NFBE Chapter 210 The Origin of the Beetle
Chapter 210 The Origin of the Beetle
The villagers were all stunned. They didn't expect the village chief to answer like this, which made them feel embarrassed.
Zheng Sisi said: "Village Chief Wang, it's okay. I will still need their help later."
When the villagers heard that this noble man still needed help, they immediately stood up.
Village chief Wang bowed and nodded, leading a group of people back home. The villagers followed behind him, wanting to know what help the noble man wanted them to do.
Entering the village chief's courtyard, this courtyard is one of the few brick houses in the village, but the row behind is still thatched houses. The courtyard is very clean, it seems that the women in the village chief's family are good at managing the household.
The village chief ordered his family to move out all the stools and chairs and asked everyone to sit in the yard, as the main room was too small to accommodate so many people.
The wife of the village chief and her family made tea for everyone in coarse earthenware bowls. The tea leaves were of the worst quality with a lot of foam. This was probably the only thing the village chief's family could offer.
Zheng Sisi took the tea bowl, thanked her, blew off the tea foam on it, and took a small sip. The other young ladies were disgusted at first, but they were afraid of losing manners, so they followed Zheng Sisi's example and took a sip.
Zheng Sisi looked around and asked, "Village Chief Wang, I heard that there are beetles in the Weishui River area. They have a strong reproductive capacity and cannot be eliminated every year. I wanted to learn more about it. Do you know when these beetles appeared?"
Village Chief Wang thought for a moment and said, "It was probably eight years ago. There was a big flood that year. The water flow was very fast and submerged the fields in our area. Fortunately, we ran fast and ran to the high ground behind the mountain so we were not washed away by the water.
We later heard that hundreds of people were washed away from more than a dozen villages along the Wei River and could never be found again.
The water flooded the fields for about half a month before receding, but our crops and houses were destroyed. We could only find a way to repair the houses and reclaim the fields.
At that time, we discovered this kind of beetle when we were cultivating the fields. It was covered with shells and had large pincers that pinched people. Although being pinched by it would not kill people, it would be very painful. At first we didn't care about it, thinking that there were not many of them and they couldn't be eaten, so we ignored it and just killed all the ones we saw.
The crops we replanted that year were all fine and were harvested safely, but the next year we found that the seedlings we planted were broken for no reason.
At first everyone thought it was a prank by someone who had killed other people's seedlings, but after a few days, we found that most of the seedlings were broken. We arranged for people to keep watch, but after two nights we didn't see anyone coming, and the seedlings were still broken.
There was a child playing by the field behind us and he found that it was this beetle that broke the seedlings. When we tried to catch it, we found beetles everywhere.
Later on, it was impossible to catch them all. The more they caught, the more they caught. Over the years, the villagers in the Wei River area were tortured beyond words.
The villagers all thought that we had done something to anger God and that it was God’s punishment for us. Otherwise, the more we caught these things, the more we would catch and we would never be able to catch them all.
This thing comes out in spring. We catch it, chop it up and feed it to chickens and ducks, but chickens and ducks can't eat so much.
The most important thing is that they grow too fast, more and more every year.
We can’t do anything about this beetle. Our harvests have been poor over the years, and we can barely make ends meet after paying taxes. We’ve been living in the thatched house we built eight years ago, and we really can’t afford to repair it.”
Village chief Wang started to cry as he spoke, and it seemed that he was really tortured by these beetles.
Zheng Sisi asked: "Village Chief Wang, do you know how many villages along the Wei River have this kind of beetle?"
Village chief Wang said: "I only know that there are beetles in the villages along the river, but I don't know exactly how many there are."
Zheng Sisi understood that a person who had never left his home would not know much.
Zheng Sisi asked again: "Do you usually catch beetles?"
Village Chief Wang said, "Catch them all and feed the chickens and ducks."