Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Base Also Has an Air Raid Shelter

The door opened, and Bai Weishuang was the one knocking.

She mentioned that the medicine supplies were running quite low, and if another crisis were to strike soon, they should stockpile more medication.

“Since the base has already gotten on track and even received support from the capital, the supplies must be much more abundant than before. We should take this opportunity to gather some extra supplies now so we won’t be caught off guard later,” she said.

Jiang Huan nodded and asked her to inventory the warehouse to see if there was anything surplus. “What surplus could there be? There’s only the problem of not having enough. I’ll send out some of my private stock; you clear out about two sacks of materials. Tomorrow, we’ll head down the mountain together.”

With Jiang Huan’s implicit instruction, Bai Weishuang went to rummage through the warehouse.

Jiang Huan closed the door, dried her hair thoroughly, and paced inside the room, suddenly pausing.

She glanced back at the door, then after a few seconds, withdrew her gaze.

It was probably just her imagination.

After a heavy night, Jiang Huan seized a moment to eat two rice cakes before joining everyone else for a breakfast of noodle soup—a broth made from broken, frozen noodles, which is why someone had dubbed it “noodle soup.”

“We’re living just like in those old days. This counts as a decent meal—at least it’s fine grain,” someone remarked.

Speaking of those times, only Old Xie had lived through them. The rest were mostly born at the tail end of the 1980s, when conditions had already improved significantly. The 1980s were much better, and the 1990s brought further progress. By the late twentieth century, people dying of starvation had become rare.

There was no need to treat noodles and rice as precious fine grains.

“I was born in 2000, but my family taught me never to waste food. I’m the kind of person who picks up every grain of rice that falls on the table and eats it,” a post-90s individual shared during breakfast.

“If my parents or grandparents found me wasting food, a stir-fry of bamboo shoots and pork was guaranteed. When I was a child, I had to hold my bowl while eating, or I would get my hand smacked,” another chimed in, recalling childhood discipline.

Jiang Xi, who had been quietly listening, finished the last drops at the bottom of his bowl. Having snacked earlier in his room, he found the noodle soup less appealing now. Yet hearing about the hardships before the disasters, even in his naive way, he felt it deeply.

Jiang Huan was distracted, unaware of her younger brother’s thoughts.

Breakfast ended, and everyone got up to work. Jiang Huan and Bai Weishuang were to descend the mountain to change the bandages, accompanied by Uncle Kui and Master Zhang.

When two bags of supplies were ready, the two men offered to carry them, but Jiang Huan insisted they take turns.

In this post-apocalyptic world, anyone willing to help carry more is morally admirable and should not be taken for granted.

At the foot of the mountain, the two women could hardly continue, so they handed over the bags to the men. They walked in fits and starts toward the base’s perimeter. Jiang Huan noticed construction was underway there.

With so many people, the base looked like a massive fortification.

Inside, she sought out a familiar contact, Monkey, and learned something important: the base was set up on a stationed troop’s location because behind it lay secret fortifications and a wartime air-raid shelter.

The scale was leagues beyond the civilian shelters Jiang Huan and her group had found before.

It could house tens of thousands of people and was equipped with command facilities, medical aid stations, specialized air defense units, personnel shelters, and supporting infrastructure. Even for agriculture, there was space to grow pea shoots, various radishes, mustard greens, cilantro, red amaranth, and celery.

Now that temperatures had slightly warmed, some fresh vegetables had begun to be sold outside.

Jiang Huan gave Monkey two large bags of instant noodles as thanks. The information itself was invaluable, but Monkey trusted her because they had collaborated many times before, which made him bold enough to share.

Of course, she had to avoid giving the noodles in front of the others, or two big bags—ten packs total—would cause a commotion.

Moreover, the supplies they brought down were limited.

Because Bai Weishuang had contacts within the base, she was the one to exchange supplies, with Uncle Kui and Old Zhang accompanying her for protection, allowing Jiang Huan to conduct “behind-the-scenes” dealings more smoothly.

Monkey traded the noodles for coarse grain cakes that lasted longer, returning with two large sacks—enough to feed their group of nine children for quite some time.

Everyone looked hopeful, wishing Jiang Huan would take them in; at least then they wouldn’t have to worry about meals.

Yet there was another matter.

Though the air-raid shelter was being refurbished for use, everyone knew priority would be given to those who contributed the most. At worst, orphans like them wouldn’t even get a chance. That was the source of their anxiety.

“Let’s hope Heaven won’t get angry again and that nothing worse will happen,” the children wished.

Their prayers were futile. Since last year’s sewage discharge, disasters had been lining up.

When Jiang Huan measured the nighttime temperature dropping to minus twenty-eight degrees, she thought to herself that more drastic changes were underway.

Indeed, by noon the next day, the ground was wet and soggy.

The once hard ice was now easy to chip away.

Measuring the temperature again revealed a high of minus nineteen in the morning, minus sixteen at noon, and though it bounced back a few degrees in the afternoon, it hovered around minus twenty.

For northerners, this temperature was mild enough that they didn’t have to bundle up like dumplings to go outside.

The good news was that breaking the ice became easier, allowing more water to be stored; the milder cold also increased work efficiency.

The bad news was that everyone entered a new round of anxiety. Judging by this trend, the ice age’s end was inevitable.

All that ice melting could cause either flooding or, as Xie Congzhou and Jiang Huan had learned from outside sources, possibly drought.

Liu Ling, who often took on the big sister and motherly role, noticed this and worried. After discovering the situation, Jiang Huan led everyone on a tour of their stored goods.

In the warehouse, there was enough food for everyone to survive two months without doing anything, along with meat and vegetable jerky still being processed.

“I’m planning to take you all to one of the places the base had organized visits to before, to catch some fish for curing and drying,” she said. “If the ice melts, we’ll still have some time to store other foods. Heaven never seals all exits. I believe we’ve survived minus a hundred degrees before. With food, shelter, and water, how bad can it get?”

“Rather than useless anxiety, we should enrich our stores. In desperate times, even tree bark and leaves can be food. If worst comes to worst, we can harvest bark as a last resort, and even raise insects for protein—aren’t bugs a delicacy somewhere in the world?” Xie Congzhou added just one sentence that perfectly echoed Jiang Huan’s encouragement.

He said, “Keep pushing for one more month. Within that time, our food supplies can triple.”

Hearing their united resolve, everyone accepted it gladly. The tension eased after such a short meeting.

Afterwards, Xie Congzhou spoke with Jiang Huan privately. “If we want a full food reserve, you’ll need to start preparations in half a month. From now on, you decide how much food is left over, right?”

Jiang Huan looked up at him.