Chapter 109

Shu Fu told Cheng Yu and the others that they planned to return before the new snowfall filled the snow path. As for the rice and food, they didn’t prepare to take them because those supplies had originally been taken out to be used as their team’s rations.

There was no need to take the honeycomb coal stove or the coal either, as there were still some left in the teahouse. Although not much, it would be enough for them. In addition, they said that if it got cold, they could still use a stainless steel barrel to burn firewood.

Liu Shuang and Cheng Yu didn’t insist that they stay in the gym, but they couldn’t let them leave with the food and stove. They thought about sending them back and then packing up all the supplies for them to take with them, but Shu Fu firmly refused.

She told them that they still had some supplies hidden in the teahouse, including military rations and some goods they had received from the rescue station. The two of them had small appetites, so it was enough for them.

“Cooking is too troublesome, the military rations are better. Just open the bag and eat, and there are different flavors…” Shu Fu had originally wanted to leave more food for their team, but in the end, Cheng Yu packed a full backpack of military rations for them to take, even picking out different flavors.

Shu Fu: …

Liu Shuang also spoke up, “Take it, we have enough supplies.”

In the end, Liu Shuang, Han Lan, and Cheng Yu, carrying blankets and military ration bags, walked back along the snow path, escorting them upstairs. Shu Fu took out another honeycomb coal stove from inside the house to show them, proving that she really had one.

“If anything’s wrong, call us. If the walkie-talkie isn’t working, use the satellite phone or signal flares. Be careful with the flares, don’t hurt yourself. If the walkie-talkie’s battery runs out, replace it,” Cheng Yu nodded, then pulled several replacement batteries from his sleeve pocket and handed them to her.

“Got it, Cheng Yu—uncle!” The nagging was making her head spin.

“…”

“Pfft—” Han Lan choked on his own saliva and elbowed Liu Shuang beside him, “How did he suddenly become an older generation than us for no reason?”

Cheng Yu looked helpless, gently patting Shu Fu’s head, which was wrapped in two layers of a hat, with his black tactical gloves on. “Be careful living alone, pay attention to the temperature changes.”

Shu Fu nodded. “You all pay attention to the temperature as well.”

In the end, Cheng Yu and the others left under Shu Fu’s urging and reminders.

When they stepped out of the corridor, they closed the metal door at the entrance for the two people upstairs.

The snow outside began to fall heavily again. After just a short while of going upstairs and downstairs, their footprints in the snow path had already been covered by fresh snow.

As they walked back along the snow path, Liu Shuang sighed as he looked at the ice walls on both sides, which were over three meters high. “If we had a snowplow, it’d be great. In a town this small, it would only take a short time to clear all the snow.”

They had satellite phones and could communicate with those above, but now, it wasn’t just snowing near Wei County; the entire Huagou, the entire Northern Hemisphere, was covered in snow and ice. Dozens of cities, hundreds of counties, towns, and villages in Xizhou Province were all sealed off by heavy snow.

The situation there was even worse than here because the population was so large. In some small towns, the number of survivors was three or four times the original population, creating a densely packed living environment. Once a building collapsed or a road was blocked, a large number of people would be trapped.

Currently, the official rescue plan was definitely to focus on nearby areas, prioritizing areas with more trapped people.

What they didn’t know was whether the snowstorm that had started today would affect the rescue efforts in Xizhou Province. If the situation there was the same, the rescue in Wei County might not happen before the winter was over…

For now, the only plan was to try to secure airdropped supplies from Xizhou. They themselves weren’t lacking in supplies, but the situation in the clinic and hotel was likely not very optimistic.

---

The two women immediately got busy when they returned to the teahouse.

Yao Ruoyun stamped her feet from the cold and started the honeycomb coal stove in the corridor outside the bathroom door. She also found the temperature inside the house too low, so she lit the firewood in the stainless steel barrel.

Shu Fu, on the other hand, locked the teahouse door again, then released her wooden raft. She equipped the electric cards and temporarily stored the mattress and other items from the glass balcony, leaving only two heaters on the left and right sides of the balcony. Then, she placed two small heaters on the front and rear sides, turning them all on.

After the temperature inside the house rose, she took out a folding bath tub, filled it about 60% with hot water, and set up a small table beside it with clean clothes for changing. She also placed a cup of hot milk tea on the table and set down a pair of warm, fluffy indoor slippers on the floor. In the corner, she put an absorbent cotton mop and a trash can, then looked at Yao Ruoyun, who had just walked into the glass balcony and was eagerly watching her, and said, “You should take a shower now. Take off your dirty clothes, I’ll throw them in the washing machine. I’ll go downstairs to soak in a bath. After you’re done, remember to mop up the water, and I’ll come up to put the mattress down.”

“Really!?”

Shu Fu teased her, “No, this water is for swimming.”

Yao Ruoyun smiled and gave her a tight hug before quickly stripping off. Thanks to the four efficient heaters and the natural insulation of the glass, the temperature in the glass balcony was already over 20°C, so she wasn’t cold at all.

However, she felt too shy to give Shu Fu her disposable underwear, so after she grabbed her clothes and walked out of the balcony, she quietly rolled it up and tossed it into the trash can.

Yao Ruoyun started soaking in the bath on the balcony. As Shu Fu passed by the back door eaves, she first set her rain boots aside, took out several hangers, and hung Yao Ruoyun’s military coat and the cotton jacket and pants she had worn outside under the eaves.

The clothes inside could be cleaned and changed, but the clothes worn outside couldn’t be washed, since they would need to be worn again the next time they went outside.

After hanging up Yao Ruoyun’s clothes, Shu Fu also took off her own down-lined jacket and pants and hung them under the eaves as well.

She then entered the bathroom of the drifting island house, threw her fleece clothes, thermal wear, and Yao Ruoyun’s thermal wear into the washing machine for cleaning.

She switched the bath tub to the hot spring mode and started enjoying a comfortable soak and bath.

She didn’t neglect herself; when the cleaning finished, she lay down to soak and made herself a cup of milk tea, entering her guilty indulgence time.

---

Half an hour later, Shu Fu dried her hair, put the clothes from the washing machine into the dryer, and took out a clean set of thermal wear. Not wearing her outdoor clothes, she instead picked out a thick indoor cotton outfit, put it on, and then slipped into slippers. She rushed out from under the eaves and ran up to the balcony.

In the glass balcony, a wave of heat hit her. Yao Ruoyun had already turned off the two small heaters, but because the four had been running for more than an hour earlier, the temperature inside remained high and wouldn’t drop immediately.

The glass balcony was considered an open terrace, not within the range of the drifting island house’s “one-click dust removal,” so she had left the sponge mop earlier.

Yao Ruoyun had cleaned every corner of the floor, and now there were two chairs beside the table. She was sitting in one of them, drying her hair with the heater while sipping milk tea.

Shu Fu praised her, then packed away the two small heaters and the folding water bucket. She then took out the previous mattress, heating blanket, clean sheets, blankets, a wooden table, a box of cherries, a box of five-spice duck wings, a box of fried crispy meat, two bottles of coconut water, and a tablet…

She asked Yao Ruoyun to arrange the balcony while she went back downstairs to the bathroom. In the shower room, she took out the folding bath tub, opened the drainage plug, and let the bath water drain on its own.

---

When she returned to the glass balcony, Yao Ruoyun had already laid the clean sheets on the mattress, set up the heating blanket and turned it on, adjusted the angle of the heaters, and neatly placed the food, drinks, and necessities on the wooden table.

Shu Fu closed the sliding doors on both sides of the balcony, took out two cushions, and lay down beside Yao Ruoyun on the heating blanket, one on the left and one on the right.

“Alive,” Shu Fu let out a long sigh.

“Such a guilty pleasure…” Yao Ruoyun cuddled the fragrant cushion and whined, “In the future, I want to have such a large mattress in my wooden raft cabin, with thick blankets and a heating blanket.”

After lying there for a moment, Shu Fu took out two face masks. The two of them silently opened them and began to apply them.

The weather was so cold, it felt like their faces were about to get frostbite.

Over the past few days, even though Yao Ruoyun had many doubts in her mind, she hadn’t dared to ask a word. Now that it was just the two of them, she finally spoke up.

“Senior, I don’t want them to know I’m a raft power user, and I don’t want to be recorded…”

“Mm, I don’t want that either.”

“But you said there are two people in their team who are the same as me. Why don’t they know, but you do?”

Shu Fu briefly explained the white light bars and values.

“There’s a light bar only you can see here?” Yao Ruoyun touched the air above her head, feeling incredulous, then thought of something, “So, my value is the lowest, even lower than Lu Zheng’s…”

“Actually, it’s already quite high. The power user who died that day had a value in the single digits. I’ve seen another power user before, and their value was also in the single digits.”

“You can see all the power users’ light bars, doesn’t that mean you can easily distinguish ordinary people from power users?”

“Yeah.”

Yao Ruoyun immediately became worried: “Then you really have to hide well. Your ability is perfect for finding power users for the government…”

“Mm.” Indeed, Yao Ruoyun’s concern might become a reality. Shu Fu seemed like a power user detector. Even if others tried to be low-key or hide, as long as they appeared in front of her, all their attempts to conceal themselves would be meaningless.

“When will those two awaken, and become like us?”

“Not sure.” Shu Fu’s expression became serious. Liu Shuang and Han Lan’s situation wasn’t so simple. Their identities and current tasks were paradoxical. If they were to become her companions, they would have to fully stand by her side.

But once they awakened, what choice would they make? It was hard to say.

Awakening didn’t mean forgetting the memories of this world. Even if they awakened and gained fragments of memories from another world, they couldn’t easily abandon the identities and responsibilities that had been part of their lives for decades in this world.

Yao Ruoyun didn’t want to be recorded, and neither did Shu Fu. No one would want their information and face permanently recorded by the government as a power user.

So for now, they had to wait until after they truly awakened.

The wooden raft was facing the window, and from where they were lying, they could see through the gaps in the wooden boards the heavy snow falling outside the window.

“The snow is so heavy,” Yao Ruoyun sighed. “Do you think it will last the whole winter? I wonder if the rescue will come, and when it will come…”

Shu Fu also sighed. Over in Chamu County, they had received an airdrop yesterday, and they had heard that snowplows to clear the roads were already on their way. But now the snow had started falling again, and she wasn’t sure if it would start snowing there as well, or if it would delay the snowplows’ arrival.

But she knew that once the blizzard arrived, it would definitely affect the airdrop rescue operation.

Helicopters might still be able to take off, but if the blizzard intensified, with worsening weather conditions, it could jeopardize the safety of the pilots, and the mission might be canceled.

Some drones have long endurance and can carry out airdrop tasks, but individual drones are too small to carry much cargo. Unless they use large military drones, but those would face similar weather issues, since these extreme weather conditions now were unlike the ordinary natural disasters from the past…

Yao Ruoyun couldn’t help but think again about that raft that had been pushed down from midair and shattered when it hit the ground. A raft only worked well when it was on water. If it was on land and blocked by someone, it seemed like there would be no way out.

It was either she never left, or she went out and died right away.

She sighed again. “Winter is so unfriendly to rafts. If every winter is like this, with extreme cold and blizzards, the sea will probably freeze over. Then even if the raft is released, it won’t be useful. Every winter, we’ll be in danger…”

Shu Fu looked at her. “We can go to the Southern Hemisphere before winter arrives.”

“Huh?”

“When it’s winter here, it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere, so… at least it won’t be cold enough for the sea to freeze,” she said. Of course, that was assuming she could go. But even if she couldn’t, Yao Ruoyun and Chen Fa, Lu Zheng, and the others could go.

Yao Ruoyun’s eyes lit up as she looked at Shu Fu. “Oh yeah, why didn’t I think of that! No matter how bad the weather gets, this planet is so big! We have the raft, we can go to the warmer southern waters to spend the winter, like migratory birds!”

She reached out her pinky to Shu Fu. “It’s settled then, Senior! Before winter comes next year, we’ll stock up on tons of supplies and then take Lu Zheng, your friends, and everyone else on the raft to the southern waters!”

Another promise was made. Shu Fu thought of the promise she had made with Zheng Feifei.

So quickly, a year had passed. Back then, she thought that after a year, she would be able to meet her in Xizhou Province.

But now, she was stuck in Wei County.

But, in life, there should still be hope.

In Yao Ruoyun’s expectant gaze, Shu Fu extended her pinky, and they made the promise.

“It’s a deal!”

“Mm, it’s a deal.”

---

On the eleventh day of the blizzard, Wei County was hit by another cold wave.

In the middle of the night, Shu Fu, who had been sleeping beside Yao Ruoyun in the glass balcony, was woken by the beeping sound of the thermometer placed on the windowsill of the outside tea house. Unlike the room thermometer, which could only measure down to -30°C, this thermometer was a special tool that could measure temperatures as low as -200°C.

She had placed it there as a precaution, setting the temperature value to trigger the beeping sound when the surrounding temperature reached that threshold. It was essentially a kind of alarm.

She had set the value casually, thinking that when the temperature near the windowsill dropped to that point, it would be dangerous for the human body. When Yao Ruoyun needed to go to the restroom, she would need to be extra careful and wear more clothes.

After all, the glass balcony they were in was very warm, so they couldn’t feel how cold it was outside.

She had set the value to: -55°C.

She hadn’t expected the temperature to actually drop that low.

The continuous beeping also woke Yao Ruoyun. She sat up, feeling the cold in the air, and quickly pulled the blanket tighter around her.

Shu Fu, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, was taking out a heater from the space. There were already two heaters in the glass balcony, running 24/7. With the heating effect of the glass room, the internal temperature had been kept at around a few degrees above freezing.

But now, it seemed like the temperature had dropped to around 0°C. Shu Fu took out two more heaters, turned them on, and with four heaters working together, the temperature gradually started to rise again.

“Has it dropped again?” Yao Ruoyun asked. Due to the heat inside and the extreme cold outside, the entire glass balcony was covered with fog. After waiting for the temperature to rise a bit, Yao Ruoyun got up and went to the sliding door, wiping the fog off the glass with her sleeve, looking outside.

Just before they went to sleep, she had replaced the coal in the stove, so when she went out in the middle of the night to use the restroom, she wouldn’t freeze. She had also added the charcoal and flammable wood pieces that Shu Fu gave her to the steel bucket, so the two fire sources were still burning, casting a faint orange glow.

With the faint light, she could see that the floor, walls, and everything else in the room were covered with a layer of white crystals. It was frost formed from the condensation of water vapor that had been generated by the temperature difference between the inside and outside.

Clearly, even though the two fire sources in the hallway were still burning, they couldn’t warm up the entire room.

Yao Ruoyun was a little relieved that she had drunk very little water before bed and had barely touched any drinks. Otherwise, if she had to go out to use the restroom now, she would really be frozen.

Shu Fu noticed the air in the glass balcony was getting dry, so she took out a humidifier and placed it in the corner of the wall, filling it with pure water to slowly release mist.

Her walkie-talkie on the small table by the side suddenly rang—it was Cheng Yu.

He was worried that they might sleep through the cold and decided to wake them up. But when he heard the quick response, he knew they were awake.

Over at Cheng Yu’s side, everyone had been staying in the basement during the night. The fire source had been kept on for 24 hours for the past few days. They weren’t feeling the temperature change outside much because of it.

However, they had instruments in their vehicle—one of which was a detector and the other a display unit. The detector was placed near a narrow window on a high floor where it wouldn’t be covered by snow, and it could measure the temperature change at the first sign.

As long as the display unit was within range, it would immediately show the temperature fluctuations.

The thermometer Shu Fu had placed by the window had stopped beeping. It only beeped for about two minutes when the temperature reached the set value. After that, no matter how much the temperature dropped, she wouldn’t know.

So, she asked Cheng Yu about the actual temperature outside.

“Minus 61 degrees,” he paused, then added, “It’s still dropping. No matter what happens, don’t let the fire source go out, and don’t leave the house.”

His voice was serious, and Shu Fu understood the gravity of the situation. She responded earnestly, “I understand.”

---

On the fourteenth day of the blizzard, after three days of extreme low temperatures, the cold wave finally passed. During the day, the temperature rose to between minus 20 and minus 30 degrees.

Shu Fu turned off two of the small heaters, leaving just two heaters in the balcony. When Yao Ruoyun went out wrapped up like a bear to use the restroom, she wouldn’t freeze and cry out anymore.

Over the past few days, Shu Fu had been eating mostly dry foods to minimize bathroom trips. She hadn’t even had milk tea, coffee, or drinks, and had barely drunk any water. Now, she was finally free to drink water again.

Shu Fu, wrapped in her home cotton clothes, went downstairs to use the restroom, and when she came back up, she took out two freshly brewed hot lattes she had made.

She had been trying to minimize trips downstairs lately because the wooden stairs were exposed to the cold air. But she was better off than Yao Ruoyun—once she bundled up tightly and rushed into the Drift Island house, she could use the bathroom, wash, or even take a bath in the temperature-controlled house.

Originally, after coming back, they had planned to explore the building to see if any rooms had larger spaces or if they could move the tables and chairs from the tea house to another room, creating a larger area where Yao Ruoyun could release the raft.

She was probably the first person to awaken for a while, but she hadn’t had the opportunity to release the raft and check it.

Her raft house also had some insulation. They could shelter inside it for the winter, though there was no electricity. But Shu Fu had a kerosene stove.

Her raft house was also larger, and she could design and place the furniture and items she had collected for Yao Ruoyun. The house even had a bathroom, so Yao Ruoyun could use it freely instead of always bundling up like a bear and running to the tea house’s restroom.

But in the first few days after returning, they had been lazy, thinking they’d just rest for two days.

A few days later, the temperature dropped again, and it was simply too cold outside. They had tried going out, but less than ten minutes after leaving the heaters and stoves behind, they couldn’t bear it anymore. So, they retreated back indoors. Yao Ruoyun didn’t even get a chance to use her treasure shovel once during the day.

Now that the temperature had finally risen, they were preparing to eat something simple and then start looking for a place to release the raft.

Though the temperatures were still extremely low these past few days, the snow was not as intense as it had been during the first few days. The snow outside had accumulated to about half a meter above the second-floor windowsill.

As they walked down the stairs to the middle floor between the second and first floors, they found the window in the stairwell had been completely covered by snow. If it weren’t for the fact that the windows were still intact, the ice and snow would have long fallen inside and piled up in the hallway.

The light on the second and first floors was very dim. The two floors now felt like they had been buried under ice and snow. After searching around, they found no suitable space, so they went to the fourth floor.

On the fourth floor, a door at the corner had been pried open and was left unlocked. A glass window on the south-facing balcony had broken, and cold wind was blowing in from the outside. As soon as they stepped into the hallway, they noticed it was much colder here than downstairs.

They braved the cold and walked around the fourth floor, but because there was no suitable space, they decided to go back to the third-floor tea house. Shu Fu would use the space to move the wicker tables and chairs into another room.

As they were about to go downstairs, they suddenly heard the sound of a propeller from the sky, and the noise was quite loud.

Was it rescue?

They exchanged a glance and immediately ran to the broken balcony window at the end of the corridor.

They stepped onto the balcony, covering their faces tightly with their scarves, and put on their ski goggles, looking towards the source of the sound in the sky.

It was really a plane!

But it wasn’t a manned one; it was a large military drone. It flew over the square at a slow pace. After crossing the square, it began to decelerate and hovered above the hotel building. Then they saw several square, waterproof packages being dropped by the drone.

There were about seven or eight of them, each with a small white parachute. They fell from the sky one by one and landed on the hotel’s roof.

Afterward, the drone flew again, skimming low over the pure white snowy world, eventually hovering over the direction of the hotel building and the clinic building. This time, about twenty or thirty waterproof packages were dropped. They quickly landed within the same building area and disappeared behind the buildings.

It was a rescue airdrop!

Though it was a bit late, it had finally arrived, and the exact location of the survivors had been predicted with precision for the drop. The coordinates must have come from Cheng Yu.

Shu Fu took out the walkie-talkie and called Cheng Yu.

“The airdropped rescue supplies have arrived.”

“I know, we saw them too,” Cheng Yu replied, his voice light. “Do you still have enough food? If not, we’ll go back and dig out the snow path again.”

“We’re fine, we’re fine. You gave us so many military rations before; even if we share one bag, the two of us can’t finish it,” Shu Fu quickly responded.

“Good. Take care of yourselves, wait a few more days. We’ll get you out of there soon.” On the other end of the walkie-talkie, when Cheng Yu mentioned taking them away, his teammates beside him and across from him all looked at him at the same time.

The team wasn’t looking at their leader out of curiosity; their expressions were serious, including Han Lan, who was usually carefree. They all thought of the reason they were urgently planning to leave Wei after hearing Cheng Yu’s words.

Nearby, Qi Kai, who had been busy with the satellite computer, paused again, stopping his fingers from typing.

Cheng Yu had already put away the walkie-talkie and turned to Qi Kai, asking, “How’s it looking?”

“The calculations are still about the same. This cold wave and blizzard have completely broken historical records. It’s never happened in this area before. I can only rely on data from other extreme cold regions to simulate and integrate it. But the results and time predicted by these calculations are full of uncertainty because future climate changes can’t be predicted. Different weather changes could cause the data to fluctuate at any moment.” Qi Kai sighed.

“Give me an approximate timeframe.”

“10 to 20 days.”

Cheng Yu nodded. “Then we need to find a way to evacuate Wei within ten days.”