Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse-Chapter 967 - 550: The 100-Year Catastrophe at the Human Stronghold

"To have such a magical ability..."

The elder exclaimed.

Li Wenxi had just briefly introduced her abilities.

"I’ve heard that your metal ore reserves have already been depleted, is that correct?" Xu Ying asked.

"...That’s indeed the case." The elder nodded heavily.

"More than fifty years ago, you were familiar with the situation here. Over fifty years have passed, and not only has the situation not alleviated, but it has also become increasingly severe. We, on the other hand, have struggled in both offense and defense due to a lack of resources such as ores."

"Increasingly severe, you say..." Xu Ying frowned. "Didn’t you take the initiative to attack back then?"

"Of course, but..." the elder sighed, "Their numbers are endless. Even if we clear an area, it can only remain stable for half a year. After six months, it becomes a dangerous zone again. Their reproduction capability is truly extraordinary."

"We have put a lot of effort into this, but in the end, it hasn’t been effective. Instead, the consumption of our resources has been too great, leading to the current situation. Perhaps part of this outcome is due to the decisions we made back then."

As he spoke, the elder’s cloudy yet dignified eyes dimmed slightly.

"You can’t say that, Grandpa," Wei Shishi argued. "Without your decision, the human settlements might have been severely affected fifty years ago."

"What are you talking about?" Li Wenxi was a bit confused. "I don’t quite understand."

"Let me explain." Wei Shishi started to explain, "You’re not from our human settlement, am I right?"

"...Yes," Li Wenxi nodded, "I’m not."

"If you live in our city for a few days, you’ll understand what we were just discussing. This issue is the biggest crisis facing all humans in our current settlement."

"While the depletion of our resources is known only to a few, this matter is an undeniable crisis known to everyone."

"Our human settlement has been under attack by beast hordes for centuries."

Li Wenxi’s eyes widened slightly, "Beast hordes... attacks? Even underground... ah!"

She recalled the experiences Xu Xin had shared with her about exploring the underground world.

Indeed, under the cultivation of alien invaders, the underground world had developed quite a stable ecosystem.

"I don’t know how you live, but for us, we humans have lived underground for a thousand years in peace and stability. The settlement’s area gradually expanded, reaching its peak a century ago."

"As for why we ceased to expand a century ago, it’s because around the settlement, there appeared beasts of unusually large size, which are not friendly to us."

"Beasts of unusually large size?" Li Wenxi was surprised, "Are they giant beasts?"

Wei Shishi did not answer but continued, "Those unusually large beasts share characteristics similar to those of surface beasts recorded in historical books, but they are much larger in size and exist in unusually large numbers, always attacking the outermost human settlements in packs."

Giant beasts... beast tide?

Li Wenxi was very surprised.

"A century ago, humans were far too complacent, and during the rapid expansion, no preemptive protective measures were taken outside the settlement."

"So, when the beast disaster struck from multiple points on the settlement’s periphery, the humans who encountered it had no means of resistance. At that time, it was truly... a devastating catastrophe."

Li Wenxi looked at Xu Ying.

As someone who crossed millennia, she should be familiar with that era, shouldn’t she?

Xu Ying understood what Li Wenxi meant and shook her head, "I haven’t been back a hundred years ago. The last time I came here was fifty-five years ago, which was when I had dealings with Wei Bai. The time before that was two hundred years ago."

Wei Bai was the elder’s name.

Hearing Xu Ying mention this name, the elder smiled.

Being eighty years old, hearing his name from an old acquaintance not seen for fifty years left him quite emotional.

Wei Shishi, meanwhile, frowned slightly.

Seeing a girl around her age directly calling her grandfather by his name made her feel uncomfortable, but she couldn’t say anything about it.

"Then... didn’t you go back to see?" Li Wenxi asked, "Go back to a hundred years ago and take a look?"

The sudden appearance of giant beasts besieging the human settlement underground is rather abnormal, isn’t it?

"No." Xu Ying shook her head, "To prevent changes in the future from affecting our plans, we usually don’t engage in time travel to the past."

"Otherwise, we might set up plans for the future, only to go back and inadvertently make changes, causing a butterfly effect that alters the future... that would be too foolish."

"For example, if my brother and I went to fifty years ago and told Wei Bai many things, but if we then traveled back a hundred years and unwittingly caused some changes, leading to alterations fifty years later where Wei Bai is no longer Patriarch, or perhaps there’s no Wei Bai at all... we’d have wasted our efforts."