Bai Junjun sat on a chair, pulling on the ropes.
Although no one had lived here for a long time, the gears still operated smoothly.
Bai Junjun didn’t expend much effort to ascend.
However, as soon as she reached the top, she froze.
The tube-shaped building was roughly 6 square meters, with only enough space for one room.
In this constricted space was only a simple wooden bed, on which a body that had decayed to the extreme lay sprawled.
Upon seeing this, Bai Junjun swiftly descended, just as the foolish youth was gazing up waiting for her.
After Bai Junjun came down, she grabbed the youth by the collar, "What do you mean by this?"
The foolish youth who was expecting a reward faced Bai Junjun’s fury, innocent and frightened.
Li Wenli sensed something was wrong, and without asking Bai Junjun what had happened, she went upstairs to check for herself.
Seeing the decayed corpse, Li Wenli came down with a dark expression as well.
Facing the pressure from both of them, the foolish youth’s eyes reddened as he was about to cry, "An... An empty room... Only when someone dies does a room become vacant... This was Uncle Fei’s place, now... it’s empty."
Just then, One-Armed Uncle passed by dragging a backpack, seemingly ready to go to work.
He glanced at the tense group and immediately guessed the situation, speaking out in defense of the fool, "The rule here is that a death renders a room vacant, whoever moves in buries the body, compensating for the rent. If you don’t want to bury him, then build your own house."
After speaking, One-Armed Uncle beckoned to the foolish youth, "Let’s go, Fool. You haven’t shown up at The Dawn for two days. If you don’t go today, there’ll be no rations for you."
The foolish youth muttered a few words, but perhaps intimidated by Bai Junjun and Li Wenli’s presence, he chose to run off with One-Armed Uncle in the end.
With the foolish youth gone, only the five of them remained.
Bai Junjun had never imagined that the bodies here went unburied, and that whoever occupied a house was responsible for the corpse. Wouldn’t that imply that among these nearly thousand tube-shaped buildings, many contained rooms with dead bodies?
How could living people cohabit with the dead?
The body upstairs had been decaying for more than half a year, with Corpse Insects nearly filling the entire room.
Living there was out of the question, but Bai Junjun and Li Wenli still took care of Uncle Ah Fei’s remains.
Nearby the jungle was a burial ground where they laid Uncle Ah Fei to rest.
Then they began felling trees at the very end of the tube-shaped buildings, evidently planning to build their own house.
They had no choice, if these tube-shaped buildings all contained bodies, they would be impossible to inhabit.
Even though they were not fastidious about minor formalities when away from home, there was a limit to how much they could disregard.
How many germs would be on a dead body? They could easily adhere to the wood, and living there for a long period would undoubtedly be detrimental to their health.
While they were busy, most of the tube-shaped building’s residents had gone out, apparently to the Place of Corvee.
What exactly did they do at this corvee site was something they didn’t know.
Nevertheless, everyone understood that now was not the time to worry about such matters, so they all worked diligently.
Li Wenli and Bai Junjun assigned the younger ones to dig bowls and spoons and then began moving and lifting.
But speaking of moving and lifting, they were actually using their Special Abilities.
Thus, when Lame Man Uncle returned from his corvee, he saw these few children had built a new tube-shaped building in just one day’s work.
And this tube-shaped building was much more refined than theirs, even replicating the gear mechanism found inside the building.
Shock filled the depths of Lame Man Uncle’s