Chapter 972 The Starlight of Life
After the competition, Sandstone, representing the wasteland guardian clan, invited Gordon and others to visit their camp.
After Gordon thought about it, he declined.
At present, it seems that Detel, who protects the clan, and the strange-faced clan led by the golden priest are likely to have a competitive or even hostile relationship.
The festival of the Strange Face Tribe will begin the night after tomorrow. Don’t cause any more accidents, and it’s better to reduce your contact.
After parting ways with the Detels who were guarding the clan, it was still early in the day. According to Gordon's original idea, he could actually ride the pterosaur all the way to the southern swamp.
The distance is "a bit" far, but with the speed of the pterosaur, we should be able to arrive shortly after dark.
From the map, you can see that the survey team also has a camp in the swamp area in the southern part of the wasteland. We can go to the camp there to rest for one night, have a full day of fun tomorrow, and come back the day after tomorrow to participate in the Qimian Tribe Festival. The itinerary is perfect.
However, after everyone discussed it, they decided not to be so wasteful.
Although the main purpose of this mission has been basically achieved, they are still escorts, and it is a bit excessive to sneak from the wasteland in the north of the big ant mound to the swamp in the south.
Mr. Monroe and his friends, if something unexpected happens over there, they might not even be able to find them, let alone getting back in time.
"Go to the swamp next time." Hayata comforted Gordon, "There will be a chance in the future."
Facing her comforting tone to a child, Gordon felt helpless, "I don't want to go to the swamp that much.
There are a lot of things to see in the northern part of the Big Ant Mound Wasteland. We have been wandering around here for the past two days. "
“Didn’t you say that the night view of the big ant mound is very special?” Zhupa suggested, “It happens to be relatively hot now. Can we go back to the camp to rest first and then come out after nightfall?”
Gordon Hayata looked at each other.
“That’s it!”
The sun has completely set.
The temperature difference between day and night in the Big Ant Mound Wasteland is not small. When the sun is strong during the day, it burns your throat when you take a deep breath. However, the temperature drops quickly after nightfall.
Of course, it is still far from the extreme temperature difference in the Dede Desert of the Old World where people can die from the sun if they don’t drink cold drinks during the day and people can freeze to death if they don’t drink hot drinks at night.
But there is also a feeling of going from midsummer to autumn quickly.
Gordon and Hayata walked out of the camp one after another after resting all afternoon. They climbed along the rock wall and left the small canyon where the camp was located, looking at the world in front of them.
Falled into a brief silence.
“That’s it, meow?” Xianglan expressed their thoughts, “That’s it, that’s it, meow?!”
The weather is pretty good tonight, there are no clouds in the sky, and the sea of stars is as bright as ever.
Hmm, although this starry sky is beautiful, it is no different from the sky I saw when I was at the Star Stronghold. It is a bit excessive to say that I am tired of aesthetics, but it does feel like I am used to it.
The scenery on the ground can only be said to be unsatisfactory.
Gordon really likes the desert scenery of the sand sea under the moon. The desert shrouded in starlight and moonlight will show a blue color. If there is no wind, the endless undulating sand dunes will look like a still ocean.
During the night hunt during the Battle of the One-horned Dragon, the night view of the desert left a very deep impression on him.
But the scenery in front of him made him unable to appreciate it.
Large ledges, rocks eroded into strange shapes by wind and sand, and tower-shaped ant mounds, fragmented the wasteland in front of us.
Looking at it during the day, it still makes people marvel at the "wonderful workmanship of nature", but at night, all that is left is weird.
In areas such as the depressions in rock mountains and the edges of stone platforms that cannot be covered by starlight, there are many shadows, and it seems that some monsters will pounce out at any time, which is a headache to watch.
"Actually, I can't say that the scenery is ugly." Taking a deep breath of the cool night breeze, Hayata commented: "I've heard more than one person say that the night view of the Big Ant Mound is extraordinary, and my expectations are a bit too high. Alright."
"Yeah." Gordon shrugged, "Maybe the scenery here is just not good enough. Should we go further north? It feels like the view there is wider."
"Um."
The two people and the two cats started their night outing with a negative mentality of "come here".
They didn’t call the pterodactyl, and just ran all the way north. Although they had a playful mentality at first, they felt like they were running cross-country in the middle of the night.
The night gradually deepened, the stars became brighter and brighter, the temperature gradually dropped to about 20 degrees, the late night breeze was very refreshing, and the disappointment in the hearts of Gordon and others also dissipated. Even if there is no scenery worth admiring, is it not bad to go for a night run once in a while?
Their pace began to quicken, and finally they started racing.
With the sound of pork chop, "Chong meow!".
The two Ellu suddenly ran wildly on all fours, "Meow hahaha!" and jumped out, followed closely by Hayata, who was also laughing.
Gordon, whose only weakness was speed, was left behind. He was furious but had no choice but to run wildly.
Just when he became more courageous, he grabbed a few fruits growing on the vines on the roadside, hung up the projector, and prepared to turn this racing competition into a props competition.
A huge, shining figure crashed into his field of vision, and he subconsciously shouted, "There's something wrong!"
Hayata and the others, who had already run for a long distance, immediately stopped and gathered around them in a vigilant posture.
Gordon looked warily at a huge anthill not far away that was as big as two houses stacked on top of each other.
He just saw that this thing was glowing.
That kind of light reminded him of the lightning bugs on the Thunder Wolf Dragon. The moment he turned his head to pick up the fruit, he even thought there was a Thunder Wolf Dragon lying in the shadow.
Hayata and the others gathered together, and after listening to Gordon's statement, they also set their sights on the anthill.
"Where is the light cat?" Xianglan tilted her head and looked at Gordon, "Is it because you can't run away and are trying to trick me?"
Gordon flicked Pandan's head, and then made a "silence, hide" gesture.
The two men and the cat squatted on the spot, staring at the anthill dozens of meters away.
After waiting quietly like this for a short time, a few inconspicuous fireflies began to shine from the ant mound. As time went by, more and more lights lit up.
The fireflies flicker and flicker, and if you take a quick look under the dark night, it is indeed easy to mistake them for anything alive.
“Why didn’t we notice Meow just now?” Xianglan licked her paw.
Hayata thought for a while and suddenly clapped her hands hard several times.
The sensitive little beings on the anthill were frightened, and the little fluorescent lights disappeared instantly.
"Maybe we just laughed too loudly." Hayata said with a dry smile: "When there is no flash, these ant mounds are no different from ordinary rocks, so you can't notice them."
"Let's stop running, be quiet and walk quietly." Gordon suddenly smiled, "This should be what they call the 'special night scene'."
They came to the big ant mound quietly.
If you look closely, you can see that there are many finger-long worms crawling on the large ant mound. They have huge claws, and their soft abdomens are shining with fluorescence.
Under the temptation of these fluorescent lights, the transporter ant larvae in the ant mound are attracted, and then they are taken into the mouths of these worms with large pincers and chewed.
The strange thing is that the adult transport ants seem to be completely invisible to them, and these worms are still lying on the ant mound to feast on the larvae.
The ant mound in front of us alone is shining with thousands of fireflies. Every bit is a trap. At every moment, hundreds of transporter ant larvae are trapped by these shining worms. Prey and devour.
“Damn meow, all the larvae will be eaten at this rate, meow!” Pandan felt a little pity for those mindless transporter ant larvae, and stretched out her claws, trying to catch those glowing worms.
Hayata pressed its paw, "This is a part of nature's self-regulation.
If it weren’t for them, the entire Big Ant Mound Desert might have been eaten up. "
Gordon whistled, signaling for his companions to turn around.
Everyone looked into the distance. As far as the eye could see, everything was as small as less than one person tall, and as big as a towering mountain peak. Every ant mound was illuminated by thousands of fireflies.
Under the fireflies, countless cruel killings are going on.
But this is the starlight of life.
ˆPs.
I didn’t notice this scene at all when I was playing the game, in which the shining insect-eating larvae of the large ant mound prey on the transporter ant larvae. I only noticed it later when I watched the ecological video of “Rome Investigator 027” on Station B.
The night view of the Big Ant Mound Wasteland is indeed not pretty, but with this ecological detail, everything else seems unimportant.
(End of this chapter)