It took Sun Hang a full ten-plus minutes to figure out that what this remnant called "hunting" wasn’t about killing Sinking Sand Giant Worms, but about tracking their movement routes and following right behind their asses to collect a special kind of "secretion."
And people like Nuer, in their settlement, were called "Hunters."
On the other side, the advance team had originally planned to come over, but Sun Hang decisively vetoed their plan—after a period of communication, Nuer had already put down most of his guard against Sun Hang. If a bunch of unfamiliar "outsiders" suddenly popped up now, there was no guarantee Nuer wouldn’t have some kind of extreme reaction.
"This is what I’m supposed to collect." Nuer rummaged a few leather-stitched bags out of the sand skiff’s wreckage. Sun Hang opened one and saw a pale-red viscous liquid inside, giving off a pungent fishy stench.
According to Nuer, this special secretion from the Sinking Sand Giant Worm volatilized in the air in just half a day. To collect it, you had to chase right behind the worm’s ass and load it into a sealed container before it completely evaporated.
This secretion carried a trace-level memetic reaction, but what was astonishing was that as long as the mouth of the bag was tied tight, these plain-looking leather bags could completely isolate the secretion’s memetic reaction. Even Sun Hang’s perceptive abilities couldn’t penetrate them.
"What’s this stuff for?" Sun Hang asked Nuer.
"We use this to feed..." Nuer suddenly startled halfway through, hurriedly shook his head, and said, "I can’t tell you!"
"Fine, don’t say it if you don’t want to... By the way, are you hungry? Thirsty?"
Before Nuer’s mouth could answer, his stomach, which let out a series of "gurgle gurgle" sounds, had already answered for him. He hurriedly went to rummage through the sand skiff wreckage, only to find a single worn-through water bladder; the water inside had long since drained away.
As for food, that was even more out of the question.
Sun Hang noticed that the most solid parts of the sand skiff’s structure were basically all used to store the leather bags containing the Sinking Sand Giant Worm’s secretion, while Nuer’s other supplies had long since scattered into the endless Desert Sea along with the damage to the skiff.
"Do you remember what happened before you passed out?"
"Before I passed out..." Nuer struggled to recall. "It was... the wrath of the Storm God... His servants turned into a vortex that swept over everything across the Desert Sea... When I tried to steer the sand skiff to evade, it was already too late..."
From Nuer’s description and the traces on the scene, this unlucky bastard had most likely encountered a sandstorm or a tornado. However, the lethality of sandstorms here couldn’t be compared at all to the death sandstorms in the uninhabited zone of the Hexi Corridor. At least ordinary people like Nuer still had a chance of surviving after running into a sandstorm, whereas wherever a death sandstorm passed, let alone a crude sand skiff like this, even the heavy armored vehicles of the Dragon City Defense Army would be ground into a lump of meat-stuffed scrap iron.
The question was whether the sandstorms in the Desert Sea were natural phenomena or phenomenon-type eldritch entities... Sinking Sand Giant Worms would hunt other eldritch entities appearing in the Desert Sea, but when it came to phenomenon-type eldritch threats, even the Sinking Sand Giant Worms probably didn’t have any good way of dealing with them, right?
"Looks like the blessings from your Priests are at least somewhat useful... You actually survived this." Sun Hang nodded, then, right in front of Nuer, took a pack of field rations from his backpack and started eating with some clean water.
For Sun Hang, whose palate had been spoiled by Zhong Ling, the taste and texture of field rations were barely edible at best... This stuff was more like a supply meant to maintain vital signs than actual food. But in front of Nuer, Sun Hang deliberately put on an act as if this thing was delicious, even smacking his lips loudly as he ate.
Watching Sun Hang devour his food, Nuer couldn’t help swallowing a few mouthfuls of saliva. He pressed a hand over his shriveled belly, eyes fixed on that piece of compressed biscuit radiating a greasy aroma.
"You’re not thinking of robbing me of my food, are you?" Sun Hang glanced at him from the corner of his eye and asked quietly.
Nuer didn’t answer.
"You don’t seriously think you can beat me, do you?"
Nuer still didn’t answer.
His attention seemed to be completely captured by the food; he could no longer think about anything else at all.
"Do you want it?" Sun Hang took another piece of compressed biscuit from his bag.
Nuer lunged over instantly, but before his hand could touch the compressed biscuit, Sun Hang had already kicked him flying.
Nuer crashed heavily onto a sand dune. Even though Sun Hang had used less than ten percent of his strength, the pain coursing through his body like every bone had snapped still left him unable to get up from the ground for a while.
"Relax, I controlled my strength. Your bones aren’t broken." Sun Hang said, watching Nuer grope frantically over his own body, his expression a mix of pain and terror—for a remnant like Nuer, a fracture, an infected wound, or even a disease that modern people could cure just by taking medicine was equivalent to death knocking at the door. In that instant, his fear of death had far outweighed his craving for food.
Sun Hang had only just realized a problem—his attitude toward Nuer seemed to have been a bit too gentle, to the point that the other party appeared to have overlooked one crucial fact: Nuer’s life and death were still entirely in Sun Hang’s hands.
"I can choose not to kill you, and I can give you food and water, but I want you to answer a few simple questions for me." Sun Hang said to Nuer. "You can answer, or you can refuse... But if you’re not willing to answer a single question, then you’re of no use to me at all. You understand what that means, right?"
Nuer nodded hard.
Growing up in this brutal survival environment, he certainly understood what happened to people who were useless.
"How do you solve your food problem?" Sun Hang asked.
Nuer looked toward the leather bags filled with the Sinking Sand Giant Worm’s secretion.
"This is your food?" Sun Hang lifted one leather bag in slight astonishment. "This stuff... you can’t possibly eat it, right?"
Even if you could, ordinary people who ate it would very likely end up infected.
"No... we don’t eat it... we use it to feed... feed..." Nuer got stuck on the word "feed" for a long time, but still couldn’t say what exactly they were feeding.
"So this is feed? You people are raising some kind of poultry or livestock or something?"
"What is poultry, what is livestock?" Nuer froze for a second and asked back.
These remnants didn’t even know the concepts of poultry or livestock? Yet he’d clearly used the word "feed" just now!
Could it be that the mainbrain’s translation was off?
Sun Hang looked at Nuer in front of him and couldn’t help wanting to use his mind-reading ability—but mind-reading could only pick up what the other party was currently thinking about. If he forcibly read all of the other party’s memories, then once he finished, the person being read would most likely turn into an idiot or a vegetable.
If he wanted to establish communication with Nuer’s settlement, then harming Nuer was obviously an extremely stupid move.