The sun was shining brightly, the light was scorching, and the streets in the central area, which used to be bustling with cars and people, were now empty, except for the reporter standing in front of the camera, with big beads of sweat dripping from his forehead, drinking Huoxiang Zhengqi water while reporting with difficulty on the current situation in Xingcheng.
The entire Xingcheng was so quiet that it seemed like a dead city.
Si Nan sat in the dim living room blocked by layers of temperature-proof curtains, cracking a bag of spiced melon seeds in his hand, staring at the local news on TV without blinking.
There are two computers next to the TV, which are downloading various books, materials, movies, TV series, songs and variety shows. All the sockets in the living room are plugged in with power banks for charging.
She has not left the house for half a month since she returned home from suffering from heat stroke. Now it has been the third month that the high temperature has continued, and the daytime temperature has been as high as 55 degrees for a week.
A reporter from the TV station was wearing a pair of rubber slippers. When one of his feet stepped on the scorching hot road, the sole of the slipper melted and stuck to the ground at a speed visible to the naked eye, which caused the reporter to exclaim. They called on everyone not to go out during the day, and to stay in cool and ventilated underground tunnels, summer shelters or homes as much as possible. If they have something to do, try to go out early in the morning and at night to cool down, so as to avoid heatstroke.
The scene changed and a TV host reported that due to the continued high temperatures abroad, various high temperature disasters occurred in many countries.
For example, due to extremely high temperatures in many European countries, many people have died. The corpses have rotted and piled up into mountains, attracting countless flies and mosquitoes to bite them, but no one is willing to deal with them.
Due to wildfires in many places, there was a lack of sufficient water to extinguish them, and the fires continued to expand and spread, resulting in horrific scenes of towns in many countries being engulfed by wildfires.
In addition, the rivers in the United States have dried up, revealing a large number of prehistoric dinosaur footprints and corpses of unknown ancient viruses. The people cannot afford the continuously rising electricity bills, resulting in large-scale power outages. They gather in various government departments in the United States and continue to clash with local government departments and the military. They claim to overthrow local government departments and choose their own organizations to fight, just to have electricity.
As for the hottest countries in the world and Africa, the former chooses to gather together to pray to God. They smear cow dung on their bodies in a dried-up sacred river and pray every day to the gods for rain to resolve the disaster. Then, they ignore the daytime sunburn and the scorching heat that will kill people when they go out, and just work as they should, in the so-called walking with God.
The latter simply choose to lie down. Most people find a cool place to lie down or sit. When they are hungry or thirsty, they look for food and water at night.
If you can find it, you are lucky. If you can't find it, you don't force it. If you are really hungry, you will eat whatever you can catch, including the corpses of people who died of heat, disease, starvation and thirst...
A famous nuclear power plant on an island country has cracked its pipelines because its high-temperature reactor cannot be cooled properly, and is dumping radioactive fuel into the nearby sea...
These news were originally blocked by the country two months ago, but since some time ago, the news began to report a series of disasters caused by continued high temperatures around the world, and web forums no longer deleted people’s comments. After the initial panic, people got used to it in a short period of time and quickly accepted the current situation.
Apart from some illegal and criminal incidents that continue to occur and are suppressed by the powerful means of the state apparatus and constantly appear in the news to warn the world, the people of country Z can always get by no matter how difficult their lives are.
This is probably the effect of boiling a frog in warm water. When something may come true and will bring great panic and unrest to the society, the country will take action at the first time to block the source of information, but not completely. Some information will always be leaked, sending people a signal that seems true or false in extreme climates.
When something comes true and becomes uncontrollable, when the original news is revealed again at this time, people have already become numb and their ability to accept things is much stronger than before. If the country wants to do something at this time, no one will react excessively.
It has to be said that the decision-making ability and vision of the leaders of country Z are stronger than those of leaders of other countries. When most countries in the world are in panic, violence and chaos, country Z is still under the scope of national control.
Although crimes are increasing day by day, at least the vast majority of the situations can be controlled, which is enough for a country with a large population of more than one billion.
Si Nan watched the news for a while, but felt that there was nothing interesting to watch. She wanted to watch other TV stations, so she took the remote control to change channels, but there were only a few local stations and the National Central Station. The other TV stations were either shut down or had blocked their signals, and there were no entertaining TV dramas to watch. She lost interest after taking a look, so she turned off the TV and got up to see Cheng Su Ming busy in the kitchen.
Since she came back from the hospital with heat stroke, in order to avoid the kitchen temperature being too high when she was cooking without air conditioning, Cheng Suming had been cooking for the past half month. Occasionally, when he didn't want to cook, the two of them would eat the various dishes packed in advance in the space.
Tonight Cheng Suming asked her what she wanted to eat. She felt that the food she had eaten recently was a bit bland, so she casually said that she wanted to eat hot pot skewers. Cheng Suming then got busy.
He washed and cut the tripe, lasagna, liver, pig intestines, yellow throat, duck intestines, fatty beef, tenderloin, beef and other meat dishes that she took out of the space, and strung them into skewers. He also strung the vegetarian dishes, such as cauliflower, leek, enoki mushroom, oyster mushroom, shiitake mushroom, fungus, lettuce, water spinach, cabbage and other vegetables on the prepared bamboo sticks.
Vegetables such as leeks, lettuce, water spinach, and Chinese cabbage are all planted by Sinan on the balcony. The growth cycle of these vegetables is very short. For example, in the hot summer, Chinese cabbage can grow to seven or eight centimeters in height in a month, and can be rolled into a core to the size of half a palm and then eaten.
The growth cycle of lettuce and water spinach is about one and a half months, while that of leek is even shorter, and it only takes twenty days to grow to 17-20 cm and reach harvestable size.
The last three types of vegetables are those that can continue to grow after being harvested with their roots left. However, due to the problem of seeds, it is difficult for Chinese cabbage to survive with its roots left, so it can only be pulled up and then planted again.
Cheng Suming has been performing surgery for many years. Not only is he adept at using a scalpel, he is also skilled at using a kitchen knife for cutting vegetables. Without even noticing what he is doing, he cuts the duck livers into the beautiful flowery livers that are professional in hot pot restaurants, and cuts the pork loin slices into palm-sized slices that are less than two millimeters wide and as thin as paper. The beef is also cut against the grain into slices of moderate size, and he adds egg whites from local chicken eggs raised on his balcony, pure sweet potato starch, and chopped green and red fresh chili peppers grown on the balcony, and a little water to mix them all together, then puts them on bamboo skewers.
He looked at Cheng Suming for a long time in front of the Sinan-style kitchen, washed his hands and helped to string the cut vegetables with bamboo sticks, and exclaimed: "I used to cook, although the taste was okay, but I don't have much patience and I don't have so many particulars. As long as it tastes good and fills me up, I've never had the energy to cut the loin slices so thin, cut the beef into squares like tofu cubes, and even cut the liver into the same size, like blooming cockscombs... Arranging it on the plate is like a work of art, it's simply a blessing for people with obsessive-comic disorder, I can't bear to pick it up and string it. Why don't we just pick it up from the plate and put it in the pot to blanch it?"
"It's fine as long as you say it's okay." Cheng Suming saw her skewering vegetables seriously with her head down, a helpless and doting smile on his handsome face. He put the patterned plates in his hands on the workbench, washed his slender fingers stained with blood at the sink, and turned to watch her work.
Si Nan's appearance is not that of a stunning beauty that would strike anyone as stunning at first sight. Her facial features are more like the gentle and beautiful appearance of a southern girl, with long willow-shaped eyebrows, lively almond eyes, a high nose, and small lips. When she smiles, she purses her pink lips, giving people a cold feeling of smiling without showing her teeth.
Because the weather was hot, she wore a lavender knee-length halter dress, revealing her long legs and delicate collarbones. She tied her hair into a loose ponytail, looking beautiful and casual like a stay-at-home girl. She was the type who looked easy to bully.
Cheng Suming lowered his eyes and suppressed the desire to hold her in his arms and hug her.
This girl looks weak and easy to bully, but she is actually a ruthless person.
During the past three months, except for the few days when she felt uncomfortable due to heat stroke, she practiced various fighting and self-defense techniques with him almost every day, and also did various physical exercises.
In order to make herself stronger and have enough ability to deal with strong men, she made four ten-pound sandbags and tied them to her arms and thighs. She took them with her for training and running every day, and every now and then she would carry a fifty-pound package for weighted long-distance running.
After three months, her seemingly slender arms had developed two large bulging muscles, the muscle lines on her chest and back became firm and clear, and her abs were as good as those of anyone who had done long-term physical training.
In order not to lose to others in actual combat, she often asked him to take action. The two of them conducted actual combat drills. Many times, in order not to hurt her, he would let her go. As a result, this woman would take the opportunity to counterattack. Once, he hit her too hard and made his nose bleed.
Cheng Suming recalled the day when Si Nan accidentally hit him, and she was like a young wife who had done something wrong, submissively helping him run the bath water, washing his clothes, cooking for him, and massaging his back and legs. He actually had a perverted idea in his mind. If she hit him again, he wondered if he could pretend to be weak and sleep with her in bed...
The two have been married for three months and have been sleeping separately on two sofas in the living room. Although Cheng Wei and her boyfriend moved next door half a month ago, they come to their house every day to eat and use the air conditioning. In order to avoid being exposed, the two basically stick together during the day, giving people the illusion that the couple is in love and inseparable.
But at night, the two of them would sleep separately. Sometimes he wanted to sneak up on her, but the two geese kept on the balcony were so alert at night that if they saw someone walking around in the living room, the gander would immediately shout in a shrill voice: "It's your turn!"
Si Nan would wake up at this moment and ask him in confusion what he was doing. Of course he would make an excuse to go to the bathroom.
Later he discovered that before going to bed every day, Si Nan would open a hole in the heat-insulating curtain that covered the chicken coop near the living room, just to let the gander see the situation in the living room clearly and be alert at all times. The purpose was either to prevent thieves or to prevent him.
The author has something to say:
Fun fact: Most meats are more tender if cut against the grain.
Male geese are extremely alert, comparable to dogs. They will wake up at the slightest disturbance, and when they are emotionally excited, they will make a high-pitched anthropomorphic sound: "Oops!" to remind their peers. When there is nothing to do or when they are in a very good mood, they will make "Ah..." or other sounds.
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