Si Nan was stunned for a moment, and immediately took out a thermometer from the space, placed it outside the window for a while, and brought it back. The display showed minus five degrees.
Not only that, the temperature displayed on the thermometer was rising rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Sinan looked out the window and saw a fiery red sun suddenly appearing from the clouds that had been gloomy for nearly a year and a half.
The red light illuminates the snow-white earth, and the scorching temperature quickly melts the ice and snow on the windows, walls, and roofs.
The melted ice water went from dripping to flowing down like heavy rain, and the world of ice and snow soon turned into an ocean of deep and shallow water.
It was August of the fourth year of the apocalypse, one of the hottest times of the year. Si Nan looked at the rapidly melting ice and snow in the yard and felt what it meant to enter summer in a second.
She felt a layer of sweat on her back and her cheeks turned red. She quickly took off the quilt wrapped around her body and took off her thick clothes one by one.
"It's so hot." When Si Nan took off all her thick clothes and was left with only a thin warm coat, the clothes were already wet with her sweat and the thermometer showed 20°.
It only took ten minutes for the temperature to rise back to 20°, and it was still rising. It was indeed a doomsday disaster climate, so weird and shocking.
Cheng Suming turned off the air conditioner generator in the room, quickly took off his clothes, and pulled Si Nan downstairs: "Let's boil some water and take a bath."
The temperature was so cold that they were shivering even with thick clothes and quilts wrapped around them, let alone taking a shower.
They hadn't taken a shower for nearly a month, and the sudden rise in temperature made them sweat profusely, the smell was enough to kill a person.
"Can I take a shower later?" Si Nan struggled: "I want to go out and see my aunt and uncle to see if they have frostbite."
"Shower first." Cheng Suming insisted, "Under the extremely cold weather, the snow on the roads outside has not been cleared, and the snow and ice have piled up higher than the floors of the houses. The sudden rise in temperature has caused a lot of melting of the snow and ice. It is not safe to go out now. We can easily be hit and injured by the melting and collapsing ice. Let's take a shower first, and then go out after that."
Si Nan had no choice but to follow him into the bathroom to take a shower.
Other people in the base also felt the rising temperature. They opened their windows and doors and saw the sun outside. They exclaimed, "Oh my God! The sun is out!"
"I was wondering why it was so hot. I thought I was just freezing and had an illusion of being hot, but it turns out it wasn't an illusion!"
"Great, the sun is out! I haven't been in the sun for almost a year and a half. I've almost forgotten what it feels like."
"Oh my god, it's so hot! What's the temperature now?"
"It's 30 degrees."
"What?! It's already reached 30 degrees in less than half an hour. What a horrible weather. Is it going to go back to the extremely hot weather four years ago?"
"Who knows? Take off your clothes quickly. I'm dying of heat."
The Shishan military also discovered the temperature rise at the first time. The military and government immediately dispatched a large number of soldiers and staff, holding loudspeakers, and wandering the streets and alleys to remind the survivors: "Everyone, pay attention, the temperature has risen! The ice and snow outside are melting. Everyone should try not to go out before the ice and snow melt, so as not to fall into the broken ice layer or be hit by the large amount of melted ice!"
When the surviving survivors received the news, most were happy, but quite a few were sad.
Many people's family members and relatives could not survive the severe cold and froze to death in the ice and snow at home or outside. If they want to collect the bodies of their relatives and friends, they have to wait until the ice and snow melt.
Cheng Wei heard a lot of noise outside and woke up from Yang Wentao's arms. She rubbed her eyes dazedly and asked, "What's going on outside? Why is it so noisy?"
Yang Wentao spent the whole night cleaning the ice on the doors and windows last night. He fell asleep at dawn this morning. He was awakened by Cheng Wei and found himself sweating all over. His cheeks were as red as cooked shrimps. He was so scared that he quickly looked outside and soon understood what was going on. He called Cheng Wei: "The temperature has risen. Take off your thick clothes quickly to avoid heatstroke."
"Is the severe cold over?" Cheng Wei cheered as she took off her clothes and looked at the ice that was melting quickly. "That's great! The temperature has finally risen! I finally don't have to wear those extremely thick clothes and move around like a clumsy bear! I can wear a pretty dress and put on some nice makeup and go out to play!"
Yang Wentao looked at her lovingly: "Where do you want to go?"
Cheng Wei frowned and thought for a while: "If possible, I want to go out of the base to travel. In the past few years, we have been fleeing from various natural disasters. It feels like there is no rest. I want to go out to travel in the mountains, play in the water, eat some delicious food, and have some fun..."
Next door, at the Sheng family, Mother Sheng was the first to notice the temperature rising, and hurriedly woke up Sheng Youqing and her brother, "Get up, don't sleep any more."
Sheng Youqing and her brother got up, felt the scorching heat, and took off their clothes.
Compared to when everyone was cheering that the atmosphere had finally heated up, Sheng Youbin was more concerned about his work: "I wonder if the hospital will be open today?"
When Cheng Suming was a full-time doctor, Sheng Youbin was his assistant. With his care, the job became quite easy.
Now Cheng Suming is just a nominal doctor. Although Sheng Youbin is still his medical assistant, without his care, his workload is half more than before, but he cannot complain.
He used Cheng Suming's backdoor to do the medical work that everyone wants to do, with good salary and benefits.
In order not to lose this job, he had been getting up early and working late for the past six months, working extra hard, for fear that if he did not do well enough, the hospital would find a reason to fire him.
Sheng Youqing was also troubled by this. She had been in the hospital for more than three months. There had always been someone who wanted to replace her vacant patrol team member position, but Yang Wentao suppressed it and the patrol position was kept for her.
After she returned to the patrol team, she worked even harder than before, just to shut up those who gossiped about her.
Sheng Youqing took off her thick clothes, put on a short-sleeved shirt, and pulled out a pair of gray sandals that she hadn't worn for almost two years and put them on her feet: "Mom, I'm going out. I'm going to see if the patrol team has any work for us to do."
Mother Sheng poked her head out from the kitchen: "Hey, eat something before you go out."
Sheng Youqing hurried out: "No more eating. I'll talk to you when I come back."
Seeing that the temperature had risen, Liu Dalin's family and Si Yufang's family took off their clothes at home, boiled water, and planned to take a good bath together.
Zheng Hao's eldest son Zhuangzhuang, Zheng Jian's daughter, Liu Ming's daughter next door, and Liu Yue's two children saw that the ice and snow outside were melting, and the five little ones took advantage of the adults not paying attention and slipped out to play together.
When Si Yufang heard her little granddaughter's cry, she found her eldest grandson Zhuangzhuang running back and crying, "Grandma, my sister is buried in the ice cave! Sister Xingxing next door was hit by ice and is bleeding a lot!"
"What?!" Si Yufang and the others were so shocked that they dropped what they were doing and asked Zhuangzhuang what was going on.
Zhuangzhuang said that five of them went out to play together and saw several holes melted under the ice and snow outside that were taller than the house. They thought it was fun and drilled into the holes not long after. The ice on top melted too quickly and the front and back holes were blocked. The daughter of Liu Yue next door was hit on the head by the melted ice and fainted. Zhuangzhuang saw that the situation was not good, so he struggled to get out of the hole and went home to ask for help.
Mao Pingzhen and her daughter were also surprised to hear Zhuangzhuang's words. Liu Ming scolded him, "Zhuangzhuang's mother, how do you discipline Zhuangzhuang? Why do you always let him lead my Xingxing astray and do those dangerous things?"
"I'm sorry, Xingxing's mom. This is my fault. Let's go save people first." Zheng Hao's wife apologized to Liu Ming in a low voice. She turned around and grabbed Zhuangzhuang's arm in anger and slapped him hard on the buttocks twice. "You bastard, why don't you make me worry at all!"
"Mom, it wasn't me!" Zhuangzhuang covered his sore butt and cried loudly, "It was Sister Xingxing who asked my sister and I to play in the cave. She was standing outside with Niu Niu and the others, and used snow to block the hole my sister and I went in. As a result, she was hit on the head by an ice cube, and my sister was frozen in the cave."
Zheng Hao's wife was stunned and didn't know what to say.
Zhuangzhuang is a boy who has always been very naughty. He always does things that make people angry. Whenever something happens when the five children are together, she always subconsciously thinks that Zhuangzhuang is the leader.
Now she had wrongly blamed Zhuangzhuang. She stammered twice and was about to admit her mistake to Zhuangzhuang when she heard Liu Ming say in a sarcastic tone, "We Xingxing are girls. We are usually well-behaved and obedient, unlike some people who are naughty all day long and do all kinds of bad things, and then blame us Xingxing for all the bad things."
Zheng Hao's wife's face turned cold: "No matter how naughty my Zhuangzhuang is, he knows the seriousness of the matter. He is not as cruel as some people's children. They actually let our child crawl into the hole while they blocked the hole outside. The child is almost ten years old. Don't they know that blocking the hole will cost someone's life?! From now on, our two families will live separately. I dare not help you take care of the child anymore. You should take care of your precious child by yourselves!"
"Who do you think you care about?" Liu Ming rolled his eyes. "My family usually gives you food so that you can help my sister and me take care of our children. But you are so good. Your two children are fat while my three children are so skinny. You even cut down on the food for your children. Aren't you afraid of being struck by lightning?"
"Mr. Liu, please speak with conscience! When have I ever treated your children badly? They eat what my children eat. They eat more than my two children. It's none of my business if your children can't gain weight! I treat them like my own children. I wash their clothes and pants that have feces and urine on them, teach them to read and write, and remember to give them the delicious food. You say these words that hurt my heart, aren't you afraid of being struck by lightning?"
Seeing that the two were about to quarrel, Liu Dalin yelled: "What are you quarreling about? We are all relatives. Save the child first!"
By the time Si Nan finished her shower and walked to the end of the alley wearing a refreshing white halter dress and beach sandals, the two families had already rescued the children and were preparing to send Xingxing to the hospital.
Zheng Hao's wife sat in the living room crying in grievance. She felt that she had done her best to raise the child. It was clearly the Liu family's child's own mistake, but someone had to blame her son. She felt very uncomfortable.
Liu Ming firmly believed that his daughter would not lie. Her words implied that Zheng Hao's wife did not take good care of her son, which led to this incident.
Si Nan understood the whole story and said objectively, "Sister-in-law, don't feel wronged yet. When Xingxing wakes up, ask her what happened and the truth will be revealed. Cousin, don't make a fuss either. You know what kind of person you are. Children are a blank sheet of paper. They will become like adults. When children wake up, they will know what is right and wrong."
Liu Ming was unhappy: "What do you mean? Are you saying that my Xingxing is imitating me and doing this on purpose?"
Si Nan raised his eyebrows: "I never said that."
Everyone went to the hospital to take Xingxing to see a doctor. After about an hour, she woke up. There were several stitches on her head and it was bandaged with gauze. It was Cheng Suming who sewed it.
Cheng Suming took off his gloves and said, "It's nothing serious. After a period of rest, he will be back to normal."
"Will it leave scars?" Liu Ming asked worriedly.
"It's a matter of personal constitution. Some people will keep the wound, and some won't." Cheng Suming sat down on the office chair in the clinic. "Her wound is on her scalp. Even if there is a scar, her hair will cover it. It won't be a big problem."
Then it was time to reveal the truth. Xingxing was hesitant to speak, so Sinan took out a beautiful butterfly hairpin and handed it to Xingxing: "I believe Xingxing didn't do it on purpose, right? If you tell the truth and be an honest child, I will give this butterfly hairpin to you. If you lie, I will give it to someone else."
Ten-year-old girls are at the age when they love beauty. Hairpins were very common before the apocalypse, but became rare after the apocalypse.
Xingxing has always wanted a beautiful hairpin to dress herself up beautifully. When she saw the hairpin in Sinan's hand, she told the truth, "I didn't take Dazhuang and the others out to drill a hole on purpose. I was just curious about how long it would take for a person to become an ice sculpture like those frozen dead people outside after drilling into an ice cave..."
Before she could finish her words, Liu Ming blocked her mouth.
Even if she didn't mean it, the fact that she had that kind of thought was enough to scare people.
Seeing that the Zheng family had something to say, Si Nan said fairly: "Children are very curious, and it is normal for them to do things that we adults think are irrational. People who can survive to this day, let alone children, are adults, and their psychology has become more or less distorted and has problems. Liu Ming, Xingxing is your daughter, and you should be responsible for her education. Don't always rely on others. If you don't want Xingxing to go astray, you should be more careful yourself."
These words silenced both the Liu and Zheng families.
Yes, in the context of natural disasters and doomsday, people have seen too many deaths from natural disasters, and people’s hearts have become dark. Even adults have become weird and cold, not to mention the unstable minds of children.
Just as Sinan said, children are like a blank sheet of paper. The society they live in, the people they meet, and the education they receive will all become paintbrushes, writing and painting on them, turning them into unexpected people.
Most children will become cheerful and colorful, but a few will become dark and black and white. If you don't want your children to lose their nature in a distorted social environment, you can only strengthen your children's education.
The temperature rose today. In less than half a day, the thick and high ice and snow on the road melted quickly, revealing the pale bodies of people who had frozen to death in the open air.
The streets and alleys were filled with icy water that was waist-deep. Corpses were floating in the streets and alleys with the current. The entire base looked like it was surrounded by mountains of corpses, which was extremely horrifying.
Many people closed their doors and covered their children's eyes, not daring to look at those horrific scenes.
Sinan had foresight. When the water just reached his calves, he put on his rain boots and followed the Liu and Zheng families back home.
In order to prevent the sewage soaked with corpse bacteria from flowing into the house, she stood at the gate of the yard with a large iron shovel and shoveled all the sewage flowing into the yard into the sewer, and she spent the whole afternoon shoveling.
During this period, the government dispatched a large number of cleaners, armed with shovels, carts, brooms and other tools, to sweep the water into the sewers.
The sewer was blocked and could not bear the amount of water, so the water was shoveled into carts, which were then pushed into streams and rivers and poured into the waterways.
Military and government workers were moving around, picking up the floating bodies one by one, loading them into large military trucks, and then hauling them outside the base for burning.
When the water level was cleared to a level where people could walk, the survivors who had lost their relatives and friends began to look for them everywhere.
One body after another was carried out from houses, greenhouses, agricultural greenhouses and other places, collected by vehicles sent by the military, and towed away from the base for burning.
The sky was filled with black smoke from burning corpses and people's cries of grief were heard one after another. In this severe cold disaster, nearly 500,000 people died at the Stone Mountain Base, and the number of survivors was getting fewer and fewer.
When Cheng Suming got home from get off work, it was already dark.
The hospital opened today to treat many frostbitten patients. The medical staff were too busy to handle the situation, so they asked Cheng Suming to take over.
Cheng Suming was unable to convince the dean, so he went to see patients for a whole day and hurried home as soon as he got off work.
Si Nan calculated his time to get off work, prepared meals in advance, and waited for him to come home at the gate of the courtyard with Dahei and Dabai as bodyguards.
"Su Ming, you're back. How was your work today? Are you busy?"
"It's OK. Not many people need surgery. Most of them are for frostbite. They just need some medicine."
Si Nan had placed a small carpet at the entrance of the courtyard. Cheng Su Ming consciously stepped on the carpet and saw that the courtyard was cleaned without any ice water. He reached out and touched Si Nan's head, "You have finished all the work again. Didn't you say you would wait for me to come back and sweep the floor?"
"I was idle at home and had nothing to do. If I didn't clean up the ice water, the bacteria from the road outside would flow in and it would be easy to get infected and sick."
Si Nan locked the courtyard gate, took Cheng Su Ming's hand and walked into the living room. Dahei wagged his tail enthusiastically, and Dabai and his wife spread their wings and followed them in.
The food was already on the table, including light steamed pork ribs with soy sauce, Chinese cabbage and dumpling soup, strong-flavored stir-fried shredded pork with extra spicy peppers, and stir-fried green beans. The portions were just right, enough for two people.
Cheng Suming washed his hands, sat at the table, ate every dish Si Nan cooked, and praised: "Your cooking skills are getting better and better. The food in the hospital cafeteria today is really hard to swallow. It's just a cold steamed bun and a bowl of mung bean porridge that is so thin that you can see the rice. I'm so hungry that my eyes are dizzy. Every dish you cook is very suitable for my taste. I want to eat more tonight."
"Really?" Si Nan raised his eyebrows and deliberately put a piece of erjingtiao with chili pepper and chopped green and white pepper into his bowl with his chopsticks, "If you like the food I cook, then eat more."
Cheng Suming paused for a moment, silently picked up the chili shreds with chopsticks and put them into his mouth. Not surprisingly, it was spicy and he started coughing. His handsome face with cold white complexion turned red from the spiciness.
Si Nan poured him a glass of ice water and handed it to him, "Why force yourself to eat spicy food if you can't eat it? Can't you refuse the food I pick for you and tell me, 'Anan, I can't eat anything too spicy'?"
After Cheng Suming finished drinking a glass of water, he felt that the spicy taste in his mouth had faded a lot. He then looked at Si Nan with gentle eyes and said, "I can never refuse anything you give me..."
Just when Si Nan thought he was going to say something affectionate, he coughed and said, "Next time, could you please not give me such spicy food?"
Si Nan chuckled, feeling a little guilty, "Got it, I'll make you something lighter next time. I eat heavy food myself, okay?"
After dinner, the two washed the dishes, and in tacit understanding, they turned around and took out various alcohols, disinfectants, air fresheners, insecticides and other chemicals, and disinfected the house inside and out, from top to bottom, to prevent bacterial infection.
Before going to bed at night, Si Nan specifically asked Cheng Su Ming to pull down the screens on all the windows.
As the temperature rises and it is summer again, all kinds of tenacious mosquitoes, cockroaches, insects and rodents will multiply and feed in large numbers, causing the spread of various bacteria, so we must take precautions.
Si Nan’s guess was correct. In the following month, people were surprised to find that snakes, insects, rats and ants that had disappeared for a long time appeared in large numbers in people’s sight.
During the day, there are dense swarms of unknown small insects flying around in the air. They look harmless, but if you are infected by them, you will feel dizzy and weak all over.
At night, there are all kinds of mosquitoes that take advantage of every opportunity to suck blood from people. Many people are bitten all over and get dengue fever, with symptoms such as fever, body pain, rash, bleeding, shock, fainting, etc.
The rats, which reproduce very quickly, burrow into holes day and night, stealing food stored in people's homes and various crops grown in agricultural parks. Even larger rats go to poultry and livestock breeding areas to eat chickens and ducklings, causing a variety of bacterial infections.
There are still more than three million survivors in the Shishan base, and nearly half of them have been infected by germs carried by mosquitoes and rats and have been sent to Shishan Hospital for treatment.
Shishan Hospital was overcrowded, with the sounds of people coughing and groaning in pain constantly heard, and the medical staff inside were overwhelmed with the workload.
Because these diseases are contagious, the Shishan government and the Shishan military have taken a two-pronged approach to control the disease. On the one hand, they have organized personnel to carry out pest and rodent extermination operations throughout the base.
On the one hand, all the sick patients were sealed in the hospital and a high iron wall was welded outside the hospital, not allowing them to leave without permission. They had to wait for the military to produce the missing medicines so that they could receive treatment.
The Shishan Hospital, which is less than a thousand square meters, is crammed with millions of patients. Food and accommodation are a problem, not to mention that so many people are crowded together, causing cross infection. What kind of life do the people inside have?
This was not the worst. People outside discovered that the water in the Shishan stream was getting less and less. One day, the flow of the stream stopped completely, and the canal dried up, leaving only the riverbed.
People were horrified to find that since the severe cold weather and the temperature rising, the sun has been out every day for the past month, and the temperature has remained between 30° and 38°. Compared with the high temperatures four years ago, the current temperature is considered normal in previous summers.
But from the day the temperature returned to normal until now, not a drop of rain has fallen. After the rivers dried up, the land on the ground also dried up and cracked. The crops gradually dried up due to lack of water, and people had a bad idea in their minds.
Could it be that, as some people said on the Shishan website forum, the natural disasters that have already occurred will rebound and we will experience them again?
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