Reclaiming Wasteland: Carefree Mountain Farmer

Chapter 260 The Cold Winter 1
Liaodong Marsh
What was once a swampy wasteland in Liaodong has now turned into frozen soil.

A group of more than 5,000 people is marching across the dark and misty wasteland.

Here, it's impossible to tell the time or the route.

For ten months since the catastrophe, the world has been in a state of deathly silence, the sky has always been pitch black, and there are nightmarish, dazed scenes everywhere.

Shen Tuo led his men ahead, squinting at the indistinct road.

The ground was covered in volcanic ash like snow, and hundreds of miles behind us was another volcano that was still erupting.

The rest of the group remained silent, having grown accustomed to the stillness and desolation.

The group of teenagers looked around; there was no grass left on the ground.

There were no leaves, no grass, and no food.

The ten-month migration was an extremely arduous journey for everyone.

Food must be eaten sparingly; only a little bit can be eaten each day, and the rest of the time one must travel on an empty stomach.

Several thousand people have already starved to death on the road, and many of their families have been abandoned and left to die because they could not continue their journey.

Except for young children who cannot walk yet and pregnant women with large bellies, everyone else must continue walking.

To avoid starving to death, they collected and ate horse manure, cow manure, and even human excrement.

Aside from not eating people, they would eat anything edible, and they would even fight over it.

Everything is just for survival.

"Father, someone else has died."

Six-year-old Fang Zhihui told her father.

Fang Damin was used to people dying, and said softly, "Walk carefully, we'll be fine once we get to Shan Nong Kingdom."

The neighborhood kids have heard it many times.

Faced with the quiet atmosphere in the group, Fang Zhihui, who had fled from Goryeo, remained silent along with the others, despite her young age.

No one mourned the dead, and no one buried him.

The daytime lasts only a few very short hours. Once night falls, everyone must huddle together quietly and wait for dawn.

The long night can last for thirteen or fourteen hours, and even going out to use the restroom can easily lead to hypothermia and collapse.

Hunger drove them to seize every moment and move forward to reach the mountain farmers' territory.

Not eating dead people isn't about having backbone; it's about knowing that the mountain farmers forbid it.

If the mountain farmers find out about the cannibalism, everyone will be in trouble.

Every day, people collapse on the road, and some people cough and then fall to the ground and can't get up.

At first, they could find some food and some animals that had starved to death.

However, as the disaster continued, food became increasingly difficult to obtain for tens of thousands of people.

As the group walked, just as it was getting dark, they suddenly heard men shouting ahead.

"There's someone ahead!"

Upon hearing this, the disaster victims quickly perked up and rushed over, pushing carts and pulling their children along.

Some of these people were former nobles, while others were high-ranking officials and soldiers; most of them were not from the lower classes.

The truly impoverished people were all on Jeju Island, which served as a coastal labor market, recruiting servants and sailors.

The team leader, Shen Tuo, met another team of tens of thousands of people.

"Who are you on the other side?" "We are refugees from Goryeo. Our country has been submerged by a volcano, and there is black smoke and fire everywhere. We can no longer survive in our homeland, so we request to go to the Kingdom of Shan Nong to save our lives. Who are you?"

“We are refugees exiled to Eastern Siberia. After the disaster, King Wu sent people to take us back. Now the whole tribe has come from three thousand miles away, around the great volcano, to Liaodong. We were about to head south, but we got lost on the way and were delayed for more than two months.”

Both sides established initial trust through shouting and laid down their weapons.

As the leaders on both sides slowly walked forward, they gradually came together in the dim and choking night.

Shen Tuo held up a torch and looked at the group of people opposite him. He confirmed their identities after seeing the tattered official robes they were wearing.

Zhang Duanxing, also carrying a kerosene lamp, lowered his guard upon seeing the Goryeo envoy's attire worn by the other party.

Goryeo and San Nong Kingdom had no enmity and had always submitted to San Nong Kingdom's orders, so the people of San Nong Kingdom actually had a very good impression of Goryeo Fusang.

No matter what, they were all from the same cultural sphere, looked similar, and were subordinates of King Wu, so they were more approachable than those Europeans.

Zhang Duanxing asked, "Why don't you take a boat to Huanghuai Province? Taking a boat is much faster than walking."

Shen Tuo looked at this young man who was a few years younger than him and looked only twenty-six or twenty-seven years old.

"If you take a boat to the seaside, you can't see anything once it gets dark. Many places in the south have been submerged by tsunamis, and there are strong winds and waves everywhere. If you take the sea route, you may capsize. It is safer to take the land route."

Zhang Duanxing nodded. "It's not safe to travel on the road either. We've had several earthquakes in the past six months. Hundreds of people have frozen to death at night, and many livestock have also died."

A middle-aged man next to him said directly, "Stop talking, let's hurry to Tiezhou. Once we cross Shanhaiguan, we'll be in Tiezhou."

Zhang Duanxing introduced the middle-aged man to the Koreans.

"This is Ma Rudao, the former governor of Huanghuai Province. The day His Majesty discovered the disaster, he sent me by train to Siberia to bring everyone back. The disaster victims scattered in the Northeast region were evacuated long ago. Why are you only just evacuating?"

Ma Rudao's family was exiled to the easternmost part of Siberia to grow potatoes, and they did so for three years.

Because they had been growing potatoes for three years, tens of thousands of people had developed the habit of storing food, which is why they were able to bring enough food for the journey.

We brought enough cotton-padded clothes and boots. Although many supplies were still scarce, thanks to our three years of experience living in frigid regions, not too many people died during this migration.

Shen Tuo replied, "Many places are covered by black smoke. We can't get out of the black smoke and can't find a place to breathe. These people are the ones we met on the road."

Ma Rudao turned and walked away, saying, "Hurry up and get to Tiezhou as soon as possible."

Shen Tuo followed, leading thousands of people behind the mountain farmers.

As they walked, the people behind them noticed fresh horse manure on the road.

When Zhang Duanxing wanted to bring some food to the people behind him and inquire about the Changbai Mountain volcanic eruption, he discovered that some people there were eating feces.

Zhang Duanxing hadn't experienced much hardship. If it were a middle-aged or elderly person in their fifties or sixties, they could understand how difficult it was to live in poverty and hunger.

Living is not easy, and having enough to eat is more like a pipe dream.

There's only so much food; if someone eats more, some people will starve.

The sun was cold and dark, the moon seemed to have disappeared, and the sky above was always gray.

The land could no longer produce food; brushing aside the dust, there were withered weeds everywhere, a desolate land.

Hibernating animals starved and died underground, while animals that should have been active collapsed because they couldn't find food.

As the ferocious beasts gradually lost their ability to find living animals, they survived by feeding on carrion.

Water sources were destroyed, and many streams and lakes were covered with dust. Frozen water sources were covered with layers of mountain ash, and animal offspring would quickly die of thirst after not receiving milk from their mothers.

Young animals cannot grow up, and the number of adult wild animals is constantly decreasing.

Insects, birds, wild beasts, river fish—all animals living in the open air are heading towards extinction.

In the first year, herbivores died at an alarming rate, and wild animals survived by eating the carcasses.

(End of this chapter)