Chapter 2 Floods
Xia Xiaoman's home is in a remote mountain village in Yunhai City.
Her parents favored boys over girls, so after she finished junior high school, they asked her to drop out of school and work to support her younger brother.
But her family was not poor and could fully afford her high school tuition.
Xia Xiaoman was raised by his grandfather and learned his temperament completely from his grandfather. He could not learn to be submissive since he was a child.
After her grandfather passed away, she was taken back to her parents' home.
Every time her parents beat her, she would beat her brother. As long as her parents didn't beat her to death, she would definitely give the beating to her brother.
Xia Xiaoman was very strong and always beat her brother Xia Haoming half to death.
After beating her a few times, her parents became afraid and stopped beating her.
That time her parents hid her household registration booklet and refused to enroll her in high school.
Xia Xiaoman simply tied up Xia Haoming and hid him. She only told them Xia Haoming's whereabouts after her parents registered her for high school.
After the college entrance examination, she turned 18. Her parents got into trouble again and wanted to marry her to an old widower.
Xia Xiaoman blocked all the doors and windows of the house late at night and set fire to it.
The parents were awakened by the thick smoke. When they opened their eyes, they saw Xia Xiaoman holding a torch and staring at them sinisterly.
The parents were scared to death. In order to save their lives, they finally agreed to let Xia Xiaoman live independently and not interfere with her marriage and childbirth.
Xia Xiaoman got the newly issued household registration, took his ID card and left the small mountain village, and never returned since then.
The city where she went to college was the floating city.
After arriving in Fucheng, she worked while studying.
In order to work, she rented a two-bedroom apartment in Jiangshan Flower City. The room next door was originally rented by someone, but later the owner got rich and rented a large flat near the subway station. She was too lazy to move, so she simply rented the room next door as well, and lived more comfortably by herself.
Jiangshan Huacheng is an older residential complex, with the highest floor being 8, and all of them are walk-up apartments. The terrain is also not good, with an extremely long slope at the entrance of the community.
I heard that two elderly people in the community fell down this slope and died soon after. So some people said that the feng shui of this community is not good.
But the good thing is that the rent in this community is cheap, a two-bedroom apartment only costs 800 yuan a month.
After returning home, Xia Xiaoman took a shower, changed into dry clothes, and sat on the bed to check messages on his mobile phone.
She doesn't have many friends. It's not that she doesn't want to make friends, but she doesn't have the time.
Before college, she spent a lot of time studying every day, and when she got home, she would have endless housework to do.
After college, she had to study and work part-time at the same time. She had almost no time to rest, let alone make friends.
The messages flashing on the phone were all from my part-time boss, saying that floods were raging and the shop was submerged, so I didn't need to go to work tomorrow and the specific working hours were to be determined.
Xia Xiaoman replied to the messages one by one, and at the same time spread out his right hand. The next second, a cream bun appeared out of thin air.
Xia Xiaoman lived with her grandfather until she was 12 years old. After her grandfather passed away, he left her a thumb-sized jade gourd.
Once when Xia Xiaoman went out to cut grass for pigs, he accidentally cut his hand. At the same time, the rope around his neck broke and the jade gourd fell to the ground.
When she reached out to pick up the jade gourd, blood dripped onto it, and it instantly emitted a dazzling light. When Xia Xiaoman opened her eyes again, there was an extra space on her body.
The space is infinite, it is pitch black, and time stands still. Whatever you put in is the same as when you take it out.
The only drawback is that it cannot hold living things.
During her two years in college, Xia Xiaoman worked in a bakery. Every night, she collected the expired bread that the store didn't want and threw it into the space.
The expiring bread in her space is now enough to open three bakeries.
Xia Xiaoman tore open the bag with her teeth and ate the bread while checking the news online.
This flood did not occur suddenly.
In the days before the flood, heavy rains had been falling in the floating city.
Today the flood suddenly backed up because the Nanxia City Dam upstream of Fucheng City had fallen into disrepair and the gates became loose and fell off. A large amount of flood water poured down from upstream, and in just a few hours, Fucheng City became a vast ocean.
The Internet is flooded with information about floods.
Xia Xiaoman keenly discovered that there seemed to be many places where floods broke out this year.
In their province alone, four cities have experienced floods, and as it stands, two of them will not be able to escape the fate of waterlogging.
Many other provinces and cities also suffered from urban flooding. A rough look showed that at least six areas had suffered floods.
Xia Xiaoman checked the weather forecast again. It was raining heavily in most parts of the south. The weather in the north was also abnormal. In June, there was continuous hail and snow.
Looking at the notification on her phone that there will be heavy rain tomorrow, Xia Xiaoman felt a little uneasy.
It was already dark outside, and the property management of the community sent a message in the group saying that due to the flood, the electrical box on the first floor was damaged and power was temporarily unavailable.
Xia Xiaoman lay on the bed, closing her eyes and counting the wealth she had accumulated over the past two years.
She had never had enough food since she was a child. After she earned a little money, what she bought most was not beautiful clothes and shoes, but various foods.
Xia Xiaoman’s biggest hobby is to go to the supermarket at night, buy some discounted food, or exchange snacks with supermarket points at a discounted price.
If she comes across some food with a very good discount, she will try to buy more, since she has the space and is not worried about the food expiring.
In her space, besides the more than 20,000 yuan in tuition fees, there is also the food she has stockpiled over the past two years.
Xia Xiaoman had no shortage of food, but she lacked medicine and some essential daily necessities.
If the flood cannot recede in the short term, she will have to find a way to get some daily necessities and medicines just in case.
"Ding-ling-ling..."
The phone rang, Xia Xiaoman turned on her phone, and a call came in from an unfamiliar number.
After pressing the answer button, a man's muddy voice came from the other side, "Hello, is this Xia Xiaoman?"
Xia Xiaoman frowned, "Who are you?"
"I'm Ye Wengang, are you Xia Xiaoman?"
Xia Xiaoman said, "Village Party Secretary, what's up?"
She still had some impression of this village party secretary. At that time, her parents did not allow her to go to high school. When she tied up Xia Haoming and threw him on the mountain, Ye Wengang came to her house to act as a peacemaker and persuaded her parents to let her go to school.
Later, when she went to college, Ye Wengang gave her two hundred yuan.
In order to repay the two hundred yuan, Xia Xiaoman left her contact information to Ye Wengang.
"Xiao Man, there's a flood in my home, and your parents' house is buried by mud sliding down from the mountain. Do you want to come back and take a look?"
Xia Xiaoman asked: "What about my parents? Are they buried too?"
"No, your parents were just going to town to pick up your brother, so you escaped."
"Oh, then let me know when they are buried!"
Ye Wengang sighed, "How can you be so cruel, little girl?"
"If I wasn't so cruel, I would be a mother of three kids now."
Ye Wengang is a peacemaker. He sympathizes with whoever he feels sorry for and cannot tell right from wrong.
Xia Xiaoman was too lazy to argue with him. Considering that he had once donated 200 yuan to her, she kindly reminded him to stock up more food and then hung up the phone.
The next morning, heavy rain continued and the water had already reached the second floor.
Xia Xiaoman turned on her cell phone to check the outside world's information. In just one night, she received more than a dozen text messages warning of heavy rain.
The network signal was a bit poor, and she waited for a long time before opening the news page. The top ten hot searches were all about natural disasters, seven of which were about heavy rain and floods in the south, one was about sudden hail in a city in the north, and two were about a celebrity donating money for natural disasters.
Xia Xiaoman felt even more uneasy when he saw that three or four cities upstream of Fucheng had experienced torrential rains and were already flooded.
Looking at the glaring "disaster" words on his phone, Xia Xiaoman took out a notebook and carefully checked the current natural disaster situations in various parts of the country and abroad.
It would have been better if she hadn't checked. The more she checked, the more frightened she became. In just three to five days, natural disasters of varying degrees occurred in various parts of the country and abroad.
Someone may have deliberately suppressed the news on the intranet, so we rarely see news about the frequent disasters in various places.
But on the Internet, videos and topics about natural disasters can be found everywhere. Many people are expressing various apocalyptic theories, saying that the frequent natural disasters are a warning from God to mankind and that the end of the world is coming.
Putting down her phone, Xia Xiaoman looked at the vast ocean outside with a heavy heart. After thinking for a long time, she changed her clothes and decided to go out to salvage supplies.
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