Chapter 15 Suicheng

[Congratulations on winning the third prize: Drift Bottle Protective Shield (24-hour experience card, note: this is a level 3 raft function, the experience card can be used on any level of raft)]

【Do you want to receive the prize? 】

【whether】

A small golden card fell into her hand. It was similar to the green electric card she had obtained before, with a line of small words on it: Drift Bottle Protective Shield (24-hour experience card). Please swipe the card on the raft display to use it.

Drift bottle?

Shu Fu remembered the "bottle" icon on the bracelet, so are the drifting bottle and the raft a match?

Level 3 raft function - this line of text means that once she upgrades the raft to level 3, she will be able to fully unlock the drifting bottle protection shield?

But she remembered that the raft itself had its own protection, and the cabin area had a "master mode": disaster resistance, constant temperature, and exclusion. Since the drift bottle protection is a function that will only be unlocked on a level 3 raft, it is naturally impossible to overlap with the existing protection functions of a level 1 raft. So what kind of protection function will this be?

Shu Fu's curiosity was aroused, but she didn't want to use the card just because of curiosity. After looking at it several times, she carefully put it into the bracelet space.

The night was as dark as ink and the heavy rain was still falling outside the window.

In the past two days, people on the Internet who were originally happy about the suspension of work and school are no longer happy. There are more and more flooded areas in Suicheng, windows are leaking and water is entering the houses. Not to mention the difficulty in traveling, the accumulated water has affected their normal life at home, and more and more people can no longer sit idly by.

——We raised the gate to block the rain, but today the water started to backflow, my god, the water really stinks!

——What should I do? The water has risen to my doorstep, and the rescuers haven't come yet. Several families around me have already formed a team to evacuate. It seems that they went to the school across the street. There is no one there, the floors are high, and the classrooms are large. It was opened to people who were affected by the flood. But we have elderly people at home. It's so cold outside, and it's really inconvenient to be outside with the water up to your thighs!

——If the evacuation site is so close, hurry up and evacuate! The water is up to your thighs, but you can barely walk. The old man carries you on his back and you can get through with gritted teeth! The water here is up to your chest. If you can’t swim, you will be drowned if you trip!

——I feel so sad. At least you can stand in the water with your head exposed. The water here is already more than two meters deep, and there are undercurrents. Even those who can swim need to hold a lifebuoy! My house is flooded, and now I am squatting in my neighbor's house waiting for rescue. It's really miserable!

——I live on the third floor of my house. From the balcony, I can see that the neighborhood has become a lake. I am shivering. Isn’t this really the end of the world?

——My house is on the seventh floor. Except for the leaky windows, everything else is fine. I just don’t know how long the rain will last. How will we go out to buy food after we finish eating? And how will we take out the garbage? Every household has several bags of garbage in the corridor outside our gate…

——We live on the 11th floor, and there is a supermarket downstairs. I just went to grab a bunch of instant noodles and chocolates in my diving suit. The private supermarkets have raised the prices without permission, and the prices are ridiculous! The diving suit is thick enough, so it’s not too cold. I wanted to take a shower and change clothes when I got back, but the power went out! It was such a twist!

——The whole family just evacuated and moved into a hotel at the intersection. The hotel has ten floors and has a generator, so we don’t have to worry about power outages. The room rate is 50% off. I am very grateful to the rescuers for coming in time with the speedboat. My mother took the rice and various vegetables, meat and eggs from home with her when she evacuated, but she found that there was only a kettle in the room. It was embarrassing...

——Is the room rate 50% off? We also moved to a nearby hotel, why is there no discount and it is twice as expensive as usual? No, I want to expose this hotel that is making money from the disaster!

…

You can see all kinds of news on the Internet. This rainstorm covers a very wide area. The situation in coastal cities is even worse than here in Suicheng. Various unexpected disasters have occurred, and rescue work is more difficult than planned.

Huaguo's rescue aid is currently tending towards coastal cities, where there are many buildings and a dense population. Many cities that have never been hit by a typhoon have been hit by continuous wind and rain, with damaged and collapsed buildings and floods. A large number of people need to be evacuated. In comparison, the situation in Suicheng is not particularly urgent and it is still in a state of self-rescue.

In the early morning, Shu Fu was awakened by the sound of her bracelet vibrating.

The vibration of the bracelet is far less obvious than that of a mobile phone, but because the bracelet is in close contact with the skin on the wrist, every time it vibrates it feels like a tiny electric current flowing through the skin, and the feeling is very clear.

She unlocked the phone and clicked on the "notebook" icon. A small black notebook appeared in her palm. The font on it glowed faintly in the dark, and every word was clearly visible.

[Check the latest disaster warning to get a 5% progress bar for level 2 of the raft. (Current progress of level 2 of the raft: 65%)]

The task seemed to be getting easier. Shu Fu put away his notebook and took the mobile phone from the bedside table.

On the silent phone screen, there is a series of disaster warning messages, and the eye-catching yellow triangle prompt marks make people feel nervous.

Attention all citizens! The orange rainstorm warning in Suicheng, Jiangcheng, Wucheng... Zhongzhang County, Dong County, Shangqi County... and many other places has been upgraded to a red rainstorm warning! The rainfall in the next 24 hours will exceed 250 mm!

Attention, citizens of Suicheng! Traffic control has begun in Suicheng... Flood prevention and disaster relief evacuation work is still in progress in low-lying and flooded areas... Please take all precautions against heavy rain...

Shu Fu looked at the time. It was past four in the morning. There was still a noisy sound of rain outside the window, mixed with the sound of other people talking downstairs.

There was no vibration from the bracelet, which meant the mission was not over.

She thought about it, took the thick velvet nightgown from the end of the bed, wrapped it up, and left the room.

After coming out of the bedroom, the voices downstairs suddenly became clearer. There were several voices, which sounded a bit chaotic. The voices were high and low, and the emotions sounded a bit excited.

The residential building has poor sound insulation, and the corridors on each floor are half-open, so any noise can be heard by all the residents in the corridor. If people on the fifth or fourth floor were talking, she would have been woken up long ago.

Now she listened to the distance of the sound and it seemed to be coming from the second and third floors.

The voices gradually turned into noise, with some crying mixed in, becoming increasingly harsh, and there was even the sound of things being thrown.

She came out of the bathroom, wrapped her nightgown tightly and came to the small north-facing window in the kitchen. The small window faced the aisle. Standing here, the sounds outside were clearer. She opened the window a crack and happened to hear the sound of the door opening next door.

Some people don't like to join in the fun, like her. If she doesn't have a bracelet task, even if she is woken up by the noise, she will just turn over in bed and continue sleeping.

But some people are born to join in the fun, such as the young couple next door. They have no children at home and have been forced to stop working for the past few days. They are almost bored to death at home every day. Now when they hear the noise downstairs, they hurriedly put on their pajamas and come out to join in the fun.

"It sounds like it's Xiaoli's family on the second floor? Are they arguing with Fang's family on the first floor again?" A female voice came with a hint of anxiety.

The young couple next door to Shu Fu and the young couple on the second floor should know each other, probably because they are of similar age and family situations. She has seen them chatting in the stairwell, one complaining about her husband and the other complaining about the neighbors downstairs.

"It's okay to quarrel. It's not the first time. Why are you in such a hurry?" The man said disapprovingly.

"You know what? The entire first floor is almost submerged in water. This is a building. The rescue team hasn't come yet. Let the people on the first floor take shelter upstairs first and we'll pick them up tomorrow. During dinner, the old lady on the first floor took a chicken feather as a token of authority and ran directly to Xiaoli's house, saying that this was arranged by the leaders above and that her family wanted to live in her house! If they didn't let them in, it would be illegal. Xiaoli's husband was so angry that he almost slapped the old lady!"

"The first floor is flooded, so the rescue team arranged for us to stay with our neighbors upstairs... It's not just this family that needs to stay, the whole first floor needs to stay, that's tragic enough, so what's the big deal about just letting them stay for one night?" The man was scolded by his wife, and he said helplessly, "How do you know so much?"

"Xiao Li took a video and posted it online of the other party coming to her house to make trouble! As a result, many people watched it and many people left comments scolding her... Didn't I ask you to watch it before going to bed? You were so busy playing games that you didn't even watch it..."

"It's not good to expose others. After all, it was Zhong Li and her husband who had bad living habits that frightened the old lady of the Fang family—"

"Hey, who are you helping?"

…

While the two people outside were talking, the noise below became louder and louder, with the sound of a man's angry roar and a woman's shrill scream being heard.

The young couple seemed stunned for a moment, then locked the door, stepped on the wet walkway and ran towards the stairwell.

Shu Fu roughly understood what happened downstairs.

Indeed, they live in a building, and as long as the people whose homes are flooded move upstairs, they will not be in any danger for the time being. If they meet familiar neighbors who are willing to take them in, they may not even have to evacuate for the time being, and there will be plenty of time to transfer supplies and important items in the house upstairs.

The whole city is flooded now, and the bungalows in many areas are almost submerged. The rescue team must focus on more urgent rescue efforts first.

But this matter cannot be bound by morality, it must be something that both parties agree on.

There was a commotion on the first and second floors at this time. It was probably because the household on the first floor discovered the video. In addition, the orange rainstorm warning turned into red, and the situation became worse. Under multiple pressures, people's emotions naturally collapsed.

There was a lot of noise downstairs. There were six people in total from the two families, and the neighbors were all joining in. The noise was even louder than the previous one when they blocked the stairs.

This was not something Shu Fu could do. She did not hesitate for long, closed the window that was slightly open, and wanted to go back to sleep.

However, just as she turned around, she heard a subtle and strange noise coming from the door behind her.

——Sizzle…

Shu Fu froze. There was no movement outside the door, only the noise coming from the second floor.

She thought she had heard it wrong and was about to take a step again.

——Sizzle, sizzle…

Her feet froze and her scalp felt a little numb.

This time she heard it clearly. There was indeed a sound outside, just outside the door behind her.

**

A metal fence has been installed outside the front door of Shu Fu's house, but the fence is hollow, so a normal person can still knock on her door with just a hand.

She frowned, and a bottle of pepper spray appeared in her palm. She tilted her head to look at the door and held her breath.

The sound outside the door stopped, but only for a moment, then there was a slight movement again: rustling, rustling, rustling...

Shu Fu's head was buzzing and a chill ran down his spine.

It was past four in the morning and everyone was attracted by the noise on the second floor. Even if someone came to see her at this time, they should have made a normal knock on the door.

Now what does this mean? Mystification?

She had never encountered such a thing before. She was a little scared and a little annoyed. Finally, she walked lightly to the back of the door and looked out through the peephole carefully.

She had seen many similar incidents, and since she was a screenwriter, all kinds of horrific scenes automatically emerged in her mind...

It was raining heavily outside and the night was dark. She had the habit of leaving a night light on the floor of the bathroom outside her house, so she had not turned on the light since she got up. Her eyes had long since adapted to the darkness, and at this moment, she could clearly see the corridor outside.

There is no one outside the door.

There was no one in the aisle.

She stood there frozen for a moment, and just when she was about to give up, that sound rang out again, still a subtle and strange crackling sound.

Shu Fu was really annoyed and kicked the door of her house.

With a bang, the subtle movement that made her scalp tingle was suppressed.

However, she soon heard a new noise coming from outside, still accompanied by that piercing sound: "Meow... Meow..."

Shu Fu: ...

The person who was almost scared to death was now extremely angry. She opened the door panel and found that the outer fence door was closed tightly. However, at the bottom of the fence door, a round cat's head was stuck between two bars. It was unclear whether it wanted to come in but couldn't, or was stuck and couldn't get out.

Shu Fu soon found out. As the door inside opened, the blue cat nimbly passed through the metal fence and walked directly into her home.

"Meow..." The blue tabby cat made a coquettish voice, but before it could completely enter the door, someone grabbed its neck and lifted it up.

Shu Fu snorted and laughed. Looking at the cat in her hand that she had saved once, she felt like a witch full of malice at the moment. She laughed a series of strange laughs: "Little guy, are you trying to scam me?"

"Meow..." It seemed to be uncomfortable being carried and struggled with its paws.

"Why are you trying to be cute?" Shu Fu said in a bad tone, but she changed the position of her hands, lifted it up in front of her, and shook it gently, "Tell me! Why are you running to my place when you can't sleep? Don't think that I will always send you home just because you look cute. I'm not a cat lover, I prefer dogs, got it? ... Oh, it's a little male cat!"

It tucked its paws in and looked at her with its big blue eyes, as if it was frightened by her.

Shu Fu felt a little bored. The timing was awkward. Normally, she should keep the cat for the time being and send it downstairs after daybreak.

But she listened to the noise downstairs and guessed that the family on the fourth floor was also woken up. It was probably because the door was opened that the cat sneaked out to play again.

Since it can go upstairs, it can naturally go downstairs and go home by itself.

So Shu Fu opened the gate without any sympathy and let Blue Lihua out directly: "Go home by yourself, I don't like cats, come find me when you become a dog, go back quickly!"

She reached out and patted its little butt. It turned its head and let out a small cry, as if it was dissatisfied.

She was scared enough by it today, but she didn't care whether it was happy or not. She sent the cat out, pulled the fence gate and closed the door directly.

Shu Fu locked the door and went to wash her hands. She pretended not to hear the rustling sound outside again and went back to the bedroom wrapped in her pajamas.

The bracelet on her wrist vibrated slightly when she snuggled back into the soft quilt.

**

[Check the latest disaster warning task to complete, get the 5% progress bar of level 2 raft (current progress of level 2 raft: 70%)]

Shu Fu sighed while brushing her teeth.

Well, after giving out a golden prize, there is not even a consolation prize this time.

She vaguely felt that the key point might lie with the two families on the second and first floors, but it might also be the family on the fourth floor that raised a blue tabby cat.

So, she has to go out in the early hours of the morning and participate in what's happening with her neighbors in order to have a chance to get extra bonuses and participate in the lottery?

But in this situation, it was almost an instinctive choice for her not to get involved in the farce conflict. She was indeed anxious about the progress of the raft upgrade, but she always sought stability and did not want to take risks against her instincts.

Shu Fu finished washing up and was about to apply lotion on her face from the washbasin when the light in the bathroom suddenly went out.

The sunlight was dim on rainy days, and the lights had to be on all day at home. She walked out of the bathroom, and the corridor and living room, which had been lit, became dark. She realized something, turned around, went into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator.

Sure enough, the light inside did not come on after the refrigerator door was opened.

There is a power outage.

**

After a while, the voices of residents could be heard from all over the corridor, all of them asking each other about electricity issues. Everyone hoped that there was only a problem with the circuit breaker in their own home, but when they found out that other people's homes also had no electricity, they had to accept the fact that the entire community was out of power.

It was pouring rain outside, the house was cold and damp, and there were bags of garbage piled up in the walkway outside the door with nowhere to throw away. In this situation, the power went out again. It was too bad!

The young couple living next door to Shu Fu came out to visit again. They first went to the house on the other side to ask a few questions, and then came to knock on Shu Fu's door.

Shu Fu, still wrapped in her nightgown and without having time to tidy up her hair, opened the door and shook her head at the two people outside through the fence, indicating that there was a power outage in her house as well.

"Then do you know when the call will come?" The woman asked anxiously, and when she got no answer she just sighed and nodded. She knew that she was desperate and was desperate. How could a girl younger than her know such a thing?

Her husband urged her to go back and cook, which made her roll her eyes and scold him for being a starving ghost and a fool, who was only thinking about eating even when the power was out.

"What do you know? Go back quickly and cook the vegetables, meat, rice and noodles for the family. In the current situation, not to mention electricity, even the gas may be cut off at any time! It's still possible to make do without electricity, but what are you going to do if there is no gas!" The man urged and pulled the man back.

Shu Fu closed the door, tidied herself up, and went to the kitchen as usual.

There are mostly raw foods in her space. She has had nothing to do these days at home, so she has been washing vegetables and fish, cutting them and packing them, or simply cooking them and putting them into brown paper packaging bowls and stacking them in her space.

She has a generator, a gas stove and a kerosene stove, but those also consume fuel, and they are not as convenient as cooking in the kitchen. Now that there is water and gas, it is natural to save as much as possible.

She planned to make mutton soup today. The weather was too cold and humid, so it was perfect for a bowl of hot mutton soup.

She took out a large bag of lamb ribs from the space, first boiled water to blanch the blood from the lamb ribs, then fried them briefly in the pot, added scallions and ginger and stir-fried them after the aroma came out, then added hot water according to the recipe, and after the soup in the big pot boiled, she adjusted the heat to the lowest, covered the pot and let it simmer on its own.

For breakfast, she took out a portion of bubble wontons from her space, which she had packed from Yao Ji before. What she packed was bone broth with seasonings and raw bubble wontons. Later, she took the time to cook all the wontons in batches, then scooped them out one by one and put them into the packed bone broth bowl, and put them directly into her space.

The good thing about a space where time stops is that no matter how long the food is left in there, it still looks freshly cooked when you take it out. The bone soup is hot, and the bubble-like little bastards float in the soup sprinkled with chopped green onions, which is cute and delicious.

There is still a wet curtain of water on the glass window. On such a cold and power-out morning, it is really a very happy thing to be able to sit in a safe house, listen to the sound of rain outside, and eat a bowl of freshly-made bubble wontons in peace and leisure.

In the Ping'an Community Mutual Help Group, hundreds of messages appeared in one morning. In addition to the collective complaints about the power outage, everyone was discussing the farce that happened in the early morning. Naturally, different people had different opinions.

Some people think that the family on the first floor was wrong to provoke the family on the second floor and to forcibly move into the family on the second floor under the sign of a rescue team. But the problem is that in the end no one was allowed to move into the second floor, but they secretly filmed a video and posted it online, causing people to insult them. This is because there is something wrong with the second floor.

Some people also think that what the second floor did was nothing wrong. They were just staying at home and someone forced their way in with such an arrogant attitude. They were right to film the process and expose it to let those who like to use moral blackmail know that they are not easy to mess with.

What followed up on this incident was that the old lady from the Fang family stood at the door of the young couple's home on the second floor and tried to scam them. The young men from the two families started fighting. The family on the first floor had more people, so the family on the second floor suffered a loss and called the police directly.

But with the flood at hand and heavy rain still falling outside, traffic control was implemented everywhere in Suicheng. A rehabilitation and nursing center located in the suburbs suffered a landslide due to its geographical location. The mudslide collapsed part of the building and the entire hospital needed to be evacuated. Several circuit failures also caused a major power outage in the surrounding area and emergency repairs were underway...

Crisis incidents occur frequently all over the city, and many people are struggling on the line between life and death. Who would care about such friction between neighbors?

This matter will probably have to wait until the rescue team arrives today to be dealt with, but the feud between the two families is definitely formed.

Apart from the news related to this incident, the rest are messages from residents on the lower floors asking for help. The first floor of the community has been completely flooded. If it were summer, it would be fine, but in such cold weather, normal people simply cannot live in water, so they beg familiar residents in the same building to take them in temporarily.

However, few people responded to this message for help.

It is one thing for everyone to be willing to chat and gossip with their neighbors in the group, but it is another thing to actually get them to open their doors and welcome their neighbors in.

Shu Fu saw that Lu Zheng was the first to respond and accepted a family from the same building. That family had two relatively young children.

Later, people from the community service station sent a message saying that the rescue team would come to Ping'an Community for evacuation after noon. In addition to evacuating residents on the lower floors, they would also distribute supplies to residents on higher floors, mainly life jackets and drinking water. If there are some people living on higher floors but have special circumstances at home, such as the elderly or patients, they can also be evacuated together if they need to.

Probably because the time of taking in neighbors was not very long, people eventually came forward to accept neighbors from the same building.

The two families that had a fight in Shu Fu’s building in the early morning were not in this group, and no one knew what happened next.

**

It was almost noon when the community rang again. Shu Fu heard bursts of surprised shouts outside. She immediately plugged in two empty power banks, three tablets and two mobile phones that were not 100% charged. Then she turned on the coffee machine and made herself a cup of raw coconut latte - espresso with coconut milk.

Although there are many coffees of different flavors purchased from outside shops in the space, they are all in disposable cups with straws, which are convenient to use and one cup less at a time. If conditions permit, she would still like to make her own coffee.

While drinking coffee and watching a variety show on her tablet, she didn't stop moving her hands. She blanched the sliced ​​white radish in water and put it into the cooked fresh and thick mutton soup. She also peeled and washed two iron sticks of yam, cut them into sections and put them in together. She turned to medium heat and cooked for more than ten minutes. Finally, she sprinkled garlic leaves and black pepper powder. A big pot of fresh, fragrant, rich and nutritious yam and radish clear stewed mutton soup was ready.

She scooped out the mutton soup for lunch and put the rest of the big pot into the space. Then she looked at the big pot of curry potato beef, the big pot of bamboo fungus chicken soup, the big pot of oxtail bone radish soup, and the big pot of silver carp head vermicelli soup. Suddenly, she found a new problem: she didn't have enough pots...

Also, as the number of cups of soups, drinks and cooked food increased in the space, she gradually felt the mess inside. Although time had stopped and things would not be knocked over if they were placed randomly, they would fall out if she was not careful when taking them out!

She thought that she should assemble several simple storage cabinets that she had bought online before and put them in the space to classify and organize various cooked food, take-out food and drinks that are easily knocked over when taken out.

After noon, several speedboats from the rescue team entered the community in the heavy rain, which again attracted cheers of surprise from the homeowners.

There were few people but a lot of supplies on the speedboat, so they drove directly to the corridor on the first floor and climbed over the fence. Some people assisted in the evacuation, while others began to unload supplies from the speedboat and distribute and record them.

Supplies were distributed according to the number of people in each household. In addition to a life jacket or an uninflated lifebuoy for each person, there was also a supply of water, which was full of instant food: buckets of instant noodles, self-heating rice, bottled mineral water, sausages... and so on.

The corridor on the first floor had been flooded, so the distribution of supplies was carried out in the corridor area near the stairwell on the second floor. Some residents on higher floors received the supplies but were reluctant to leave, and gathered around the rescue team to inquire about the situation outside.

For example: Where did these people evacuate to? Why were they only evacuating the lower floors, and not the people on the higher floors?

Another example: Suicheng has issued a new red warning for heavy rain. How long will the rain last? When can people return to normal life?

The rescue team members were treated as a life-saving straw with all kinds of questions, but the other party could not answer these questions at all except where to evacuate.

Some of them had not slept for one or two nights. Many of them were newly selected from the people who had been evacuated earlier. They were temporarily picked out and incorporated into the rescue team because they were good at swimming and were young and strong.

They are already exhausted just from assisting in the rescue work, so how can they have the time to figure out what the residents are asking? Yet, every time they arrive at a community, someone will ask the same questions over and over again.

At first they would reply with a few words to explain the reasons, but after so many times, they were physically and mentally exhausted, and they simply answered about the temporary resettlement site after the evacuation, and informed that only the residents on the lower floors and those with special needs were being evacuated. As for the rest, they just said they didn't know. When asked again, they asked the other party to collect the things and go back to wait for news, and not to block the aisle and affect others in collecting supplies.

Some residents were dissatisfied when they found that they could not get any information from them, but they were still happy to receive the supplies. After all, they were free and included a life jacket.

Some people took their belongings home, and because they had life jackets and lifebuoys, they discussed with their families whether they should move to a nearby hotel or shopping supermarket. These two places were the temporary resettlement sites for people living on the flooded floors of Ping'an Community.

One of the hotel and the supermarket is located at the intersection of the road where the community is located, and the other is about 100 to 200 meters away from the intersection. At present, the water in this area has flooded to the first floor above the garage, about 20 centimeters beyond the first floor. The entire water depth is about two to two and a half meters.

But the hotel building is more than ten stories high and is full of rooms, so the living conditions are not much worse than at home.

As for the supermarket, the terrain on the main road is originally higher than that in the community. Although the supermarket is on the first and second floors, there is a four-story shopping building above it, and there is also a connected office building at the back, which is also more than ten stories high.

Moreover, the supermarket's single-story building is very tall, equivalent to the two or three floors of an ordinary house. It has a rich supply of food and daily necessities. Even if it is not open now, it will make people feel more at ease being closer to the supply area.

What's more, such public buildings generally have diesel generator rooms, so if there is a power outage in this area again, there will still be backup power supply.

The family members had different reactions when they heard this. Some of them lived on the second and third floors, and seeing that the water had already reached the stairs between the first and second floors and it was raining heavily outside, they were afraid that the water level would continue to rise, so they became concerned and seriously considered the possibility of moving on their own.

"I thought we were evacuating to a farther place, completely away from the flooded area, but it turned out to be a ferry..."

"Who knows? But is there any place in Suicheng that has no water?"

"There must be!" The man who said this was not so sure, and changed his tone, "There should be, right? There are several scenic spots with hot spring hotels in the suburbs. Aren't they on the mountains?"

"It's even more dangerous in the mountains with such heavy rain. Landslides and mudslides could happen at any time! Didn't you see the news about the suburban rehabilitation center being crushed by mudslides? And there are so many places in the city that are flooded and there are too many people evacuating. There's no room to squat there..."

"But this is not right. The rescue team is here, can't we borrow their boat? It only takes a short time to get to the intersection and the supermarket by boat. It's so cold, how can I carry my belongings with me? I'm wet and cold, and I don't know if I can take a shower. And how can I cook? How can I eat instant noodles every day?"

It is an intention, but when it comes to giving up your warm and comfortable home and running to an unknown place, there are many things to worry about.

"Do you think I don't want to borrow their speedboats to transfer? But now we have limited manpower and material resources. There are so many people in our community. You want to transfer comfortably with your things, don't others want to? There are only a few small boats. After we finish here, we have to rush to the next place immediately. What will happen to the others if we take you with us? Once they see that you are staying in a safe place, how can they be willing to waste time taking you?"

"That's not right, is it? Just give us some supplies and then ignore us?"

"It's not just our neighborhood that's suffering from flooding. There must be rules for evacuation. If you don't want to evacuate on your own, just wait for notification. When everyone on the second and third floors has to evacuate, they will definitely come again..."

Similar conversations were heard in several families. For them, the best solution would of course be for the rescue team to carry them and the necessary supplies to a safe location, but this was obviously impossible at the current stage.

If we evacuate on our own, we will have to wade through the water and we won’t be able to take much with us. I am conflicted no matter how much I think about it.

There are also people who, when they hear about wading through water and moving on their own, just shake their heads without even thinking.

These residents all live on the fourth floor and above. In everyone's concept, the fourth and fifth floors are absolutely safe areas. This is a big city, not a small county town. There is no record of flooding that has submerged the third floor in history.

Isn't it a fantasy that a big city is flooded by rain and the fourth floor - actually five-story buildings - are submerged?

This is not a coastal city. If the flood in Suicheng rises to the fourth floor, then other large and small cities with the same altitude will be flooded to the third or fourth floor at least. Is that acceptable?

This kind of thing is absolutely impossible!

The only inconvenience they considered was the power outage, which lasted for several hours this morning. Apparently, the people from the power company were on the front line and repaired it. However, this situation is expected to happen again before the rain ends. They also hope that there will be no problems with tap water and gas.

As long as these three are fine, the four layers facing upwards will definitely be safe.

There are also people who, although they themselves have no idea of ​​implementing it, have raised questions.

"You said that the rescue team members don't know us. How can they determine which people are the first-floor residents who need to be evacuated and which are just there to collect supplies? Will someone pretend to be a first-floor resident and sneak onto the ship?"

"That can't be possible. Those who are evacuating now are those who can no longer live in their homes. If they are not forced to do so, who wouldn't want to stay in their own home? Who else would be so bored as to pretend to be a family that has been flooded?"

As it turns out, there really is.

**

When Huang Jun and Zhong Li's names were called out loudly and it was revealed that they were not the residents on the first floor who needed to be evacuated, the two were wearing masks, with the hoods of their raincoats tightly pulled up, and sitting on one of the speedboats used by the rescue team for evacuation.

They were naturally not the residents on the first floor who needed to evacuate, but they lived on the second floor. After weighing the pros and cons, they decided to pretend to be residents on the first floor and join the evacuation team.

They knew the residents at the end of the first floor at the other end of the residential building - 1012, and knew that the couple was not at home as they had taken their children back to their hometown for some other matter.

So, after receiving the supplies, Huang Jun and Zhong Li went back to quickly pack their backpacks and went up to the third floor from the stairwell in the middle of the residential building. They went through the corridor on the third floor and went directly to the external safety stairs at the other end of the building, from where they went down to the first floor, and then waded through the corridor on the first floor to the assault boat docked outside the corridor on the first floor.

This residential building is particularly long horizontally, and there is a stairwell blocking the middle, so there is a speedboat outside the fences on both sides of the aisle.

When the rescue team was evacuating the residents, they only counted the house numbers of the residential buildings. They pretended to be residents of house number 1012, and because there were no duplicate declarations, they were allowed to board the boat directly.

It had been raining outside. The speedboat was not very big. Each family evacuated with supplies and wrapped in raincoats. Everyone was in a mess and no one cared to find out whether the person next to them was their neighbor on the first floor.

The speedboat had even turned around smoothly and was ready to leave, but the speedboat at the other end of the stairwell also evacuated at about the same time and passed by.

Among the family that had PKed with the one on the second floor in the early morning, someone recognized Huang Jun. Although he was wearing a raincoat hood and a mask, there was a bruise next to one of his eyes, which he got when the two of them were fighting.

He suddenly realized that Huang Jun and Zhong Li were on the second floor, so why did they evacuate together?

He might not have such reaction ability at work normally, but now it involves a family on the second floor, he immediately turned into a detective. In the moment of passing by, he even figured out the character's psychological behavior and motives, and he shouted loudly on the spot.

The assault boat that Huang Jun and Zhong Li were on did stop. After questioning and verification, the two were sent back to the first floor corridor in full view of everyone.

The two of them were furious when they saw the smug expressions of the family on the first floor.

"Fang Daguang! Are you sick? How have we gotten in your way? How wicked can you be to do such a thing that harms others and does not benefit yourself!" Huang Jun stood in the knee-deep cold water in the corridor on the first floor and shouted at the people on the assault boat.

The other person was still smiling, with an expression that said, "I just want to do things that hurt others and benefit myself, and I'm happy with it."

If it weren't for the presence of the rescue team, Huang Jun would have rushed up to fight, but now he could only suppress the anger in his heart.

"What bad luck! I got soaked!" Zhong Li was also furious. The water was too deep. Even with her rain boots on, she still got soaked. The cold water soaked her pants and socks. It was cold and wet, and she felt very uncomfortable. "We are just retreating to the intersection. We are not going directly to other cities where it is not raining. We still have to pay for the hotel. Is there any need to be so proud? Let's go back and change our wet clothes!"

Huang Jun took Zhong Li's backpack and waded through the water with her towards the stairwell. He looked at the muddy flood under his feet, but he was not very optimistic.

This time the rescue team was able to arrive in time to evacuate the residents on the first floor, but will they be able to arrive in time next time when it is the turn of the residents on the second floor?

He suddenly thought of something and asked, "By the way, do you know a sister and her husband who also live in this building?"

"Um."

"Which floor?"

"Her house is safe, on the top floor."

**

Shu Fu locked the door in her raincoat and walked onto the wet corridor. When she passed the house next door, she heard laughter and two female voices coming from the small kitchen window.

"…Why give me money? We are all friends, just stay here!"

"I don't feel right about this. Actually, the second floor is fine now, but I just feel uneasy..."

"Don't think too much about it. Just think of it as visiting my home. It's quite lively..."

…

There are still guests on a day like this?

She didn't explore further and looked down at the blue tabby cat in her arms.

It huddled outside her raincoat, seemingly disliking the cold and hard touch. It raised its head to look at her, and when it saw her looking at it, it called out softly.

Shu Fu smiled: "That's right, on days like this, even cats are so bored that they run out to play every day, let alone humans?"

As she spoke, she reached out and tapped the cat's head, with a smile on her lips, but her tone was not too gentle, "Unfortunately, I'm very busy and don't want to entertain you at all. After I send you back this time, if you come again next time, I won't even open the door."

She knew that the tabby cat couldn't understand her, so she was naturally saying this to herself.

It's not good to stay at home for too long. It's okay to go out for a walk at the right time, but she doesn't want to go out just for the cat. After all, she can feel that except for the young man, no one else on the fourth floor is very welcome to her to send the cat back.

It was evening, before dinner, and every household was cooking. She could get some inspiration from the aroma and decide what to eat in the evening.

She tried to walk as close to the left as possible to avoid the heavy rain that was slanting in from outside the corridor fence. She walked through the corridor on the fifth floor, smelling the aroma of food, and entered the stairwell.

The stairwell is enclosed and will not get wet by rain like the corridor, so many residents on both sides choose to tie up their garbage from the past few days and pile it tightly in the corner of the stairwell.

Fortunately, the temperature was low and the garbage bags were tied tightly, so there was no strange smell after just a few days.

She went down to the fourth floor. Perhaps because it was daytime, it was easier to notice the missing cat. The boy from the fourth floor was looking for the cat again, and she saw him before she even left the stairwell.

"Here, your cat." Shu Fu was simple and direct. She picked up the cat and stuffed it directly into the boy's arms.

"Little cutie!" The boy hugged the tabby cat happily and rubbed its furry head with his fingers. "Little cutie, why did you run away again!"

He rubbed the cat and thanked Shu Fu. Before Shu Fu could say anything, the boy's mother, wearing an apron and carrying garbage, hurriedly appeared in the stairwell.

She looked like she was here to throw away trash, but the trash bag in her hand was light and there was nothing in it.

"Mom, look, Xiaoguai is found! The sister from before helped me bring Xiaoguai back again." The boy looked back while holding the tabby cat.

Just like last time, the boy's mother did not show any gratitude to Shu Fu for returning the cat. Her eyes passed over Shu Fu without stopping and fell directly on the cat in the boy's arms.

She didn't know if she had seen it wrong, but there seemed to be a hint of fear in the other person's eyes as he stared at the cat.

Wait, fear?

Is she scared?

What are you afraid of? This cat?

Isn’t this a bit strange?

When Shu Fu turned and walked upstairs, she heard intermittent conversations coming from downstairs.

"...Mom, why are you throwing away garbage again? Didn't you do it just now?"

"The meal is ready, hurry home and eat. I'll hold the cat, you go back and wash your hands and eat..."

"Don't... Oh, it doesn't like you holding it..."

**

After dinner that day, Shu Fu put the four floor-standing storage racks that she had spent the afternoon assembling into the bracelet space.

The four racks are all of the same style, aluminum alloy storage racks, with a total of five layers, one person high, two meters wide, and 25 centimeters deep. They are somewhat similar to supermarket shelves, but compared to supermarket shelves, the shelves she bought are very cheap and the quality is average.

If placed in a normal space, the shelves might collapse if there are too many and too heavy things on them. But in a space where time stands still, there is no need to worry about this problem. The things placed on them will not have weight. She only needs these layers of shelves to help her organize and separate the pots, bowls, cups, cooked food, drinks and various takeaways, making it convenient for her to count and take them.

The process of organizing the existing supplies in the bracelet space and moving items to the storage rack one by one is very healing, just like playing a placement and organization game.

She started with takeout meals, and stacked them up according to the types of food: spicy hot pot, pizza, hamburgers, curry rice, beef noodle soup, sushi, fried chicken, mini wontons, spicy soup, bread, cake, noodle soup...

Then there are all kinds of takeaway drinks and stewed dishes...

Then there is the homemade cooked food.

She originally wanted to put snacks, fruits and the like on there as well, but after putting the takeout on there, she found that the four storage racks were basically full. The homemade cooked food and soup pots were barely crammed in. Fortunately, time stood still and they could be stacked without regard for gravity, otherwise the four racks wouldn't even be able to hold half of the takeout.

It turns out that she had stockpiled so much takeout without realizing it!

Shu Fu sensed the space again and felt like she had built a small food supermarket in it. She felt a sense of accomplishment and at the same time a full sense of security.

In the last five hours of the day, she took a shower and put the washed clothes into the sterilizing dryer, set the timer for two hours, and then released the raft again.

She doesn't want to waste any of the five hours of daily usage of the raft, so she saves it for use at night in case something unexpected happens during the day.

The temperature in the small wooden house was comfortable. Shu Fu walked barefoot on the wooden floor, took off her thick velvet robe and hung it on the small shelf beside the door. Then she sat cross-legged on the large and soft single sofa, opened her tablet, picked a movie, opened a box of slightly spicy duck feet, took out a bottle of cocoa milk, and comfortably enjoyed lying down.

At five minutes to twelve, she walked out of the cabin wrapped in a thick velvet nightgown, and immediately shivered due to the temperature difference between the two rooms.

The temperature in the living room was only about five or six degrees. The sound of rain outside the window was much more intense than in the evening. After the raft was folded up, she reached out to turn on the floor lamp, but the light didn't come on. There was a power outage again.

She took out a velvet blanket from the space and covered the quilt with it, then took out a charged hot water bottle from the space, and only then did she feel the quilt became warm.

I still didn't sleep well that night. It was raining heavily outside, and the sound of rain hitting the window made a huge noise. When it was almost dawn, Shu Fu was half asleep, and there were many other noises in the noisy rain outside.

"Oh no! There's water in the house—"

"Oh my God! What's going on? Why is the water rising so fast!"

"Mom, I'm afraid—"

"Be careful! The toilet is flooded, it's full of stinky water, don't go over there!"

"I asked you to block the drain before going to bed! But you were lazy and kept making excuses! Now look what happened, oh my god!"

"Go upstairs! Hurry up and get upstairs!"

"No, it's too cold. We can't wade out like this. Drag the chairs and the sofa out!"

"Put on some clothes! The lights aren't on! The power hasn't come on yet!"

"Where's your cell phone? Turn on the flashlight! Bring the food from the kitchen, and grab your power bank! Put on all your clothes, wear something thicker! And put on your life jacket!"

…

There were the residents' screams, the thumping of objects moving, and the sound of messy footsteps.

After Shu Fu woke up, she jumped up immediately. The temperature outside the bed was so cold that it made her teeth chatter. She wrapped herself in a nightgown. She couldn't see clearly outside from the bedroom, so she hurried to the small balcony and looked out through the tempered glass.

It was dark outside, but the street lights standing in the water on the small road near the community were still on, probably because of the different power supply lines.

In the afternoon, clearly two-thirds of the street lamp was still above the water, but now only the lampshade and a short section of the lamp pole were above the water.

Under the dim yellow light, you can already see the shimmering water surface very close at hand.

In just one night, the water level rose by nearly three meters!