In the mountains and fields of early autumn, the smoke-like heat has gradually dissipated.

If you look down at the earth from above, you can see one after another, crisscrossing the gray-white dry land like scars. There were no weeds, no wildflowers, and no trees. No house was built on it, not even animals.

Under the high autumn sun, they were shimmering with a cold silver-gray light. It looks like a pale corpse floating on the surface of a lake, illuminated by the moonlight.

It's like grains of salt from dead fish washed up by the sea.

That is the proof of the great sin of the past when mankind pierced the world with a poisonous blade and harmed each other....It was the mark of a soldering iron full of malice and oil.

And beyond these scars of death, the breath of human civilization is still impregnated in this wilderness.

Henrik was a lumberjack.

In this day and age, lumberjacking is a dangerous job that requires both skill and physical effort. But Henry was different from the other lumberjacks...... The axe he uses is not a stone axe, nor is it an axe made from metal fragments taken from the ruins of an old era.

Instead, through trading with the Sky Islanders, he obtained the advanced tools created by Sky Technology. Not only is it more durable, handy, and strong, but it's also sharp enough.

The Sky Islanders would graze their slaves on the ground, put on strange metal utensils, and follow their orders to cut down and mine. It's like the people of the earth who go and graze the animals.

Henrik didn't know much about the Sky Islanders.

They were always arrogant—the leaders of the herding slaves, who were always covered with heavy shells, and their faces were not exposed. It was a sturdy piece of armor and a kind of "protective clothing" at the same time. According to the old scholar in the village, when the radiation on the ground was relatively strong, when they went to search for things in the ruins, they also had to put on this kind of thing.

Curse and radiation, those are two different invisible crises.

In the gray-white earth, there is always one or both of them. Even the ruins and ruins with the most materials are always haunted by these things, like ghosts. Even the relics of the old times that adventurers have taken out of them with all their might and risked their lives may have been contaminated.

Curses cannot be prevented in any way, and some time after contact, the flesh will become deformed—either tentacles, or an extra eye, or an unhealable wound on the body, strange things the eye sees, strange visual hallucinations, and memory problems.

Generally, the curse will set in half a day, and the physical discomfort will be felt before the attack. But because of this, curses are easier to detect. Before the curse officially begins, it can be washed away with the holy water of the priests.

It is said that the previous curses were much stronger, not only were they more acute, but they were also not easily dispelled. But now, like radiation, the curse has faded a lot.

As for radiation, it can only be isolated by protective clothing. Because of the accumulation of radiation dust in the body, the continuous damage to cells and even genes could not be treated by the priests.

It's like old Newt in the neighboring village...... Even if he had been healed by the village priests, it would not be long before his flesh festered, his skin cracked, pus flowed from his body, and a foul odor emanated. In the last month, there were not many wounds on his body, but his spirit became worse and worse, and he held his stomach and screamed for pain every day. screaming heartbreakingly, he rolled on the ground, the wounds on his body were all cracked, and blood marks were rubbed on the ground.

The old man said he had cancer. It should be stomach cancer, bowel cancer, liver cancer or pancreatic cancer.

The priest had no way to cure him, so he could only feed him a cup of *** sweet milk. Let him die in a groggy sleep.

The old people in the village always say that there is no radiation on the ground now.

There are a few curses, but not much. Those Sky Islanders were so cautious that they didn't even carry oxygen tanks on their backs and didn't breathe the air on the ground..... they were really cowardly.

But if Henrik wants to say, radiation is not necessarily gone. Those Sky Islanders are cleaner and prettier than they are

And smart, when they come down to the ground, they will wear such heavy protective clothing, which means that the radiation is probably still there. Old Newt can get radiation sickness is an example.

As long as people on earth get radiation sickness, they will definitely not be cured on earth. Only the Sky Islanders have the potential to save them.

But those people who are high above the Sky Island will not let any people on the ground fly to the Sky Island. Henrik has seen many begging leaders of the Sky Island to smuggle themselves to the Sky Island on the supply ship, but they have all been sternly refused. And those who secretly tried to get on the ship were eventually executed.

The Sky Islanders tightly controlled the flow of supplies, and Henrik was able to get the axe because his brother had entered the ruins before.

His brother didn't dare to go too deep at that time, so he walked around the door, and found a black crystal slab.

It must be some kind of electronic device. They studied it around for a while, feeling that it should have been left behind by the adventurers who had entered the ruins early on.

The reason why the ruins became ruins is that they were not completely destroyed. This thing looks very fragile, and if it had been in the ruins, it would have been destroyed along with it. It must have been someone who left or entered, accidentally fell out, and then left it here until no one noticed.

After being in the radiation zone for so long, it has long since become useless. But luckily they ..... opened it and took out a battery that was still in good condition. At least it can be charged and discharged. They sold the battery to the old scholars in the village and exchanged the first calf for their family.

The remaining slate, after being wiped clean by Henrik, was sold to a group of Sky Islanders.

Because when his brother was cutting wood, he was scraped down by a fallen tree, and his arm was broken, and he had to have his leg amputated. Henrik had wanted to replace the empty islanders' mechanical arms - he could see clearly that some of the slaves were also equipped with such expensive things. But I don't know because the language has become not exactly the same, and there is a barrier to communication between them...... Or maybe he didn't bid enough, and they still didn't want to give it to themselves.

It's obviously a part of a slave, so it's not that the price isn't enough. It could only be a communication problem. Henrik was remorseful.

But in the end, he got a very advanced and handy axe. Henrik quickly forgot about the unpleasant things that had happened before.

It was only after cutting down the tree and carefully knocking it down that Henrik finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He sat down on the log, picked up the corner of his coat and wiped his sweat. He took a boiled corn from his bosom, peeled it, and prepared it for a full meal.

It was the time of day for them to harvest their corn. But fresh corn is better than sun-dried corn. After this season, it is not so easy to eat fresh corn.

Usually, they can eat quite a lot. Tomatoes, corn, radish, potatoes, beans, amaranth... By exchanging crops with surrounding villages, each year will be a little stronger than the previous year.

But when winter comes, it gets extra tough.

Even if you are prepared every winter, many people will die. Some of them froze to death, some of them starved to death, and some of them were killed by fire, those who were smoked by charcoals, those whose houses were sealed by snow, and those who died of illness ..... who ventured out in winter, which was also the main cause of death. After the autumn harvest, those radiant beasts will not be able to find food for a long time, and they will also become very manic. If the smell leaks out accidentally, the radiant beast may also break through the wall.

They would stock up on firewood, seal their windows, and stay at home and live on the good food they had. Radiant beasts are particularly ferocious in winter, hunters are reluctant to catch them, and the smell of blood is difficult to deal with - the water in the river can freeze to death in winter. If you want to get some meat in your mouth, you have to rely on those smoked bacon sausages.

The radiant beasts that roam outside stealing crops, farmers, lumberjacks, and hunters may look ugly, twisted, and scary, but after skinning, the meat inside can still be eaten. On weekdays, it's also a rare delicacy.

As for clean beef or something, they are definitely reluctant to eat it..... milk is already an extremely expensive food, and beef can only be given to the elderly and pregnant women in most cases

, the seriously wounded and dying, and the smartest children to eat. The rest is sold to the Sky Islanders in exchange for medicines, advanced tools and engineering parts that they can't produce, and some seeds that have been bred to work very well.

In late autumn, the entire village will be mobilized to set up traps with the surrounding villages to capture the radiant beasts that are a little intelligent but not smart enough.

Their meat is marinated and then smoked; Their intestines can also be taken out and washed, stuffed with flesh and internal organs, and then hung outside to dry. In the winter, you can survive the snowstorm for a while by taking out some air-dried meat and vegetables and boiling a pot of hot soup with melted snow.

The little electricity left in the village has to be used to ensure the cold storage of the most precious medicines. There was no wind or water in their village, so the old scholars made a man-powered power generation device, which relied on the children to pedal their bicycles and get a small amount of electricity. The extra electricity is usually used to keep babies warm or to ensure the safety of childbirth.

It's all about continuity.

Without a "baby room", the infant mortality rate will at least double; Without Mama Li's delivery and treatment, the probability of pregnant women dying of infection is not low. All adults respect these old people who have survived the old times. Scholars, priests, old hunters... Almost as long as there are old people who survive, there are more or less unlearned.

Young people will use a hung of bacon and a hung of sausages to give to these old people who no longer have access to food, hoping that they will teach their children something to learn. The old people don't hide their secrets, and they even teach things for free. But as the number of old people who have experienced the war of annihilation is decreasing year by year, many inheritances are gradually being lost.

It is said that the people of the Sky Island also used to live on the ground before.

Later, after the war of annihilation, they grew tired of the radiation and curses on the earth and went to the sky.

Occasionally Henrik would think ..... stay in heaven, would it really be interesting?

Floating on an empty island doesn't sound big. Henrik had seen the island, which was a roundabout with two mountains. I can live in about seven or eight villages, and if I am denser, I can live in more than twenty. But then there is no place to raise cattle and sheep at all – so they will pay a lot of money for cattle and sheep from the land? In that case, why didn't they let the slaves raise cattle and sheep?

If you live in the sky, will you get stuck to the clouds when you walk on the road, and when the clouds leave the empty island, and when it rains, you will fall down from the empty island? Therefore, when I heard that some people were fishing on the beach, they would also find some empty island people who drowned and washed up to the shore. Almost every one of them is a rich man with a lot of advanced technology.

Also, if you live in the sky, will the sun get very hot? By the time it gets night, it's too cold again. One cold and one hot, you will probably freeze and catch a cold. However, the heavenly medical technology is very advanced. They probably won't get sick. However, their books seemed to be very expensive, and the old scholars wrote about their engineering skills and sold them for a very high price....in exchange for a pair of glasses and a box of antibiotics.

I heard that it was because they lacked paper to make books, because they lacked wood. It was probably bare on the Sky Island, not even a tree - the evidence is that the slaves of the Sky Island would say that they were "so beautiful" when they saw the bare ground.

It is said that before the war, there were more than just hundreds or thousands of trees on that mountain. Rather, it is thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of woods, that have been destroyed in fires and artillery fire. But Henrik thinks maybe the old man is bragging... If the world was really so beautiful before, why didn't they build another one that was exactly the same on the empty island?

They couldn't talk to the "slaves" of the heavenly people, but Henrik would eavesdrop on their conversations. From their words, Henrik pieced together the appearance of an empty island:

They built their cities out of white marble, with glittering lights, moving idols, and hymns of holiness echoing all the time. There are rivers flowing on the earth that lead to any place, and the water in the rivers is clear and clean.

There is also a mermaid lady swimming in the river and angels flying

at high altitude. As long as anyone has an accident, the executive department will be the first to arrive. Smoke hung everywhere—it must have been clouds, Henrik thought—and it was not dark even at night, and people did their best to hope that others would be happy, and whatever happened could be sent to everyone's bedside as if it had wings.

Even if they lose their arms and limbs, they can still work. Even people who are good at nothing can sell themselves for a good price.

- Moreover, they also have "heroes".

What a longing thing that is!

Born from the depths of despair, saving all beings from danger.

If there were heroes in this world, he would have admired them as a child—and most encouragingly, anyone could be a hero.

Can I be like that?

Henrik thought, that was probably impossible. Because he's not a Sky Islander. He couldn't even understand what they were saying when they were chatting - some nouns, he didn't understand at all. Henrik was acutely aware that although they had only been separated for a hundred years, their languages were completely different. But just then, Henrik suddenly heard a strange and polite voice behind him:

"Can I sit here for a moment, friend?"

"Ah, yes. You are free."

Henrik subconsciously felt that this voice was not quite right. Because his words were too polite, like the kind of words that only scholars would say.

And when Henrik looked back, he was stunned—

It was a middle-aged man who looked to be in his forties.

He has two deep nasolabial folds on his face, deep eye sockets, and a compassionate look in his eyes. There was an illusory aura on his head, and it was emitting a bright glow. He was dressed in a dirty cloth robe, which may have been white before, but now had revealed a dirty dull yellow. His pupils are a warm yellow, a color reminiscent of sunset and dusk.

This is.....

"-Lord Angel!"

Henrik fell to his knees almost immediately, prostrate on the ground, "I—I've heard of you, the savior who has returned from the old times—"

"Get up, friend."

The man's expression is calm and solemn, and the low, magnetic voice is reassuring: "There are no angels, and there are no saviors. I'm just a solo traveler.

"You can call me... Hua Mingshu."