There are only about a hundred people living in the center of Lingcheng City now, which seems to be less than the population of some small villages.
But as the mayor, Chen Guodong firmly believed that as long as people were still alive, no matter how far they drifted, they would come back one day. He wanted to protect Lingcheng, slowly rebuild the homeland, and wait for everyone to return home.
Chen Da, Lei Mu and his son, and Lin Xiao also moved from the cave on the top of Lanshan Mountain to the center of Lingcheng City.
Although it is located in the city center, the prosperous scene of Lingcheng in the past has long disappeared, and many places are still collapsed ruins.
Over the past few months, Mayor Chen Guodong has slowly gathered all the survivors here and built some stone houses using the materials that can still be used in the ruins.
Now more than a hundred people live in these stone houses.
The stone room of Chen Da and his son and Meng Yi was right next to the room of Lei Mu and his son and Lin Xiao. Each of these small stone rooms could accommodate up to four people.
Now their two families are considered to be the luckier ones among the survivors.
Many people, even if they survived the tsunami, became lonely. There were almost no people like Chen Da and his son and Lei Mu and his son who had relatives.
Speaking of Chen Da and Chen Li, father and son, they met on the third day after Chen Guodong returned to Lingcheng by helicopter.
At that time, Chen Guodong brought his assistant Xiao Liu and four patrolmen to the Lanshan base, including Chen Li and Meng Yi.
They came to the government office building at the Arashiyama base to check the basement.
If you are lucky enough, the basement under the government office building may still be there. Chen Guodong remembers that there are still a lot of compressed biscuits and mineral water in it.
When they left the inland town, they did not bring much food with them, because the town was suffering from drought and many families in the villages below had not harvested for most of the past six months.
Before leaving, Chen Guodong only asked the inland mayor for some rice and seeds of vegetables and fruits. He couldn't ask for anything else, so the mayor forced them to take some dry food and water with them on the way.
Unexpectedly, the food they brought was consumed by a dozen people in just two days.
So on the third day after Chen Guodong and his party arrived in Lingcheng, they hurried to Lanshan with a few patrolmen.
As soon as they arrived at the former Arashiyama base, they saw several ragged figures in the ruins.
Chen Da, Lei Mu, Lei Wenbin and Lin Xiao were also looking for the compressed biscuits at the base. Ever since they first found mineral water and compressed biscuits in the flooded basement, they often came down the mountain to look for them.
Although most of the time their work was in vain, they could occasionally find some edible compressed biscuits.
Because the basement is very large, there are some places that Chen Da and his friends can't get into at all.
There was an iron door in those places. They used the steel bars from the ruins to knock on the door many times, but the door didn't move at all and could not be opened.
Lin Xiao even joked that there must be a lot of gold hidden inside, otherwise why would it be like a vault.
When Chen Guodong met Chen Da and the others, the four of them had messy hair and their clothes were dirty and torn.
Chen Da looked much thinner than before, but Chen Li and Meng Yi still recognized him at a glance.
They didn't recognize Lei Mu and his son and Lin Xiao, but they felt that these people were a little familiar.
After all, the four of them have changed a lot in the past two months. The days of hunger and fullness have made them look pale and thin, and they have lost a lot of weight.
Later, under the leadership of Chen Guodong, they found compressed biscuits and mineral water in several rooms in the basement.
As the mayor, Chen Guodong had the keys to those doors, so opening them was a piece of cake.
The entire basement, except for the place where the door was opened, was flooded by sea water, and only a little water seeped into the secret rooms inside.
Although materials were limited at the time and the houses at the Arashiyama base were built like shoddy projects, the basement was made of good materials because it was where important equipment was stored.
Fortunately, they were willing to use good materials, otherwise so many people would have to starve. But it was almost summer, and they probably wouldn't even be able to drink the northwest wind.
Chen Da and four others followed Mayor Chen Guodong and his entourage, carrying the compressed biscuits and mineral water they had just found, and slowly walked down the mountain.
There are only about 20 of them together.
Chen Guodong led them to build stone houses. In addition, the land flooded by the tsunami had high salt content and it would be difficult to grow vegetables and fruits in a short period of time.
In order to avoid spending all the money, Chen Guodong asked several helicopter pilots to fly inland and bring back a lot of soil while the planes still had fuel.
Everyone used the broken bricks they picked up to pave several square ground surfaces, and poured the soil brought in from outside on top to make it look like normal land.
At first they planted potatoes, because potatoes are easy to grow and can be eaten as a staple food after successful planting.
In the following months, some survivors returned one after another.
Whenever they heard Xiao Liu shouting through the loudspeaker in the stone room where Chen Guodong worked that new members had joined, Chen Da and others would run over to see with great anticipation, but they always returned disappointed.
They don’t know whether Lu Mei, Shi Huan, and Lei Mu’s family, Lin Xiao’s younger brothers are still alive?
If they are still alive, where are they?
No one dared to think in the direction of death. As long as they didn't see the corpse, Chen Da and Lei Mu would assume that their family members were still alive somewhere else.
…
Time slowly came to October and the weather gradually became colder.
Some of the stone houses they built had large gaps and air would leak in in the middle of the night.
On a sunny day, Chen Li and Meng Yi were leading everyone to paste mud on their houses.
They are now the leaders of a patrol team consisting of 20 people, with Meng Yi as the captain and Chen Li as the deputy captain.
They grew a lot during this tsunami disaster. Not only did they lead people to bring spring water from Arashiyama to Lingcheng city, they also led everyone to actively reclaim wasteland and plant crops.
It has been almost eight months since the tsunami, and a lot of land can be used for planting.
The more than 100 residents who survived in Lingcheng lived in stone houses and ate potatoes and corn. Due to the land conditions, rice had just been planted and was not yet ready for harvest.
There is a shortage of fabrics for clothes. Many people only have one or two pieces of clothing, and they are already torn and tattered. Winter is coming soon, and people will freeze to death without clothes to wear.
This is what Chen Guodong is most worried about at the moment. Even if he asks people to plant cotton right now, it will not be able to survive the winter.
"Alas! It seems that we can only ask everyone to store more food and firewood, and try not to go out in winter."
Chen Guodong sighed and talked to himself.
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