Chapter 2 – Flood

Xia Xiaoman’s home was in a remote mountain village in Yunhai City.

Her parents favored sons over daughters. After she finished middle school, they demanded she quit school and get a job to support her younger brother.

But the family wasn’t poor at all—they could easily afford her high school tuition.

Xia Xiaoman had been raised by her grandfather. Her personality was a perfect copy of his—unyielding and stubborn. From a young age, she never learned to just accept things silently.

After her grandfather passed away, she was brought back to live with her parents.

Every time her parents beat her, she would beat up her brother. As long as they didn’t beat her to death, she’d make sure her brother took the full brunt of it.

Xia Xiaoman was strong. Every time, she left her brother Xia Haoming half-dead.

After a few beatings, her parents got scared and never laid a hand on her again.

Once, her parents hid her household registration book to prevent her from enrolling in high school.

Xia Xiaoman responded by tying up Xia Haoming and hiding him. She only revealed his whereabouts after they agreed to let her go back to school.

After the college entrance exam, she turned 18. Her parents tried another stunt, planning to marry her off to an old widower.

That night, Xia Xiaoman blocked all the doors and windows in the house and set it on fire.

Her parents woke up coughing from the smoke, only to see Xia Xiaoman holding a burning torch, coldly staring them down.

They were scared half to death. To save their lives, they agreed to let her set up an independent household registration and promised never to interfere in her marriage or childbirth again.

With her freshly printed household record and ID card in hand, Xia Xiaoman left the village—and never went back.

Her university was in Fucheng.

After arriving in Fucheng, she studied while working part-time.

To make working easier, she rented a two-bedroom apartment in Jiangshan Huacheng. The second bedroom was originally rented by someone else, but they moved into a large flat near the subway once they got a better job. Xia Xiaoman was too lazy to move, so she rented the other room too—living alone was more comfortable.

Jiangshan Huacheng was an older community. The tallest buildings were only 8 stories, and all were walk-ups with no elevators. The terrain was also bad—there was a long, steep slope at the entrance of the community.

Rumor had it that two elderly residents had fallen on that slope and died soon after. People said the place had bad feng shui.

But the rent was cheap—only 800 yuan per month for a two-bedroom apartment.

Back home, Xia Xiaoman took a shower, changed into dry clothes, and sat on her bed to check her phone.

She didn’t have many friends—not because she didn’t want them, but because she had no time.

Before university, most of her time was spent studying. Then she’d go home and do endless housework.

After starting college, she had to juggle school and part-time jobs, barely having time to rest—let alone make friends.

Her phone was full of messages from her part-time job bosses, all saying the same thing: the stores had been flooded due to the disaster, no work tomorrow, and future shifts were to be determined.

Xia Xiaoman replied to each one. Then, she opened her right hand—and in the next second, a cream bun appeared out of thin air.

Before age 12, she lived with her grandfather. When he passed away, he left her a thumb-sized jade gourd.

Once, while cutting pigweed, Xia Xiaoman accidentally cut her hand. The string around her neck snapped, and the jade gourd fell to the ground.

When she reached to pick it up, a drop of blood fell onto the gourd. It suddenly glowed brightly—and when Xia Xiaoman opened her eyes again, she found herself in possession of a mysterious space.

The space was infinite, pitch black, and time stood still inside. Whatever was put in stayed exactly the same, no matter how long it stayed there.

The only downside: living things couldn’t go in.

For two years in university, Xia Xiaoman worked at a bakery. Every night, the unsold nearly-expired bread was “donated” to her—and she tossed it all into her space.

Now, the expired bread in her space was enough to open three full bakeries.

She tore open the bun’s wrapper with her teeth and ate as she scrolled through the news.

This flood wasn’t sudden.

In the days leading up to it, Fucheng had been pounded by heavy rain.

The reason for today’s sudden backflow of floodwater was that the old dam in Nanxia City upstream had deteriorated. Its gates had loosened and broken, releasing a massive flood that submerged Fucheng in just a few hours.

The internet was flooded with news about… well, floods.

Xia Xiaoman noticed something sharp: floods seemed to be happening in many places this year.

In her province alone, four cities were already underwater, and from the current data, two more were likely to suffer the same fate.

Several other provinces and cities were also experiencing internal flooding. A rough count showed at least six regions hit by water disasters.

She checked the weather forecast—torrential rain was battering most of the south. The north wasn’t much better—hail and snow were falling even in June.

Her phone forecasted an extremely heavy rain tomorrow. A sense of unease began to take root in Xia Xiaoman’s chest.

Outside, the sky was growing dark. The property manager posted in the neighborhood group chat: because of flood damage, the power box on the first floor was broken, and there would be no electricity for now.

Xia Xiaoman lay on her bed with her eyes closed, mentally tallying her stockpile over the past two years.

She had never eaten her fill growing up. So, once she had money, the first thing she bought wasn’t clothes or shoes—but food.

Her favorite hobby was browsing supermarkets at night, buying discounted goods or redeeming snacks with loyalty points.

Whenever she found a really good deal, she bought in bulk. She had space—she didn’t need to worry about food going bad.

In her space, aside from the 20,000 yuan she’d saved for tuition, was her two-year hoard of food.

Food wasn’t a problem—but she lacked medicine and daily necessities.

If the floods didn’t recede anytime soon, she needed to figure out how to get more supplies, especially medicine and hygiene products.

Ding-ling-ling…

Her phone rang. An unfamiliar number flashed on the screen.

She answered. A raspy male voice came through: “Hello, is this Xia Xiaoman?”

She frowned. “Who’s this?”

“I’m Ye Wengang. Are you Xia Xiaoman?”

“Oh,” she said. “You’re the village secretary. What’s up?”

She remembered him vaguely. When her parents tried to stop her from attending high school and she hid Xia Haoming in the mountains, Ye Wengang came to mediate and convinced her parents to let her go back to school.

When she left for college, he even slipped her 200 yuan.

To repay that kindness, she had left him her contact info.

“Xiaoman, there’s been a flood back home. Your parents’ house got buried in a landslide from the mountain. Do you want to come back and take a look?”

“What about my parents?” she asked. “Were they buried too?”

“No, they were on their way to town to pick up your brother. They got lucky and avoided it.”

“Oh,” she said flatly. “Well, let me know once they get buried.”

Ye Wengang sighed. “You’re such a hard-hearted girl.”

“If I weren’t hard-hearted, I’d be the mother of three by now,” she shot back.

Ye Wengang was always trying to play peacemaker, always siding with whoever looked more pitiful—never clear about right or wrong.

Xia Xiaoman didn’t bother arguing. For the sake of the 200 yuan he once gave her, she kindly advised him to stock up on food—and then hung up.

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The next morning, the rain still hadn’t stopped. Floodwaters had already reached the second floor.

Xia Xiaoman checked her phone—overnight, she’d received over a dozen warning texts about extreme rainfall.

The signal was weak, and it took a while to load a news page.

The top ten trending searches were all about natural disasters. Seven were about southern floods, one about hail in a northern city, and two about a celebrity donating to disaster relief.

Seeing that several cities upstream of Fucheng were also experiencing massive rainfall and rising water, her sense of dread only deepened.

Staring at the glaring red word “disaster” across her screen, Xia Xiaoman opened a notebook and began documenting all current natural disaster reports—both domestic and international.

The deeper she looked, the more alarmed she became. In just the past few days, natural disasters had broken out all over the world.

On local sites, much of the information was suppressed—very few mentions of the disaster frequency.

But on international platforms, videos and posts about disasters were everywhere. Many people were speculating that the rise in disasters was a sign of the apocalypse—a warning from God.

Setting her phone down, Xia Xiaoman stared out at the floodwaters beyond her window, mind racing.

After a long moment, she changed her clothes—then stepped outside to scavenge for supplies.