"Let's call our community manager!"
While her daughter was on the phone, Song Qiu'e couldn't bear to see her neighbor die and be watched by others, so she took off her white sun-protective clothing and covered her neighbor's fractured head and upper body.
"Ah, dead, all dead, haha, all dead..."
Xu Lai had just finished her call when she saw the male homeowner of apartment 1703, across from apartment 1704, who had lost his wife and child in yesterday's mutated ant swarm attack, being provoked by his female neighbor's suicide attempt. He was crying and shouting at the same time.
"Sigh, this person must be crazy!"
The onlookers all looked on with pity as they watched the young male neighbor stagger and run away, crying and shouting.
Upon receiving the call, Feng Chun immediately led his men to the scene. After confirming that the middle-aged woman had indeed passed away, he arranged for someone to drive a beat-up pickup truck, lift her onto the truck bed, and head towards the crematorium.
Seeing that Feng Chun was in a hurry to leave, Xu Lai also told him about the male neighbor who had gone insane not far away.
Feng Chun, who was busy with other things, stopped when he saw the crazy man in the distance shouting "Dead, dead, all dead" incessantly.
A look of pity appeared on his resolute face: "Never mind, I'll arrange for someone to take him to a government orphanage to inquire!"
Xu Lai also knew that the current social facilities were far inferior to those of City C before the natural disaster, which had shelters and mental hospitals.
In such a harsh environment, it is already difficult for those in power to even maintain the survival of normal people.
Xu Lai felt that the person in charge of the community had done enough.
"Thank you so much, you've really gone to so much trouble!"
Looking at this leader, whose hair had turned mostly white in less than six months since he became the head of their community, Xu Lai sincerely thanked him.
This attack on humans by a swarm of mutated, venomous red ants was truly devastating.
Even though several days had passed since the mutated red ant swarm was repelled, the surviving residents of Jinxiu Haoting community kept their doors and windows tightly closed, day and night.
Even in this extremely hot weather, even when there's a slight breeze blowing in at dawn and dusk, they dare not open the doors and windows for the sake of their lives.
Fortunately, the Xu, Xiao, and Lu families had installed steel protective netting in advance. This type of netting was sturdy enough and had a dense mesh, so the mutated poisonous red ants couldn't get in at all.
The three families were able to open their windows to let their families get some fresh air.
Five days later, the community leader received a notification from his superiors that they had finally learned the reason for the attack on the Jinxiu Haoting community by the mutated red ant swarm from one of the victims who had been severely bitten by the mutated ants.
It turned out to be Meng Cuicui's husband, the middle-aged man who was bitten to death by the mutated poisonous red ants at the beginning. He was actually one of the two households that set up a stall selling clay stoves in the open space downstairs of a building.
Because making a clay stove requires sticky yellow clay, and the ground was severely cracked, he carried a load of water and poured it onto a piece of yellow soil that met the requirements, and then dug and mixed the clay there.
Perhaps he was just unlucky; he happened to dig up the path leading out of the mutated poisonous ant's nest and happened to encounter a few mutated poisonous ants on patrol, which is why he was bitten by them.
The Xu family, one of the three households in the neighborhood that sold clay stoves, has already stopped doing the business. Meng Cuicui's husband was bitten to death by poisonous ants, so they can't do it anymore either. That leaves only the last household, the Sun family.
Seeing that he was the only one left selling clay stoves in the neighborhood, and that his business was booming, the man surnamed Sun, who ran a clay stove business, immediately raised the price of each clay stove by two centimeters.
As for his former rival being bitten to death by mutated poisonous ants, he went around telling everyone that the man was just unlucky.
It's laughable that a grown man could be killed by a few mere ants.
Some bored street urchins, upon hearing this, pointed at him in front of his stall and laughed loudly: "Old Sun, you just love to brag. You're a real man, why don't you go to that place and dig up a few poisonous red ants and see what happens?"
As a result of this provocation, the man surnamed Sun actually took over the stall, carrying the water he had painstakingly saved, and found the location on the spot with the people who had provoked him.
While watering along the marks left by previous digging, they dug extensively with a hoe.
After digging to a depth of more than two meters, they finally unearthed a section of the outer perimeter of the mutated red ant's nest.
Seeing this, some ants that were preparing to go out to forage quickly crawled out and began to attack the person who was digging up their nest.
In order to prove himself to the onlookers that he was a real man, the man surnamed Sun immediately picked up a hoe and killed the six mutated ants on the spot.
The mutated ants that were watching from inside the hole smelled the scent of their companion's corpse and came out to take revenge. As a result, those idiots who were watching not only did not try to dissuade Mr. Sun, but also joined the ant extermination war.
This back and forth eventually enraged the ants in the nest.
An ant colony contains hundreds of thousands of ants, and these are mutated ants that have grown more than ten times larger and stronger, with saliva more poisonous than arsenic.
The outcome was predictable.
"Fool, what a reckless fool! How many innocent lives has he killed!"
After hearing Xu Lai's explanation, both Grandpa Xu and Grandpa Xiao were furious.
But the disaster has already happened, and no matter what, it cannot bring back the lives of those who were eaten or bitten to death by ants.
Xu Lai recalled that when the mutated ant swarm attacked their community, Long Gan, the fire brigade captain who came to the rescue, caught several live mutated poisonous ants and took them back with him.
The mutated poisonous ants we brought back will definitely be handed over to professionals for research.
I wonder what the results of their research will be?
After waiting for two more days, Xu Lai, unable to contain her curiosity any longer, picked up the phone and dialed Long Gan.
"Hey, Longgan!"
When the phone rang, Long Gan, who habitually introduced himself, glanced at the phone screen and saw that it was the girl who had saved the lives of his five brothers in the Wangtaishan fire.
He remembered that a week ago, when the Jinxiu Haoting residential community was attacked by a swarm of mutated red poisonous ants, it was she who called him for help on behalf of the community.
Only then did he relax his tone and ask, "Comrade Xu Lai, is there something you need?"
"Captain Long, I'd like to ask you, what's the reason that these red ants suddenly mutated into something so highly venomous and extremely potent in such a short time..."
Xu Lai got straight to the point, but she also knew that inquiring about the research results of this mutated insect from relevant departments might involve related secrets.
So her tone was somewhat lacking in confidence when she asked the question.
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