Chapter 102 Water is as precious as gold
The three of them were silent, and anyone could guess what happened outside. Two more practitioners died in the deserted city, a man and a woman.
Throughout the night, Zheng Qiu, Ermao and Ma Peng, no one dared to sleep with their eyes closed. God knows if the villains outside have left.
I don't know how long I waited. In the dark wall hole, Ma Peng asked in a low voice: "Is it dawn? Have those people left?"
"Let me see!"
Zheng Qiu climbed to the edge of the cave, and carefully removed a wall brick. Just as he moved a gap, a dazzling light poured into his eyes from the outside.
He squinted his eyes, and while rubbing with the back of his hand, he moved the gap wider.
There was no one outside the hole in the wall, and there were only yellow sand floating in the wind on the bare ground, and there were no traces of fighting at all.
"It's dawn, and there's no one outside!"
Zheng Qiu slowly pushed aside the bricks at the entrance of the cave, and crawled out, "Come out quickly, you have to go to the market to beg for rations."
The three climbed out of the hole in the wall one after another, raised their heads and looked around.
The traces of the fighting on the ground have been erased, leaving only the depressions and cracks on the city wall, telling what happened last night.
"Zheng Qiu, Ma Peng, come and have a look!" Ermao squatted on the ground, pushed aside the layered yellow sand and gravel, and found a shiny thing.
It was a broken sword tip, only five inches long, beside the sword tip, there were reddish-brown blood stains that had already dried up.
Seeing the eared cat reaching out to pinch the tip of the sword, Zheng Qiu reminded: "Be careful, don't hurt yourself!"
"Don't worry." Ermao pinched both sides of the sword tip, and slowly lifted it up, then he took out the stone bowl, and hit the stone bowl with the blade of the sword tip.
Beneath, the stone bowl was knocked out of the gap immediately.
The eared cat was overjoyed: "It's a good thing, a good thing! It's absolutely easy to chisel a stone bowl with it, and we don't have to worry about breaking the stone bowl in the future."
Ma Peng suggested: "It's not easy to get naked now, how about this, you go to the market to beg for food first, and I will process this thing."
Zheng Qiu and Ermao nodded in agreement, Ermao handed the tip of the sword to Ma Peng, picked up the stone bowl by himself, and ran to the market with Zheng Qiu.
"Brother and sister, please do it,
Give me something to eat..." Zheng Qiu and Er Mao held up stone bowls, crying and begging to passers-by.
After shouting for about an hour, a fat pedestrian passed by. He glanced at the squatting little beggar, and threw the remaining scones in his hand to the ground.
"Thank you big brother, thank you big brother! Big brother will surely flourish and live a thousand years..." Zheng Qiu shouted, picking up the scones on the ground, patted off the sand on them, and stuffed them into the ear cat.
"Zheng Qiu, you eat, this is the ration you asked for."
Zheng Qiu directly stuffed the cake into the ear cat's arms: "It's okay, I fight hunger, it's okay if I don't eat for ten days, this is for you."
"Zheng Qiu, ear cat! Come here quickly." At this moment, Ma Peng came out of the alley and waved to the two of them.
The two looked at each other, picked up the stone bowl and ran over.
"Look, I fixed it."
Ma Peng held a dagger in his hand. He clamped the tip of the sword between two stones, and wrapped it tightly with cloth strips. He also filled the gaps between the stones with sand to make the dagger stronger.
The exposed sharp blade is three inches long, which is enough for cutting things and chiseling stones.
The three cheerfully hid the dagger, and squatted back to the side of the road with the stone bowl in their arms to beg for food.
At noon, the three of them gathered another half of the fruit, and Zheng Qiu distributed the pulp to Ma Peng, while he gnawed out the core of the fruit.
In the afternoon, two people came to the street. They were wearing gray-yellow robes and cloth gloves of the same color. Their heads were tightly wrapped with gray cloth, leaving only a pair of eyes exposed.
On their clothes, embroidered with the word "Order" in bright red, they are the commanders of the Great Desolation and Lonely City.
Behind the two commanders, three big men in cloaks pushed a wooden cart with a huge iron bucket on it.
Seeing the tin bucket, the eyes of everyone on the street became hot. This tin bucket is filled with water, which is the most precious thing in the lonely city.
The water in the deserted and isolated city cannot be purchased from the commander in charge of the spring, but distributed by the city owner at a time determined by the city owner.
There are a total of fifty such tin buckets in the city. Every once in a while, the commander will fill the buckets with water and bring them to fifty designated water collection points in the city.
In order to let ordinary people in the city have a chance to survive, Dahuang Gucheng has always had a rule.
No one is allowed to do anything within the range of three feet around the metal bucket. If anyone snatches it, the commander can execute it on the spot.
One of the orderers picked up the iron spoon on the cart, slammed the vat, and shouted: "After half an hour, we will start distributing clean water. Today there are only 150 servings. Listen clearly, there are only 150 servings." !"
Hearing the words of the commander, the people on the street quickly dispersed, and went home to look for utensils to hold water.
At the corner of the street, Ma Peng complained with a bitter face: "It's only 150 copies, and there were 200 copies the day before yesterday. Every time there are fewer and fewer copies."
The eared cat agreed: "Yeah, it's even more difficult to find a bargain now, and I don't know if we can get water today."
The rules only say that no one is allowed to do anything within three feet of the iron bucket, but it doesn't say that it cannot be snatched beyond three feet, so every time water is dispensed, it will cause a large-scale scuffle.
Those who are three feet away will never let the person who gets the water leave easily, and they will not let the person who has not got the water get close to the tin bucket.
Because of fighting, the water-holding utensil must be durable and easy to carry, so the people of Dahuang Gucheng came up with a special water-holding utensil, the iron pot belt.
It is a belt made of metal chains, and a row of tin pots are wrapped around the belt. Each pot is the size of a palm, and is sealed with a special copper-cored iron cover, so that clean water will not leak out even if it hits the ground.
The iron kettle belt is long or short, the long one can be used as a belt, and the short one can be wrapped around the neck as a necklace, but the necklace is a bit heavy, and people with weak physiques will only break their necks.
During the scuffle of fetching water, some iron pots would fall to the ground, and Zheng Qiu and the others took advantage of this opportunity to pick up the tin pots that no one noticed.
The tin pot is a hot potato, if you can't hide it after you get it, and if someone sees it, your life will be lost.
So every time they picked up the iron pot, the three of them immediately drank and drank the water, leaving only the empty pot on the ground.
Half a month ago, they had good luck, and Ma Peng found a broken water bag in the garbage dump.
The water bladder is made of leather, the top is covered with a red copper plug, and there is a hole at the bottom on the right side, which looks like it has been punctured by a sharp weapon.
Zheng Qiu didn't know how Ma Peng mended the water bladder, he only knew that Ma Peng hid the water bladder against his chest, and the opening of the water bladder was aligned with the collar.
Every time he picked up the iron pot, Ma Peng poured water into the pouch so that they could go back to the hiding place and drink slowly.
Half an hour passed quickly, and hundreds of people poured in from all directions, surrounding the vat of water. But these people were surrounded by five feet away, and no one dared to lean towards the big barrel.
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