The moment he saw the oasis in the vast yellow sand, Qi Le people shouted excitedly: "Look, the oasis is here!"
The local guide said with a smile, "Yes, that's right there. If you keep going, you'll reach a nearby small tribe in an hour. It's not far from the underground ant city."
These words encouraged the tired Qi Leren, who rode a camel to this oasis, scooped up the spring water and washed his face, only then did he feel that the dryness and heat all over his body were dispelled.
The illusionist also jumped off the camel, filled the water bag with water, and then started to drink.
The people of Qi Le took a look at their camel, and found that it picked up a piece of white paper from the water and gnawed it with its mouth, as if it was gnawing a piece of fresh vegetable. Qi Le people curiously snatched the piece of paper that was about to be soaked in water from the camel's mouth. The words and patterns on it had already been soaked and could not be recognized.
It was just vague, as if something had been drawn.
The wet paper melted in his hands and broke into a few fibers that had absorbed water. The camel picked up the paper from the ground and continued to chew it. The Qi Le people sighed helplessly and took the camel the rope, pulling it towards the illusionist who was already beckoning him to follow quickly.
The three of them continued to move forward. The local who was familiar with this desert became more talkative at the end of this journey. They chatted with two travelers who paid a lot of money to ask him to lead the way. From the mouth of this local, Qi Le Ren somewhat has a new understanding of the current situation of the underground ant city.
"Queen Dragon Ant has regained her health recently? Didn't it mean that she was seriously ill before?" Qi Leren asked strangely, recalling the contents of the information.
"It's starting to come back to life." The local said, "Every queen is like this. This state can last for about a month. In this month, a new queen will be born. During this period, the situation in the underground ant city is very chaotic. , demons are swarming from all over the place, and the tide of demons this month will be extraordinarily turbulent, you must be careful."
People in Qi Le know about the tide of monsters. In the underground ant city, there will be such a catastrophe every month. This group of irrational and unknown horror creatures spewed out from the cracks in the ground and frantically attacked the residents of the underground ant city. Battle the creatures in January.
The three walked forward all the way, and the yellow sand finally turned into Gobi. At dusk, the open field of vision was full of wilderness, which made the Qi Le people who came to the desert for the first time feel very moved.
He is walking along the road that Ning Zhou walked towards him, and every step is closer to him. He will find him, not too far away from this day.
"The front is the Valentine tribe, you can rest there, they are very polite to outsiders." The guide said.
Qi Leren felt that his words were a bit strange, so he couldn't help asking: "What about you? Aren't you going?"
"Me? I'll forget it. I'm afraid they won't welcome me, and our tribe doesn't welcome them either. They are foreigners and look different from our local people. We have not intermarried for generations, and we have no relationship by marriage." The guide He pursed his lips in disdain, "You can buy some food there, if you don't need it, let's go straight away."
The Valentin tribe, the Qile people remember this name, and Ning Zhou mentioned it in the letter. He lost his camel in a storm and came to the Valentine tribe alone...
He didn't say more, but even if it's just a name, it makes people nostalgic.
"Forget it, time is tight, let's go directly to the underground ant city." Qi Leren said.
So the three of them continued to walk forward, crossing the wind-eroded hill next door. When standing on the hill, the Qile people looked down at the Valentine tribe in the distance. On the Gobi in the sunset, the Valentine tribe was peaceful. , like a place outside the world in the desert.
The illusionist suddenly stopped in his tracks.
"What's wrong?" Qi Leren asked.
"There was no cooking smoke during dinner time." The illusionist narrowed his eyes slightly, looking at the tribe in the distance, "There is no one moving around, and something may have happened to that tribe."
Qi Leren's experience is not as rich as that of illusionists, and he didn't think of this question at all just now: "What happened?"
"Come on, let's go take a look." The illusionist said.
The three of them walked down the hill and came to the lower-lying Valentin tribe. The closer they got, the more obvious the strange situation became. In silence.
This tragedy is no longer a world, but a hell on earth. There are gnawed corpses everywhere, and there are dried blood all over the ground. The scavenging bird was startled by the visitors, reluctantly flew away from the mutilated and rotting corpse, landed on the wooden fence outside the tent, and watched them with malicious eyes.
The terrified guide covered his mouth with his hands and prayed mutteringly. The illusionist and the Qi Le people searched the tribe, but they didn't see a living person. Old people, children, men, and women were all unrecognizable. All the sheep in the fence were dead, chewed to the point of bloody fur.
It turns out that the peaceful small tribe under the setting sun has long been a cemetery with only corpses left.
The tragedy here made the people of Qi Le hardly dare to stare at the corpse carefully, and his heart was extremely heavy. He knew that such tragedies were happening almost every day in the nightmare world, but he witnessed a tribe that existed not long ago being slaughtered. However, he couldn't let go of the tragic situation after that.
"Such a large-scale death does not seem to be the work of a demon. Demons usually don't slaughter villages, unless they are low-level and irrational demons, but such demons will not be so destructive. Probably demons, underground After the monthly monster tide in Ant City ends, many monsters will flee to the ground to plunder the nearby tribes, they are like a group of wild beasts, they eat up everything like locusts wherever they go, and they are more ferocious than demons." Illusion the teacher said.
"What should we do with the corpse?" Qi Leren asked awkwardly, nauseated by the bloody smell soaring into the sky.
"There is nothing to deal with. If this kind of thing happened outside the Tranquility Desert, the nearby stronghold of the Holy See may send people to investigate the situation and clean up the corpses, but here... this is the territory of the Dragon Ant Queen." Standing at The illusionist in the wind looked back at the deserted village under the bloody setting sun, and said softly, "Let the wind and sand bury this place."
"Will there be any survivors?" Qi Leren asked.
"I don't know, maybe there is. But an ordinary person, even if he escapes to the underground ant city, he may not be able to live a good life... Let's go, we should set off." The illusionist has already mounted the camel, urging the people of Qi Le .
Qi Leren looked at the dried blood that had already soaked into the sand under his feet, and deep sadness and melancholy welled up in his heart, making him speechless.
The camel looked at him docilely and nuzzled his cheek. Qi Leren's eyes were slightly moist, and he leaned over and hugged the camel's thick neck.
"Let's go." Qi Leren also rode on the camel and walked towards the underground ant city in the distance.
&&&
The entrance of the underground ant city looks like a crater, but there is no magma under this crater, but a huge cavity, which is 500 meters deep. The hole cannot be climbed into, and a skydive is necessary. In the deep darkness, the bottom of the cave illuminated by fluorescent plants on the rock wall is an underground lake. It is said that the water in it has existed for millions of years, the water quality is clear, and there are self-luminous fish living in it.
This cave is called the Dragon's Breath Cave. The origin of the name is unknown, but what is certain is that there are no legendary creatures like giant dragons in it, but it is full of bats.
The guide broke up with them at the entrance of the cave. The illusionist and the Qi Le people jumped into the underground lake. After climbing up, they handed over the skydiving equipment to the masked man who was in charge of recycling on the boat, and came to the shore in this small boat.
The underground world is completely different from the world on the ground. The Qi Le people who came here for the first time looked at the surrounding environment curiously. There are not many light sources here, basically relying on the fluorescent plants on the wall. If it wasn’t for his vision improvement after breaking the shell It is very painful to face a dark environment.
"What if it's too dark and someone can't see clearly?" Qi Le asked, "Can I use oil lamps or torches?"
The illusionist laughed and said, "Of course, but if you insist on holding a torch and telling others 'I'm a weak chicken', don't blame others for provoking you. There is no court to maintain order here."
Along the underground passage, Qi Leren judged his own position while comparing it with the map. He had a good sense of direction. He walked around in the dark place for a while, but he couldn't tell the difference between the south, the south and the north. The illusionist who insisted on taking a shortcut, grabbed the map while grabbing his hair, and quarreled with Qi Leren over the route.
The illusionist insisted that as an old driver who had been to the underground ant city many times, it was impossible for him to get lost, while Qi Leren retorted that they had walked through the same place three times just now.
In the end, the illusionist was furious and uttered the famous "You do it, you do it". Qi Leren really wasn't polite to him, and walked with him for ten minutes, and walked back to the main road smoothly.
This face-to-face slap in the face caused the illusionist to remain silent for the rest of the journey. After arriving at the main city of the underground Ant City, the illusionist spoke wearily, saying that he would take Qi Le people to find a place where they could live. .
Qi Leren was in a hurry to find Ning Zhou, but he refused. With the introduction of the illusionist, he found Celia, the contact person of the trial office in the underground ant city. The contact person of the trial office stationed in the underground ant city gave him a lot With help, he got the information he needed and rushed to the direction of purgatory day and night...
On the twenty-eighth day after completing the mission of the Holy Nun, Qi Leren arrived in Purgatory, triggering the second step of the mission.
At this time, Purgatory is under emergency martial law, and the entire territory is blocked and traffic is prohibited.
PS: Many settings of the Underground Ant City refer to some remote tribes and natural landscapes on the earth. Fossil water is the first episode of the BBC documentary "Africa"; the prototype of the entrance cave of the underground ant city is the Mexican swallow cave; the prototype of the dragon ant queen is the honey ant in the power chapter of BBC's "Life Story" and "Natural World" : Ant Empire. I will write down the other parts that I remember. Some documentaries with poor memory are forgotten after watching.