CHAPTER 96: IT’S TIME TO MEET THE ELDER BROUGHT BY THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Jing Shu felt it was largely because of their inability to acclimate. With a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius, which was no longer suitable for human habitation, the government had decided to use ships, trains, and other transport modes to first evacuate people from Hainan. Unfortunately, a large number of people died on the way, and more died after they reached their destination.

After all, Hainan is tropical and doesn’t get cold at night. However, in the Northeast, the temperature would drop to over ten degrees below zero Celsius at night and skyrocket to over 40 degrees Celsius during the day, creating a huge temperature difference that easily led to various diseases.

If the situation in Africa hadn’t been broadcast, perhaps it wouldn’t have raised doubts. The issue was that Africa, also facing 60-degree Celsius temperatures, had borrowed machinery from Huaxia to dig a series of underground tunnels and had lived there without any casualties. In contrast, more than half of Huaxia’s evacuees had died or been injured.

Many protested against the relocation, demanding to emulate Africa by digging underground houses. Jing Shu remembered the chaos it caused—half of the people there refused to leave. However, the government was resolute this time: evacuation was mandatory!

No evacuation meant no food supply! Those who evacuated would receive various subsidies and other benefits.

This tactic proved very effective. Using a combination of incentives and pressure, along with various forms of persuasion, the government managed to relocate everyone from Hainan. Then, they initiated the second wave of mass migration, though many still perished.

The reason given by the government was very simple: "High temperatures will inevitably cause sea levels to rise, leading to floods. Hainan will very likely be submerged. And it’s not just Hainan, an island; one-third of the world’s inland areas could also be flooded. It’s only a matter of time; it’s bound to happen sooner or later. It’s better to relocate early than to suffer countless casualties later."

Jing Shu was incredibly impressed! She couldn’t help but exclaim internally, "My Huaxia is awesome! What a brilliant move!"

As it turned out, the Science Channel had been warning about impending floods for an entire year. In the second year of the apocalypse, the floods finally came. Hainan was indeed submerged, and the survivors were all immensely grateful. The government’s decision to evacuate them, despite the pressure, had been the right one! However, the high mortality rate during the evacuations still left many people terrified and resistant, with numerous individuals unwilling to leave their homes.

By the way, even Africa’s savanna-like terrain, typically arid and water-scarce, ended up half-submerged.

The previously dug underground tunnels were a horrifying sight. Those fortunate enough to be on higher ground avoided flooding, but the less fortunate were trapped in underground tunnels tens of meters deep, unable to escape when the floods arrived.

If these underground homes in Africa represented a desperate struggle for survival, then several island nations around the world seemed destined to vanish entirely from world maps.

While Jing Shu was practicing with the Magic Cube in her hands and daydreaming, she heard Mr. Jing say, "The trains have stopped running. Your elder brother called; he said the old folks staying at Su Meimei’s place can’t leave now. Weren’t you planning to visit them when they were about to go? It seems impossible now."

Mrs. Jing said agitatedly, "Then we’ll just have to find another time to visit. My elder brother said Su Meimei is treating those old folks like her own father. She was never this attentive, not even when our own parents were alive. Sigh."

If Mr. Jing hadn’t mentioned it, Jing Shu would have forgotten about the elderly whose situation had been altered by that butterfly effect. Now, with such a food shortage, and considering Su Meimei’s nature of never wanting to be taken advantage of, would she really treat them well? That’s certainly something to investigate.

That evening, Jing Shu had her customary extra meal, finishing the last few dozen roasted quails and drinking a pot of Shiitake Chicken Soup. Then, she began practicing the Magic Cube, fully Concentrating. This state lasted for another half a month, but Jing Shu was still stuck at a bottleneck. She went from making vigorous initial attempts to solve it to her current state of irritable restlessness; she felt like she could lash out and hit someone at any moment.

Those scenes from novels, where one hits a bottleneck only to break through and level up with a bit more effort, never happened for her. Jing Shu had begun to seriously doubt if she was even suited to be the master of the Magic Cube Space—after all, she’d been working with the Magic Cube for seven or eight months without any advancement.

Several times, she had thrown the Magic Cube away, wishing she could stomp on it. But after calming down, she would still meekly pick it up, revering it like a sacred heirloom, and continue practicing how to solve it. Her current motivation was to be able to store more food and supplies.

However, Jing Shu’s temper had been terrible lately; it was best not to provoke her.

Before bed, Jing Shu added a new task to her routine: checking the traps around the villa, inspecting the Domestic Poultry, the fish in the fishpond, and the second batch of frogs. This new batch had matured just as the corrosive insect outbreak began. She felt this batch of frogs was even more valuable than the last.

In the following days, despite the continuously rising temperatures, significantly fewer people stayed home. Everyone was out scavenging for supplies, especially knives and iron rods. During this period, the neighborhood women demonstrated their incredible, gossip-fueled effectiveness, knowing exactly which families had deaths and which were on the verge of collapse. They targeted these households early, waiting for someone to die so they could drag away the body and loot the home for supplies.

Most robbers were ordinary people targeting those with food reserves. They completely ignored old, unattractive, foodless women; crudely put, these women weren’t even considered worth robbing.

Of course, there were also family-based robber gangs—entire families, young and old, raiding others for food and incidentally looking for knives to trade for meat. However, more people were enticed by the rewards offered for reporting such crimes.

Now, in Wu City, if a robbery or murder occurred in any residential area, it was typically reported within minutes—yes, for the reward.

Wang Qiqi had organized a group: some specialized in finding knives, others investigated robberies, some were tasked with tracking and identifying robbers, and still others were responsible for calling in body disposals.

Wang Dazhao sent a message confirming that Zhetian’s current target was the oil community base next to Ai Family Supermarket. Apparently, they planned to bomb the base to destroy the extracted crude oil.

Jing Shu had always assumed Zhetian was after her; it seemed she’d overthought it. Unfortunately, in her previous life, she had been too busy trading knives for meat at this point to pay any attention to Zhetian. As far as she recalled, there had been no news of an oil base being bombed then.

"Before the apocalypse, the Ai Family Supermarket’s business relied heavily on the residents of the oil community base, who all worked in the petroleum sector. Plus, there are Armed Police stationed nearby, so there shouldn’t be any problems, right?" After receiving this news, Jing Shu once again warned Wang Dazhao to be careful and ensure none of his information was compromised.

It was several days later when Mrs. Jing finally finished her tasks. The family, enduring a scorching 52-degree Celsius temperature, brought ten hard-boiled eggs and half a jar of pickled vegetables. They first went to Uncle’s house in West Mountain to pick him and his wife up, then continued straight for another seven or eight kilometers to reach Su Meimei’s home.

Along the way, Jing Shu had already downed three bottles of mineral water.

"Jing Shu, how can you waste water like that? Everyone else just takes small sips to moisten their lips. I even limit Su Long to just a tiny sip!" Aunt couldn’t bear it any longer. "Lan Zhi, you should control Jing Shu a little. Try to save some water."

I fucking stockpiled supplies for two months before the apocalypse just so I could live better now, and you’re telling me to save a bit?