Holy Crap, It's an Ambush!
The deeper one goes into Mado County, the more severe the desertification becomes.
Shen Qi saw sand pits of various sizes; these pits were dried-up lakes.
"In the 1960s, Mado County had more than 4,000 lakes, but now only a quarter of them remain. The fish are gone, the grass is gone, and the gold has been completely extracted. What's left are vast deserts, ecological refugees, and a national-level poverty-stricken county." Shen Qi was heartbroken. Humanity's unrestrained exploitation of nature's resources has ultimately punished humanity itself.
"Indeed," the driver sighed, sounding regretful. "Professor Shen, look, this big pit on the left used to be a lake. The water was crystal clear; a small net could catch over 100 pounds of fish. The naked carp is a specialty of the Yellow River Source. These fish grow slowly; a seven- or eight-pound Yellow River Naked Carp takes ten or twenty years to grow. Now you can hardly see wild naked carp anymore; the ecosystem has been severely damaged."
"Once the ecology of the Yellow River Source basin is imbalanced, the damage to the middle and lower reaches will be even more severe." Shen Qi patted the devastated desert and said, "Master Zhang, stop the car, I need to take samples."
The car is parked on the side of the road. There are no traffic police here and you can't see any passing vehicles, so you don't need to worry too much about illegal parking.
Shen Qi got out of the car to take a sample, with the help of two graduate students.
The two graduate students, one from the School of Humanities and the other from the School of Physics at School of Arts and Humanities, volunteered to come to western China to become volunteer teachers.
Shen Qi used a portable microwave radiation meter and wind profiler to detect and collect data on the temperature, humidity, and wind direction (meridian and zonal) in the area.
The two graduate students took soil and vegetation samples and put them into sealed bags.
"Xiao Gan, Xiao Meng, we haven't even reached Mado County yet, you still have time to change your minds," Shen Qi said to the two graduate student volunteers.
"Since I'm already here, I never thought of deserting." Xiao Gan, a liberal arts student, was determined.
"Green mountains and clear waters Sun Yat-sen University." Xiao Meng, a science student, expressed his strong determination to contribute to the development of western China.
Everyone has their own aspirations. No one forced them. These two graduate students volunteered to teach in rural areas, using their knowledge to do what they could in the places where their country needed them most.
Shen Qi nodded and said, "Okay, during your time teaching here, if you encounter any problems or obstacles, you can contact me directly."
In this age of entertainment to the death and materialism above all else, there are many outstanding young people who want to go to developed regions and countries, but the educated youth who volunteer to come to impoverished areas are especially valuable.
"That clump should be Astragalus plants, Xiao Meng, take a sample." Shen Qi pointed to a spot not far away.
"OK." Xiao Meng's major is astronomy, so sampling vegetation is no problem for him.
Due to overgrazing, unregulated Gold Mine mining and Cordyceps harvesting, as well as the effects of natural factors such as global warming, a large amount of vegetation in this area has been destroyed, and grassland degradation is very serious.
Man-made disasters and natural calamities have resulted in more than half of Mado County's land area being desert gravel land and bare land without vegetation cover.
Looking out, the earthy yellow of the desert is the dominant color of this once fertile land.
Scattered patches of green grass dot the desert landscape, with an estimated average height of no more than 5 centimeters.
Furthermore, the presence of Astragalus poisonous weeds interspersed among the grass clearly indicates that grazing is impossible here, and no valuable human production activities can be carried out. The desolation is spreading, and this place is no longer suitable for human habitation.
Xiao Meng was collecting Astragalus plants when suddenly an animal darted out of a burrow under the plants.
"Holy crap, an ambush!" Caught off guard, Xiao Meng was startled and almost used Flash.
The Yin creature crouching in the grass is spherical in shape, slightly smaller than a rabbit and slightly larger than a field mouse.
The Yin creature has no tail, but has a pair of small ears, making it look like both a rabbit and a mouse.
This animal stands upright on its hind legs, its eyes darting around. It doesn't seem aggressive at all; in fact, it's kind of cute.
After receiving the signal that his teammates had been ambushed, Shen Qi quickly rushed to Xiao Meng's side and captured the animal, who was only focused on being cute.
"Squeak!" The little animals finally realized that these bipedal humanoid monsters that had invaded their territory were up to no good!
Shen Qi knocked the small animal unconscious with a single punch, then dislocated its shoulder and killed it.
"Controlled yet explosive, Professor Shen, you're quite skilled!" Having witnessed Professor Shen's astonishing fighting prowess, Xiao Meng looked at the euthanized animal and asked, "Was this thing a rabbit or a mouse?"
"This is a pika, a creature that is quite similar to a rabbit and lives in high-altitude areas." Shen Qi took samples of the pikas for scientific research purposes.
"Aren't pikas protected animals?" Xiao Meng asked.
"These cute little animals are considered pests in this area." Shen Qi looked around and saw many burrows on the ground. "Look, those burrows are all pika burrows. They eat grass, dig up grass roots, and have an extremely high reproductive rate, which has made the already severely degraded grasslands even worse. Pikas' natural enemies are eagles, lynxes, leopards, and clouded leopards, but in this area, the pikas' natural enemies have been almost completely hunted to extinction by humans in just over a decade, mostly by poachers."
"The food chain has been disrupted, the ecosystem is out of balance, pikas are multiplying, they've eaten all the grass, cattle and sheep have nothing to eat, and they're threatening the human living environment." Xiao Meng hates poachers vehemently. The poachers' rampant killing of precious wild animals is being punished by nature by the local indigenous people of Mado County.
"No buying, no selling, no harm." Shen Qi patted Xiao Meng on the shoulder, preparing to continue on his way.
At that moment, countless heads emerged from the burrows in the surrounding land—big ones, small ones, gray ones, white ones—all pikas.
Rabbit heads swarmed together, densely packed.
A single pika is cute, but when thousands upon thousands of pikas huddle together, staring at the four humans with a uniform and strange posture and gaze, it sends chills down Shen Qi's spine.
Xiao Meng, who suffers from trypophobia, no longer finds pikas cute. He quickly ran to his car and slammed the door shut. "Retreat! Retreat! Don't fight them!"
The driver started the car and drove along the highway towards Mado County.
Beep beep beep!
Beep beep beep!
Driver Master Zhang honked his horn urgently, startling the group of pikas that were about to start their attack, causing them to scatter in all directions.
Master Zhang was the most experienced one. A rat is a rat; how could it dare to truly confront a human head-on?
Creak!
Click!
During the journey, within a 500-meter stretch, Master Zhang's vehicle ran over and killed more than a dozen pikas.
The panicked pikas, unable to discern their direction, ran under the wheels of a car and met their deaths.
"These pikas are extremely annoying; you could say they've caused Rat plague. In just Mado County, the amount of pasture eaten by pikas and field mice every year is equivalent to the amount of fodder for all the cattle and sheep in the county for three years." In Master Zhang's eyes, these rats and rabbits are pests.
Driving a car for several hundred meters and running over a dozen pikas and rabbits shows that the area is indeed plagued by rodents.