Chapter 1874 Scavengers Brigade
Under the seed bank building, the team did not enter the building immediately. Instead, they stood in a row. One of them walked to his horse, took a lantern from the saddle, and lit it.
At this time, what came out of the lantern was not fire, but thick smoke. Then the man took the lantern, shook it, chanted something, walked to a companion, did some ritual movements, and finally used his fingers to dip a little oil that looked like a mixture of colors in the leather goods around his waist, and drew a circle on the companion.
After that, the man did the same thing to each companion, which took a long time. During the whole process, those people stood in the cold wind without any dissatisfaction. There was no need to look at the expressions behind their masks. Just from their current movements, you can feel a strong sense of piety.
Although this blessing ceremony seems simple, it does not mean that it has no effect at all. In fact, after these people completed the ceremony, each of them had a weak energy fluctuation. This energy fluctuation does not produce any powerful power, but it can create a deterrent field, just like the deterrent caused by the difference in life level.
What surprised Leo even more was that this weak energy fluctuation was the same as Sylvia's life energy. The only difference was the strength. In other words, the god these people believed in was Sylvia, and from the fact that these people could get the effect similar to the blessing of the gods through a simple blessing ceremony, Sylvia now at least mastered some of the laws and powers of this world, which was not a good thing for Sylvia.
Although the true god of a world is equivalent to an Omega-level higher life form, its potential has reached its peak and is firmly bound to the world. Once the world is destroyed, the gods of this world will either be destroyed together or their power will be stripped away and become mortals.
Sylvia's potential far exceeds that of a true god of a world. If she becomes a god of a world, it will be tantamount to self-destruction. She is also very clear about this.
However, everything Leo saw and felt now told him that Sylvia seemed to have become the god of this world destroyed by disaster. Otherwise, she could not have blessed her believers in a distant place with just a simple ritual, which made Leo worry about what Sylvia and he had experienced in the memory he had lost.
After the blessing ceremony, everyone took out their weapons, took a lantern from their saddles, lit it and hung it around their waists, and then entered the building under the leadership of several captain-like figures.
Leo used the mental network to scan the building and secretly observed the actions of those people.
It was seen that those who entered the building seemed to have a clear goal. They were divided into three teams, heading towards different areas in the building, and it seemed that they were not here for the first time. In the building filled with various vines, they were able to quickly find the way to the upper level.
Soon, the three teams arrived at their respective targets. One of the teams was outside the seed bank. They took out a wooden box and carefully took out some seeds from the container of the seed bank and put them into the box. They did not take all the seeds, but only a small part.
Afterwards, someone seemed to propose to take some special seeds, but it seemed to be denied by the captain. Soon they took enough seeds and returned from the original route. The whole process was very smooth and there was no trouble.
Compared with this team, the other two teams were not so lucky. The place they wanted to go was blocked by vines. They were discussing what to do, but from their behavior, their opinions were very different. However, in the end, they chose the same method, which was to take out several small electric saws from their backpacks and cut the vines that blocked the way.
When these people were cutting the vines, Leo clearly felt that the giant vines in the building seemed to be awakened, and the life energy emitted by the vines began to spread in the building, but the petrified shell of the vines did not break, and it felt more like a stress response when being hurt.
The people in the building also noticed the movement of the giant vines at the first time, because the smoke from the lanterns hanging around their waists changed color from light gray to dark black.
After discovering this situation, these people's movements became much faster. Some people stopped their work, took out some grease-like things from their backpacks, and quickly smeared them in the vents on the masks, and also helped their companions smear some.
Soon they opened up a passage in the area covered by vines, but one person was too flustered. When he took back the tools, he accidentally hung on the edge of the mask, pulling the mask crooked a little, revealing a gap.
This person immediately wanted to put on the mask, but when his hand touched the mask, he seemed to lose control and couldn't move, and this person's movement also attracted the attention of other companions around him. After seeing the crooked mask on the man's face, they quickly moved away as if they were frightened, leaving a space, and pointed their weapons at this companion.
This man wanted to tell his companions loudly that he was fine, but he couldn't do anything. Not only could he not move his body, but he couldn't even open his mouth to speak.
The captain of the team saw this situation and said nothing. He aimed directly at his companion's head and pulled the trigger. The bullet that flew out of the barrel directly smashed the other's head, and the man collapsed to the ground.
At this moment, the corpse suddenly trembled, as if the man with half of his head was not dead yet. Then, tiny vines came out of his body, dragging him quickly into the vines under him, and disappeared from the eyes of other people around him.
Everyone stood stiffly in place at this moment, not daring to move, fearing that the slight movement caused by moving their bodies would cause some bad things. They stood there for several minutes until the captain made a cleanup, and then they relaxed and continued to move towards the target location on tiptoe.
Although the gunshots here were not loud, because the building was very empty, they were heard from far away by the other two teams in the building. After hearing the sound, they stopped what they were doing, stayed where they were for a while, and then quickened their pace.
The two teams came to the archives and laboratories of the building respectively, where they each looked for some relatively intact archives and experimental instruments, and then left in a hurry and returned to the outside of the building.
Although they encountered some minor accidents in the process, such as the creeping vines changing the terrain, causing the passage they came from to be blocked, but overall they were lucky and did not have another accident like the one just now that required killing teammates to solve.
The group didn't say much. They put everything they got into a leather box on the horse's back, then got on the horse and galloped out of the city. On the road, the leader took out a bell and shook it vigorously. Although the bell was not big, its sound was very penetrating. Even the cold wind that passed through the city could not blow away the bell, and even the walls of the building could not stop the spread of the bell. After hearing the bell, those who were looking for things on the edge of the city stopped their work one by one, stuffed all the valuable things they found into their backpacks, ran out of the abandoned room quickly, and rushed to the road where they first gathered.
Some people heard the bell, but they did not stop searching for items immediately like others, but continued to look for things in the abandoned houses covered with snow. What they did not notice was that at this moment, the giant vines in the city began to emit some tiny spores that could not be seen by the naked eye. These spores were not blown by the wind, but slowly spread to the periphery of the city as if controlled by some invisible force.
At this time, the scavengers had gathered on the main road outside the city, and the team of riders who entered the city center also rushed out of the city. They didn't say much, but shook the lanterns in their hands so that everyone could see that the smoke from the lanterns turned dark gray, and then they passed through the crowd and rushed in the direction they came from.
After seeing the color of the lantern smoke, the scavengers seemed to understand what was going on. They quickly put the things in their backpacks on the sleds, and then helped each other and followed the team of riders, taking steps and moving quickly away from the city.
Not long after these people left, those who had not stopped scavenging immediately after hearing the bell also returned to the gathering point one after another. They found that the people here had left, and they were a little panicked. They all carried heavy backpacks and followed the traces left behind, striding forward to catch up with the team that had left.
However, they stopped one after another after walking more than ten meters, and then turned around with a dull look, dropped their backpacks, and walked towards the city with awkward steps like puppets being controlled.
Leo watched all this happen in the dark. He did not rescue those who inhaled free spores and lost control, but he turned back to the building where the seed bank was located and took out some seeds from the seed bank. From the actions of those people just now, it is not difficult to see that these seeds are very important to them, and their value is naturally not cheap. If necessary, they should be able to exchange them for money or other items.
After taking some seeds, Leo left the city and followed the traces left by those people on the road.
Within the city, those people walked very fast, basically using their greatest strength to travel, and when they left the suburbs of the city and entered the wild, they stopped and rested for a while, and then continued to travel slowly.
After walking for about an hour or two, when the sky began to gradually darken, these thousands of people had arrived outside a cleared camp.
Many torches were lit in an area about 30 meters outside the camp. A snow wall about three meters high separated the camp from the outside world. The wall went vertically downward, and the surface was repeatedly poured with several layers of water. After the water froze, the wall became extremely hard and stable, and extremely difficult to climb.
In the camp, tents and simple snow houses built with snow blocks were neatly arranged on the open ground. Although the snow on the open ground had not been cleared, several roads were still planned, crisscrossing the camp into different areas.
Before, the team of riders had returned to the camp, and they put the items they found into a tent guarded by more than a dozen armed soldiers from all servers, and then lit bonfires with the people who stayed in the camp, prepared food, etc.
When the scavengers returned to the camp, they were able to drink hot water and food that could quickly warm their bodies, but most of the scavengers did not run to get food, but ran to the sled full of backpacks, took their own backpacks, and then ran to the snow table outside the tent of a familiar merchant who specialized in collecting scavenged items, took out the things they found one by one, and showed them to the merchant.
The merchants quickly identified the items and gave a price. Some people cursed and looked angry after hearing the price, while others cheered loudly and looked happy. Whether they were dissatisfied with the low price or satisfied with the purchase price, they did not ask other merchants for the price, but completed the transaction with the merchant they found.
Soon, all the items found by the scavengers were sold. After eating, they returned to their tents, and the camp became a little quieter.
The merchants who bought a large number of items have not rested yet. They sorted all the items. Some extremely valuable items will be stored by them, while other items of average value will be tied up on their special sleds and shipped back to Newland after dawn tomorrow.
At this time, it was completely dark, and some wild animals that had been hiding in the snow caves during the day began to move. Perhaps it was the temptation brought by the large number of living things in the camp that some hungry wild animals began to come out of the camp, constantly wandering and testing the edge of the area illuminated by the torches. Finally, several wild animals finally couldn't bear the impulse and drilled into the area illuminated by the torches, quickly approaching the snow wall outside the camp. However, before they approached the snow wall, they heard several gunshots, and then these wild animals fell to the ground, slid for a distance, and lay there motionless, with blood flowing from their bodies, dyeing the snow below red.
The smell of blood was a strong temptation for those wild animals. They couldn't stand this temptation one by one. The animal nature occupied the rare reason, and they rushed into the torch isolation zone outside the camp in groups. Gunshots rang out one after another in the camp, tearing the silence of this land.