Extreme heat is followed by torrential rain, and only after the torrential rain comes true extreme cold, with temperatures plummeting overnight, and countless people dying in their sleep.
Everyone has food, but they lack the tools to cook it. Fortunately, the community is located halfway up a mountain, with vegetation everywhere, so they can at least cook the rice properly.
As for the water, who knows when it might be cut off? Every household, regardless of age or gender, puts everything they can hold into service as soon as the water comes back on.
Thinking back to how the artificial pond in the community still had water a week ago, but now it has all evaporated, a group of people who were slow to realize the truth immediately felt extremely regretful.
Jiang Zhi continued her routine of eating, sleeping, and practicing martial arts. During the day, when the sun was at its strongest, she would go directly into her spatial dimension to farm, feed poultry, and practice her techniques. She would only go to sleep in the basement at night.
Jiang Zhi has mastered the "Immortal's Guidance" technique to perfection, and she senses that she will learn even more skills.
The reason she dared not stay in the space at night was because she was afraid of what happened that night. If she went into the space, she wouldn't even know if her house was raided in the middle of the night.
She had no choice but to put up with this for now; she still had a great grudge to settle and couldn't possibly hide in her spatial dimension forever. Humans are social animals, and being alone isn't conducive to cultivation. Therefore, Jiang Zhi would use natural disasters to temper herself, making herself more resilient and stronger.
At the end of August, the temperature rose to 70 degrees Celsius. People hadn't seen insects for a long time. In such hot weather, all the animals must have died out.
"Mommy, did we eat Xiaomei?" The child, whose face had no baby fat at all, touched his belly and asked in a daze.
"No, Xiaomei has gone to heaven. We'll have Xiaomei again in the future." The child's mother stroked the child's dry, messy hair and sighed silently.
It's unbearable. They haven't seen meat for months, and their pet dog barely gets enough to eat. When will this end?
"I don't believe it, why would we eat Xiaomei?" the child cried, feeling wronged.
"What are you crying for? If you cry again, believe me, I'll slap you." The man shouted from the yellowed sofa.
"Oh, that's enough. The child doesn't understand anything. Why are you getting so angry?" The child's mother quickly protected her child.
Over the past few months, this family has had countless arguments under the same roof, each ending in a harsh reality.
Before the apocalypse, who wasn't a wealthy lady? Who wasn't a domineering CEO?
Now, even if the company is still around, let alone whether it still exists, they have no chance to turn things around.
The whole family huddled in the basement, sweltering in the heat. When they fell ill, they could only rely on the limited supply of Huoxiang Zhengqi Water to tough it out; if they couldn't hold on, they would die.
Many people in the neighborhood have died from the heat.
Now, whether it's day or night, basically no one dares to go out.
It's so hot, I'm having trouble breathing, my skin is burning, and my internal organs feel like they're about to explode—it's so suffocating.
To survive, they had to dig deep pits in the basement. Down below, they could find moist soil, which would lower the temperature.
Jiang Zhi watched as the ice melted faster and faster. A piece of ice that was half a square meter in size could last a day before it could only last half a day before it completely melted into water.
The weather was so hot that the solar water heater on the roof of Jiang Zhi's villa exploded.
Helpless, she could only add a few more solar cookers.
We should make the most of such good sunlight.
The people in the neighborhood aren't fools. If Jiang Zhi could think of using the sun to heat up her rice, so could they. So the firewood craze was long over, and the number of dead trees in the neighborhood increased. By early September, there were hardly any trees left alive.
"No, without internet and electricity, and without knowing what's happening outside, we'll be trapped here sooner or later. Third brother, say something, let's leave this hellhole now and get to the base." The speaker was a burly man named Lu Jiu.
The man called the third brother, with a scar on his face, was Zhou Heng.
They are currently in a tunnel in the basement of a villa, which they dug out over the past two months.
Zhou Heng thought for a moment and said, "The base near Jiangcheng is in Shuofang District. There are many mountains there, as well as a tributary of the Qianjiang River, and the groundwater is relatively abundant. However, cars cannot drive there now, and it will take at least a day and a half to walk there. It would be difficult to make it through with supplies."
At a speed of 15 kilometers per hour, it wouldn't be impossible for them to set off overnight. However, with so many residents trapped here, most of whom are half-dead, it's simply impossible for them to reach that speed.
As a soldier, protecting the people is his bounden duty, and he could not possibly leave so many people behind to go to the base.
For some reason, a person popped into Zhou Heng's mind.
The image of her standing on the corrugated iron roof with a knife that night is still vivid in his mind.
If that girl hadn't died, he thought he would at least have reminded her to come along with him.
"Third brother is right. We came out on a mission, but we didn't expect to run into something like this. I wonder how my wife and kids are doing. Sigh." Lu Jiu sighed, looking down.
As it turns out, humans are always inferior to nature.
"We don't have much food left, so we have to be careful with our food. We can only last for a month at most. In September, when autumn arrives, there will be another 'autumn tiger' (a period of intense heat in late summer). I don't know if the temperature will continue to rise. If it reaches 80 degrees Celsius, even if we hide underground, we won't be able to breathe properly and will suffocate to death," Old Ghost complained from the side.
"So much vegetation died, the Earth's carbon-oxygen balance was already disrupted. I think in the end we won't starve to death, we'll really suffocate. It's so damn frustrating," Little Q muttered.
Zhou Heng glanced at his watch; it was 4:30 a.m., and the air temperature had already dropped to its lowest point. He climbed the rope ladder and quickly scrambled out of the pit.
Lu Jiu called out, "Third brother, where are you going?"
"I have something to do and need to go out for a bit." With that, Zhou Heng picked up his bicycle and left the basement.
Perhaps influenced by Xiao Q's words, Zhou Heng felt a momentary sense of suffocation when he came into contact with the warm air. He shook his head and snorted coldly. How could something like this scare him?
Zhou Heng hopped on his bicycle and rode to Jiang Zhi's house.
He looked up and saw a light inside, and there seemed to be a smell of kerosene in the air.
Good heavens, they even have kerosene lamps.
This woman is indeed extraordinary.
Jiang Zhi's cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds recently, and she had already sensed someone outside. She waved her hand to put all the buns she was making into her spatial storage, then sprayed air freshener to make sure there was no smell in the underground garage before changing her clothes and going up to the second floor.
She stepped onto the corrugated steel roof and immediately saw that the person below was Zhou Heng.
"Zhou Heng," Jiang Zhi called out.
Zhou Heng was surprised that Jiang Zhi called his name. He was still dressed the same as last time he came, in a vest, shorts, and on a bicycle.
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