Echoing faintly within Water Encirclement Town, Long Yuehong opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say, only feeling that the sentiment was extraordinarily complex and difficult to describe in words.
None of the four spoke, seemingly focused on listening until the jeep drove out of the gate, heading into the distance.
"What were they reading? I didn't quite hear clearly." Jiang Baimian glanced at the rearview mirror, her tone slightly frustrated.
"'Moonlight before my bed,'" Shang Jianyao repeated the opening of "Quiet Night Thought."
"Oh, like that..." Jiang Baimian sighed with emotion, but didn't say anything more.
She drove carefully, guiding the jeep quietly along the confusing, crisscrossing paths in the swamp.
After completely leaving the area, Bai Chen looked ahead and said, as if to herself:
"Part of the reason I want to become a formal member of the company is so I can borrow a lot of books."
"It's okay..." Long Yuehong, who had lived inside "Pangu Biology" since he was a child, didn't think there was anything special about it. "In the ruins of old-world cities, aren't there books, aren't there libraries?"
Bai Chen's gaze seemed to reach far away:
"Yes, in the beginning, there were many, but I wasn't even born at that time.
"Later, many books were moved away by major powers, by certain people. The remaining part was used as easy-to-light firewood by relic hunters and wilderness wanderers, gnawed and torn by rats and other animals, making them unrecognizable. Only a very few can be found and read.
"In those city ruins that haven't been explored much, there may still be a large number of books, but those places are too dangerous."
After a brief silence, Shang Jianyao asked with a leap in logic:
"Can you read?"
"Yes, my father and mother taught me. After they died, they left me a very good teacher." Bai Chen's expression gradually softened, the corners of her mouth curling up almost imperceptibly.
But her eyes were unfocused, as if she had woken up from a dream in the middle of the night, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, staring blankly out the window.
Jiang Baimian glanced at Bai Chen, then continued to focus on the road ahead.
She said with a smile:
"Can you guys talk a little louder?
"Are you bullying me because my hearing isn't good? I suspect you're talking behind my back, saying bad things about me."
Long Yuehong's heart stirred, and he muttered softly:
"We're saying it to your face."
"We're saying it to your face." At the same time, Shang Jianyao responded to Jiang Baimian's "accusation."
Long Yuehong immediately felt a little happy:
"Haha, how about it? Am I very understanding of you? Can I keep up with your train of thought!"
"How do you know I'm not deliberately letting you keep up?" Shang Jianyao didn't back down.
"Not bad, you have to pay attention to the team atmosphere when going out for training. It must be serious and lively. Otherwise, the spirit is easily overstretched, and it will collapse itself before long." Jiang Baimian casually commented, "Okay, enough about this. Let's discuss Town Leader Tian's experience and see what useful things can be summarized from the details he described, uh, mainly about the destruction of the Old World."
Shang Jianyao seemed to have thought about it for a long time and immediately said:
"'Mindless' mainly appear in larger cities. There are almost none in villages and towns."
"The destruction of villages and towns seems to have been caused by a combination of war and geological disasters." Bai Chen added.
Jiang Baimian nodded slightly:
"War and geological disasters may be equivalent.
"Before the destruction of the Old World, there may have been geological weapons. Of course, this needs to be confirmed by finding relevant data through the exploration of certain city ruins."
Hearing this, Long Yuehong thought and said:
"What is the relationship between the appearance of the 'Mindless' and the war?
"Did their appearance lead to the war, or did the war induce their appearance?"
"There's no way to answer this. There is a lack of sufficient data and intelligence." Jiang Baimian smiled and said, "This will be the main direction of our Old Task Force's work in the future."
She looked at the road, pulled the steering wheel, and continued to raise questions, guiding the team members to think:
"Why do you think the 'Mindless' initially appeared mainly in big cities, and there were almost none in the countryside and small towns?"
"Are cities more densely populated? Is this an important condition for transmission?" Shang Jianyao replied, combining the definition of cities in the textbook.
Bai Chen said from another angle:
"Are cities more important, so they are the main target?"
"Possibly." Jiang Baimian did not deny it.
The four of them discussed the corresponding questions for a while. Although they couldn't reach a conclusion, they broadened their thinking and had a clearer idea of the investigations and information they would need to collect in the future.
As the jeep drove neither too fast nor too slow, Jiang Baimian threw out another question:
"What do you think of the guy the relic hunters are looking for?
"I mean the black-haired, golden-eyed one that the residents of Water Encirclement Town have encountered."
Long Yuehong gasped:
"I feel like he's very strange. Not only is his origin mysterious, but he himself is also very strange.
"Normally speaking, no one can simultaneously gain the admiration of a group of people at first sight. There are both men and women!"
"Actually, I'm a little curious about what he looks like and how much charm he has." Jiang Baimian replied with a smile. "However, you're right, it's quite strange. And for people who can create strange phenomena, my first reaction is to classify them as Awakened."
"Why?" Shang Jianyao blurted out.
Bai Chen did not show any doubt about the term Awakened, obviously knowing that such people existed.
Jiang Baimian slightly released the accelerator and reduced the speed:
"In addition to possessing bizarre and terrifying abilities, the Awakened themselves may also exhibit strange and different characteristics from normal people. Well, this manifestation is like their ability. The probability of them being the same as each other is not too high."
"For such an Awakened to appear in the Black Marsh Wilderness, it must be more than just for survival." Bai Chen looked out the window, gazing into the depths of the swamp. "He may be looking for something... there may be a big secret hidden deep in the swamp."
Jiang Baimian nodded:
"Indeed. Forget it, I won't say anymore. Our route will not pass north of Moon Lu Station. Besides, it's too dangerous to take two newbies to participate in this obviously unusual thing. I can only find a chance to report it to the company.
"Long Yuehong, Bai Chen, you can rest for a while.
"Ah, ha, Bai Chen, don't rush to sleep. Tell me how to go next..."
"..." Bai Chen looked at Jiang Baimian, wondering if this was still the unusually reliable leader from before.
Just like that, the jeep traveled through the Black Marsh Wilderness, and around noon, it stopped at a weedy cement intersection.
"This is the first point of this field training." Jiang Baimian opened the door and went out, pointing to the left side of the jeep.
Shang Jianyao and Long Yuehong followed and got out of the car, following the leader's finger, looking over.
There was a fork in the road sloping downward. The cement ground was cracked by clumps of weeds and plants, and there were almost no intact places.
The area on the left side of the road was suspected to be farmland, but it had been mostly swallowed by the swamp. The remaining area was covered with many different varieties of plants. On the right were three buildings forming an open square. One of them had collapsed, and the rest were covered with ivy and other plants.
At the end of the road was a not-so-small square. On both sides of the square were more four-story, five-story, and six-story buildings, but there was also a very large and high single-story building.
They were also partially collapsed, and the rest were mixed with green, making it difficult to distinguish them.
At the end of the square was a pair of iron-black double doors that could accommodate four jeeps side by side. The doors were wide open, revealing a row of houses that did not look like residences.
Behind these houses, where Shang Jianyao and others could not see, several "chimneys" of either brick red or gray-black rose from the ground, reaching into the sky, which was quite spectacular.
The outer walls of each were inlaid with iron-black, very rudimentary staircases. The higher up, the sparser the green plants in the gaps.
After Shang Jianyao and Long Yuehong observed for a while, Jiang Baimian explained:
"In the future, our team will inevitably enter the ruins of old-world cities, especially those that few people have visited, or that have not yet been discovered, which will be quite dangerous.
"So, you have to adapt to this kind of place in advance and accumulate some experience."
"But this doesn't look like a city." Long Yuehong couldn't help but say.
Jiang Baimian smiled:
"Of course, we have to start with the lowest difficulty.
"This used to be a steel factory, the kind with a complete social structure, which is equivalent to a miniature city. Look, the buildings by the road are hospitals and radio stations.
"Well, this place has been visited by relic hunters many times, and most of the valuable things are gone.
"Your main tasks today are two:
"One is to find some food here, whether it's finding something that others haven't found, or targeting the wild animals that haunt this place.
"The second is to draw a complete map, marking all the key points.
"How about it, simple, right?"
Shang Jianyao and Long Yuehong did not answer because, based on their experience, they could not judge whether this was simple or difficult.
Jiang Baimian looked at the steel factory again:
"There are often relic hunters here. If you encounter them, you have to learn how to deal with them, how to get along with them, and how to exchange information and supplies."
"Team Leader, didn't you say that most of the valuable things here are gone? What are those relic hunters doing here?" Long Yuehong asked with some surprise.
Jiang Baimian chuckled:
"Isn't there a saying? Even a rotten ship has three pounds of nails left, let alone such a big steel factory?
"If you don't find anything elsewhere, come here to look around, and maybe you can bring back something useful.
"There were relic hunters who dug open the ground before, removed a section of the main water pipe, and then pulled it back to exchange for some food."
Seeing Long Yuehong and Shang Jianyao nodding lightly, indicating that they had no more questions, Jiang Baimian turned her body to the side and said:
"Let's begin.
"Bai Chen and I will watch the car here. If you encounter any trouble that you can't solve, send a signal for help. If you need guidance, return within two kilometers and use the walkie-talkie."
ps: Asking for recommendation tickets~
ps2: Recommend a book, *Da Yu Tian Xing*, a book of poetry, food and the slaying of demons.