Chapter 246 Exclusively published on Jinjiang Literature City: The ocean is a vast resource...
"Our greenhouse—!"
As the towering waves instantly submerged the hillside greenhouses they had painstakingly cultivated, as well as more than 3,000 acres of newly planted land, the villagers on the suspended bus couldn't help but scream in agony.
Aunt Sun, Aunt Liu, and others collapsed into their seats, wailing in anguish.
"Gone! All gone!"
Li Tie, Grandpa Zhang, and many young members of the hunting team looked down at the surging water below, which was even more terrifying than the flood, and at the greenhouse that had been completely destroyed. Their eyes were also very red.
Li Tie's lips trembled as if he wanted to say something, but his face turned pale and he couldn't utter a word for a long time.
Perhaps sensing the change in the adults' emotions, Lei Xiaobao, along with Chen Rong's daughter, and several babies from the Ye, Liu, and Wei families, burst into tears.
Zhang Dafu, Xiong Dabao, and the other children looked bewildered and frantically clutched their parents' clothes.
This scene inevitably evokes memories of the devastating earthquake that engulfed Yunlu Village.
They thought that with Lu Xuan's help, they would never encounter such a fate again. However, less than two years later, God dealt them a heavy blow.
Although this devastating blow did not result in any personal injury, the destruction of over 3,000 acres of greenhouses and more than 6 million kilograms of mutated grain every month was already a devastating loss.
Not only could the people of Yunlu Village not stand it, but the viewers in the live stream couldn't hold back either.
Ah!!! A greenhouse!!!
[Food! So much food is gone! Will the amount of food in the future lottery be greatly reduced?]
【What kind of time is this to be thinking about a prize draw?!】
[The losses weren't just about food! Bamboo groves, mushroom houses, lotus ponds, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, lotus roots—all gone! Everything has to be built from scratch; the losses are devastating! %￥#@——！]
Even as an outsider, I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack just watching this! It's so tragic! Waaaaah.
[For the first time, I'm grateful that climate change can be controlled in the interstellar era; otherwise, the thought of encountering such a natural disaster is enough to make me despair.]
[I thought the only major loss for the streamer was failing to take the fruit trees with him when he left the Yunlu Mountains, but it seems like it's happened again!]
[Initially, only a few dozen trees were lost, but now it's thousands! How long will it take to recover so many trees?]
Lu Xuan opened the Weather Companion app with a cold face. Seeing that most of the Central Plains was marked with a glaring red X, his expression became even more gloomy.
Restoration? It's most likely impossible.
The rain outside the window will continue for another half month, with daily rainfall exceeding that of the rainy season, and the sea will not recede in the short term.
There isn't much land left now, and it's hard to say whether it can even accommodate all the surviving disaster victims, let alone use a lot of land to grow fruit.
It's obvious that it's impossible.
If he had known the disaster would have such a significant impact, he should have moved the plants out of the greenhouse as well, and harvested the immature crops prematurely.
How could things have come to this? We were just trying to escape the earthquake, but we have to watch all our hard work be destroyed.
"Ah Xuan." Lei Yan, holding his wife and child in his arms, frowned and reminded him.
"Brother." Lu Chen's face was also a little pale.
When Lu Xuan came to his senses, he realized that he had unknowingly leaked his supernatural power, and the people nearby were obviously having difficulty breathing. So he took a deep breath and withdrew his supernatural power.
The others immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
Li Tie wiped his face hard, and in a hoarse voice, he shouted at the wailing villagers, "Alright, stop crying! Can't you see how scared you've all terrified the children? What kind of behavior is this!"
"On the bright side, at least we're all still alive and well. If the greenhouse is gone, we can just rebuild it."
Thinking about the cost of greenhouse heating, his heart was bleeding.
No matter how heartbroken or frustrated they were, since the deed had already happened, they could only accept it.
His only consolation right now is that the livestock were transferred to the hovercar with them.
Otherwise, even with Lu Xuan's help, not to mention cattle and sheep, raising several thousand chicks would not be possible in a short period of time.
Seeing that they had calmed down a bit, Li Tie turned to Lu Xuan and asked, "We're far from the sea here and it's already flooded. Aren't other places closer to the sea even more dangerous?"
Grandpa Zhang also came to his senses and slapped his thigh, saying, "And what about Huo's army?"
Li Tie said solemnly, "I'll contact Vice General Liu to ask about the situation. Are other towns and the capital also affected? Ah Xuan, you should call and ask quickly."
Lu Xuan nodded and began contacting the leaders of each gathering place one by one.
From the new emperor, to Prefect Liu, Chu Ming, Old Master Chen, Ye Feiluan, and so on.
The new emperor was probably too busy to answer the call immediately, but others responded one after another.
As expected, other towns were also hit by the aftershocks of the tsunami, some even an hour or two earlier than Yunlu Village.
The situation there was far worse than in Yunlu Village.
At least in Yunlu Village, safe houses can be stored away to prevent damage to houses, but this is not possible in other places.
The greenhouses in the city were washed away, and the houses were flooded. Except for a few three- or four-story buildings that still had a roof, the rest sank underwater.
Luochuan, which has a relatively large population, initially believed that as long as they avoided areas that would be cracked by the earthquake, they would be safe. Many of the disaster victims simply moved to other areas of the city instead of going to higher ground.
This meant that when the seawater flooded the land and inundated the city, many victims had no time to escape.
Prefect Liu said in a heavy voice, "We used fishing boats, kayaks, and lifebuoys to rescue some people, but many others were still submerged and disappeared."
Because there were too many people, the exact number of casualties could not be determined in a short time, but a rough estimate suggests that the number exceeded tens of thousands.
The total population of Luochuan, including the population of surrounding towns that were subsequently incorporated, was just over 200,000. A tsunami wiped out tens of thousands of people, resulting in losses greater than those from the recently concluded beast attack.
It's so heartbreaking.
Then look at Yangshan and Fengxian, whose populations are less than six figures.
The former originally lived on the mountain. Although the aftershocks submerged much of the mountain and forced people to shrink their activity range, everyone's lives were still saved without serious danger.
The latter, being small in size, also has its advantages; instructions from above can be transmitted to everyone as quickly as possible.
Upon realizing something was wrong, Ye Feiluan immediately took out a large number of boats of various sizes and had all the people in the county transfer to the boats. Just like during the rainy season, he reconnected all the boats with chains to withstand the impact.
Although many boats were capsized at the edge, the damage was minimized thanks to timely rescue efforts from others, and the number of casualties was ultimately kept to within a few hundred.
Looking at Licheng in Jiangnan, the population is even greater than that of Luochuan, but there are also more boats there, with many private households owning small boats.
In addition, several nearby tributaries provided a buffer for the subsequent waves, so the overall losses were not too great, totaling about two or three thousand people.
Just as Lu Xuan had gained a preliminary understanding of the situation in other places, the new emperor finally brought him bad news.
The capital city was also flooded.
The centuries-old capital was submerged by the tsunami, and more than 100,000 acres of greenhouses were reduced to ashes.
The Yunxian Marquis's mansion and the 10,000 mu of greenhouses under Lu Xuan's name were naturally gone as well.
[I can't take it anymore! I'm in so much pain for the streamer, I can't breathe.]
[Tens of thousands of acres of greenhouses! Oh no, the lucky draw will probably have to be suspended for a while now.]
[Let it be paused. The streamer has already suffered enough losses; there's no need to make him bleed even more.]
[Damn natural disaster! Damn tsunami! Aaaaaah!]
The people of the capital temporarily went to a high mountain on the outskirts of the capital to take refuge, but the place was not large and it was not a place where they could settle down for a long time.
After briefly explaining the current situation in the capital, the new emperor suddenly asked Lu Xuan, "Was it because Marquis Yunxian only accepted debts owed for the past six months that he had already foreseen what would happen today?"
Knowing that their greenhouses would be destroyed within six months and the crops would be unharvested, they agreed to short-term debt in order to avoid not being able to collect their debts.
Lu Xuan exchanged a glance with the new emperor, whose eyes were filled with inquiry, and remained calm and composed.
"If I could have foreseen everything, the greenhouses in Yunlu Village wouldn't have been destroyed along with it."
To put it bluntly, while Weather Companion seems to be all-powerful, able to predict torrential rain, undersea earthquakes, and tsunamis, it ultimately cannot fully predict the chain reaction brought about by multiple disasters overlapping.
The new emperor paused for a moment, then relaxed, "That's true."
Lu Xuan: "I set a short-term repayment period simply because there are too many unexpected events during the catastrophe period, and I don't want things to get complicated or cause any unforeseen problems."
Of course, the main reason is to accumulate enough points to buy warships as quickly as possible.
The new emperor sighed deeply, his expression somewhat sorrowful: "In the end, it's just that Heaven is blind and insists on making things difficult for us."
Lu Xuan remained noncommittal.
The new emperor frowned, looking weary: "Without greenhouses, there is no source of income. Even if the court wants to continue to help other victims of the tsunami, it is powerless. Even the capital itself is in dire need of protection. Marquis Yunxian, what do you suggest I do?"
Just when he saw a glimmer of hope for the restoration of order and the consolidation of imperial power, a tsunami dealt him a harsh blow, teaching him a lesson that made him realize once again that the power of nature is far beyond human control.
Even immortals have their limitations.
But what will he do if the entire capital is gone?
Starting over?
Or will we just sit around and let our savings run out?
The answer to this question is not only something the new emperor wants to know, but also something people in other settlements want to know.
Lu Xuan's answer to this was: "It is indeed difficult to obtain more resources on land, but that does not mean there will be no other sources of resources in the future."
Lu Xuan looked down at the endless ocean below and said, "The ocean is a huge resource."
The ocean covers more than half of the entire planet, and the number of fish, shrimp, and crabs living in it is countless.
It could feed tens of millions of people, or even add a zero to that number without any problem.
Moreover, the submerged towns are not entirely useless.
With sufficient equipment, it is entirely possible to dive into the seabed to retrieve supplies that could not be moved in time due to the suddenness of the disaster and bring them up.
A living person won't die from holding in their pee.
There are many ways to survive.
However, the main components of the water flow in Yunlu Village are melted snow after avalanches and rainwater. The seawater flowing here has long been diluted, and it is mostly unsuitable for marine life to inhabit in the short term.
In other words, the available resources are extremely limited.
Lu Xuan's gaze drifted towards the sea area where he often led the villagers to fish.
Having lived here for over a year, perhaps it's time to move around.
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