56 Chapter 56

Looking at the gun on the table, Tong Shu was deeply moved. Although she had a premonition, seeing the gun in person still brought her a mix of indescribable sorrow and melancholy.

Wen Shaocheng probably also felt that their separation was imminent.

Tong Shu stroked the gun handle, lost in thought for a while.

After a moment, she took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, then carefully put the gun away, along with the ten energy boxes.

After composing herself, Tong Shu walked out of the villa, found Tong Songming, took out ten military daggers from her bag, and said, "Dad, these are what I got from the military. Give one to everyone in the family and keep them with you."

Tong Songming looked at the pile of gleaming cold weapons, his heart skipped a beat, and he asked, "Is the world about to change again? What is it this time? Why are they using daggers?"

Not wanting to increase her family's fear, Tong Shu shook her head: "Keep these for self-defense. Better safe than sorry. The community is hiring people for work recently, so don't go. It's safer to stay at home."

Tong Shu's vague words made Tong Songming sense that something was wrong, but out of trust for his daughter, she didn't want to say more, so Tong Songming didn't ask any further questions. He nodded, accepted the ten daggers, and immediately went to distribute them.

Tong Shu looked at the crystal ball again. Originally, there was only one thin, thread-like plant, but after searching carefully, she found two more, which intensified Tong Shu's unease.

With uncertainties about the future, Tong Shu couldn't sleep well for several days in a row, and her hair was falling out in clumps. Fortunately, she had been training persistently during this period, otherwise, she felt that she would probably have fallen ill in this mental state.

Everyone in the family sensed something unusual, but only Tong Shu could enter Nini's magic house. They wanted to help Tong Shu analyze the situation but had no clue, so they could only do their jobs to prepare as many supplies as possible.

Tong Songming upgraded the doors, windows, and walls of his home, adding hardness and explosion-proof properties to the original insulation. This required a lot of materials, and the island's daily material production was limited. It took Tong Songming a month to complete the renovation of his home.

During this time, Wang Jie also helped to reorganize the supplies in everyone's backpacks, adding a lot of self-defense weapons and medical supplies, so that they would have the ability to save themselves if they were suddenly separated in an accident.

Under Tong Shu's insistence, Grandpa Tong and Grandma Tong moved into the villa on the island with Qin Xiaoxiao. They only appeared briefly when the community conducted routine headcount. Everyone's important personal belongings were properly placed on the island, and they only carried their various identification documents with them.

At this moment, the vines inside the crystal ball have spread all over the ice surface.

“Plants…plants…” Tong Shu tossed and turned in bed, when suddenly a thought struck her, and she sat up abruptly: “If it’s a plant, would herbicide work?!”

Tong Shu immediately got up and went into the island, searching through the product list of the island's shop. She remembered that when she bought the seeds, she also bought all the other pesticides in the seed shop, including paraquat and dead tree king.

Sure enough, Tong Shu found the two bottles of pesticides not long after searching. She was overjoyed and spent some Senbi to buy a few more spray bottles to store the pesticides.

Since it was something meant to save her life, Tong Shu didn't think about diluting it with water. She put on gloves and poured the high concentration of pesticide directly into the sprayer. After doing this, Tong Shu's tense heart finally relaxed a little, and she felt a bit sleepy. She yawned and went back to her room, where she finally had a good night's sleep, something she hadn't done in a long time.

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"Island Master! Island Master! There are so many big, huge trees! Come and see!"

Tong Shu was using a slingshot to flick leaves when Nini came running up to her, panting and shouting. When Tong Shu heard what Nini said, her expression changed drastically, and she started running as fast as she could.

Inside the magic house, the scene displayed on the crystal ball was completely new: towering trees blocked out the sun, and tens of thousands of vines crisscrossed them, resembling a primeval forest.

Tong Shu didn't have time to look closely. The rapid running made her heart pound in her chest. She turned and left the house. As soon as she stepped off the island, she lost her balance and stumbled. Tong Shu immediately steadied herself at the entrance. She thought it was her fault, but when she calmed down, she could clearly feel her whole body slowly sliding towards the door. She pulled back the curtains and looked at the apartment building across the street, only to find that the building in her line of sight was tilted at a rather obvious angle.

Oh no! Alarm bells rang in Tong Shu's mind. She ran to the island and found that everyone except Tong Songming, who had gone to the convenience store, was still on the island and had not gone out, so she had no idea what had happened.

"The whole building is slowly tilting. You all stay inside and don't go out. I'm going to find my dad," Tong Shu instructed, then headed straight for the convenience store without further explanation.

Tong Songming was reinforcing the convenience store and doing his routine moving work when a large jar of flour fell from the top floor and hit him on the shoulder. The jar was for pickling radishes. The impact made half of his body go numb and he couldn't stand steadily. He had to hold onto the window frame and stand there until he recovered.

"Dad! How are you?" Tong Shu rushed in and saw Tong Songming clinging to the window frame in pain, which scared her half to death.

"It's nothing! I'm a little dizzy from being hit by the jar and can't stand up straight for long, but I'll be fine in a bit," Tong Songming said.

"It's not that you're dizzy, it's that the house is tilting. You need to come back to the small house with me..."

"Xiao Tong! Lao Tong! What are you still doing here! Come downstairs!" Zhu Cheng ran up at some point and shouted at Tong Shu and Tong Songming from outside the iron gate.

Upon hearing their words, Tong Songming immediately understood, his face turning deathly pale: "Family...family..."

"They've all run away! It's safe!" Tong Shu knew what he wanted to ask and immediately interrupted him. She originally wanted to take Tong Songming back to the island, but she abandoned the house and ran out by herself. Unexpectedly, she ran into Zhu Cheng and had to carefully climb over the wall to help her father.

"How are you? Can you run?" Tong Shu asked worriedly.

"It's alright, my foot is fine," Tong Songming replied.

"...What are you doing up here?! Didn't we say to go to an open area?" Outside the iron gate, Zhu Cheng and a group of people were arguing. Seeing their eyes fixed on the convenience store, Zhu Cheng instantly understood. His finger trembled as he pointed at the crowd, "What...what time is it? Instead of thinking about saving your lives, you're planning to...do nothing..."

"Stop nagging, Director Zhu! If you don't need supplies, then don't block the way! If those trees grow back, our community will be gone. When the trees fall, the monkeys scatter, don't you understand?!" A dark-skinned man shoved Zhu Cheng aside and yelled at the people around him to ram the iron gate together. The iron gate itself had few welds, so it couldn't withstand the combined force of a group of adults. With a "bang," the iron gate, which had stood in the corridor for months, finally collapsed, and a group of people rushed in, their eyes filled with the greedy lust of wolves as they looked at the shelves.

Tong Shu reacted quickly, dragging Tong Songming to a corner before the crowd surged in. Looking at these faces, some unfamiliar and some familiar, Tong Shu felt a chill she had never felt before.

"Xiao Tong, Xiao Tong!" Zhu Cheng called out to her from a short distance away, rubbing the back of his head where he had been hit. "Forget it, these are all greedy and reckless people. Come on, let's go down together."

Tong Shu had no interest in these supplies, nodded, and helped Tong Songming walk towards the stairwell.

"They're trying to escape! They must have even more supplies at home! We can't let them get away!" a woman shouted shrilly as she noticed their movements.

Upon hearing this, the people who were scrambling for supplies turned around, and a few even staggered towards them.

Tong Shu's gaze was icy as she handed Tong Songming over to Zhu Cheng, the dagger in her hand barely visible.

"You said your wife died, and you have two children at home. You took a lot more things from me than you should have, right?" Tong Shu stared at the person who led the way, her eyes filled with a mixture of anger and disappointment.

The man paused, seemingly a little guilty, but he quickly shook off his strange emotions and said to Tong Shu, "So what? It's precisely because my family is struggling and I have two children to raise that I need these supplies more than you do. Your family hoards so much stuff and only occasionally gives us a little. Do you really think you're saviors?"

"That's right! Why should your family be the only ones living a good life? Hurry up and take us over to move the supplies!" A woman reached out to grab her, but Tong Shu hadn't been training for nothing. She gripped a dagger that no one else could see and slammed the hilt hard against the woman's wrist.

"Ouch!" the woman cried out, clutching her wrist and jumping up and down.

Seeing that Tong Shu dared to make a move, the others disregarded their past relationship and, clutching the supplies they had just seized, prepared to arrest her.

Unburdened, Tong Shu easily retreated a few steps, reaching the stairwell entrance. Looking at this group of jackals, the once cheerful conversations between them became increasingly blurred. She felt resentful yet helpless. With a flick of her wrist, the dagger was slipped into her pocket, and a set of keys was clutched in her hand.

"...Go ahead and snatch it, you idiot." Tong Shu cursed, swung her arm and threw it with all her might. The key, gleaming with a metallic sheen, landed in the crowd in a parabolic trajectory. This time, no one paid any attention to her; everyone turned around to look for the key on the ground.

Tong Shu ran downstairs to meet up with Tong Songming and Zhu Cheng.

"What a bunch of ungrateful wretches!" Zhu Cheng spat, glancing hatefully at the upstairs.

Tong Shu stopped thinking about those things. Her gaze was drawn to the branches growing out of the ice. The temperature didn't seem to have risen yet, but these trees were indeed growing from under the ice. Many of them had broken through the thick ice layer and poked out unevenly. Several apartment buildings were tilted by the tree trunks growing out of the ice.

“I’ve used your boat to transport several groups of people,” Zhu Cheng said somewhat embarrassedly, having used their things without their permission. “Now everyone else has moved to outside the North Gate. There are no buildings there, so it’s safe for now.”

Tong Shu waved her hand to indicate that it was alright.

"Hurry up and get on the ship, we're going too. The supply ship has already been towed over," Zhu Cheng said.

Tong Shu shook her head, supporting Tong Songming, her heart calm: "Director Zhu, you can use the boat, we won't go. The rest of our family has already left, we need to go find them."

"Hey! You guys..." Zhu Cheng was surprised that Tong Shu's family was leaving, and he couldn't say anything for a moment. His face turned red with anxiety.

"Director Zhu, take care, and I hope we'll meet again someday!"

Zhu Cheng was still dizzy, holding onto the gunwale of the boat. There was no way he could catch up with the father and daughter. He could only watch them walk in the opposite direction, getting further and further away until they disappeared from sight.