living in the world of reincarnation

Chapter 19 The Scavenger

Under the leadership of Andrew, Mu Lan walked around the city. He was very familiar with the urban environment and walked on narrow paths. The two of them walked for an hour, getting farther and farther away from the urban core area full of high-rise buildings .

Andrew pointed to the sewer fence at his feet and said, "Sister Lan, we are going to take a secret passage!"

"Sewer?" Mu Lan was confused.

"Yes!" Andrew nodded, then raised the sewer fence and made a gesture of please.

"You go first!" Mu Lan resisted and asked Andrew to go down first. She didn't expect that going to the scavenger's territory would require drilling into the sewer.

Andrew jumped down first, and Mu Lan leaned over to smell it, and found that it didn't have the unpleasant smell as expected.

It may be because no one lives in the city and there is no domestic sewage in the sewers.

Mu Lan hesitated for a moment and then jumped down.

As soon as I came, I found that the sewer is very wide. It is like the large urban sewer system in Europe in the past. The width can accommodate three or four people walking side by side.

Mu Lan asked the doubts in her heart: "You live here?"

"It's still far away! It's safer to go from here, Erics can't see it!" Andrew said.

Mu Lan saw that it was too dark in the sewer, so she took out a flashlight from her pocket.

Andrew stared at the flashlight with curiosity in his eyes, and Mu Lan handed it to him.

"Don't you have a flashlight?" Mu Lan asked.

"A light that can be carried with you!" Andrew looked around with a flashlight, feeling like he couldn't put it down. He exclaimed, "Actually, there are such things in the camp, but the quantity is very small, and they are distributed by the patriarch."

It seems that the resources of scavengers are quite scarce. Seeing that he likes flashlights very much, Mu Lan asked him to hold them and lead the way.

The sewer system here is very complicated. Andrew took Mu Lan around in it. Most of the passages are very wide, but some are very narrow, and you need to walk on your waist, so you only walked for more than 2 hours. The two of them were panting from exhaustion. Mu Lan felt that her chest was so tight that she couldn't breathe. Affected by the previous explosion, her chest and abdomen still hurt.

Mu Lan tried to memorize the maze-like passage route, but she gave up. Without Andrew leading the way, she would not be sure that she would be able to find the right direction in this sewer even with the detection technique. away from the city core.

"It's almost there!" Andrew said.

Mu Lan wiped her sweat. She noticed that there were already some traces of human life in the passage here. There were some large boxes on the ground for unknown purposes, and some miner's lamps hanging on the wall.

"Sister Lan, this way!" Andrew grabbed a ladder, greeted Mu Lan and climbed up.

Opening the fence, Mu Lan climbed out of the sewer, looked around and found that it was an abandoned factory, surrounded by a circle of low factory buildings, and many people in shabby clothes were doing nothing around the fire.

"Finally home! I thought I would never come back!" Andrew sighed.

"Andrew! Where did you go?" Several children ran over and fought with Andrew familiarly.

"Ahem! Stop making trouble, there are more important things!" Andrew straightened his face like a young adult, and then looked at Mu Lan.

Only then did the children realize that it was a stranger. An older boy saw Mu Lan and asked curiously, "Stranger? Andrew, what's the matter with you? Bring a stranger here?"

"It's a guest! And Sister Lan is a good person!" Andrew told his friends about Mu Lan giving him food, and began to show off his experience: "You would never have imagined that I saw Eric with my own eyes. They Fighting with those mysterious people in the city is so cool! Now I'm not a coward!."

Mu Lan observed the scavenger camp, it was already night, most people didn't show up, but it is estimated that there are less than [-] people in total, there are many bonfires in the factory compound, and I don't know what is cooking in the pot , a scent floated over.

Wandering around in the camp, she saw a group of people surrounding a stove, in which bottles and jars of pottery were being burned, and young and strong men carrying old-fashioned double-barreled shotguns on their backs and holding miner's lamps patrolling high places. A woman skins an animal with a knife in front of a fire.

Although it is backward here, there is a smoke and fire. Mu Lan can't help feeling that human beings are a very resilient species. Even if civilization is destroyed, they can still survive in the cracks, hug each other, and yearn for the reconstruction of order.

"Is your place so lively at night?" Mu Lan asked Andrew.

"Yes." Andrew nodded and said: "Night is much more dangerous than daytime. There are strange beasts attacking us outside, so we can only be divided into two groups, one group rests during the day and the other group rests at night. But the pioneering day is here, and the patriarch should ask We have reduced our activities."

Andrew found a room in the factory building for Mu Lan to settle down temporarily. After a while, he came over with hot water and food, "After walking all night, let's eat something first! It may not be as good as your food, but It's all hot!"

Mu Lan took a sip of hot water and felt her body warming up immediately, then she pointed at the dark pancake-like thing in front of her eyes and asked, "What is this?"

"It's khamba!" Andrew said, breaking off a piece for himself and chewing. "We usually eat these, and they're made of rye!"

"Oh!" Mu Lan picked up this Kangba, it was hot, it should be baked, just about to try to take a bite, when she heard the noise outside, the little boy who greeted Andrew before ran in.

"Andrew! The patriarch wants to see you!"

Seven or eight people came in surrounded by an old man with white hair. The old man looked at Andrew with a reproachful look. Andrew immediately lowered his head, and then he moved his eyes to Mu Lan.

"Stranger, where are you from?" The old man's voice was very old, but his eyes were piercing, revealing a kind of shrewdness. This should be the patriarch that Andrew mentioned.

"You are the patriarch! I come from a far away place, and I fled here to avoid Eric's pursuit." Mu Lan said.

"It's been a long time since a strange refugee appeared." The old man looked at Mu Lan's face, remained silent for a moment, and then said, "You don't look like a refugee at all."

"Stop pretending! This person is Eric pretending to be! Hurry and catch her!" A dark-faced scavenger pointed at Mu Lan, feeling a little excited.

"The patriarch! Sister Lan is not." Just as Andrew was about to argue, he was pulled away by several adults.

Seeing these scavengers drew out their weapons and surrounded them, Mu Lan didn't panic, she slowly said, "How could Eric be so stupid as to sneak into your territory alone, not to mention that I'm a weak woman with a body Without weapons, there is no threat to you!"

Speaking of which, Mu Lan spread her hands, indicating that she had no weapons, and she continued: "The Pioneering Festival has begun, and I am a poor person who was hunted down by Eric just like you, and my friend has died in the city Inside, now I just want to seek your shelter."

"Patriarch, don't be fooled by her!" Another scavenger said, "Look at her appearance and her clothes, it's obvious that she is from Eric."

The patriarch remained silent. He looked at Mu Lan, wanting to see how she would explain.

Mu Lan looked at the group of scavengers in front of her. It might be due to long-term nutritional imbalance. They all had sallow and thin faces and looked like bitter gourds. Compared with the Eric who she killed before, they were completely different species.

Just as Mu Lan was about to explain something, there was a sudden gunshot outside, and then there was an instant commotion in the abandoned factory.

(End of this chapter)