After sitting on the ground for a long time, his legs were a little numb, Zhiwen got up violently, but he didn't stand firmly, stumbled a little, and accidentally knocked down a back basket.

"Tsk!" A mouse jumped out of it and was about to burrow into the corner.

Zhiwen's eyes were sharp, and his reaction was fast, he raised one foot and stomped down, and when he was about to step on the mouse, his heart moved slightly, he spared the mouse, and his toes were deflected and pressed on the tail.

The rat screamed and turned around, trying to bite Zhiwen's shoe, but Zhiwen scooped up a piece of dirt and smashed it on the head, knocking it out.

"Uncle Liu, I remember that you don't want to see rats the most, saying that they steal food and will be destroyed when they see it, why are there rats rampant in the place where you live now." Zhiwen was joking in his mouth, but in his heart he was thinking about what made him feel wrong.

"Hey, I work for Jiannu all day and night, where is the energy to catch mice." Liu Laohan was a little ashamed, thinking that at the beginning, when he first came out of Taihang Mountain, he ran to Aunt Zhao'er's shack to chase and beat him for a mouse, and now he has become like that.

"Besides, these rats are very fine, and it is really not easy for ordinary people to catch them, and I have been dull over the years, and it is really not easy to catch them." Liu Laohan made another excuse for himself.

Very fine?

When Zhiwen heard this, he finally understood that something was wrong.

There are also a lot of rats in the Jinren camp here, but compared with those in Da Linghe, most of them are stupid and stupid, and they don't have that tricky energy at all, and they can see dead rats from time to time.

Where there is plague, this is normal, rats are not only vectors, but they can also be infected with plague themselves, and when they get sick, they can also affect their movement and lead to death.

But the rat that was knocked unconscious by Zhiwen was different, it was too normal, completely different from those rats in the Jinren camp, as if it had not been affected by the plague.

By the way, Liu Laohan also said just now that the rats here are very fine and can't be caught easily, which is a bit strange.

"Uncle Liu, are all the rats here so treacherous?" Zhiwen asked.

"Pretty much." Liu Laohan just replied casually, and then he said no, "No, childe, if you don't say it, I really haven't noticed, the rats here seem to be divided into two groups, the small number is particularly fine, it is not easy to catch, the large number is much more stupid, walking staggeringly, you can step on it to death casually, by the way, there are a lot of dead people." ”

Oh? And this kind of thing, on the side of the golden people, the rats are not divided into camps.

Zhiwenti slipped the rat's tail and carried it to the lamp to take a closer look, but saw that this rat was petite and slender, and was obviously very good at drilling holes.

"Huh?" Old Man Liu was shocked, "This doesn't look like a vole, it's like... It's like a house mouse in our Central Plains. ”

As soon as Liu Laohan said this, Zhiwen also reacted, the rats on the Jin people's side may be because they don't need to drill holes in the house, most of them are much fatter than the one in front of them, Liu Laohan's words are right, this seems to be really the house rat of the Central Plains.

At this time, the mouse that was being carried upside down by Zhiwen began to tremble slightly, as if it was about to wake up.

Zhiwen slammed his tail to the ground lightly, fainted it again, and then said to Liu Laohan, "Uncle Liu, do you have a cage, put it in." ”

"How can there be a rat cage when you are camping outside?" Old man Liu muttered, grabbed a handful of wheat stalks beside him, and after a few strokes, took the mouse over and tied it up.

"Uncle Liu, think about it, are those mice that can run and drill similar to this one?" Zhiwen asked.

Old man Liu scratched his scalp and said apologetically, "I don't care too much, Childe." ”

Zhiwen frowned, he had an idea now, but Liu Laohan's sentence "I didn't care" made it difficult for him to confirm.

Think differently and ask from other aspects.

"And where do these shrewd rats mainly appear?" Zhiwen asked, pointing to the mouse that had been tied up and tied to the corner by Old Man Liu.

"Where else can there be, clay pots and baskets, and grain bags, where there is food, they will run wherever they want, this ability is absolutely amazing." Liu Laohan replied.

"Does that mean that you won't see these unusually cunning rats in the wilderness?"

"Well," Liu Laohan pinched his chin, "it's really like this, the voles are bigger than them, and most of the dead are voles, and these little mice don't seem to have seen dead yet." ”

That's right, Zhiwen secretly applauded himself, it seems that the source of the plague this time is here.

Most of the Han people here came from northern Shaanxi, and they all experienced the plague in the second year of Chongzhen, although they were spared, they may have produced antibodies, and they will also carry plague bacteria more or less.

Of course, this is not to say that the plague began to spread from these Han Chinese.

Maybe it's the climate, or maybe it's some other reason, so that after these Han people in northern Shaanxi were taken away by Jiannu, there was no outbreak of plague, and after so many years, the bubonic plague bacteria in their bodies should have been difficult to exist, otherwise, they would have been transmitted to other people.

The real culprits should be these house rats that were hidden in the bags of the Han people and fell to Liaodong with them.

Like the Han Chinese, they survived the plague and were contaminated with the plague germs, which then multiplied, thrived, mutated and mutated on them from generation to generation, and finally broke out in this autumn, first infecting the voles here, and then passing on to people through voles, and Azig was probably the first to be tested by the mutated pneumonic plague.

As for why these house mice can still be alive, either they have antibodies, just like the Han people in northern Shaanxi, and antibodies can be passed down from generation to generation, or as a host of germs, they are not afraid of this germ congenitally.

"What's wrong, Childe?" Seeing that Zhiwen was stunned, the Liu father and son asked in unison.

"It's fine." After some deduction just now, Zhiwen himself felt that he should be very close to the truth, but in this era, there is really no way to explain it to others.

"By the way, Childe, this little mouse, you caught it and let me tie it up, do you have any plans?" Liu Laohan asked.

Planning, what can you plan, just now I just saw that it was different from voles, and I wanted to take a closer look, and now that the source of this plague has been found through it, then it is useless, and it should be killed.

Thinking of this, Zhiwen stretched out his hand and carried the rat that Liu Laohan had tied with wheat straw in front of him, and he was about to kill it.

At this moment, the little mouse was already awake, his whole body was tightly tied with wheat stalks, and a pointed mouth was left exposed, unable to struggle, so anxious that he "squeaked" and screamed, only his tail was shaking around.