celestial system of the solar system

Chapter 274 Caravan

As usual, as soon as the intersection of heaven and earth showed a hazy red, the villagers of Nine-headed Bird Village walked out of their homes one after another and gathered near the gate.When the first ray of sunlight fell on the ground, the village chief had assembled his team and set off for the farmland outside the wall.

The farmland is close to the fence. In terms of straight-line distance, the farthest farmland is no more than two kilometers away from the fence.Therefore, the neat and silent team soon arrived at the farmland.

After reaching the farmland, the team automatically separates, and the women and older children stay in the farmland to work, while the men continue to move forward.

The fields grow barley, wheat, oats, potatoes and vegetables.The main work of women in the farmland is to fight against various insects, weeds, voles and birds.The older children, aged eight to 12, served as their assistants.

People did similar things on farms hundreds of years ago to get higher yields from crops.But now, no matter how hard people work, the grain that can be harvested from one mu of land is no more than a few dozen catties at most--and the yield of hopeful harvest will naturally be lower, but the difference between the two is not too great.Women and older children hunted insects, voles, and birds in the fields, not so much to increase food production as to gather food.

In order to fill their stomachs, humans in the last days eat everything: leaves, tubers, bark, wild fruits, hares, voles, squirrels, snakes, frogs, sparrows, wild pheasants, wild ducks, various insects and their pupae. , maggots... no matter how nasty and disgusting this thing is, and no matter how indigestible it is.As long as anything is eaten, the human gastric juice can extract the last nutrients from that thing, even if it is a molecule or a particle; and the blood of human beings in the last days can also transport these nutrients to the most remote places of the body, Go build the toughest, fiercest, strongest, bravest physique.

Generally speaking, except for the harvest season and some special festivals, grilled insects and unknown but edible wild vegetables are regarded as normal food - because of its scarcity and importance, food is raised to a slightly higher level. Below salt, but almost equal to where the meat is.

If they were lucky and caught a mole or dug up a handful of maggots, the women would take them home and make a pot of soup with heavy seasonings for extra flavor.Occasionally, when the men returned to the village in the evening, they would bring back their harvest, whether it was wild sheep, wild deer, wild boar or whatever.That night, the residents of Settlement 54951 would have broth to drink, and if there were enough prey, the man who contributed the most in the hunt might even have meat to eat at home—however, that was something that could be met but not sought after.

While the women and older children did the heavy field labor, the men patrolled the territory like lions on the outskirts.Men's work may not be harder than women's, but they need to bear more danger.Because men often need to fight against beasts that are faster, stronger, and stronger in attack and resistance than themselves.

The men conscientiously patrolled the periphery to prevent hungry wild beasts from breaking into the fields and hurting the women and children working in the fields.Generally speaking, when women and children work in the fields, they will always attract a beast with malicious intentions to peep from a distance.Men need to be vigilant and pay attention to any abnormal situation. Once a beast crosses the psychological warning line, they will quickly rush over, brandishing weapons and shouting loudly to intimidate each other.If the psychological warfare fails, a fierce battle will ensue.

Men are in charge of guarding, women and older children collect food in the fields, and children under the age of eight will stay inside the wall and play and play under the care of the elderly.Because the weather is still warm and the cloth is very precious, children under the age of five, regardless of gender, are all naked, laughing, screaming, playing chase games and hide-and-seek in the open space all day long.

If the elders who take care of the children are not paying attention, the children will drive away the young poultry and puppies, making chickens fly and dogs jump around, and chicken feathers and dog feathers fly all over the sky.The only way to calm children is to tell them stories.All the children, as soon as they hear that someone among the old people wants to tell a story, they will crawl over and sit around the old man, listening quietly.

In addition to taking care of young children, the elderly also need to serve as security guards.

Nine-headed Bird Village is an ordinary village in the wilderness.Like all other villages in the wasteland, the core area of ​​Nine-Headed Bird Village is a circle. This part is surrounded by barriers made of tree trunks, soil and stones, leaving only a gate for entry and exit.Outside the wall, there is a trench guarding it.Four guard posts were built at the four corners of the wall, and this is also the place where the old people are engaged in guard work.

The productivity of human society in the last days has been greatly reduced. Therefore, after various communication equipment are damaged, what replaces them is not new communication equipment, but wolf smoke, message trees and drums.In Jiutouniao Village and its surrounding areas, people used to use the sound of drums to convey messages.

The melody of the drum sounds like some kind of music, but in fact its direct ancestor is Morse code.The number of drum beats in each section represents "." and "_" respectively. These two basic symbols are combined into different letters, numbers and punctuation marks, and then they are further combined to express various information.

In practice, some five-character codes are sent as one word, such as: BYOXO ("Are you trying to crawl out of it?"); LIOUY ("Why do not you answer my question? ”); AYYLU (“Not clearly coded, repeat more clearly.”), in order to improve the efficiency of drum sound delivery of messages.In addition, abbreviations are often used to convey messages with drum sounds. Unlike the same symbol, abbreviations retain the space between characters, and they are not used as one.For example: A-All after (after the question mark is used to request repetition); C-Yes (yes, good); 88-Love and kisses (the farewell of love and kisses, theoretically should be used between "opposites"); 99- go way (asked to leave, not friendly).

Due to historical reasons, the whole wilderness is traditionally divided into two parts, the Yakutia wilderness and the Krasnoyarsk wilderness.The reason for this division is that this wasteland was formerly the autonomous republic of Yakutia and the Krasnoyarsk Krai.

Nine-headed Bird Village is located in the Yakutia Wasteland.The legally official language of the Autonomous Republic of Yakutia is Yakut.However, in the world-wide immigration after the disaster, people from various countries poured into this wasteland one after another, resulting in a very large number of languages ​​on the wasteland, at least exceeding three digits.

(End of this chapter)