"You're welcome. We're neighbors. This knife is of good quality; you never know when you might need it."

Seeing Xiao Lingfeng take the knife and walk past her upstairs, Jian Ning quickly followed, making sure to lock the open stairwell gate.

It seems the first door also needs to be electrified, otherwise someone will sneak in and saw through the lock every day, and it will be opened sooner or later. Luckily, I still have a lot of electrical wires, and I found them all when I went back inside.

He used the walkie-talkie to call Jian Anping and asked him to connect all the wires to his socket. The generator here was always running anyway; they wouldn't miss out on this little bit of electricity.

Jian Anping came over to fix the electrical wires and immediately noticed the small pool of blood on the ground.

"Xiao Ning, what happened? People downstairs rushed up? And there's blood."

"Xiao Lingfeng chopped off a section of someone's finger. If it weren't for him, these people would probably have risked their lives to get to the top floor. Brother, from now on, we'll take turns keeping an eye on the surveillance cameras."

They don't have any suitable tools right now. If they had a chainsaw or something, breaking down these doors would be easy.

"I know, you don't need to worry about this. There are four people in my family. We'll arrange a shift when we get back. Your sister-in-law and I will watch over them at night. I doubt they'll have the guts to do it during the day."

Besides, once the door is electrified, they'll have to think twice before using a chainsaw, unless they're suicidal. But Brother Xiao looks like a pretty boy, yet he's quite ruthless; I like that.

Jian Anping didn't think there was anything wrong with cutting off a section of someone's finger. He admired a man's courage; he wasn't sure he could do that himself.

Two more days passed. Although it was still raining, the rain wasn't as heavy, and the power still hadn't been restored. Every day, there were sounds of arguing and fighting coming from downstairs.

It's mostly about food and drink. You know, when people go to borrow a toilet from a neighbor's house, they initially open the door and let them in, based on the idea that neighbors help each other, and even bring them some food and supplies.

Now, basically no one will open the door when you knock. Everyone has realized the seriousness of the situation. This flood is a global disaster, and almost all cities in the country have been flooded.

Although the internet is down now, based on the news from a while ago, I can probably guess the gist of it. When disaster strikes, everyone becomes selfish; if there's not enough food for their own family, let alone sharing.

Besides, because the downstairs apartments are flooded, it's difficult to flush the toilet downstairs. Sewage is even overflowing from the toilets on the seventh and eighth floors, making their homes stink, but they just endure it and don't go out.

After all, it's even harder for those living in the stairwell. They not only have nowhere to use the toilet, but they can also endure the lack of food. In this heat, the lack of water is truly unbearable.

Looking at the people on the opposite building, the building was about to collapse, and many people were standing on the roof, waving bed sheets for help. Compared to them, this side was better off, at least they could be sheltered from the wind and rain.

It wasn't until after 5 p.m. that the government and the military finally dispatched a joint rescue team. A speedboat towed a small boat carrying supplies, delivering bottled water and bread to each community through the windows.

They comforted them, saying that they should hang in there a little longer and they would get better soon.

No one on the 16th floor went out. Jian Ning crossed her arms and looked down at the busy soldiers. These soldiers were respectable.

Their own barracks were probably washed away by the flood, but they still obeyed orders and came out to help the suffering people. Keep in mind that they were just kids under 20 years old.

While delivering supplies, they also braved the sweltering heat to retrieve floating corpses from the water.

In this sweltering heat, if these corpses aren't dealt with quickly, they could easily breed various viruses and cause an epidemic, which would be an even greater disaster.

Suddenly, a small boat appeared in the distance, catching Jian Ning's attention. This was not a rescue kayak, but one of those sightseeing boats from an amusement park, with five or six people crammed inside, and it was rowing directly towards Jinmao Mansion.

When they reached the window downstairs, a man stood up, holding a megaphone, and shouted loudly, "Jian Ning, Jian Ning, this is Li Mingxuan. Could you come down for a moment and let us into the community?"

"Ningning, who's calling you?"

Aunt Li walked over, squinting as she looked down. They were now only six or seven stories above the water, and they could see the situation below clearly without binoculars.

"Ignore him, he's just a classmate from before." Jian Ning's voice was full of indifference.

She was a little puzzled. Just a few days ago, Li Mingxuan said he was staying in a hotel. How did he end up so down and out that he was wearing clothes?

Maybe the hotel was on a lower floor and got flooded? Jian Ning felt that her guess was pretty close to the truth.

"Jian Ning, we've visited several classmates' homes, and almost all of them have been affected by the disaster. We also can't find Wang Hongming and Li Yue. We finally managed to find a boat to row over here. Could you give us some food?"

Miao Xin took the megaphone from Li Mingxuan and pleaded tearfully.

"Hey, why don't you guys come in? It looks like the weather's changed again over there," the tattooed man inside shouted loudly, his eyes full of calculation.

"Thank you, big brother." Miao Xin was overjoyed to hear this and directed Li Mingxuan and the other boys to row the boat to the window, where they climbed in one by one.

They even tied the boat to the pipe inside the stairwell with a rope, intending to leave a boy behind to watch the boat. The tattooed guy practically dragged him inside.

"We don't have much food left here, but we can share some bread with you. You can also have a bottle of water each. We'll have to borrow your boat from now on."

“Okay, no problem.” Li Mingxuan was so hungry that his eyes were practically bloodshot, and he agreed immediately.

The man with the tattooed arms still had cloth wrapped around his fingers; the material looked like it was torn from his clothes, and there was a lot of blood seeping through. Miao Xin noticed it immediately when he picked up the bread and handed it to her.

"Brother, are you injured? It must be pretty serious. I have some medicine here, let me change your bandage. Don't worry, we are all medical students, so we can definitely handle basic wound dressing."

"Really? No rush, let's eat something first, and I'll trouble you to take a look at it later." The man with the tattooed arm was all smiles, seemingly not taking the wound on his hand to heart at all.

The six people were divided into three pieces of bread, and each person could only have half. No one was willing to drink all the water at once, and each person basically left more than half a bottle.

After finishing his meal, Li Mingxuan felt his strength return. Ignoring the dirt on the ground, he plopped down, frowned, and asked:

"Miao Xin, do you know which floor Jian Ning lives on? Didn't she hear us calling her just now? Otherwise, why wouldn't she come out?"