Chapter 25 Suicheng

It was pouring rain. Shu Fu took back the hand holding the tape measure, and after checking the scale on it, he shook his wet hand.

The sound of a helicopter was heard in the sky, and she quickly took a few steps back, hiding her figure under the eaves of the corridor.

A moment later, a red and white rescue helicopter appeared in her sight, flying towards the west of the city.

This was the third day that she had lived alone. During these three days, four helicopters had appeared. She didn't know whether these helicopters passed through Suicheng, rescued people in Suicheng, or transported some supplies away.

This situation was not very favorable for her. She had always wanted to wait until Suicheng became a real empty city on the water before moving on to the next higher building, but obviously, she could not predict the appearance of the helicopter.

These helicopters fly quite low, and she couldn't guarantee whether the people on the helicopters would notice her small raft on the water below.

It may be ignored as a floating object such as a building door panel, or it may be inspected from a lower altitude.

Fortunately, the water level has not yet risen to the fourth floor, so she still has time.

Only after the red and white helicopter completely disappeared in the heavy rain did she turn around and go back to the fifth floor.

Two days later, the water level reached the ceiling of the third-floor corridor and the third floor was completely flooded.

Three days later, the water line did not reach the first step of the fourth floor. Shu Fu removed the door panels of the bedroom and bathroom, used the space to transfer, and added the iron bucket and stove abandoned by the neighbors in the stairwell to build a simple wooden bridge for ferrying people between the stairwell and the corridor on the fourth floor.

That same night, she began to release the raft overnight outside the building in the fourth-floor hallway, and also began casting and reeling in her rod three times a day.

The harvest was not satisfactory. It consisted of small stools, iron buckets, stainless steel pots, hammers and other things that would not be damaged even after being soaked in water. Occasionally, I received unopened cans of brown sugar, bags of vermicelli, bean curd and red dates and other small things.

It seemed that the residents of Ping'an Community collected their belongings very cleanly when they left. She suspected that the food was left under the water when the residents did not have time to clean up the flood that night...

But overall, automatic water fishing rods are still very reliable. All the catches are unspoiled food, or items that can be used after soaking in water. There is no garbage or waste, and they can be "disinfected" with just one click, making them non-toxic and sterile.

Two days later, in the morning, when she walked out of the Drifting Island House, she found that the simple wooden bridge she had built on the fourth-floor corridor was also submerged in water.

Shu Fu looked at the time. It was less than six o'clock in the morning, and the raft had six hours left to be used today.

She did not stay on the raft. Instead, she put on a waterproof jacket, folded up the raft, and went straight back upstairs.

At nine o'clock in the morning, she stood at the door of her house again and looked back at the rented cottage.

Although it was a rental, before she awakened, she really regarded it as her future home. She spent a lot of time and effort on decorating it and also envisioned living here in the future.

After today, she will not come back here again. This house will probably be submerged in water soon.

Shu Fu closed and locked the door, then went directly to the walkway fence and released the raft into the water below.

The water level had already submerged several steps on the fourth floor. After the raft was released, she flipped over the fifth-floor fence and landed on the roof of the Drifting Island House, and then got down to the raft. When it was anchored, the raft was as stable as flat ground, and did not sway because of her flipping and jumping.

Shu Fu changed her shoes and went into the house. The inside and outside of the wooden door were still two different worlds. It was raining heavily outside and the temperature was cold.

The interior of the wooden house was as peaceful and refreshing as early summer, dry and warm. Even with the wooden door open, the slanting rain could not penetrate the door frame and enter.

She tried it twice before she was sure that even if the drift bottle protection shield was not activated, the invisible barrier already existed starting from the eaves of the wooden house.

Shu Fu thus confirmed that the hardware home furnishings connected to the Drifting Island House produced by Blue Prize will also become part of the wooden house after being equipped, and will be included in the "master mode", becoming a disaster-resistant, constant temperature, and exclusive safe space.

Therefore, she has now made use of the small space under the eaves of the front and back doors. The two small shoe cabinets have been moved to the side of the outside door. On the other side of the door, a camping chair with a backrest and a small camping table are placed, where people can sit when changing shoes. The table is convenient for storing things, and they can also sit here to get some fresh air when the raft is drifting.

However, the eaves are smaller than the internal compressed space, and unlike the internal compressed space, they are not as windproof as the drift bottle protective cover. Occasionally, she would move a little more heavily under the eaves, and her hands and feet would be immediately wet by the rain if she stretched them out.

Shu Fu started the "drifting" process, set the direction, and skillfully operated the raft towards the intersection.

The two buildings at the intersection were very eye-catching even through the rain. The buildings nearby were not very tall. The water level was now over eleven meters. Even though many buildings were still above water, most of them, like the one where Shu Fu lived, had only two or three floors left outside.

The shopping mall has a total of six floors, each floor is more than four meters high, and the office building at the back is as high as eighteen floors.

These two buildings, one is wide and the other is slender, look like two large sea beasts lying in the sea from a distance, one in front and one behind.

Shu Fu temporarily changed her shelter plan. If she could enter from the outside of this office building, it would become her second stop.

First, the eighteenth floor is considered a temporary safe height; second, there is a large supermarket in front with a wide variety of items where you can pick up bargains.

The location here is average, and the office building behind it is not Grade A, with a floor height of about 2.8 meters, which is similar to the 2.7 meters floor height in her community.

She parked the raft on the side of the office building close to the shopping mall in front, trying to "moor" the raft close to the exterior glass of the office building. Then, she opened an umbrella to block the rain above her head, took out a windproof ignition spray gun, adjusted the flame to the maximum level, and pressed it towards the corner of the glass wall.

The exterior walls of this type of office building are all made of tempered floor-to-ceiling glass, and the tempered glass must be destroyed from the four corners, usually by hammering on the edges or corners. You can also heat the glass first to make it brittle and then hit it with a hammer.

She now chooses the latter method.

She had never practiced this before. If she still couldn't destroy it after trying various methods, she would open the protective shield for the raft and then head towards the commercial street building that had been planned before.

There was a specially designed building that she could enter directly from the outside.

After more than ten minutes, the tempered glass was successfully broken. She cleaned up the glass shards, entered the office building, and collected the raft.

The garage of this building is in the basement, and the fourth floor was almost flooded. She entered the large office area on the fifth floor. There was no electricity in the building, the light inside was not very good, it was cold and damp, the desks and chairs had been moved around in a mess, and a space had been cleared against the wall, where sofa cushions and blankets could be seen laid out.

This place had been stayed by refugees before, and there were a lot of garbage such as bottles, cans and packaging bags left inside, and the air was very bad.

Shu Fu was not in a hurry to go up. He first checked the entire fifth floor, roughly understood the internal structure, and determined the location of the safety staircase before starting to go up.

This place is not a business district, there are few similar buildings nearby, and there are no overpasses or subway stations, so transportation is not very convenient. Therefore, this office building is not like the building where her previous company was located. The offices on some floors are not rented out, the glass doors outside are locked, and the inside is empty.

Starting from the seventh floor, there was a lot less garbage in the office building, and the desks and chairs were not so messy. From the ninth floor upwards, there were basically no signs of the refugees staying there.

Finally, she chose her temporary residence on the tenth floor. The entire tenth floor seemed to belong to the same company. Except for the reception desk at the elevator entrance, the entire space was semi-open. There were no glass doors, and many of the small offices inside were only separated by frosted glass walls. Several offices that looked like high-rise offices had doors, but they were all locked.

Shu Fu looked around and finally chose a small meeting room.

The meeting room faces north, the door is not locked, there are several manually opened sliding windows on the floor-to-ceiling glass, and the floor is covered with thick carpet. The interior space is not large, so using a kerosene stove will heat up faster.

Afterwards, she began to arrange the space, using the space to move the long table and most of the chairs inside to the outer room. She found a three-seater sofa and coffee table from the tea room and moved them in, placing them near the floor-to-ceiling glass. She then moved a smaller desk from the large office area outside and placed it against the wall together with the previous chairs.

This is not her own home. She will definitely go back to the Drifting Island House to sleep at night. She doesn't want to decorate it in too much detail for the mid-term transition. A simple place to rest and eat will be enough.

After confirming the temporary accommodation space, she ran up a few floors, took a quick look at the environment, and finally returned to the fifth floor. She released the raft again outside the smashed floor-to-ceiling glass window and then cast out the automatic water fishing rod.

She lived in this office building for about half a month. The situation here was indeed different from that in her community. Not only was the harvest time greatly shortened, but the supplies obtained were also abundant, with a full basket each time.

There were all kinds of paper products, a lot of mineral water and canned drinks, well-packaged potato chips and snacks, drink powder, instant noodles, self-heating hot pot, self-heating rice, vacuum canned meat, hot sauce, shrimp seasoning, pots and pans, unopened skin care cosmetics...

Shu Fu was never picky and stored everything she harvested into the space on her bracelet.

She still stays in the building from eight in the morning to eight in the evening. Sometimes she takes out the generator and induction cooker to cook some simple cooked food, and sometimes she takes out the kerosene stove to keep warm while cooking.

She is not completely isolated from the world. Just like when she was staying at home before, she uses another mobile phone to check the outside world every day and occasionally logs into WeChat to check messages.

There were a lot of messages from Lu Zheng and Yao Ruoyun, but she didn't click on them, so they remained unread.

She would reply when she saw messages from Zhang Tian and the other two and Zheng Feifei, but because WeChat was not open 24 hours a day, most of the time the replies were very delayed, and it would take several days to get back and forth. But at least they kept in touch and knew that each other was doing well.

At first, although the signal was intermittent, I could still access the Internet. Later, the signal gradually became worse and worse. Even if I opened a web page, it would be blank and there would be no response even after refreshing for a long time.

In the end, the only things I could barely read were weather forecasts and disaster notifications.

The situation on the entire planet is bad. It is raining everywhere. Most of the coastal areas have been flooded after several tsunamis and typhoons. Some island countries with extremely low altitudes in tropical areas have completely disappeared.

The land area of ​​the neighboring island country has been greatly reduced, and tsunamis, heavy rains, hail and thunderstorms have ravaged it one after another. The survivors tried to move overseas, but under such climatic conditions, civil aviation had long been closed, and those who tried to travel by sea died in the typhoons and heavy rains at sea.

In comparison, the situation in Hua Country is relatively good. Although large areas of cities in the southeastern coastal areas and low-altitude areas have been submerged, Hua Country has the highest mountains on the planet, vast mountain ranges and plateau areas.

The internet is almost entirely filled with news about the westward retreat. The heavy rains have been going on for more than a month, and by this time, most of the refugees who have been forced to leave their homes have realized that they will not be able to return home in the short term.

In Sankou Province west of Suicheng, Ningcheng, Shanyangcheng and even Zhangcheng, which had once served as refuge cities, also suffered from floods one by one. The refugees had to move again along with the people in these cities. The country began to renovate and build temporary residences in large numbers in cities with higher altitudes to accommodate these refugees.

Life jackets, lifebuoys, inflatable boats, rubber dinghies, diving suits... these types of water life-saving supplies have become the most sought-after goods for a while.

Prices started to rise, especially for purified water and food, which doubled or tripled, and this was the price in some large supermarkets under state control. In some private supermarkets, prices increased five or six times, and some people even bought cabbage for 100 yuan a head and eggs for 200 yuan a box.

Of course, occasionally you will see news about someone who got high-priced vegetables by joining a group through the community property or some homeowner, but ended up receiving a bag of rotten vegetables. Every one or two days you will also see news about scammers being caught.

Sometimes, some supermarkets will release a batch of low-priced drinking water supplies with purchase limits, which can slightly ease the living pressure on people. These supplies come from aid from the country and other cities.

In times of great disaster, everything is in chaos, and the news is both good and bad, true and false.

One day before the Internet was completely cut off, Shu Fu saw news online that several cities in the west were preparing to build bypass dams. The news she saw was not officially announced, and she didn't know whether it was true or false.

However, these cities are basically hilly and mountainous with high altitudes. Although there are heavy rains at present, the situation in the cities is normal.

The rain in Suicheng basically switches between heavy and extremely heavy, occasionally accompanied by thunderstorms and hail. Sometimes when you wake up in the middle of the night, the water level will rise by half a floor.

She had to break a piece of floor-to-ceiling glass every once in a while so that she could launch the raft and spend the night in the house on the drifting island.

At first, she spent most of her daytime time in the small meeting room, watching TV series and variety shows, reading books, and listening to music. She felt that her time alone was quite comfortable.

But soon, she realized that such a life of lying down would gradually make her useless. More importantly, her daily routine of lying down with milk tea, snacks, coffee and fruits made her gain three kilograms in weight in more than half a month...

So, she began to use the safety stairs in the building to do simple stair climbing. When she was bored, she would go to each floor to look around and put away any useful supplies she found.

Some unopened barreled water, bottled water, tissue paper, bagged coffee, boxed scented tea and fruit tea, instant noodles and vermicelli, new A4 paper and pens, brand new office chairs... As long as it is small in size, considering that she may use it in the future, she will put it into the bracelet space.

According to her original idea, she planned to stay here until the waterline passed the fourteenth floor, and then move directly to the commercial area.

But as time passed, the helicopters passing over Suicheng gradually disappeared.

There was no people, no boats, no planes, only the sound of rain, from morning to night, endlessly.

The bracelet on her wrist was always silent, never vibrating once. She took out her black mini notebook many times and looked through it, trying to find the font of the new task, but the task on the raft level 3 progress bar never appeared.

When the water line completely submerged the eighth floor, Shu Fu could no longer sit still.

The network was completely cut off. She was temporarily unable to learn about the situation outside. New upgrade tasks were delayed in appearing, and the raft could only be used for 12 hours a day. If she could not upgrade, she would be in trouble sooner or later.

Maybe she should go out and try her luck. Maybe the mission will appear while the raft is drifting.