You have mastered the art of thunder and you tell me that it is in a strange world?

Chapter 43: A Wheat Ear

When the donkey cart entered Xuzhou, the surrounding scenery immediately changed a lot.

If you can still see yellow-green grass all over the mountains and rivers in Qingzhou, once you enter Xuzhou, these tones will disappear completely, leaving only muddy brown, dry yellow, and black patches on the ground.

It was the color of broken flesh, flowing blood, scattered bones, and the accumulation of dead bodies.

Zuo Chen glanced around, and in his eyes, the entire earth was repeatedly emitting wild and ghostly energy.

He frowned slightly.

Not quite right.

This doesn't seem to be a simple famine.

Although the Qi on the ground is very weak, Zuo Chen believes that he cannot cover an entire state.

But this feeling doesn't seem to be caused by simply opening the altar.

Zuo Chen just felt it was strange and weird, but he couldn't tell what was going on.

The donkey cart gradually went deeper into Xuzhou, and the colors of the surroundings became increasingly pure and monotonous.

Looking up, the sky is blue; looking down, it is red.

The two sides of the official road should have been lush and green with trees all over the mountain, but now only bare mountain tops can be seen. Even if you can occasionally see a few trees on the roadside, the bark below the height of a person has been peeled off.

Overwhelming oppression came towards them. The golden boy and jade girl in Zuo Chen's sleeves stopped playing and making noise, and shrank obediently in his sleeves, secretly poking their heads out to look around, feeling both curious and frightened.

On the relic, the monk’s shadow also emerged.

When he saw his former hometown, he sighed three times.

"When will this great wilderness end?"

Caiyi also stared at the tree with its bark stripped off and swallowed her saliva:

"Monk, did you live on this?"

"Yes." The monk smiled, not knowing whether the smile was helpless or numb: "Where was there food at that time? If you could dig a piece of bark from this tree, you were considered rich.

"But you know what, girl. After the bark is stewed in the pot until it is soft, it tastes really good. It tastes like tea. If you can add a handful of coarse salt, it will be like a living god in Xuzhou. You can chew it in your mouth for half a day without feeling hungry."

"Oh my god." Although Caiyi had sometimes gone hungry and experienced the days of having no food to eat, she could only eat one steamed bun a day at most, which was considered filling. She really couldn't make stewed tree bark into eighteen different flavors.

"What else did you eat besides tree bark?" Caiyi listened to the monk's description. She was timid but curious. She asked cautiously, then shrank back.

“That’s a lot.” The monk said, “Wheat husks, corn husks, when the rice is finished, we can only eat the leftovers.

"Oh, some soil is edible. The yellowish kind looks like mud after being soaked in water. Some people think it smells good, while others think it's bitter. Guanyin soil is not edible. Although it fills you up, it may be because Guanyin Bodhisattva doesn't allow people to beg for food from him. People who steal Guanyin soil will first feel full, and then their stomachs will swell up and they won't be able to defecate. They will suffocate to death."

“That’s enough.” Caiyi waved her hands repeatedly: “It’s scary! It’s scary!”

The monk just laughed and stopped talking.

The car continued to move forward, and the monk suddenly shouted: "What is that?"

Zuo Chen looked over there.

Just then I saw a solitary ear of wheat growing in the wilderness.

Golden.

He drove his bike up to the ears of wheat, twisted the roots with his hands, and pulled them out of the ground.

And looked in all directions.

There was nothing left except this ear of wheat.

"I didn't expect this plant to survive." The monk was quite emotional: "Maybe the seeds dropped by a wealthy businessman who fled to Qingzhou sprouted. It was not eaten by the refugees, nor by the locusts. It's lucky." Zuo Chen held the wheat ears in his hand, silent, not knowing what he was thinking.

He returned to the car, still holding the wheat ear in his hand. Caiyi found it strange and asked Zuo Chen:

"Master, is there anything special about wheat ears?"

"Nothing, just ordinary millet." Zuo Chen shook his head, but still held it: "I do have something I want to test, so I'll take it with me first."

Caiyi didn’t know what Zuo Chen was going to do, but she knew that Zuo Chen was very capable, so she didn’t say anything and lay on the donkey cart thinking.

Continuing along the road, he suddenly saw a store in front of him. Zuo Chen felt a fierce glare from it at just one glance.

There must have been a lot of casualties in this place.

"This is a notorious black shop in the area." The monk popped his head out again to introduce: "When we were running here, people on the road told us this, saying that the shop owner was originally a law-abiding person, but after the famine, he had no choice but to start selling rice and meat. But they still seem to be keeping their duties. They only kill those who enter the shop, and will not leave unless they leave the shop."

Zuo Chen sighed slightly.

This world has made the living become more like ghosts than ghosts.

But when they drove past the store, they found that it was empty. Zuo Chen used his spiritual energy to observe and was slightly surprised:

"No one alive?"

He strained his eyes to look carefully again, and then he found a couple lying on the floor in the store, who had been dead for a long time.

starving.

The owner of the shady rice and meat shop actually starved to death!
The monk also looked inside and saw the two bodies. He sighed:

"He didn't run away."

The donkey cart set off on the road and no one spoke anymore.

When Zuo Chen heard Liu Laizi say that Xuzhou was hit by a disaster, he didn't have such an obvious feeling. After all, it was difficult to tell how serious the disaster was just from the words.

Now that I have actually seen it, I finally understand how heavy the three words "cannibalism" that I have seen in history books are.

I walked unsteadily from day to night, and there was no one on the road, let alone a human or even an animal.

The crow is gone. Someone shot it down with a slingshot and ate it.

The earthworms are gone, the ground has been dug three feet deep, and the worms are dug out and eaten.

It's so desolate.

When the sun set, Zuo Chen was planning to stop the carriage and spend the night nearby, but suddenly he saw bright lights not far away.

He looked over and found that there was a village on this wasteland. The lights were on, and it looked like a party was being held. It was very lively.

Zuo Chen could tell at a glance that the village was full of ghosts, just like a village of the dead.

He was not surprised. So many people had died in this place, it would be strange if there were no ghosts.

But Zuo Chen immediately felt that there seemed to be some living breath in the middle of the village, as if several living people had accidentally drowned in it!
After thinking for a moment, Zuo Chen put the donkey back on:

"Let's go into the village."

Caiyi was slightly stunned: "Master? That's obviously a ghost village, you want to get rid of them and gain merit?"

“Actually, I want to find a few locals to ask about the situation.”

Zuo Chen said.

Grandpas, please read and vote! I kowtow to all of you grandpas!
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(End of this chapter)