The weather turned cold, and farmers from the suburbs drove their flocks of sheep over to sell.
The Tech District was originally a suburban area—this place used to be countryside. Later, a large stretch of land was zoned off and built into what was now the Tech District. Beyond the residential area and industrial park, it was still countryside.
In the past, sheep flocks raised by nearby villagers wandering onto the Tech District’s roads had made the news several times.
After the big explosion on October 5th, they lost electricity.
Although the Tech District had immediately had electric-type superpower users protect the cafeteria’s freezers first, and quickly rushed out power generation equipment, they couldn’t change the situation in the urban districts.
They could no longer go into the urban districts to search supermarket cold storage for frozen meat.
It had all turned into spoiled meat.
Seeing that they were about to run out of meat, Brother Dong said: “Why not check the suburbs?”
Brother Dong’s parents’ home was in the suburbs. When he’d left home, since he hadn’t planned to go back, he’d given all the family’s chickens and ducks to the neighbors.
He was very familiar with the suburban rural situation.
“There must be people raising livestock. Go look.”
Even if the people had turned into zombies and died, maybe the cows, sheep, chickens, and ducks they’d raised were still there—free for the taking.
Free for the taking wasn’t actually free.
Because the livestock and poultry raised by dead farmers had already been taken by their surviving neighbors.
The Tech District people really did find some.
Then came price negotiation.
Performance points meant nothing to these people. Trade had regressed to barter level.
Fortunately, the Tech District had all kinds of supplies. In the end, they managed to negotiate a deal and bought sheep, chickens, and ducks.
This counted as finding a meat supply source for the Tech District. The quantity was too small—rations had to be controlled—but it was still better than nothing.
Gao Yuxuan and the others also rigged up an electric net to electro-fish in the Bailiang River.
At least everyone still had meat to eat.
Now that the weather was cold, the farmers knew they didn’t have the ability to get so many animals through the winter, so they drove them all over, wanting to sell to the Tech District.
The Tech District took them all.
They didn’t slaughter them all at once either. They built pens, set up stoves to warm the livestock, and raised them while slaughtering.
As they raised them, a mother sheep even gave birth to a lamb.
When the little kids learned the lamb was also going to be eaten, they cried.
An unexpected joy was that the chickens laid eggs every day.
Zeng Qiang strongly recommended large-scale chicken farming to secure the egg supply.
The farmers wanted to sell before it got colder because their own strength was limited—the feed for winter farming couldn’t be obtained now, so they needed to cut losses in time.
But for the Tech District, which had wood-type superpower users, this wasn’t difficult.
The real reason the Tech District had never considered farming was—the core members were all a bunch of urban youths.
They grew crops because they’d been gifted wood-type superpowers.
But animal husbandry relied entirely on people themselves—it was a blind spot in everyone’s minds.
Sister Pan understood it, though.
But Sister Pan was superstitious about educated people, feeling that these kids were all educated people—if they didn’t mention it, it wasn’t needed.
So she didn’t speak up either.
Just like that, though with some bumps along the way, after planting, the Tech District finally embarked on the path of animal husbandry too.
Ultimately, everything had to rely on their own production.
Jiang Cheng remembered a slogan from a book: Self-reliance and hard work to have enough food and clothing.
That should have been a slogan from over sixty years ago. The conditions back then were far worse than now.
Yet those people still walked all the way to the prosperity that existed before the disaster.
So, we definitely can too.
—
Shortwave radio, because its coverage could even cross continents, could receive all kinds of communications.
At first, no one paid attention to that communication.
It was Uncle Jiang who first said to Sister Mao: [Do you believe it?]
Sister Mao said: [If you want me to believe, there has to be evidence.]
Uncle Jiang: [I have it, but I can’t say.]
Sister Mao: [If you have it, say it.]
Uncle Jiang: [I already said I can’t say it.]
Sister Mao sneered: [Playing mysterious.]
Because the two of them had many listeners in the youth apartments, everyone was drawn by this exchange to tune into the content they were discussing.
Amid a pile of madmen’s and psychos’ mutterings, curses, doomsday theories, and religious preaching, they found a middle-aged man’s voice—very deep. It should be a recording, because it repeated over and over: [Everyone must prepare. Extreme weather is coming.]
[Everyone must prepare. Extreme weather is coming.]
[Everyone must prepare. Extreme weather is coming.]
…
It sounded no different from the other lunatics.
If it hadn’t been for Uncle Jiang and Sister Mao, people would probably have skipped right past it when scanning frequencies.
But Uncle Jiang and Sister Mao were seriously discussing extreme weather.
Uncle Jiang firmly believed that person, saying he had reasons to believe, but wouldn’t say what the reasons were.
But the more he was like that, the more it drew people in.
Jiang Cheng convened a meeting of core personnel: “What do you all think?”
Someone said: “He sounds like a charlatan to me.”
Someone said: “We’ve tried calling out to him. Uncle Jiang never responds. He only responds to Sister Mao.”
But the two of them, playing off each other, were extremely engaging.
Jiang Cheng said: “First, let’s discuss—how extreme would extreme weather be? What impact would it have on us?”
Everyone was surprised: “You’re taking it seriously?”
“Yes.” Jiang Cheng said, “Let’s discuss it as if it’s real.”
Jiang Cheng never joked about serious matters, and never joked around with meeting time like this.
Everyone got serious.
Someone spoke first: “First we have to define what extreme weather is. S City’s winter minimum temperature is around minus 15 degrees, right? My hometown’s winter is minus 30 degrees. For S City, that would count as extreme, right?”
“Oh my god, minus 30 degrees and I’d freeze to death! I’m most afraid of the cold.”
“That’s why you’re a fire-type, haha.”
“Thank goodness I’m a fire-type. Thank you, heavens. No joke—I sleep with a fireball going now. I can keep a fireball unchanged even while asleep.”
Song Jingshuo: “Don’t go off-topic.”
“Oh, so it’s low temperatures, freezing cold, hail, freezing rain, that sort of thing?”
“More or less.” Jiang Cheng said. “What about the impact on us?”
Now everyone spoke seriously: “Going out would be difficult. Heavy snow and ice—whether walking or driving would be very hard. If we needed supplies and wanted to go out to find them, it would be very difficult.”
“With sustained low temperatures, the stoves in the houses couldn’t be stopped. In my hometown’s temperatures, stopping would freeze people to death.”
“The soil would freeze hard, and people couldn’t do outdoor activities. Planting would definitely have to stop. Food would be affected.”
That was about it.
Jiang Cheng: “Then what are our countermeasures?”
Song Jingshuo: “For icy roads, we can put anti-slip chains on tires. That’s simple—we can make them ourselves.”
Others said: “Depends on how cold it gets. If it’s really too cold, either distribute more coal, or centralize housing.”
The most important thing: “Food must be sufficient. That’s the most important.”
Jiang Cheng reported the theme of this meeting to the other districts via radio.
“Even if he’s a charlatan, as a government, we should prepare contingency plans.”
“If it really happens and we don’t respond in time, people could die.”
After the radio communication ended, someone remarked: “She still thinks of herself as a government, even now.”
Under enormous survival pressure, many people’s spirit from when they’d first established their provisional governments had nearly worn away.
The person beside them was silent for a moment, then said: “Forget others. But her—she deserves it.”
Everyone regularly exchanged situation reports and communicated what they had.
Everyone knew the general situation of the Tech District. They were S City’s most populous survival settlement. They should have faced the greatest survival pressure, yet they were the best-managed of all the settlements.
Could be called well-fed and well-clothed.
With water, electricity, and gas all cut off, the residents’ mental state was actually still so good.
In reality, the Tech District had, to some extent, become everyone’s spiritual pillar.
Sometimes when people felt exhausted and wanted to give up, they’d think of the Tech District and feel it wasn’t impossible to keep going.
On some difficult roads, you just needed comrades.
Zheng Junwei, formerly of Shilong District, told his people at a meeting: “What Jiang Cheng said makes sense. We should have contingency plans anyway. Let’s prepare too.”
—
On November 14th, from the morning onward, they heard Uncle Jiang: [Go listen! Everyone go listen!]
So they switched frequencies and found the deep, middle-aged male voice.
He was repeating over and over: [Today there will be a major temperature drop. Extreme weather is here. Everyone prepare!]
[Today there will be a major temperature drop. Extreme weather is here. Everyone prepare!]
[Today there will be a major temperature drop. Extreme weather is here. Everyone prepare!]
Someone immediately reported it to Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng frowned slightly, then after a moment decided: “Notify all communities. Implement cold-weather contingency plans.”
She added: “Contact all districts and remind everyone.”
After the base stations stopped, cell phones were all useless. For a few days, contacting each community had been troublesome—someone had to personally go deliver messages.
Later, under Song Jingshuo’s guidance, they searched everywhere for those off-road vehicles with big numbers on the rear windows and antennas on top. They removed the radios from these vehicles and equipped each community with one. Only then did communication finally evolve from the primitive civilization of shouting to the modern civilization of radio.
All communities received the notification.
In Jixiang Jiayuan, President Xu checked room by room: “Have you all added coal? Add more, fill it up, leave the stove opening uncovered, don’t put the lid on.”
“Just make do. Don’t complain. What’s wrong with squeezing in a bit?”
“Listen to the government.”
Each household had only one iron stove, without exception installed in the living room. The Tech District Provisional Government required everyone to sleep in the living room.
President Xu and Director Yu had already become familiar faces around Jiang Cheng, and were qualified to attend some meetings as observers.
They could also speak and offer suggestions. Several times their suggestions had been adopted.
The longer they spent together, the more trust they had in Jiang Cheng.
As an enterprise manager, President Xu deeply understood that subordinates had to be supervised properly for execution to go smoothly. So he patrolled every room, forcing employees to do as Jiang Cheng required.
The four of them had also moved their mattresses to the living room, moved the coffee table aside, pushed the mattresses together, and slept squeezed in.
Indeed, the living room was much warmer than the bedrooms.
President Xu looked at the ceiling and said: “Actually, I feel like we could sleep like this all winter. It’s warm.”
It really was warm—but in the middle of the night, everyone still woke up from the cold.
A chorus of sneezes.
“Holy shit, why is it so cold!”
“Is the fire out?”
“Get up and check.”
Shivering, they lit a candle and crawled up to check—it wasn’t out. The stove was burning. But it was just cold.
The temperature had really dropped.
This house had a thermometer on the wall. President Xu, teeth chattering from the cold, held up the candle and went over to look.
This was November 14th. S City’s centralized heating usually started on November 15th.
In previous years at this time, S City’s nighttime low should have been 1 or 2 degrees. It was rarely below zero at this time.
Every breath President Xu exhaled was white mist, fogging up the thermometer.
He reached out and wiped the white mist off the thermometer’s surface.
The round thermometer’s temperature indicator area was a fan shape. The right side was red, with a maximum of 50 degrees. The left side was blue, with a minimum of minus 30 degrees.
By candlelight, President Xu saw the needle drooping limply on the left side, in the blank area below the blue “-30.”
President Xu’s whole body was cold.
From the inside out.
Leave a Reply