Chapter 197 Ice
Although Youxi had prepared herself mentally, she was still shocked by the outside world when she was awakened by the crackling sound outside the window that night and opened the curtain to check.
Because there was no gray fog, she could see the scene outside clearly with her eyesight.
Under the night, the cold wind whistled and swirled, rolling up thin ice flakes and wreaking havoc everywhere, like a giant blender or a cutter. The evergreen trees on the mountain had been cut down to bare branches. In addition to sharp ice flakes, there were also branch and leaf fragments, and even building fragments in the wind.
All of these were carried forward by the strong wind, and once again hit every object in the place they passed.
The mountain, the tree trunks, and the villa where she was.
The eight steel pillars were hit continuously, making a harsh sound. The walls and glass of the villa were scratched and crackled. Under such circumstances, it was impossible for other people in the villa to sleep.
Youxi's door was knocked soon. Jian Shou stood outside the door. Seeing her answer the door so quickly, he nodded to her: "Are you awake? Come up and take a look."
Tonight was Jian Shou's night shift. In the central control room, several screens that were originally used to monitor the outside world had gone black.
In addition to several cameras around the villa, one was installed on each of the eight pillars in the middle and lower sections of the steel pillars. But now only seven or eight of the dozen cameras were still working, and the others seemed to have been destroyed by the ice blade.
"The temperature outside is dropping very quickly. It's now - 25 degrees below zero." Jian Shou pointed at the temperature display and said to her, "When I just went downstairs, it showed 18 degrees below zero."
"At what time did the temperature start to drop?"
"Half an hour ago, it started to drop from around 3 degrees below zero."
"It dropped by more than 20 degrees in half an hour!?"
"Yes, the temperature dropped too quickly, and the water pipes didn't react. Here -" Jian Shou clicked on the 3D electronic diagram of the villa and the steel columns, and pointed to the middle and lower sections of the steel columns, "This should be frozen."
"Isn't there an insulation device?"
"That's what I want to say. The water inlet pipe can withstand a certain sub-zero temperature, and the additional insulation device outside is automatic. It will automatically start when the temperature is too low. But because the temperature dropped too quickly, the pipe was frozen before the automatic insulation device could react.
Now the insulation device is activated, but the pipe is already frozen, and it may not be thawed for a while."
"So the water supply to the villa is temporarily cut off now, right?" For You Xi, this is a small problem. First, she brought two boxes of metal ice in the Star House warehouse, and second, ice freezing is her main skill. Similarly, it is not difficult to melt ice into water.
What she is worried about now is the outer wall and glass of the villa. Although they are all reinforced explosion-proof materials and can fully withstand extreme climates, the current situation outside is obviously far beyond extreme climates.
"In addition, because of the rapid drop in temperature, the carbon crystal floor heating has increased the demand for electricity. After comprehensive calculations, the fuel crystals that could originally last for eight or nine days can only last for five to six days. Do you think it would be better to lower the indoor temperature setting a little bit, for example, from the current 15 degrees to 7 or 8 degrees."
Even if the room temperature is only 7 or 8 degrees, it is within the range that the human body can bear. You can wear more cold-proof clothes, but it can save a lot of electricity.
"You don't need that." Youxi had plenty of fuel crystals. Compared to considering the future demand for low-altitude vehicles, it was definitely more important to take care of the present first. "Don't worry about the fuel. I don't know how long this villa can last. Try to be as comfortable as possible while you can still stay here."
Jian Shou was silent for a moment when he heard the other party say that there was no need to worry about the fuel.
Others didn't know, but he personally drove her to the hypermarket and the warehouse outside the city that day.
She clearly bought enough supplies to fill several large suites, but in the end she only picked up a few bags of takeout in the car; she clearly didn't bring anything out of the warehouse, but when Hei Mu was worried about the fuel before, she was able to take out a box of fuel crystals, and now she told him not to worry, so it was obvious that there were other stocks.
Where did she put all this stock?
Also, after the gray fog dispersed, the low-altitude car that was originally parked on the platform disappeared. He didn't believe that the wind before was strong enough to blow the car away, so where did the car go?
Although he had not been with her as long as Hei Mu, he had also been her bodyguard for three years. How could he not notice the force she displayed now and these strange changes.
If even he could notice it, he felt that Hei Mu could not be completely unaware of it, but he said nothing and still took care of her life as meticulously as before.
And he - he always remembered that after they escaped from the warehouse outside the city, she took him to the private aristocratic clinic to treat his arm.
The doctor had a casual attitude and didn't take him seriously at all, but he didn't mind because he was used to it. There was a huge gap between humans and ordinary people. It was enough that the other party was willing to treat him. He could go back and adjust the treatment himself. It was just the difference between pain once and pain twice, not a big problem.
But she warned the doctor coldly, reminding him to set the bones carefully and not to leave any sequelae.
He didn't say a word at the time, but he made up his mind in his heart that no matter what the planet was about to encounter, he would do his best to do this job well and protect her.
Therefore, even if he noticed her changes later, he still didn't ask anything and did everything she asked with all his heart.
Maybe one day in the future, when the disaster is over and they are completely safe, he will ask.
But, not now.
While the two were talking, the other people in the villa also got up. Xing Min, Hei Mu, Yan Shang, and Xi Yuan stood at the central control door. They were all broad-shouldered, long-legged, and good-looking. They stood there, crowded and dazzling, like models on the backstage of a fashion show...
[…………]
Receiving Xing Min's gaze, You Xi coughed softly and gathered her scattered thoughts: "There is no big problem at the moment. Just leave Jian Shou to watch the night. Everyone go to sleep. That, Xing Min, come to my room."
The originally scattered gazes suddenly gathered on her again.
When she looked back, Yan Shang lowered his head and retracted his gaze, and was the first to leave from the corridor.
Hei Mu nodded at her, indicating that he would go to check the situation on the next floor, and if she was done later, she could call him at any time. After Hei Mu left, Xi Yuan, who was leaning against the door frame, glanced at Xing Min, hummed softly, and turned away with his hands in his pockets.
You Xi: ?
Finished?
I always feel like I was misunderstood about something inexplicable...
**
This terrible whirlwind of ice blades gradually stopped before dawn.
Youxi put on polar cold-proof gear, walked up the stairs from the second-floor window to the platform, and looked back at the suspended villa. He found that the outer wall was scratched with countless scratches, but fortunately the wall was solid and the scratches were not deep.
In addition, because the villa was far from the ground, some heavier building branches and other debris could not fly to such a height, so no destructive damage was caused.
Although the blade-shaped hail was sharp and terrible, some were large and some were small, but because it was thin, it did not have the impact of hail of the same size. Most of the glass in the villa was intact, with only two cracks. Fortunately, the glass was explosion-proof and double-layered, so it could not be damaged for a while.
The houses in the resort at the foot of the mountain were not so lucky.
The resort is mainly composed of villas, most of which are one to three stories high. The walls and glass are not as good as those of the suspended villas, which are specially built for disasters. The glass windows were smashed by ice blades and cracked, and they could not withstand the impact of debris in the strong wind.
Many glass windows on the first and second floors were broken. The strong wind rolled the ice blades and immediately poured into the building from the holes. The low temperature invaded, and many people were cut by the ice blades. There were wailing and cries for help.
Those who originally thought that the gray fog would dissipate and the disaster would stop were once again hit hard, and the psychological blow far exceeded the physical blow.
Some people couldn't bear it, and when others retreated to avoid the windows where the ice blades were raging, they rushed out screaming...
In order to fight for the intact rooms, conflicts broke out between natural humans and slaves. In some buildings, people with slaves were tied up, and their slaves were driven away from the safe rooms.
In their view, now is the time to make a decision. There is only this much space for survival. How can the life and death of slaves be more important than that of natural humans?
...
When the raging of the ice blades ended, the resort had become a mess, like a battlefield.
There were branches and garbage, building debris, and human remains everywhere...
The situation of the troops was not much better. The houses in the resort were not strong enough. The wall they spent a lot of time building was originally used to defend against the blood bubble man, but now it has collapsed in half after being ravaged by the wind and ice blades.
The research team has been doing various research day and night recently, analyzing the blood-red software, developing weapons that can deal with the blood bubble man, and analyzing the composition of the gray fog... But just when all the work progressed, they found that the weather outside had changed and the gray fog disaster seemed to have passed.
A new disaster has come, and they are helpless against it.
In the command center, the communicator reported the situation of several nearby shelters. Because the shelters were different, the degree of damage they suffered was also different. The best shelter was about 200 kilometers away from them, in a mountain near the six city district.
The shelter was built underground, and except for the initial period of fear that it would become a new ground fissure zone, the subsequent gray fog and ice blade cooling had little impact on the area.
"Everyone relocate?"
"Yes, the buildings here won't last long. Judging from the previous disasters of Red Lotus and Gray Mist, this time the ice blades can't happen only once or twice. If it lasts for more than half a month, the buildings here will probably be destroyed. It would be too passive to plan to relocate at that time!" "
Didn't we move back a lot of new building materials for building the wall? The team members checked. Although half of the wall collapsed, the damage to the building materials themselves was not serious. Using it to reinforce the building can withstand the ice blades."
"Indeed! There aren't that many low-altitude flying cars. Two hundred miles of highway is too far to drive on land. After all, it's someone else's place. We will be very passive."
"It's not for nothing that they accepted us. They don't have many scientific researchers there. They were rebuilding their defenses and their research lagged behind..."
At this point, everyone else understood that the other party needs their scientific research team here. When the troops here evacuated the city early, they happened to be near a scientific research institute and rescued everyone in time, including several scientific researchers.
At present, these people are the targets of key protection by the army.
However, the transfer proposal was not approved immediately. The top military officials were divided into two factions. Each party had its own concerns. In the end, it was decided to stay in place for two days and vote after two days.
These two days were reserved for the public, mainly because there were too many injured people in the resort, and many people were seriously injured by the ice blade attack. If the injuries were not rescued and stabilized in time, these people would not be able to survive in the mountain shelter 200 kilometers away.
The troops began to move, dismantling the new building materials used to build the wall, temporarily reinforcing the building, and reallocating the people's housing.
**
While Shanxia was reinforcing the building, Youxi was also reinforcing the outer wall of the suspended villa.
In the early morning, she had tried before Jian Shou knocked on the door. For some reason, she seemed unable to control the ice blade outside. Later, she asked Xing Min to go over to study this matter.
She asked Xing Min to use energy to prop up a layer of barrier outside the window, then opened the window, quickly took a piece of ice blade captured by his energy barrier, and then closed the window, asked him to remove the energy shield, and began to study the ice blade in his hand.
First, she tried to use her ice control ability to move it. Although it was a bit difficult, she succeeded. However, this feeling of powerlessness made her feel very strange.
What was even more strange was that the ice blade in her hand did not melt immediately indoors. Finally, she took the ice blade into the bathroom and placed it in the sink, trying to convert it back into water.
Just like controlling the movement of the ice blade just now, the process of melting it again made her feel powerless and blocked.
She had practiced ice control for so long that she could switch between ice and water in an instant, but it took her a minute or two to melt this piece of ice.
The ice blade melted into water in the pool, but the water was very turbid, with a little scarlet and dusty stuff.
"What is this?" She took out a flashlight and looked carefully.
Xing Min, who was standing by, bent down slightly: "It looks like gray mist and soft residue."
"So the composition of this ice is not just water, no wonder it's a bit difficult for me to control it."
You Xi looked at the turbid liquid in the pool, and felt sick when she remembered that these things had caused normal humans to turn into monsters like blood bubble people. "Could this thing be alive after becoming like this?"
"Wait a minute." Xing Min closed his eyes, as if sensing something.
After a moment, he opened his eyes and shook his head: "It's no longer alive."
You Xi nodded, opened the drain of the pool, let the turbid liquid in the pool flow away, and turned on the faucet to flush, then she realized that the water pipe was frozen.
However, she was now on the sixth or seventh floor, and the frozen water pipe was about the height of the first or second floor. In addition, there were steel columns around it, so she couldn't control the thawing, and finally she could only use her own water to flush it clean.
Because of the special composition of the ice blade, she had the idea of reinforcing the villa with an ice layer.
Now the daytime temperature outside is about 17 or 18 degrees below zero. As long as a layer of solid ice is attached to the outside of the villa, even if she does not spend her superpowers later, she can rely on the weather to keep the ice layer from melting.
Youxi first used mountaineering equipment to quickly descend to a position around the second floor, thawed the water inlet pipe built into the steel column, and then returned to the platform to take out the ice bricks in the Star House warehouse, controlling their movement one by one, melting them to cover the roof and outer walls of the villa, and finally recondensing them into a solid ice layer.
Because all the walls had to be covered meticulously, the whole process consumed a lot of her superpowers, but this extra layer of protection made her feel a lot more at ease.
When Youxi was about to leave the platform, she felt something cold falling. She turned aside and found that it was a snowflake.
She looked up at the gloomy sky, and snowflakes were falling from the sky.
It was snowing.
**
"Mom, it's snowing!" In the No. 3 Medical Center, which was temporarily reinforced by the team members, a little girl looked out the window in surprise. Because of the reinforcement, the originally large glass windows only had a small gap, but the heavy snow falling outside could still be seen clearly.
The snowflakes were so big and dense that it was hard not to notice them.
The girl's mother shuddered. When she heard the word "snowing", she subconsciously thought of the terrible wind and ice blade last night. Her husband was also injured last night to protect them.
But he was not cut by the ice blade, but by the window frame and glass that were broken by the tree trunk. The whole window was broken at that time. He used a blanket to protect them and escaped from the room, but he was cut by the fragments of the window frame and glass. At this moment, he was lying on the bed beside him, wrapped in gauze and in a coma.
But for the girl, snow is still a beautiful scene in her memory. Under these disasters, seeing such a scene is one of her few happy moments.
She broke away from her mother's hand and wanted to run to the window to see, to make a wish and pray that her injured father would get better soon.
The wards in the medical center were very crowded. The room that used to hold four beds now had seven or eight beds. With the accompanying family members, there was almost no room to stand.
A man with a large piece of flesh cut off from his leg limped back from the bathroom. He repeatedly rubbed the wound along the way because it was difficult to walk and there was no one to help him. He grimaced in pain and swore, "Damn it! There's not enough room for the injured, and the whole family has to squeeze in. Is this because the medical center has high floor heating and can get hot meals on time? Fuck! You are the only ones who have so much trouble. Why don't you take care of the whole family? Drag her over here too!"
The more you fear something, the more it will happen. When he passed by the window, he was almost hit by the little girl who ran towards him quickly. He was furious and pushed her away with a slap: "Why are you running! Hurry up and reincarnate!"
The girl was only seven or eight years old. She was worried about not eating well and sleeping well recently, and she became thinner and smaller. The man pushed her and she fell to the ground, scratching the skin on her palm.
She cried out in pain, but she didn't dare to be too loud. The experience of fleeing for many days told her that it is best not to yell in front of strangers.
The girl's mother immediately ran over and hugged her daughter, but she didn't dare to get angry with the man. In this world, ordinary people don't have an easy life even if they are guarded by the army.
Maybe she could make the other party apologize by yelling and calling the military, but being aggressive and having the upper hand for a while does not mean a good result.
The military would not do anything to the other party if he did not kill or burn anyone, but people with such hot tempers would hold grudges, and once they provoke the other party, they might continue to retaliate.
She could only endure for a while and keep things calm. Her husband was still in a coma, and she did not want to cause trouble.
The man felt a little relieved when he saw the other party leave with the girl in his arms. He still limped towards his bed, cursing.
He did not know if it was his illusion. The wound on his thigh, which had only been a dull pain not long ago, seemed to be more painful, and the injured area was throbbing with pain like fire.
It felt like something was drilling into his flesh...
That night, the man was awakened by a tearing pain.
He felt as if his injured leg was being boiled in boiling water. The piercing pain was totally unbearable. He
began to tear the gauze wrapped around his thigh frantically. When the gauze was torn off, bloody skin and minced meat were brought along with it. The wound, which was originally the size of a bowl, had expanded to the entire thigh at some point. The flesh on his leg seemed to be completely rotten and turned into blood-red cotton wool.
He turned on the light with difficulty and looked carefully at his thigh. He found that the flesh seemed to be alive and was actually squirming! ?
"What is this - my leg!? My leg - ah -"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
