Chapter 147
Qiao Sheng planted crops before going to bed, and the next morning he harvested them. Just after he and Li Mu finished their work on the boat, Chu Wanyou came back and called them to have breakfast. Grandma Chu had already prepared breakfast.
Seeing her, Qiao Sheng asked why she came back without waiting for them to take over.
"Qing Wan has recovered, and the old lady who was in a coma in the shelter has also woken up. I heard that they are neighbors and are now helping Qing Wan take care of the children. I was completely useless and was rushed back. I haven't even got on the boat yet, but my grandma sent me here to call you to have breakfast. Hurry up, don't waste time. My grandma also said, don't bring anything here, otherwise I will scold you." Chu Wanyou stood under the boat and shouted to the people on the second floor.
You can't go empty-handed. You have to bring things over even if you get scolded. Winter bamboo shoots, spring bamboo shoots, sesame seeds, peanuts, soybeans. Qiao Sheng didn't take the common ones, but the intermediate ones. When he
got to Grandma Chu's boat, he took them out and said that he didn't know how to cook them. Dried bamboo shoots, pickled bamboo shoots, sesame oil, and the most important thing was the soybeans. He wanted to eat fermented bean curd, so he came to ask Grandma Chu if she could make it.
It was really a set of combo punches, mixing the real and the fake together. Li Mu didn't know she was so good at talking.
Grandma Chu was smart. He knew what she meant at a glance and told her not to worry. She could make whatever she wanted to eat, and she would study to make whatever she didn't know how to make. Anyway, she would arrange for her to eat it in the end.
After breakfast, Qiao Sheng and Li Mu went to the island to help, Chu Wanyou stayed on the boat to catch up on sleep, and Grandma Chu got off the boat with them, but her destination was the logistics department of Pei Hong's fleet next to her. The old lady had been helping there since last night.
When they arrived at the ruins, after a night of digging, many places had been cleaned up. There were places on the open ground for corpses and items, and these needed to be identified by the survivors themselves.
Master Wang had arrived at the ruins early in the morning to identify people, and was now identifying the five corpses dug out last night.
Qiao Sheng and Li Mu called Pei Hong over and handed him the food they had collected earlier and some of the food they had stored before. It was not that they did not trust Pei Hong's logistics department, but some things were better to be exposed.
After the handover, Li Mu stared at Master Wang and the corpses, his brows slightly raised, and he didn't know what he was thinking.
"Something is wrong, Brother Pei, remember, when we came here on the first day, Master Wang said that there were only a hundred old and weak women on the island. Didn't he say yesterday that one of the corpses was the second son of the Liu family, another was a barefoot doctor, and the last was a headless corpse, all of them were males. I just scanned these five, and two of them were males, right?" Li Mu came back to his senses after being touched by Qiao Sheng and asked the question.
Pei Hong quickly called the team member who was in charge of burning the corpses yesterday. It was not someone else, but the steady young man who helped to pull Qiao Sheng and the others. Pei Hong asked him the approximate age of the corpses burned yesterday.
This man really paid attention to this problem. He said that the two named ones looked wrinkled. He wiped the bodies a little before burning them. Although the faces were deformed, it was still obvious that they were quite old, probably in their 50s or 60s.
"Brother Pei, I looked at the one without a head. He is very young. The skin on his upper body is very smooth and white. He doesn't look like someone who fishes all year round. He has a wolf head tattoo on his lower back." The steady young man said what he observed. He didn't know what Master Wang said. He had to observe these details by himself.
Pei Hong didn't say anything, but asked him to be responsible for burning the bodies in the future, and the key point was to remember every young male body.
After the steady young man went back to work, they were sure that there was something wrong with what Mr. Wang said.
"You said that Mr. Wang knew who the headless young man was, but he didn't want to tell us? There is a tattoo on his lower back, which is much better than the head to identify people." Qiao Sheng felt that this inference was very likely.
However, they had no way to force Mr. Wang to tell the truth, so they could only record, infer, and verify bit by bit.
Knowing that there was something wrong with Mr. Wang, Pei Hong first instructed the team members guarding the shelter to keep an eye on this person and hold him down as soon as possible if there was any unusual movement. Although the team members didn't know what was going on, they were very efficient in executing his words.
After everything was arranged, Qiao Sheng and Li Mu joined the excavation team. It was pure physical labor, and they didn't have to think too much. When a body was exposed, a special body-lifting team would lift it to the side. Those items that were not damaged would also be picked out separately.
At noon, Zheng Xi and other members of the logistics department came to deliver lunch, and Qiao Sheng and his team also ate a big pot of lunch together. Until the evening, they cleaned up a large area.
Four bodies were dug out, three adults and one child. The mother and child were dug out together. The team members standing nearby couldn't bear to watch it. The mother was in a hunched posture, holding her child in her arms. Her spine had been completely broken.
When the team members who were carrying the corpse tried to separate the mother and child, they found that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't pry the mother's hands apart. Although they knew the chances were slim, they still checked the three or four-year-old child in her arms and confirmed that she had no breathing or heartbeat, so they gave up on separating the mother and child.
"It's instinct for a mother to protect her child. I used to cry when I saw such reports on TV. Later, Xu Ziyan didn't allow me to watch these reports. I didn't expect that one day such a thing would happen to me, sob." Fang Yueyi lay on Qiao Sheng's shoulder and cried.
Qiao Sheng patted her head and told her not to cry. They had saved everyone they could. They had built several shelters, and there were 71 survivors lying in them, but many of them were injured.
Qiao Sheng also took out the Panax notoginseng he had stored before, and treated all those who could be treated, but there was nothing he could do for those with broken arms and legs.
But Pei Hong had someone who could set bones, and now the seriously injured were lying there to recuperate, and the slightly injured were able to help take care of the seriously injured. The food for the more than 70 people was also provided by Qiao Sheng, and they had been bleeding a lot recently. After completing the copy of this island, they had to start stockpiling food in large quantities.
Just this excavation work took more than 60 people another five days. It was really too time-consuming to dig by hand without an excavator, and the team members were also exhausted.
After putting all the urns of ashes together, Pei Hong checked with the steady young man Pei Zhenxing. A total of 23 bodies were burned, two of which were headless young male bodies. There were tattoos on the lower back, the first one was a wolf head, and the second one was a dragon head.
The two extra headless male bodies should be the focus. Now the completion of the copy is 98%. It seems that they guessed wrong before. Rebuilding the homeland for the islanders is not a way to increase the completion. Checking the two headless male bodies is. Qiao Sheng also calculated that digging out a body is 1%, and it was 75% before. Adding these 23 bodies, it is exactly 98%.
But I can't tell Pei Hong about the completion of this copy. If I don't help the islanders build a home, Pei Hong and his team will leave, leaving Qiao Sheng and his team alone, and safety will also be a problem.
It just so happens that the excuse I found before is quite useful. I can use food to keep everyone here. Maybe there will be another adventure. After all, Xia Beibei also got a reward at the beginning.
After clearing the islanders' settlement, Pei Hong went to ask Master Wang how they built their houses in the past, since there were so many bricks in the ruins.
Master Wang said that they built their houses with stones transported from the mountains. Because the walls were thick, they were warm in winter and cool in summer. However, the disadvantages were obvious. Once an earthquake occurred, people who didn't have time to get out of the house would be in danger.
"Master Wang, we don't know how to build stone houses. We will build a few wooden houses for you for now, and we will modify the others when the young people on your island come back." Pei Hong explained the subsequent arrangements and began to ask Master Wang whether the ashes in these earthenware jars all had family members.
Master Wang nodded and said that he had them all. Now he only had ten earthenware jars left. They were all from men or sons who had gone out to sea. When they came back, they could take them away and bury them.
Pei Hong then asked what to do with the two without heads. They had not found their heads yet and the ruins had been cleaned up.
Master Wang began to change the subject. He said that he really couldn't identify them without heads, and then he said that after they were all taken away, someone would definitely come to claim the remaining two. He also said that it didn't matter if they didn't have heads. It was all life, and it was also life if they didn't have complete bodies.
What happened next was even more confusing. He suddenly held his head and said he felt dizzy. Grandma Sun, who had been helping to take care of Qing Wan in the corner, quickly came over to help the old man to the bed, and asked Pei Hong to leave first, saying that Master Wang might have been hit on the head by a stone. He had been having headaches at night recently, so he should stop asking and let him have a good rest.
Seeing that he couldn't get any useful information, Pei Hong didn't pester him. He still had to stay for a while anyway. Grandma Sun seemed to know something. When she was about to leave, she looked at Qing Wan at the door. Unexpectedly, she was holding a child in her arms and looked at him as if she wanted to say something.
Pei Hong stood at the door, wanting to see if she could say anything, but in the end Qing Wan just sighed, turned her gaze to the baby in her arms, and stopped looking at him.