Lord of the Desert

Chapter 433 Moss
Five days later, February 13th.

In the afternoon, the sky was dark and humid, and it was about to rain.

A team of more than a thousand people arrived at Tiewa Pass.

Or rather, the remains of Tiewa Pass.

The twenty-meter-high city wall is covered with scars. The outer layer of stone slabs has been crushed by the knife wheel and is damaged everywhere, exposing the light white cross-section that has not yet weathered.

It looks like a piece of bone.

In the western section of the city wall, nearly 100 meters long collapsed completely, and the rammed earth base inside was turned into a slope.

Directly above the city gate, the three-story watchtower collapsed into a ruin, with the howling of the wind inside.

The tragic scene made the team hesitate to move forward, so Hong Fan and others took the lead as usual.

There were no corpses inside the pass, and it was dead silent.

A few worker insects wandered around in an unorganized manner and were killed at will by the warriors who cleared the way; the civilians who followed behind used iron knives to cut off their poisonous mouthparts and glands and put the rest into baskets.

If insects eat people, there is no reason for people not to eat them back.

Behind the pass, the dark yellow barracks built with large earthen bricks retained their original appearance. Everyone carefully inspected each room and saw that there were many dried white egg shells gathered in the corners of the room, each with irregular openings on it, and the inside was empty.

"They are all the eggs of those sub-worms. They hatched about twenty days ago."

Xi Zhi pinched the brittle shell, then reached out to press the dried mucus at the bottom of the egg and speculated.

"Are there no eggs of real insects, or do real insects not lay eggs?"

Hong Fan asked.

He had thought that resources would be prioritized for the best combat forces.

"When I was deep in the wilderness in my early years, I saw real insect eggs. They were as big as cows and took about 30 days to hatch. I definitely can't leave them here."

Xi Zhi replied.

"According to the habits of the Zerg, they will definitely build a nest closer to the battle line. As for this batch of eggs, it is probably because they obtained too many resources in a short period of time, so they consumed a wave of eggs during hatching."

He said this casually, and then suddenly fell silent for a long time.

Hong Fan saw the old soldier turn his back and wipe his eyes with his hand.

"Master Hong, war cannot be fought without logistics, and this is the same for all races."

Nie Bo, the defender of Huaxue City, took over the conversation and diverted everyone's attention.

"It's just that the Zerg and Terrans have different understandings of logistics. For the former, the enemy is certainly dangerous, but also the most concentrated resource. So they usually build the mother nest one hundred to two hundred miles away from the front line and leave heavy troops to guard it. This way, firstly, they can respond to the main army, and secondly, they can minimize the loss of resource transportation."

"What City Guard Nie means is that since the Zerg didn't build their mother nest here, it means that the 'front line' they planned is much deeper."

Hong Fan took a deep breath and nodded.

"At least this means that our journey northwards in the next few days won't be too dangerous..."

At this time, the team had all entered the pass and had just started to set up camp.

Although they knew that the Zerg had no concept of garrisoning a city, high-level warriors such as Hong Fan and Gu Yixin still patrolled the entire area behind the pass first.

There was such a large empty space that, as usual, there was nothing edible left.

Except for five or six particularly lush old trees, the treetops are extremely full, with black showing through the dark green.

Hong Fan concentrated and saw that every tree was huddled with countless birds. They neither called nor moved, but only cast strange glances.

Hao Tianlu was frightened by what he saw and angrily blasted his palm towards the tree trunk; the flock of birds flew away in fright, like a basin of dirty water poured into the sky.

“They don’t eat trees.”

Hong Fan stretched out his hand and pressed it on the rough tree trunk, which felt damp, cold and hard.

"It's not that we don't eat trees, it's that we don't eat trees that are over a hundred years old."

Xi Zhi replied.

"After all, their protector is also a tree. I have never seen one, but I heard that it is hundreds of miles in radius. I don't know if it is true."

"It sounds incredible that a living creature can grow to hundreds of miles in radius."

Hong Fan replied. This sentence seemed to be contemptuous, causing Nie Bo, Xi Zhi and others to look at him sideways.

All the gods of different races are disciples of Zulong. Even though the races are constantly at war, they are still worshipped as righteous gods. No one has ever described them as "a living creature".

But Hong Fan no longer matters.

In the afternoon, the team settled down in the barracks area.

Compared to tents, earthen bricks are more solid shells, giving people's wandering hearts a temporary sense of security.

After running for more than 300 miles, many vehicles had to be repaired - the solidified gravel in Hongfan could temporarily bridge the broken axle wood halfway, but the stone was heavy and brittle and could not last long.

Repairs require materials, and the only suitable materials inside the pass are those hundreds of years old giant trees.

When the sun sets, the dim rays of light lash the bungalows and kneeling figures in the camp like a whip.

The men in charge of felling trees put their axes aside and bowed to the trees under the silent gaze of the birds among the branches and leaves, guiltily asking the tree gods for forgiveness, as if these few surviving trees had shared the power of the insect plague.

The ceremony had not yet ended when a piercing buzzing sound came.

A man suddenly walked through the kneeling crowd, used the sand as a saw, and chopped down the tree with an unquestionable gesture.

The flock of birds rose up again, like dirty water poured into the sky for the second time, and then flew away completely, never to come back.

The treetops collapsed with a loud bang, and the green leaves trembled constantly, like blood splattered by something whose name could not be described.

Hong Fan dispersed the Sha Liu Dao and left without saying a word.

The civilians knelt and sat in a daze for a long time, then their faces calmed down and they stood up to chop the wood with droopy faces, and their movements were particularly fierce, as if they were chopping a piece of pork leg.

An hour later, it was already dark.

The rainstorm that had been brewing for many days finally came.

Hong Fan was sitting in a barracks on the north side of the pass and heard thunder rolling back and forth in the distance, like self-bombarding artillery.

There are many sounds between heaven and earth that cannot escape the ears of innate warriors.

The dull sound is the raindrops hitting the soil;
Clear is the sound of raindrops hitting bricks and stones;

The muddy ones are raindrops falling on the wooden frame of the carriage;

With a popping sound, raindrops fell into a pile of more raindrops.

On the newly built stone table, a plate of roasted worker bug meat was placed neatly, half eaten.

The taste of sub-worms is similar to chicken, very tender and has a special fragrance.

Objectively speaking, the meat was not bad to eat, but when he thought about the energy source for its hatching and growth, Hong Fan found the aroma so strange and unpleasant that he found it difficult to swallow.

He stood up and looked, his sight piercing through the rain curtain to the south, and witnessed the pale mist splashing on the ruined city wall.

Death has no color.

If so, about pale?
Hong Fan recalled that four days ago, it was the first time that the team had casualties, and since then it had continued every day.

Today, when we arrived at Tiewa Pass, three more people died due to illness.

Life in Shengzhouxi is not easy, but it is not difficult for ordinary people to travel forty or fifty miles a day with all their strength.

But if we maintain this speed for several days, casualties are inevitable.

But what’s the big deal if some people die?

After traveling for eight full days, Hong Fan felt that his team had become a broken-down truck, shedding parts as it went.

[It doesn't matter if parts are lost, as long as the car can arrive. 】

He thought about it and wondered how many parts would have to be lost before the car could no longer be considered a car.

It's still raining.

So much water jumped off the cliff, as if it was just to break outside his house so that the fragments of the corpse could splash in.

Hong Fan sat upright in the empty house, feeling moss growing in his heart.

He thought of Duan Tiannan again.

(End of this chapter)