Chapter 117: Chapter 117: The Extreme Cold Is Over
Ruby Young, the woman at the registration desk, froze for a moment. Her gut told her this person was here to cause trouble. "Look, we accept all kinds of goods here. There’s nothing to be concerned about."
Sue Lawrence maintained her smile. "I want to see Silas Hawthorne."
Ruby Young was floored. She opened her mouth, ready to chew Sue out for picking a fight, but luckily, Victor Keller was passing by. He quickly stepped in, asked a few questions, and then led them away.
The people left behind started to murmur among themselves.
"What was that all about?"
"Who knows? The Lawrence Family must have gotten their hands on something good again!"
"Their Points are going to shoot up, aren’t they?"
’Something good? A surge in Points?’
Jason Sterling was completely stunned.
He suddenly remembered offering Sue Lawrence a packet of hot pot base. What had she said again? That she didn’t need it. ’Does she really have something better? Is that why she looked down on what I offered?’
He frowned and followed them, but it was no use. Past the public area, soldiers stood guard with rifles, and he couldn’t get through.
With a grim look on his face, Jason Sterling had no choice but to wait.
Meanwhile, Sue Lawrence and her people had opened the black crate in front of Silas Hawthorne.
"These are our supplies. As for how to exchange them, I figured it would be best to ask you directly."
At her words, several people looked over. Even Theodore Frost spared a glance, only to see that it was filled with fresh vegetables!
"Fresh?!"
Theodore Frost himself was astonished.
The highest temperature outside was just over seventy degrees below zero. Actually, it had recently dropped a little more, down to negative seventy-one degrees Celsius. But forget vegetables—you couldn’t see a single speck of green anywhere.
"Where did these come from?"
He was utterly shocked, but Silas Hawthorne had already spoken. "Come, let’s discuss the details."
Where did they come from? There was no need to ask. They wouldn’t say.
They had their own cultivation base, of course, but getting more was never a bad thing. Especially vegetables this fresh—they looked like they had just been picked.
’Sue Lawrence’s base must have a cultivation zone as well.’
’This is very good.’
Silas thought.
Soon, the goods were exchanged for a large number of Points. After all, fresh food was truly hard to come by. Most of what their own teams collected were canned goods, frozen meat, and some frozen vegetables, but the taste was nowhere near as good as fresh produce.
One crate of vegetables had earned them over three hundred Points.
It felt great.
And so, in the time that followed, Sue Lawrence led her family back and forth to their own base. She even exchanged her Points for three more robots, though these three had an additional program: mining.
She wanted to excavate the mine further.
As a result, the Lawrence family’s Points began to skyrocket. And it wasn’t just their Points that were rising; the outside temperature was slowly climbing as well. Three months later, the extreme cold had passed, and the temperature reached a pleasant twenty-or-so degrees Celsius.
The tens-of-meters-thick ice and snow melted rapidly, but the situation outside was far from optimistic.
This hadn’t been a simple winter; it had been an age of extreme cold. The melting ice and snow didn’t bring immediate relief, but rather floods and mire that engulfed the city.
The meltwater surged like a burst dam, instantly filling every low-lying area of the city. The original streets, plazas, and underground garages were all submerged in murky, icy water, reaching depths of several meters in some places.
The ground floors of skyscrapers and the first floors of old residential complexes were all soaked in putrid water. The surface was littered with floating dead branches, the frozen remains of animals, shattered construction debris, and countless pieces of household garbage that had been buried under the ice, all of which now surfaced with the melt, creating a scene of utter filth.
The rising temperatures caused the water to evaporate wildly, shrouding the entire city in a perpetual, heavy fog. Daytime visibility was no more than a dozen meters. The sun struggled to pierce the dense vapor, casting down a mottled, dim-yellow light. The biting cold was gone, replaced by a damp, sticky chill.
As the ice and snow completely receded, the exposed ground was revealed to be permafrost that hadn’t felt warmth in a century. It was soft and muddy; one step would sink you halfway up your leg, making it completely impassable.
Fortunately, amid the chaos, life was also quietly beginning to stir.
Plant seeds frozen in the soil and rhizomes buried deep underground were awakened by the 20-degree temperature and began to burst madly from the earth.
Weeds and vines spread at an astonishing rate, crawling over ruined walls, twining around broken streetlights, and carpeting the flooded streets. They even sprouted from the cracks in skyscraper windows and the fissures in buildings, unfurling tender green leaves.
Birds and insects, long silent, emerged from unknown corners to flit between the ruins and the new greenery.
As for the city’s architecture, it was in even worse shape. The frost heave from the extreme cold and the immense weight of the ice had already left the buildings riddled with damage. The subsequent rain and meltwater delivered the final blow.
Most of the downtown skyscrapers were still standing, but they were battered beyond recognition.
The glass curtain walls had completely shattered, leaving only bare steel skeletons. The facades were mottled and peeling from ice erosion, exposing the rusted concrete beneath. The upper-floor rooms were mostly empty, though traces of the hasty evacuation remained: scattered furniture, tattered clothing, and household items that had frozen and then thawed, now soaking in pools of stagnant water, molding and rotting.
Low-rise residential buildings and old factory complexes had suffered even more severe damage. Their walls were cracked, roofs had collapsed, and they were half-buried in mud and half-covered in vegetation, transformed into nests for wild animals. Only a few structurally sound buildings were still vaguely recognizable.
The underground infrastructure was completely ruined. Subway tunnels, subterranean malls, and air-raid shelters were all filled to the brim with meltwater, becoming lightless swamps. As the water temperature rose, they began to emit a persistent, foul stench, turning them into the most dangerous, forbidden zones in the city.
Back in the air-raid shelter base, everyone had been eagerly anticipating the rising temperatures. Excited by the thought that the extreme cold was finally over, they couldn’t help but demand to go out and see the world outside.
But the reality of that world dealt them a harsh blow.
Go out?
Better not. The mud outside was like a man-eating swamp, and with the thick fog, you couldn’t see a thing. One wrong step and you’d be swallowed whole.
At least during the extreme cold, you had thermal suits. But with the swamps, if you fell in, it was certain death. No one would be spared.
"Let’s just wait a little longer," Marcus Morgan said into a microphone, patiently trying to persuade everyone. "At least the temperature is back up. In a few more days, once the fog clears and the ground dries, we’ll be able to go out."
Only then was hope rekindled in the crowd.
But the Reincarnators knew all too well what awaited them next: the extreme heat apocalypse. In their previous timeline, the temperature had once reached over eighty degrees Celsius. This time, however, the extreme cold had been far worse. ’Does that mean this coming heat wave will be even more intense than the last one?’
’How hot could it possibly get?’
’If it reaches a hundred degrees, water will turn completely to steam. At that point, could anything on this planet still be alive?’
Compared to the happy and expectant crowd who knew nothing, it was the Reincarnators who were plunged, as one, into a deep fear of the future.
After all, extreme heat was far, far harder to survive than extreme cold.
