dewdney

"The signal pole on the east side has fallen, and a demon has passed by."

"Pray it's not a rabbit..."

At dawn, wisps of smoke rose from the cracks in the stone houses, and people began to walk in the village.

Five or six men in their prime formed a silent group to go out on patrol, the most important task of the day.

The men were reduced to a handful of bones, their skin was sun-tanned, and they looked forty years old when they were thirty. The so-called weapons are some rough grinding stone knives and spears.

This is the Forest of Warcraft, located far from the Mass wasteland inhabited by humans, and more than half a month away from the nearest city-state, it is a truly deserted place.

There were no people in the forest, and there were towering old trees that had grown for decades, and there were a few gray places where huge hard stones were scattered and formed rubble piles.

These stones are put together to form a shelter from the wind and rain, and people put wooden fences and grass sheds around them to form simple houses.

If you can call it housing.

It was not yet light, but everyone in the village was at work. Aside from the patrol, the rest of us have our own divisions. Some carried buckets to the nearest stream, while others gathered berries, wild vegetables, and anything they could eat in the surrounding woods.

The elderly and children do not have to go out, but they also have to farm, weed, knit and do some chores in the village.

There was hardly a woman to be seen in the whole village.

Everyone is silent, and although they are isolated, life is not easy at all. They have to fight ferocious monsters for food, face harsh natural conditions day after day, and endure hunger and poverty just to survive in the forest.

Regular footsteps tread on the thick layer of fallen leaves, making a "rustling" sound.

The team of six men found the spot where the signal pole had fallen, and sure enough there were some footprints.

"Good thing it's not a rabbit."

Rabbit in the Forest of Warcraft. No one wants to face up to it.

The men burn a special kind of grass and spread it around, this pepper grass smells so bad that the monsters avoid the village when they encounter it.

One of the youngest men held in his hand the only iron knife, the most valuable object in the village.

IDA cherish the iron knife, this is the patriarch grandma gave him the baby, he is usually not willing to take out to use, would rather bare hands to pull weeds.

"The sightings of Warcraft have been getting closer to the village lately..."

"I don't know how much longer we have."

Again all were silent.

Ada worked in silence. He crushed the earth with rocks and tied the sticks to the fence to make a simple wall. While there is little resistance to these measures, they can at least protect the fields inside.

The villagers of SLATE Village farm only a small piece of land near the rubble pile, and if the harvest is bad because of natural and man-made disasters, it is likely that all of them will not survive that winter.

There used to be a lot of human life in the forest of Warcraft, but gradually it all disappeared.

In recent years, SLATE Village has had no contact with the outside world.

They also thought about leaving here and going further afield to survive. But those who went out to explore the village never came back.

They had no choice but this small pile of rubble.

IDA wiped the sweat on her forehead and smiled at the other dejected people: "It doesn't matter, this year the rain is enough, the mother river will not be cut off, by the end of the year there will be several newborns in the village, maybe lucky there will be a girl."

When it comes to girls, the people in the team also have a gentle look.

In a society with many men and few women, the Mother River is the source of life for the people of this continent, and its tributaries spread across the globe, giving all races the chance to continue.

Ada is 16 years old, and the only woman he's ever seen in his entire life is his grandmother. His mother died of illness shortly after giving birth to him, leaving only his grandmother as a woman among dozens of people in the village.

If a baby girl is born, it will be the expectation of the whole village.

But Ada was not disappointed, because her grandmother had said that at the peak of their village, there were four women!

Young boys sometimes wonder what a young woman looks like.

According to my uncles, it is as beautiful as the dew in the morning and the moon at night.

When they finished their work and returned to the village, Ada was just in time for their daily morning meal.

Wild vegetables, wild fruits and some mushrooms are mixed together, add a lot of water to boil into soup, put a little ground into powder of food, it will become sticky, hot drink a bowl is very hungry.

Villagers lined up with an assortment of stone and wooden bowls waiting to share their food. They will eat less during the day, and at the evening meal, they will each get an extra baked sweet potato, and at least they will not go to bed hungry.

As the sun was rising, Ada sat on the steps of the stone house, drinking mush, while the chief grandmother offered him some from her bowl.

The people of this continent are extremely respectful and loving to women, even in poor villages such as SLATE, as the only woman, Elise can enjoy more than one sweet potato in every meal.

Ada hurriedly said, "Grandma, I'm full!"

Elise was old. She squinted and touched her grandson's head. "Eat more and grow taller."

IDA drank the wild vegetable mash, and looked at the other villagers withered and thin appearance, only felt that the village was dead and there was no hope.

It's autumn now, and there are plenty of berries in the forest, but soon it will be winter, when cold temperatures and heavy snowfall will threaten their lives, plus there will never be enough food to eat, murderous monsters, and unheralded storms.

A lot of people die every year.

They can't live without this land, and this land can't support them.

IDA closed her eyes and prayed devoutly: God of heaven, please come and save them, the villagers of SLATE village just want to live.

Grandma said there was a goddess in the sky, and when the stars joined together, the goddess would come down and give them abundance and harvest.

If this is true, hopefully the goddess will come sooner...

Autumn is the harvest season, and the Forest of Warcraft is no exception.

Ripe berries grow everywhere under the roots and along the edges of the rocks, some as big as chestnuts and some as small as peanuts, with attractive light.

A wide-tailed mouse with brown fur was foraging for food. It found a bunch of freshly ripe plum trees. It was shrugging its nose to put the fruit in its cheeks. Suddenly a purple-black mist filled the air, and the mouse that had been eating quickly stopped moving.

Several rattans swam out from behind the grass, like snakes, and dragged the mouse into the grass.

where There grew a flower the size of a washbasin, its petals an ominous purplish red, its golden stamens spitting a dizzying toxic mist, and around them two small rings of spikes, like shark teeth.

In particular, the teeth were wriggling and swaying, as if it were only a short time before the brown mouse was wrapped in a flower's stamen and digested.

The Mon