Everyone enjoyed a lively meal. Afterwards, Lao Liu, Zeiss, and Sun Wei, who doted on their wives, volunteered to clean up the mess.

"Look at Brother Sun, Brother Cai, and Brother Liu, they all volunteered to wash the dishes. And look at you, you're nothing!" Wang Jing started complaining about Zheng Ming again.

"Am I not here to serve all the ladies?" Zheng Ming retorted.

"With your physique, you're already doing a good job of serving myself, let alone all the ladies."

"Ms. Wang, please watch your words and don't drive."

Fortunately, Aunt Ji and Aunt Wu took Xiao Zhi and Cai Quan to play on the side, otherwise they would have harmed the flowers of the motherland. Wang Jing only dared to joke like that because everyone present was the same age.

"What are your plans for the future?" Zhang Min asked.

"We don't know what will happen next, so we'll just take it one step at a time. We don't know when this natural disaster will end," Liang Ping said.

“We’ve been married for two years and were planning to have a baby, but now it’s not possible. I can’t even survive on my own,” Li Jingjing said.

“Zheng Ming and I are both from Nanshi. We graduated and worked in Gangcheng. We’ll go to Nanshi to find our families after the natural disaster,” Wang Jing said.

“I’m definitely going back to Beijing,” Dai Qin said.

“We’ll be passing through Nanshi on our way from Gangcheng to Beijing. We can travel together then,” Wang Jing said to Dai Qin.

"Great, then we'll have someone to look after us."

"I don't think the natural disaster will pass anytime soon. It's cold now, but it might get very hot again someday. Nature is a cycle, so we'd better prepare in advance, with food, supplies, and so on. We should go to the base again if we have the chance in the future," Xu Lin hinted to everyone to make more preparations.

"Why would you go to the base when you're living comfortably at home?" Wang Jing didn't understand.

“The houses we live in have been soaked by rain and are now frozen by the extreme cold. The structure must be unstable now. Moreover, social order is likely to become more chaotic in the future. Going to the base is at least under the watchful eyes of the authorities, which is much safer.”

Everyone fell into deep thought after hearing Xu Lin's words.

"You mean, after one natural disaster, another will occur?" Zeiss grasped the key point.

"Didn't the broadcasts announce the survivors' homes? This means that the authorities must have predicted the natural disaster and made preparations in advance. If the natural disaster only ended here, there would be no need to build a base. It can only mean that there will be other natural disasters later, and our homes may be destroyed. That's why we need to build more."

After Xu Lin finished speaking, everyone became unsettled. Life was going well, and suddenly a natural disaster struck, and after one natural disaster, another would strike, without end.

"There's always a way out. We can only take it one step at a time. We're lucky to have survived this long. Before, when we were searching for supplies, many people froze to death at home. Being alive is a blessing." Old Liu was quite optimistic.

“That’s right, every extra day we live is a bonus,” said Grandma Ji.

The group chatted until 4 p.m. and then prepared to leave. It was already getting dark, and they couldn't very well sit in the dark and chat without water or electricity.

Back on the 8th floor, Xu Lin gave Zhou Pin a Northeastern stew and told him to heat it up on the stove for dinner before heading home.

"Don't put too much pressure on yourself, just let things take their natural course."

"I know."

Zhou Pin knew that Xu Lin deliberately said those things in 701, hoping that everyone would not take it lightly and would make more preparations.

Having survived the apocalypse, Xu Lin still retains her kindness. However, the kinder a person is, the greater the inner repression becomes. Seeing the social order becoming increasingly chaotic and more and more people going hungry, she always feels a sense of powerlessness.