Isn't this the meaning of life?
I have food and drink, and a little nest.
This was the first time Jin Shu had lowered her expectations for life so much. In the past, she had eaten all kinds of delicacies, dressed in fine silks and satins, and had servants by her side. But she had never been like this before, sitting alone by a warm stove, eating hot pot, and listening to the increasingly heavy rain outside the window.
The temperature outside the window has dropped to nearly 55 degrees Celsius.
Strangely, the rainwater didn't freeze; instead, it intensified.
The window was being violently battered by the strong wind, and Jin Shu glanced at it.
The window won't hold for long. According to the original plot, a tornado will soon hit the city, and countless people will perish in it.
She had to reinforce the windows before disaster struck.
Perhaps because she hadn't eaten anything so fresh and delicious in so long, Jin Shu ate with tears streaming down her face, until her stomach started to ache from being so full that she belatedly realized she was already full.
I cleaned up the pots and pans, and packed up all the remaining food to use for noodles tomorrow morning.
Seeing the frost on the window outside, Jin Shu rubbed her hands and quickly crawled into her sleeping bag under the covers.
I wrapped myself up layer by layer, then hugged a hot water bottle and closed my eyes to sleep.
The original owner must have not had a good night's sleep in a very long time.
The screams outside lasted for a long time before Jin Shu was finally awakened.
Someone was banging on the door, accompanied by cries for help. Jin Shu pulled open her sleeping bag and looked at her watch.
It's 4 a.m.
It was still dark, and the temperature was around minus twenty degrees Celsius. The remaining fuel in the stove allowed a small flame to slowly radiate warmth.
But it was quickly dispelled by an even colder chill.
Jin Shu looked out the door.
Her sealing strip wasn't completely dry yet, and people outside were kicking and stomping on it. Although they couldn't get in, it still affected the use of the area behind the gate.
After getting dressed and standing up, Jin Shu grabbed a kitchen knife and stood at the door, looking out through the peephole.
It was pitch black outside the door. You could vaguely see a few people standing outside with flashlights, talking in hushed tones. Someone else was banging on the door, and the words they were saying gradually turned from pleading to cursing.
"Open the door! You sissy! So you've been home all along!! Open the door now!"
"That sissy," Jin Shu thought for a moment, confirming that he was the original owner of this house.
In Jin Shu's view, the term "sissy" is an insult not only to men but also to women. The original owner was just gentle and pretty, but his courage in the face of death was something that these self-proclaimed men outside the door could not match.
Jin Shu kept her breath and listened to the commotion outside.
Her hearing was far superior to that of ordinary people; she could clearly hear the whispers and discussions of the people outside through the heavy door.
“I checked several times before and there was no one on this floor, but today I heard a lot of noise upstairs! And the room smelled really nice.”
There are definitely people inside! And quite a lot of supplies too!
"That sissy has been hiding for so long!"
"When was this door changed? I didn't notice it when I came here before!"
"Never mind all that. There must be someone and supplies inside. We probably can't force our way in. We need to find a way to get him to open the door."
After a while of murmurs outside, a woman's sobbing was heard.
"Please, open the door! We mean no harm. We have a child at home who is about to starve to death. We don't want anything, we just want some water. The city has been without water for too long, and the water we stored before has been contaminated with black water. If our child doesn't get water soon, he will really die of thirst!"
Jin Shu watched the woman's performance outside with a blank expression.
She was indeed holding a child in her arms. When she got to the point of being sad, she pinched the child hard, and the child, who had been shivering from the cold, immediately opened his mouth and started crying.
At just over a year old, his cries were heart-wrenching.
Jin Shu kept a straight face and remained unmoved.
The three men hiding behind were furious when they saw that there was no movement inside.
"You damn beast! You piece of trash who wouldn't even help someone dying! Don't let me see you! If you dare show your face, I'll kill you!"
The other party is hard-hearted; this kind of self-inflicted suffering won't work on her, so there's no need to waste time on it.
The last few people left cursing, the child was still crying, and the woman was holding the child and crying so hard she was about to faint.
She followed behind the man, holding back her tears, and they went back together.
Seeing that everyone had left, Jin Shu withdrew her gaze.
She guessed that there were other people living in the building, so they all moved within a still timeframe.
It now seems that reinforcing the doors and windows was indeed the right decision; otherwise, the original door wouldn't have been able to withstand the other party's relentless kicking.
As time went by, the temperature quickly rose.
From 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., in just three hours, the temperature soared from minus 20 degrees Celsius to over 30 degrees Celsius. It was as if the earth had been thrown directly from a freezer into a giant furnace, with almost no transition time.
Such a drastic difference in temperature between day and night is something that humans, as warm-blooded animals, simply cannot adapt to.
Almost all of the newborns died.
Humans simply cannot survive in such extreme climates.
By eight o'clock in the morning, the temperature had already risen to forty degrees Celsius.
The room, which was so cold last night that it could freeze everything, has now turned into a steam oven.
The higher the floor, the higher the temperature. In the room where Jin Shu came out, the indoor temperature was close to 40 degrees Celsius. At the highest temperature, the outdoor temperature was nearly 55 degrees Celsius, and the indoor temperature was also close to 50 degrees Celsius.
At such temperatures, without proper physical cooling methods, people will quickly die from dehydration due to sweating.
The original owner had followed the advice of a senior member in the group, and as a precaution, had covered the entire roof of his top floor with insulation boards to block out most of the heat.
So even when the apocalypse came, the temperature in the original owner's house rarely exceeded 35 degrees Celsius. Although it was a bit hot, it was enough to ensure survival.
As for now, although there is no insulation board, Jin Shu has ice blocks that she brought back from the cold storage last night.
A bucket of ice was placed in the corner of the entire living room. The solar generator was turned on and connected to an electric fan. The two fans created a direct airflow, quickly circulating the cold air from the ice throughout the entire house.
Half an hour later, the thermometer read 27 degrees Celsius, which is a very comfortable temperature for humans.
Jin Shu lay on another mat.
There are two cushions in the living room.
One is a thick Simmons mattress, with a sleeping bag and two thick blankets on top.
There was also an ordinary mat with a cooling mat on top. On both sides of the cooling mat were small rechargeable fans. Jin Shu lay in the middle, eating the chilled grapes and cherries she had brought back from the freezer.
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