Ancient Invasion [End Times]

Day 140 after the invasion

Tarantulas approached Cheng Sheng and his party.

When Lin Qian thought of the desert spider bees being bred in the stomachs of these potbellied tarantulas, his scalp would explode.

He couldn't help asking Cheng Sheng: "Why did they follow us all of a sudden?"

Cheng Sheng shook his head and said with dark eyes, "I don't know, but if they keep following us, we have to take some extreme measures."

Just as Lin Qian put a question mark on the "extreme means" the doctor said in his heart, the next second he saw small blue sparks burst out from the doctor's hanging fingertips, and fell quickly into the desert, splashing tiny crackling flames, which startled the wolves. The spider flung its eight claws wildly, making its steps chaotic.

"Just burn it and finish it." Zhang Jiuzhang said.

Cheng Sheng shook his head: "No, you want to lure other desert spider bees over?"

"Although the desert spider wasp is a solitary wasp, there have been more than one person and more than once witnessed a group of desert spider wasps gathering and circling around a dead spider wasp, forming a whirlpool-like mourning circle. Like an ant colony." Cheng Sheng said with a frown.

Lin Qian twitched the corners of his mouth, staring at the pot-bellied tarantulas trying to avoid Spark, and muttered, "So human?"

"Don't underestimate the group order and emotional empathy ability of lower animals." Cheng Sheng glanced at him and said.

After he finished speaking, he turned to Zhang Jiuzhang, explaining: "Although this kind of situation is rare, if it can be avoided right now, the main thing is to avoid it."

Zhang Jiuzhang didn't say anything after hearing the words. Rather than attracting more hidden dangers of desert spider bees, he could indeed avoid them as much as he could.

"But the question is, why on earth did they follow us..." Lin Qian watched helplessly as the tarantulas avoided the flames splashing on the sand, and continued to move tirelessly in their direction.

While muttering, he frowned and looked around, asking Cheng Sheng: "Is it because we are going in the wrong direction? We happened to bump into them?"

"There's nothing else around here that attracts spider bees or tarantulas." Cheng Sheng shook his head, paused, and said, "But we can experiment."

He said, moving in the other direction.

No tarantula followed.

The next one was Zhang Jiuzhang, who approached in the direction Cheng Sheng was moving.

Also no tarantulas followed.

Lin Qian swallowed nervously, and said to Du Nanrong, "It's your turn, Mr. Du."

Du Nanrong nodded, he turned his footsteps, and just walked a few steps towards Cheng Sheng, when he saw seven or eight big tarantulas in front of him turning in unison following his footsteps.

Du Nanrong: "..."

A few tarantulas seemed a little anxious, swinging their claws in two directions, as if anxious about where to go.

Duan Yi frowned when he saw this, he walked quickly to Du Nanrong's side, and shouted in a low voice: "Don't move."

Du Nanrong didn't dare to move either, these big tarantulas stared at him covetously, as if there was some peerless delicacy hidden in him.

Duan Yi checked Du Nanrong's whole body. Du Nanrong stood there like a wooden man, allowing Duan Dui to touch his body up and down. Occasionally, when he touched a sensitive itchy flesh, he could only hold back his laughter and tremble all over.

"Shaking what?" Duan Yi asked.

"...Itchy." Du Gong said in a low voice, the 1.8-meter tall man was a little embarrassed.

Duan Yi's hands paused, but fortunately, he quickly found what he was looking for from Du Nanrong.

On the collar behind Du Nanrong's neck, he found a small piece of white, thin, powder-like substance, which he did not know where it got on.

"Doctor, come and see what this is." Duan Yi said.

Hearing this, Cheng Sheng walked over quickly, squinted his eyes and stood behind Du Nanrong, gently scraping off a little powder with a twig.

"It might be phosphorous powder." Cheng Sheng discerned.

"What kind of fan?" Du Nanrong wondered, "The kind that can float around?"

"It's like the phosphorous powder on the wings of butterflies and moths. It may have been stained by the giant spider wasp encountered on the tree before." Cheng Sheng said, "The scale powder is equivalent to the animal hair-like substance, which can act It is waterproof, and at the same time emits a faint smell, which is easy to identify the location."

"The phosphorous powder of some male butterflies has a smell, and the female butterflies will use this smell to find each other's location." Cheng Sheng said, and attracted Lin Qian, and as expected, he found a similar powder on Lin Qian's clothes .

"No wonder these tarantulas came over," Zhang Jiuzhang said.

Dare to feel that there are two "traitors" in their team.

Lin Qian and Du Nanrong quickly took off their coats, buried them in the yellow sand under their feet, and then quietly backed away, hiding behind a small sand dune.

I saw those tarantulas slowly moving towards the place where the coats of the two were buried, gathered in a small pile, and dug holes in the sand.

"It's really because of the phosphorus powder." Lin Qian was relieved when he saw this.

"Okay, don't disturb them, let's leave quietly." Cheng Sheng said, making a detour to avoid the tarantulas carrying the wasp eggs.

Lin Qian and the others nodded and left quietly.

They originally took the direction of Populus euphratica forest as the main direction of action, looking for a place where they could rest temporarily.

It's just that as we walk, there are fewer and fewer things that can be used as references. The surrounding area is gradually replaced by taller trees such as red willows and Haloxylons, and sandy land.

They couldn't climb to a high place to confirm whether they were going in the right direction and whether the Populus euphratica forest was still in place.

Unable to do so, Cheng Sheng and the others did not go any further, but set up camp on the spot, found a half-height place on the windward slope of the sand dune, with a relatively gentle slope, and pitched their tents directly down.

Even though they walked a few hundred meters further, there would be green vegetation covering them, but Duan Yi still chose to camp on the loess of the sand dunes.

An oasis means more mosquitos and wild animals.

And the low-lying places in the sand, even if they are leeward, have a great risk of being buried. No one wants to wake up the next morning and find that half of their body is crushed under the wind and sand.

What's more, in the leeward place, the wind and sand are mostly sand slopes formed by accumulation. The sand is loose and the tent is not easy to fix.

Relatively speaking, Duan Yi chose the half-height of the windward slope, where the wind and sand will not be too large, and the windward side is affected by wind erosion, and the yellow sand is compacted, which is relatively hard and suitable for fixing tents.

Lin Qian and the others did a simple cleanup at the place where the tent was fixed, cleaning up all the rocks, branches and shrubs, and then set up the tent.

After the tent was laid down, Duan Yi took out a windproof lamp from his backpack and fixed it on the side of the tent.

Lin Qian looked at Duan Yi unexpectedly, wondering what else was hidden in Duan Dui's backpack.

First the tent, then the hurricane lamp...

"Has Team Duan brought a moisture-proof pad?" Lin Qian looked at Duan Yi expectantly.

Zhang Jiuzhang snorted: "Come out for camping and tourism? Still have a moisture-proof pad?"

There was no moisture-proof pad, but Duan Yi took out a sleeping blanket.

——If he could get a moisture-proof pad, I believe Duan Yi would also bring it, but he and Cheng Sheng went around the resident market, and only got these few things in exchange.

Zhang Jiuzhang: "..."

"It's no wonder Duan Duan's backpack is bulging, and there are so many things in it." Du Nanrong was surprised.

Their backpacks were not empty either, but they were full of supplementary necessities, such as salt and water.

In the words of Cheng Sheng: "Your mother is not a sheep, you can't tell which layer of rock has salt on it."

——So, each of them brought some edible salt.

When the body lacks salt, it will lead to weakness, anemia and dizziness. Many people know that water should be replenished in time in the desert, but they ignore the criticality of salt.

After the tent was set up, several people got into the tent.

Five men crowded the ordinary tent to the brim, and one could not help but worry that the tent would fall apart.

The saxifrage jumped out of the tent, took root, and grew into a shape less than two meters long, wrapping the tent under its own leaves.

Under the full moon in the desert, on the endless desert plain, the nearly two-meter-high and stout figure of the saxifrage has become a particularly prominent existence.

From a distance, it looks like a huge umbrella.

"Tap the remaining water." Duan Yi said.

"receive."

At the beginning, the amount of water they brought was based on six people, two liters of water per person. This amount was basically enough for a whole day's walking consumption, but they were not only walking on the road, but also fleeing. huge.

"Drink this water sparingly, it will last for half a day at most." Lin Qian said, shaking the half-squeaking water bag.

Seeing this, Yang Mucuo immediately understood what these people were talking about earlier. He crawled out of the tent and dug a hole outside the tent.

Du Nanrong was stunned for a moment: "What is he doing?"

Duan Yi quickly realized Yang Mucuo's intentions, and he immediately called other people to come over, dug a few shallow pits, spread a waterproof tactical backpack on the pits, and pressed a few relatively clean stones on top.

"The temperature difference in the desert at night is large, and the humidity is heavy. The water will condense on the surface of the stone or metal. A small amount of drinking water can be collected overnight." Duan Yi simply explained.

Du Nanrong was stunned: "Speaking of which, I seem to remember reading a method of self-distillation in the desert..."

"Desert distillation requires digging a deep pit of at least [-] centimeters, which consumes too much energy for us." Duan Yi vetoed, "Although desert distillation can obtain nearly three liters of water in one night, the water obtained comes from The saline-alkaline water seeped out of the sand cannot be directly drunk.”

Cheng Sheng nodded slightly, and added: "Drinking saline-alkaline water without treatment will cause vomiting and dehydration. Once you vomit, you will lose more water in your body faster and more. The loss outweighs the gain."

Du Nanrong took a deep breath. He didn't expect that under such circumstances, the water he finally obtained would still be undrinkable.

Seeing this, Cheng Sheng paused and said, "Actually, when the temperature drops below zero at night, the saline-alkali water will freeze. Freezing can dilute the saline-alkali content in it, and it can be used after diluting. It's just that we have stricter time requirements. It is harsher, and you need to hurry up and hurry, relatively speaking, the cost performance of this method is not as good as directly collecting dew.”

Du Nanrong nodded: "Understood Doctor."

"I don't know what's going on at the station." Lin Qian said.

He raised his head and froze in place, not knowing which direction to look for a moment.

To be honest, they were really embarrassed and embarrassed at the moment, and it was the first time they encountered a situation where they could not distinguish their directions.

Even when they were in a terrible miasma, the dense miasma covered the sky and the sun, and it was difficult for sunlight or moonlight to penetrate the miasma, Duan Yi still had a way to lead them to find the way to leave.

But the current situation is quite the opposite.

The moon is bright and the stars are sparse above their heads, and the North Star is still shining brightly. They can easily locate the direction.

However, just like during the day, after a few ten minutes passed, even if they stayed in place, when they looked up at the sky again, the position and direction of the Polaris changed again.

It was as if the whole world was joking with them.

At first, when they found out about this situation, they felt helpless and desperate, but now, Lin Qian and the others were almost numb. Even when they saw the North Star above their heads turn around helplessly, there was no disturbance in their hearts.

——What else can I do, I can't fight the sky or the earth.

This is a completely different feeling from being in the miasma forest.

Being in the miasma, at least they know what they are going to face, but in this desert, there are mysterious unknowns everywhere.

Populus euphratica Lin, who changed positions silently, left no one scratching their heads. Even Lin Qian couldn't help being shaken and doubted by Yang Mucuo's suspicious murmurs—whether the so-called break-off devil really existed.

As for the station where Lin Qian was worried, nothing extra seemed to happen.

The infected people who crawled out of the desert continued to attack the garrison as usual, while the antlion that caught people off guard the night before did not reappear under Cheng Sheng's warning.

The resident spent the night peacefully, and only a few people felt sad for Yang Mucuo's "death" in the fire.

Xu Ying led Du Jingshu and Luo Xiaonan to stay behind the station. Chen Nan didn't ask Xu Ying to join the battle, perhaps because he didn't think Xu Ying could play a big role.

Du Jingshu hid in the safe room, listening to the roar of the infected outside, his pupils trembled slightly.

She pressed her chest subconsciously, always feeling that the beating frequency of her heart seemed to coincide with a certain sound outside little by little.

She looked out the window suspiciously, looking for the strange sound, but found nothing.

"What are you looking at?" Xu Ying asked.

Du Jingshu shook his head slightly.

There was a sudden scream outside the window. It seemed that some infected person had broken through the wall of the camel thorn and broke into the garrison base for the first time.

Xu Ying hurriedly said to Du Jingshu: "I'll go out and have a look, you take Luo Xiaonan to hide in the house, don't wander around."

Du Jingshu collected her mind and nodded, "Miss Yingzi, be careful."

Xu Ying responded and hurriedly left the house.

Du Jingshu leaned on the window and looked out of the window worriedly.

Luo Xiaonan approached Du Jingshu slowly, and put his head on Du Jingshu's shoulder.

He said softly in a low voice that only the two of them could hear: "Sister Du, don't listen to its voice."

Du Jingshu was taken aback.

Immediately, she looked at Luo Xiaonan suddenly: "What?"

Luo Xiaonan raised his face slightly, looked at Du Jingshu, and said softly: "Remember yourself, Uncle Du, Nan Nan and everyone."

Du Jingshu looked at Luo Xiaonan blankly: "Huh?"

Luo Xiaonan didn't know how to speak more clearly. He frowned and bit his nails while reading Du Jing's book: "Sister, remember what Nan Nan said. That voice...is not good."

As he spoke, his little hand reached out to Du Jingshu's chest, and gently pressed on Du Jingshu's heart.

The boy who was only four or five years old had a serious face with a baby fat face, and a pair of black eyes stared at Du Jingshu without blinking, which made Du Jingshu feel a sense of horror out of thin air.