“Daming, Hongxia, you’ve come just in time. Come take a look, oh my. Your aloe plant is really…”
As soon as Qin Sang’s family came downstairs, several uncles and aunties called out to her parents.
This aloe plant had grown out of a crack in the cement by the yard gate. No one knew when it had sprouted. The family had never pulled it out. It had grown for seven or eight years and was now waist-high.
When they were preparing for the apocalypse, her parents had thought about digging it up and bringing it inside. But the roots were too deep to dig out easily. They also wanted to keep it to see what would happen after the apocalypse. Now they knew—it had become dried aloe.
“Eighth Uncle, is everything okay at your place?” Qin Sang’s father asked the neighbors.
“Fine, fine. Lucky. Just got hot for a bit when the air conditioner broke. Much better off than those who got sent to the hospital.”
Several people in the village hadn’t taken proper heat precautions after their air conditioners stopped working and ended up suffering from heatstroke—not the ordinary kind either. When they were taken to the hospital, doctors suspected heatstroke with organ damage.
Listening to the elderly neighbors chat about various households, Qin Sang also checked her phone to see the situation elsewhere.
After scrolling for a while, it seemed not many had died. But many had been sent to the hospital with heatstroke or heat-related organ damage.
There really wasn’t a good solution for that.
“Sang Sang, why don’t you pull out that aloe plant?” Brother Fa strolled over at some point. “I just saw Uncle De throw away his money tree.”
“Huh? Wasn’t his money tree in a pot?”
Uncle De cherished that money tree. Why hadn’t he moved it inside?
Brother Fa winked. “Uncle De forgot to bring it inside. Auntie De didn’t remind him. They’re arguing by the trash pile right now.”
Qin Sang found it a bit nonsensical. But the fact that a married couple still had the energy to argue after the apocalypse had struck was, in a way, a good thing.
That said, regarding plants, it wasn’t just their family. Many people in the village group chat were sharing photos of their own situations.
Star fruit trees, longan trees, evergreen bushes, bougainvillea—all growing in yards—had turned into dried husks.
It wasn’t just homegrown plants either. The green belts outside had become yellow belts. What was once lush green was now a sea of yellow-orange.
“From now on, who knows if we’ll even have vegetables to eat,” Brother Fa said, following Qin Sang’s gaze toward the dried-up green belt.
“Some of what we’re growing at home should survive,” Qin Sang replied. Then she stopped chatting and went inside to check the planting room upstairs.
But before she even reached the stairwell, she saw Qu Meijing running up from behind. When she spotted Qin Sang, Qu Meijing’s expression turned sour. She shot Qin Sang a glare and dashed upstairs first.
Qin Sang: What’s her problem?
“After the air conditioner broke in the village company’s basement, some people started fighting. Qu Meijing just happened to get hit by a stool someone threw,” Brother Fa said, still there, seeing the whole thing. “Several families were fighting over a fan. When we went out on patrol, the village chief was still lecturing them.”
Hearing that was the reason, Qin Sang shrugged. She wasn’t taking the blame for this. Qu Meijing getting hit was an accident. Besides, her family’s basement was theirs. If Qu Meijing had a problem with that, she could move out.
Meanwhile, Qu Meijing had already stormed into her room and slammed the door shut.
The motion was a bit too forceful, and the pain in her back—where she’d been hit—flared up again.
Damn!
That petty woman Qin Sang wouldn’t even let her stay in her basement. And now she’d gotten hit by a stool.
Hiss—her back hurt so much.
Qu Meijing pulled an anti-inflammatory spray from her space, took off her shirt, and awkwardly sprayed her back in front of the mirror. After applying the medicine, she finally had time to look at her home.
In just one day, half of the plants she’d been growing had died. The rest weren’t looking too good either.
This discovery panicked Qu Meijing. She immediately ran to the livestock room. The livestock room had an air purification circulation system, and the air conditioner ran 24/7. All the chickens, ducks, geese, and pigs she’d been raising had been fine. But now, when she looked—every single one was dead.
The air conditioner had stopped working long ago. Clearly, these livestock and poultry had all been killed by the heat.
Seeing this, Qu Meijing collapsed onto the floor.
She had stored quite a bit of meat in her space too. But after raising these animals for a month, they were all gone just like that. How was she supposed to have a continuous supply of meat in the future? Who knew when the apocalypse would end.
No. Qu Meijing quickly shook her head. Something was wrong with this apocalypse. In her previous life, the high temperature had indeed arrived. But there hadn’t been that instantaneous heat exceeding 100°C. And the air conditioner definitely hadn’t stopped working all of a sudden.
But now it had. Could it be that her rebirth had changed the course of this world?
Thinking this, Qu Meijing shivered despite the scorching heat.
If the world had changed, would all the memories of the apocalypse in her head still be useful?
Would Xinling Village still become the center of the safe zone in the future?
For the first time since being reborn over a month ago, Qu Meijing began to deeply doubt her plans.
—
Upstairs, Qin Sang had no idea about Qu Meijing’s self-doubt and inner turmoil.
Right now, standing in front of her own planting and livestock rooms, she was also a bit baffled.
Like Qu Meijing, Qin Sang had installed air conditioners in all her planting and livestock rooms. These rooms had originally been rental units, equipped with standard air conditioners. After the air conditioner failure, all of them were now unusable.
In the planting room before her, half the plants had died. As for the livestock room—well, since she didn’t have many small animals, she had moved them into her space early on. But given that so many plants had died, and without air conditioning to regulate the temperature, any animals left outside would probably have all died after a single day.
That saved her the trouble of letting the small animals out.
Qin Sang sighed and gathered the dead plants, preparing to throw them into the large trash bin downstairs.
But the moment she picked up these dried-up plants, something felt strange.
After thinking for a moment, she went straight into her space.
“How’s it going out there!”
Grandpa Goose’s raspy voice sounded in her ear, but Qin Sang no longer had the mind to listen.
Because as soon as she entered the space, she noticed it had changed.
“Grandpa Goose, how did the space’s energy increase so much?”
Yes, if the energy concentration in the space had been 10 points before, now it was 20 points. The change was so noticeable that Qin Sang couldn’t help but be surprised.
Grandpa Goose shook his head, acting as if it was no big deal.
“Wait until the space’s energy is full before you get all excited. Go out and take more walks when you have time. Don’t worry about those dried plants. Just toss them aside.”
Hearing this, Qin Sang knew she couldn’t just leave the dried plants she was holding alone.
“Spit it out, Grandpa Goose. What can these dried-out plants do?”
Grandpa Goose shot Qin Sang an annoyed glare. He had found that ever since Little Sangzi grew up, she wasn’t as cute anymore.
“Just leave them. It won’t hurt.”
Qin Sang rolled her eyes. She felt that Grandpa Goose should stop being called Grandpa Goose and start being called Riddle Grandpa instead. Ignoring him, she took all those dried plants and planted them in a plot of land in the space. She casually watered them—not with energy water, just ordinary water. Whether they could survive was beyond her control.
Emerging from the space, Qin Sang checked the time and prepared to go downstairs to see how her parents were doing.
—
“All done checking. The house looks fine. The electrical wires, gas lines, and fiber optic cables don’t seem to have any problems. But the external drainpipes are deformed—probably unusable. And the air conditioner—still no response.”
When Qin Sang got home and saw her parents eating a late-night snack, she asked and found out those were the only issues with the house.
“Then I guess a lot of people here are in the same situation.”
In the self-built houses of the urban village, most of the drainage pipes were installed directly on the outside of the buildings. Most of these pipes were made of PVC or PPR—materials similar to plastic, with melting points below 100°C. It was normal for them to melt and deform. The problem was that she hadn’t stored any pipes in her supplies.
Her parents had clearly thought of this too. They sighed. “Who would have known that on the first day of the apocalypse, the thing we’d be short on would be drainage pipes. This should be less of an issue in apartment complexes—most of their pipes are built inside the walls.”
Qin Sang thought that was true. But some complexes also had external drainage pipes mounted on the walls. If those failed, raw sewage would flow everywhere. Just thinking about it was unpleasant. That said, with this scorching heat disaster, sewage might have a hard time forming anyway.
As for the air conditioner, there was no need to worry. Once Da Linzi came back, he could take a look. The air conditioners she had installed were specially purchased to operate under extreme temperatures. If they really were broken, she still had ten backup units in her space, enough to last a long time.
—
Just then, a loudspeaker blared outside: “Attention, please. Attention. If you find any animal carcasses in your home, please notify us immediately for cleanup. Repeat…”
Hearing this, Qin Sang immediately ran to the balcony to look. A garbage truck had arrived. Several workers in white protective suits got out.
Even though it was past 11 p.m., the temperature was still over 40°C. Working in protective suits under these conditions was exhausting just to think about.
Then she heard Qu Meijing shouting from upstairs. Qin Sang knew that all the small animals she had been raising had died.
Besides Qu Meijing, several other households were calling for the workers to come collect carcasses. But a few families looked uneasy and remained silent. Qin Sang knew that these families also raised chickens, ducks, and geese—almost every household in the village did. If their animals hadn’t died, they had probably moved them to the basement.
The uneasy expressions on those families’ faces—they weren’t thinking of eating animals that had been dead for a day, were they? In this heat—over 70°C during the day—the meat would have gone bad within hours.
The village chief clearly knew what these people were like. He hurried over and shouted, “You few families, bring out all your dead chickens, ducks, geese, whatever. Those animals have been dead for a long time, and it’s scorching hot. There are probably loads of bacteria by now. Don’t hide them and try to eat them. If you eat them and die, the village won’t be responsible.”
The village chief was yelling, and the workers were also trying to persuade them.
Watching this scene, Qin Sang guessed that the number of dead livestock and poultry across the country must be enormous. After all, basement space was limited. There was barely enough room for people to take shelter. The animals left in above-ground buildings had seemed fine with the air conditioning on—no one knew that air conditioners across the entire country would fail.
The next items in short supply, besides drainage pipes, would be air conditioners.
After being persuaded again and again by the village chief, those families finally brought out their dead animals.
Qin Sang then remembered the stray cats and dogs at the village office. She called Brother Fa directly.
“They’re fine, all good.”
“When the air conditioner broke, Second Aunt called all the little animals down to the basement.”
Of course, the arguing and fighting in that basement later had scared the animals quite a bit.
But at least they hadn’t turned into carcasses.
Brother Fa was the village patrol captain. His team often fed those stray cats and dogs. If they had died, he would have been upset.
Hearing they were alive, Qin Sang breathed a sigh of relief and asked about the situation in neighboring villages.
This was an urban village in the south. If there was one thing there was plenty of, it was rats and cockroaches. But earlier, downstairs, Qin Sang hadn’t seen any dead rats or cockroaches.
At this, Brother Fa’s voice dropped significantly. “No. The patrol officers from several villages have a group chat. Some patrol officers have seen cat and dog carcasses, but hardly any rat carcasses. And cockroaches—forget about it. Now everyone’s saying the cockroaches probably all died of heat. Plus, with that nationwide pest control campaign before…”
Qin Sang: “You don’t think they could have died of heat, right?”
Brother Fa: “Exactly! Before, when I caught cockroaches, it was hard to kill them even with boiling water. How could they just die of heat?”
Qin Sang also knew firsthand how tenacious cockroaches were.
And she knew even better—the giant cockroaches that appeared in tunnels.
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