Chapter 139: The Faces of All Beings in the Dark Ages (I)

On January 18, 1949, in the south of England, the city of Bath was in ruins

Two years have passed since the dawn of civilization was extinguished from this land. www.biquge.info The Anglo-Saxon nation has spent hundreds of years on expeditions and plundering the world, while desperately squeezing its own civilians, and the rich family wealth accumulated with blood and tears has been almost swept away. Countless factories, towns, mines, ports, and the buildings and industrial facilities that had been the result of countless European efforts and expectations were reduced to ashes in the brutal devastation of war and famine. Today, the island of Great Britain has almost returned to the Dark Ages, and the light of centuries of civilization from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution has been extinguished. Scholars and experts with knowledge have died of hunger and cold, leaving only a group of lonely ghosts with nothing, who continue to desperately survive in this land that has been repeatedly scorched by war and nuclear explosions.

The once clean, elegant, picturesque, tourist-filled spa city of Bath is now almost all that remains of a filthy, ugly, burned-down ruin - after the collapse of the British Empire and two full years of civil strife and famine on the island of Great Britain, 99 percent of the original population of this scenic tourist city has disappeared without a trace, but some foreigners from afar still wander the ruins of the city.

-- Just as after the collapse of the Roman Empire, all kinds of foreign barbarians, from the Anglo-Saxons to the Vikings to the Norman conquerors, crossed the sea and landed on the island of Great Britain, and the birds seized the fertile land of England and drove the old landowners, the Celts, to the Scottish highlands.

Of course, in this nightmarish dark age, people who really live in the ruins of Bath City and live a difficult life will not have such poetic and philosophical associations in their hearts at this moment, but will only have the simplest desire to survive, and beyond that, there is infinite confusion, numbness and confusion......

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“…… Today...... It seems like a good day! Ahh At the very least, it's finally not snowing anymore! "Dark-skinned former U.S. Army Captain Quinta . Kim poked out of the basement of a dilapidated house, looked through the broken glass window, looked at the cloud-piercing sunlight not far from the horizon, and muttered quietly.

In a high-latitude region like the UK, the winter nights are particularly long, and the mornings come very late, so although it is still only dawn, Quinta . . . Kim had been awake for a long time. It's just that I'm afraid of the cold outside, and I barely managed to get out until now.

In the last two years, the weather in the UK has been particularly cold, and from late November, the entire island of Great Britain has been covered in overwhelming wind and snow. Especially shortly after the New Year, just like the frost giants in Norse mythology descended on the mortal world, a violent storm suddenly swept in, roaring for seven days and nights in a row, and many people were crushed by the falling snow and their houses died at home. The snow near Bath City is also a metre or two deep and has barely stopped until recent days.

But the cold winter is not the most deadly thing, and the weather anomalies that last all year round are even more desperate - since 1947, the weather in Britain has hardly been normal, and there are a few snowfalls in the summer, and the temperature is warm and cold irregularly. Humans who are highly adaptable to the environment can naturally withstand such strange weather changes, but the crops in the fields are inseparable from the warmth and sunshine of summer......

You must know that once there is no assistance of industrial civilization, the most primitive farming is really called watching the sky and eating, no matter how diligent the peasants are, a drop of sweat falls into the field and falls into eight pieces of hard work, but as long as there is an extra burst of rain, a few more days of sunshine, or a cold spring, this harvest is greatly damaged.

As for this strange weather with snow falling in June and chaotic seasons, it is even more difficult for agriculture to mention - it is unreasonable not to stop harvesting!

-- Even crops that have been domesticated by humans for a long time and have adapted to the cold zone cannot grow in the darkness, cold wind, and ice and snow of winter!

As a result, British agriculture, which had already degenerated to a medieval state due to the collapse of the fertilizer industry, the suspension of agricultural machinery, and the disrepair of water conservancy and irrigation projects, was further degraded into the Ice Age in such an abnormal climate, with the exception of a few fast-growing hardy crops. Even if there was no harvest, yields fell to medieval levels, with harvests at most four times as much as sown and even twice as little.

Seriously, Quinta. Captain Kim barely knew how he had managed to survive the purgatory two years with his black brethren.

Although he had captured a large amount of coal, flour, canned food, biscuits, and grease when he had united several forces to break through the city of Bath, no matter how much material was captured at that time, it would not have been possible to survive the entire two years if he had just sat back and eaten.

However, the harsh environment can really train people, driven by the survival instinct, Kim, who was not very good at farm work, has turned into a modern version of Robinson, and managed to build a small farm and survival base in the ruins of Bath City. They fished and fished in the River Liven, which flows through the city, turned abandoned gardens into farmland and vegetable gardens, and took advantage of the brief and intermittent warm weather to grow potatoes, turnips, and onions - although the yields were pitifully low and the harvest was sometimes lost, but there was a small harvest to replenish the depleted food reserves. In addition, they raised a flock of chickens from grass seeds, earthworms and insects collected in the wild, but unfortunately one of them was not careful, and was swept away by the fox who stole the chickens......

However, in England's return to the Dark Ages, the greatest threat was not the unstoppable natural disaster, but the rest of humanity - the Britain of the Three World Wars, not only the collapse of government, the collapse of order, the loss of agricultural harvests, but also the loss of trade with foreign countries. With the pitiful production of this land in the disaster years, it is simply not enough to feed tens of millions of people. And those who did not want to starve to death quietly, but were reduced to hordes of outcasts, looting houses and houses for a living—Captain Kim and his men were among the armed vagrants before they became settlers.

Driven by hunger, these homeless people are like locusts, walking and eating all the way, and when they can't find anything to eat, they gnaw on the bark and grass roots or eat themselves - directly eating human flesh. In particular, fishermen and fishing villages that are less affected by the catastrophic climate and have a lot of seafood are the focus of their robbery. And the settlers who entrenched themselves in fishing villages or estates also attacked and fought each other from time to time for territory, food, women, or other things - in this dark age without law and morality, the only thing that determines survival is the simplest violence.

In the cannibalism of the remaining humans, the already scarce resources are further wasted, resulting in a decreasing population of the land.

Although the city of Bath is not directly located by the sea, it is located on the main transportation route, and there are also crazy gangs of homeless people passing by from time to time. Thus, in the last two years, Kim and his black men have been repeatedly attacked by armed exiles or gangs - strictly speaking, there is no difference between the two, and the potatoes and turnips that have not yet grown in the fields have been looted, and even the seedlings have been gnawed. There were also a few unlucky black American soldiers who were accidentally caught by homeless people in their sleep, skinned and cut flesh alive and cooked in a pot to eat...... In order to defend their lives and hard-won food, Kim and his black men worked tirelessly to remove bricks and pillars from the ruins of the building and dig up stones, and built a fortification composed of stone barricades and trenches, which looked very much like a European cottage or an Oriental dock fort in the early Middle Ages, so that it was finally a little safer.

And of course, don't put the quinta. Captain Kim and his black men were too kind-minded - they had also been merciless in killing the remnants of the citizens of Bath City in order to save food consumption during the previous food crisis; They have also clashed with other settlements near Bath City in order to grab land and food, but so far they have not been extremely hungry and have not eaten human flesh......

What's even worse is that Rao is so struggling to survive, fighting with the sky, the earth, and people, and the group of blacks in Bath City are still constantly attritional, some are killed, some die of illness, some freeze to death, and some are accidentally burned to death...... By this point, there were only about two dozen people left.

-- In the Dark Ages of Great Britain, everyone who survived was a dead remnant of a cockroach......

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Thinking back on the hardships and hardships of the past two years, Kim couldn't help but sigh, wrapped himself in a greasy, dirty coat, and got out of the cellar where he slept, and walked through the first floor, which was very dark because most of the doors and windows were blocked by snow, and walked up the crumbling staircase to the second floor.

- To keep warm and safe, Quinta . Captain Kim and his women usually slept in the basement during the winter.

In an empty room on the second floor, a haggard red-haired woman had lit a bonfire and was cooking a pot of muddy soup. The soup contains potatoes, dried fish, and a dash of meat from a fish that was taken by a Quinta before the recent heavy snowfall. The unlucky wild cat that Kim caught with a trap, although the cat's meat was so sour that it was hard to swallow, and it would emit a stench when cooked, but in today's difficult times of cannibalism, there is no room for the slightest waste, so the cat was still frozen and hidden by Kim with ice cubes, and from time to time cut a few pieces of meat to supplement nutrition.

The red-haired woman who was cooking on a fire was named Anne, who had been taken captive by Kim during the siege of Bath, and at first he was unwilling to be ridden under him by a black man, and he was very desperate to survive several times, and even tried to escape. But after a long time, especially after witnessing the tragedy of several homeless cannibalisms, she gradually became numb - in today's extremely harsh and cruel and terrible world, even if a weak woman like her can escape, she will not be able to find a way to survive on her own. It is normal to starve to death and freeze to death, and maybe it will be reduced to food for the hungry.

Here, she is the private pet of the black chief, and she can enjoy special treatment, at least half full every day, and will not be cooked and eaten...... And at this moment, the red-haired Anne's belly was already slightly bulging, apparently pregnant with Kim's child - so she resigned herself to her fate.

Quinta. Kim whistled and leaned over to the pot to take a look, and the soup in the pot was just beginning to steam a little, and it was still far from being able to eat. I looked at the place where the firewood was stacked, and found that there was not much firewood left before the snowfall, and it should be used up after two or three days at most.

Winter will last a long time, and if you don't take advantage of the short sunny day after the snow has stopped, go out in the cold wind to collect some firewood, and when the terrible storm comes, you will no longer be able to go out, and there will be no fuel to keep warm in the house, then you will be at risk of freezing to death in the bed - in the last winter, many of his men had been frozen to death in such a way as their women had froze to death.

If it was usual, he would have kicked Anne's ass with his leather shoes, urging the lazy girl to go out and collect firewood. However, now that this red-haired white girl is pregnant with her own cub in her belly, she has to take care of it a little more. So after hesitating for a while, Kim still turned around and took an axe on his own, and then, he didn't bother to dig a hole through the gate buried by the snow, but jumped directly down from the balcony on the second floor, stepping on the two-meter-high snow and walking out.

As soon as they left the house, the wind blew in the face with fine pieces of snow foam, hitting the faces and causing pain. Kim had to bow his head and wrap his coat tightly, and walked on the snow with difficulty, and within a few steps he came across a rough barricade of furniture, rubble, bricks, and broken cars, which was the fortification of Captain Kim's small settlement. The settlement is located on a small headland surrounded on three sides by rivers, which form a natural defensive barrier. As long as you put some effort into building a wall on the only side that connects to the land, you can defend it decently.

However, at this time Quinta . Captain Kim frowned, for he found that the snow was so heavy that anyone could easily step on the snow and walk from one side of the barricade to the other, while the outer trenches were filled with snow. In addition, the river behind it is so frozen that even a car can run on it - that is, the current settlement has become completely defenseless!

But even if he knew about this kind of thing, he couldn't solve it, thinking that if it was freezing today, there should be no enemy to attack him—with the poor constitution of the homeless people who were half starved, ragged, and covered in abscesses, most of them would not have been able to walk a few kilometers in such weather, and they should have been frozen into popsicles.

So, Quinta . Kim just said hello to the shrunken black sentry in the barricade booth and went out with his axe on his shoulder.

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Outside the barricades that defended the black ghetto of Bath City, across a small clearing, there were still abandoned houses with no one in sight.

In the early days, Kim and his black men foraged for combustibles directly from the ruins of the city—wooden doors, floors, books, newspapers—all of which were good fuel for drying fires. However, as more than two years have passed, the wood and books that are easy to collect and can withstand burning have now almost been burned out, and those cloths, clothes, and other things that are better used to protect them from the cold, and the few remaining coals and fuel oil are being used by Quinta . The last reserves that Kim treasured should not be used lightly unless it was absolutely necessary.

So now Quinta . Like the woodcutters of old, Kim had to chop down tree branches with an axe - without having to walk too far, as a very green tourist city, there were enough trees to provide firewood in the city and suburbs of Bath, the spa city.

After more than an hour of busywork, and just a little hot on his body, Kim gathered two large bundles of firewood, which he tied up with a rope, and then took a steel pipe as a flat burden, and walked back like this...... The abandoned city after the heavy snow feels extremely quiet, the sky and the earth seem to be bleak and snow-white, and there is only the whining and whistling sound of the wind blowing in the ears. Kim felt that the heat in his whole body was being quickly blown away by the cold wind, and his limbs, nerves and senses were almost numb from the cold, so he just instinctively stepped on the snow and carried the burden back.

It wasn't until he happened to notice a flash of metal on the corner of the street that his frozen mind suddenly started to work again, and he became alert for a moment.

However, by this time, for Quinta . Captain Kim said it was too late.

“…… Bang! ”

With the flames erupting from the muzzle, a hot bullet came in a burst of light. Before Captain Kim could dodge, he pierced his abdomen. The next moment, because of this impact, his body bent into a bow and flew backwards, and he fell heavily into the snow...... The poles and firewood were scattered to the ground, and warm blood gushed out of the wounds in his abdomen like a fountain, staining a large white field of snow in the blink of an eye.

“…… Ahh

Fatal pain that made Quinta. Captain Kim was almost incapacitated in an instant, but despite this, he struggled to pull out the M1911 pistol from his waist and return fire, but the next moment, he was hit in the head with a wooden club, and finally reluctantly fainted.

Then, two homeless people, who were in tatters and smelly, like moving garbage heaps, jumped out excitedly, looked around Kim a few times, and one of them pulled out his dagger from his waist, "...... Well done, John, you can add to your meal tonight and eat meat stew! ”

But another guy named John stopped him," ...... Wait a minute! William, now is not the time to do such a thing! Have you forgotten what we're here for? Follow Boss Goodman to attack that stronghold by the river is the right thing to do! It is said that there are a lot of potatoes there, there are biscuits, flour and canned food, and women! If we delay here and go late, the good things in it should be robbed by others! ”

“…… That's right, alas, let's leave this here for now! I hope that when we get back, we won't let the wild dogs take it away......"

So, these two dirty and smelly outcasts just touched Kunta. Kim turned and walked down the street with his pistol and axe, leaving him to fend for himself in the blood-stained snow...... After a while, the dying moment of the quinta. Captain Kim, who woke up again before he died, seemed to vaguely see black smoke and fire rising from the direction of the settlement, and faintly heard violent explosions and heart-rending shouts......

In this way, the already extremely faint light of civilization on the island of Great Britain was once again extinguished a handful......

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ps: The anime I talked about at the end of the previous chapter, it's the heroine who is a blue-eyed blonde Lori Victoria. Morality. Blois's Gosick. There is a plot that on the eve of World War I, a small fictional Mediterranean country held a bloody festival, kidnapped girls and teenagers from various powers around the world, put them on a slowly sinking ship full of killing traps, forced them to kill each other, and judged the cruel divination of the victors of the world war as the last survivors.

Although the background and process are different, it is still reminiscent of the foggy shipwreck of the Korean Seol, from the owner to the captain to most of the crew members are cult believers, and it is said that 48 hours after the ship capsized, there were students in the cabin who used their mobile phones to ask their families for help, but none of them were rescued. After the incident, the female president also blocked the big-ticket artists and the media suppressed the news. Hey, the female president of South Korea who worships the unspeakable, and Mrs. Clinton, who likes to organize a group to go to Loli Island to play with imprisoned girls, is really getting more and more out of discipline in this world. I bet the best screenwriters are shocked by this kind of plot, and who says that art comes from life but is higher than life? Facts tell us that life is the top art! If Hillary Clinton really planned to start a nuclear war as soon as she came to power, playing the Radioactive Wasteland, and using a world war to shake off the burden of the financial bubble, I might believe it. After all, the countless facts of the past year have proved that we are far from understanding how low the lower limit of discipline and IQ of politicians in this world is. (To be continued.) )