The two continued to search the entire village. From the traces left at the scene, it could be seen that these people left in a hurry and only carried small valuable items with them. Some relatively valuable but bulky pottery jars, farm tools, and furniture were left behind. There were also many large pieces of animal skins.
The water tank was half full, and the liquid had not yet turned green, as if the owner had just left.
“Something must have happened to the people here, so they left in a hurry.”
This tribe was surrounded by mountains, with a winding river next to it, and their homes all had water, so it should not be due to drought. As for the possibility of landslides, the possibility was not high. The tribe was in the middle zone, so even if there was a landslide, it would not had a big impact on them.
“Could it be a wildfire?” He hypothesized. “The tribesmen knew about the wildfire and left in a hurry, but the wildfire was extinguished for some reason, such as timely rainfall?”
Qin pointed to the withered branches in the pottery vase, on which hung equally withered flowers: “Spring is rainy.”
Wildfires often occurred in autumn, when the weather was clear and windy.
To find out what happened, they stayed at the tribal site until the afternoon. An Yinong found the temple used for sacrifices and burials in the valley through the footprints left by the ancestors.
This was the sixth time he had entered the game. He looked at the task list and saw that the number of survivors had not decreased much. He wondered what bad things the game developers were planning.
The candidates all rushed north, but they still insisted that sharpening the knife would not delay the chopping of wood. Finding clues would be more beneficial than moving forward blindly. The collapsed temple in front of them proved their idea was correct.
The entire temple used twelve stone pillars that were more than ten meters high. Now they and the roof have fallen down and broken into several parts.
An Yinong searched for clues in the ruins.
Qin watched him busying about. The walls around him were crumbling. He used his power to lift up several tons of debris and pushed them back to their original positions one by one.
Everything was like a rewind of a movie. An Yinong stared blankly at the broken temple being restored before his eyes. He turned his head and thought that Qin was feeling uncomfortable. But any time wasted was a harm to Qin.
He turned on the light on his ring and observed the carvings on the pillars, the patterns made of colored stones, and the larger statue of the Queen in the middle.
The stone pillars were carved with various insect shapes, which showed that this insect race had evolved into a more complete insect shape with stronger combat power.
The Zerg in this section had different divisions of labor between high-level and low-level ones, but the position differences were not that big, which could be seen from the types and positions of the Zerg on the stone carvings.
However, the current Zerg were not as good as the ancient ones. The current Zerg were directly divided into different classes due to different levels.
He looked at the pattern on the temple again, which was the wings of the queen with six petals. There was an obvious crack on it, running through the entire temple. It was somewhat broken.
The statue of the queen was still rough and mysterious. This huge stone statue was stuck in the groove of the stone slab, and there were several cracks present.
This temple was built with large stone pillars and large stones. It was thick and solid. At first glance, it seemed to have structural flaws, but it was cracked like this…
“Could it be an earthquake?”
Carefully looking up at the statue, An Yinong discovered that the ‘queen’ in ancient times seemed to be genderless. It had both female and male characteristics.
“It’s amazing…”
In film and television works, the queen portrayed a gentle feminine image, but there were records of both male and female queens in history, and their past experiences also had something in common. Until now, the Zerg still did not know how the queen was differentiated.
An Yinong’s knowledge of the queen all came from the original owner, and the original owner only knew that the queen was the key to the evolution of the Zerg, but the queen themself was not so “lucky”. No matter how their physical condition was before, after becoming the queen, they would become weak and sickly, and rarely lived beyond the age of forty.
Was losing their vitality the price of being a queen?
An Yinong was more confident in the judgment of the queen’s statue. He also found half-burned wood and a cracked clay tablet in the fire pit.
After the clay tablet fragments were pieced together, it was only the size of a palm, with many primitive “words” scratched on them with a wooden stick.
The clay tablet showed signs of burning, but it was possible that the clay tablet was made and cracked when it was burned, so there were also signs of fire on the broken edge.
He remembered that the ancient Egyptians had the tradition of burning clay tablets to predict good or bad luck, while the ancient Chinese burned tortoise shells. Was it the same here? If so, was the clay tablet cracking a good or bad omen? Was it one of the reasons why the tribesmen left?
An Yinong felt that the back of the clay tablet was not flat, so he turned it over and found a picture. He looked at it carefully and found a petal-shaped wing symbol.
“Qin, I found it.” He ran to Qin, holding the clay tablet, his eyes shining.
The force was retracted, and the temple fragments that had been pushed up collapsed with a loud bang.
Following the blueprint, they found the treasure chest in the stream, and inside it was another stone slab covered with hieroglyphics, so they had three stone slabs in total.
“Looking at the temple, it should be the earthquake that caused these people to leave. If that’s the case, according to the game’s habits, it will definitely cause the mountain to shake, and maybe even cause a landslide.”
However, this was a mountain range with many layers of mountains on top of each other. How easy was it to climb over them?
Speaking of the fastest way, it must be flying. An Yinong looked at the little Fengchi and shook his head: It was a pity that it was too small to carry people, otherwise how many people can fly over?
“Ouch?” Feng Chi’s face was full of doubt.
An Yinong’s worries could be seen from his face. Qin wanted to tell him not to worry, he could quickly take him away from the mountains, but An Yinong spoke before him.
“We’ll go by water. I have a boat.”
There was a river near where the tribe gathered. Although they called it a small river, the river was more than ten meters wide and there was no problem in using a small boat.
He threw out the portable boat confiscated from the Bear Slayer team. It expanded when it fell into the water and soon became a colorful boat floating on the water.
The boat was more than one meter wide and seven or eight meters long, with a cabin and oars, and could seat four or five people. An Yinong and Qin were on the left and right sides of the boat, while Fengchi was placed in the cabin.
An Yinong knew how to row a boat, so he rowed against the current. At this moment, he felt a little regretful. If he had known earlier, he would have saved two attribute points and added them to strength.
Qin saw how hard he was working and quietly gave him a push. He knew that An Yinong was trying to prevent him from using the special abilities of an advanced Zerg.
He once heard someone say that some families would be sad when they found their children had transformed into high-level Zerg, fearing that the children would not live past 30, and would not allow them to use their abilities recklessly. He previously had never understood this, but now he understood.
An Yinong rowed the boat upstream, leaving ripples where it passed.
Qin’s head hurt a little from using his abilities, but what hurt even more was his dirty skin.
“He likes me… So this is what love is.”
He would rather never know: How could a person whose life was about to end deserve it?
The boat sailed overnight and entered the seventh day. It started to drizzle, but they were still in the mountains.
The raindrops made people feel scared. The candidates all remembered the night a few days ago when bean-sized raindrops fell from above, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The heavy rain washed away the forest and destroyed the plains.
The rain now was just a drizzle, and it stopped after halfway through, leaving only a round drop of water on the tip of a grass leaf, and more traces. It was so gentle that it didn’t even look like a scene from a survival game.
An Yinong rowed the boat and felt relaxed as he looked at the mountains on both sides of the river that became greener after being washed by the water.
There was only one more mountain to get out of the area, and he was very excited, saying that he should be able to row faster. Unexpectedly, the water started rippling lightly, and many birds flew up from the forest.
He was still wondering what had happened in the mountains when he saw the fish in the river panicking and frantically swimming in and out of the cracks in the rocks. They also saw animals that originally lived in caves running out one by one.
That familiar, oppressive feeling loomed over An Yinong’s head.
“It’s almost time to start.” He pushed the oars hard, and the waves cut through the stream.
The two continued to move forward. They found a slightly larger flat piece of land. Even if the mountain had a landslide, at least they would have room to avoid it.
Soon the boat entered a curved river channel, and large patches of grass appeared on one side of the river. The weeds were taller than their knees, and were dotted with unknown flowers, like a floral carpet.
This was the place they were looking for, but someone had already found it before them. From a distance they saw several people occupying a big tree. It was a small team.
“I’ve seen these people before, the second one was in the forest.” When they almost clashed, but in the end the leader restrained himself.
An Yinong put down the telescope and said, “Go and say hello?”
In fact, Qin discovered these people earlier and confirmed their identities.
“Don’t get too close,” he said.
“…”
The two people and the beast walked on the pebbles along the river bank, step by step, and those people looked at them warily. When they saw Qin’s face, their expressions changed abruptly, and the atmosphere suddenly became solemn and tense.
“You?” When they were more than ten meters away, An Yinong stopped and greeted with a smile. The signs of differentiation on his body became more and more obvious, which made him look very harmless.
But what harmless person would move with the infamous Qin?
The audience in the team’s live broadcast room all covered their mouths and exclaimed “Oh no”: How did they run into a killer like Qin? This was trouble, were
they going to fight?
Ken felt complicated when he saw Qin, and sweat broke out on his back.
Before entering the game, he had done his homework and determined that Qin might be the biggest uncertainty in the game. He even simulated the two of them meeting and fighting, and what the final result would be – without exception, he suffered heavy casualties.
Although the Qin in front of him seemed different from what he knew, he still couldn’t let his guard down. Ken’s muscles were tense, but his face remained expressionless: “You, what a coincidence, we meet again.”
“Yes, it’s really fate.” An Yinong glanced around and his smile became even brighter.
An Yinong and the other man had no intention of conflicting with them, so after saying hello they found a clean stone to sit on and enjoy the breeze.
“They are very nervous about your appearance, a different kind of nervousness than other participants.”
“He won’t conflict with me easily. He is selected here with a national mission.” Qin directly stated this information that many people did not know.
“Eh?” The audience in the live broadcast room and An Yinong in the game all looked puzzled, “What do you mean by coming in with a national mission?”
WhiteMoon x BlackSun 