Cave Refuge

At this point, Dong Tianyu was no longer riding the horse, but had modified the rear horse carriage and was sitting in it, driving the horse with Spirit Power.

Just as he had left the village at the foot of the mountain, the scene before him made Dong Tianyu somewhat incredulous.

Who could have thought that the wrecked cars that were specifically left on the road to block traffic have now been cleared to both sides of the road, and the previously congested road is now flowing smoothly?

Although the road had changed from a two-way six-lane road to a two-way four-lane road, it doesn't affect the vehicles driving on it.

Luckily, there were no vehicles on the road at this time, otherwise, Dong Tianyu might have had to put the horse into the Shadow Space and continue his journey on foot.

The outer ring expressway was also unblocked. Unlike the occasional traffic jams of the past, although the road was narrower now, there were no vehicles driving on it.

People in the Qi Refinement Realm, without Divine Sense, could only observe the situation on both sides of the road by sight. Dong Tianyu, being cautious, didn't want others to see the horse he was riding.

It had been nearly two months since the underground Refuge Center in Pengcheng had been put to use. Most of the supplies in the newly built Community Shelters had already been nearly exhausted.

The officials were using the underground subway network to transport supplies to each subway station refuge center, and then distribute them to the other surrounding shelters.

However, due to the increasingly lower temperatures, vehicles that can still operate in such low temperatures were scarce, and in the whole of Pengcheng, only about a hundred vehicles were available.

Moreover, not all of these about hundred vehicles could be used to distribute supplies. The officials could only assign one vehicle to each subway station refuge center. The other vehicles were used for other purposes.

"Haiyang, you've worked hard these past few days."

Hearing his wife's words of concern, Dong Tianyu's cousin just smiled and said nothing.

In fact, Haiyang wanted to act tough and say that he wasn't tired, but in order to earn more food, he had been following the food delivery trucks to the surrounding shelters every day.

Delivering food didn't seem too tiring at first because all the deliveries were short trips to the nearby shelters, and they weren't responsible for loading and unloading.

But even such an easy-seeming job had left several members permanently disabled.

The early days were okay because although the weather outside was cold, people could still manage to go out if they wore enough clothing.

But as the temperature dropped to minus forty or fifty degrees, ordinary clothing lost its ability to keep people warm. Leaving the shelter then meant a certain death by freezing.

So the mood in the shelters was relatively stable for the first few days, but as the weather got colder and colder, people in the shelters began to become restless.

Additionally, some of the shelter officials didn't have a reliable plan for managing and rationing food, which led to a situation where the food that could have lasted for three months was consumed by one-third in just a few days.

In less than ten days, they consumed the supplies that were supposed to last a month according to the plan.

If no one else knew about this situation, it wouldn't be a problem since officials would eventually arrange transportation and communication between the shelters, and the problems with supplies could be handled properly.

But it was during these few days that others in the shelter learned about the situation. If it were about anything else, they could have ignored it, but the fast consumption of supplies had to do with the personal interests of everyone in the shelter, which caused chaos.

Some shelters with good management were able to negotiate and reach an agreement, deciding to get through the tight spot by economizing and reducing consumption. Other shelters, unfortunately, fell into chaos.

The shelters at the subway stations were different. Even though they were all initially arranged with a few members from the Officials, none of them were equipped with firearms. When law and order was established, their uniforms were intimidating, but when chaos ensued, they became the primary targets.

Because communication was cut off, some problems in the shelters were unknown to the officials. The officials who were sent as liaisons later only communicated with the people in charge of the shelters and didn't have a thorough understanding of the situation in each shelter, so they were deceived by some people.

The initiators of these riots, after learning from the liaisons that the officials were gradually regaining control of each shelter, initially panicked, fearing that the officials would suppress them if they found out the truth. But as time went on and they discovered that the liaisons only contacted them about work and didn't ask too many questions, they took the chance to take control of the shelters.

I don't know if the officials knew about it, but this situation continued until most of the shelters began to lack supplies.

The officials should have noticed something at this point. After all, after communication was restored, the original managers of the shelters also had friends and relatives.

And after communication was restored, their information just vanished, which definitely indicated that something was wrong, but the officials didn't have the resources to deal with it at the time, so they probably just let it slide for the time being.

It would have been fine if it stayed this way, but some overly clever people, fearing that the truth would be revealed when they found out that the officials were using vehicles to distribute supplies, decided to hijack a vehicle and flee Pengcheng.

This created a conflict with the escorts accompanying the vehicles. Although there were few escorts, the vehicle was parked in the freezing cold outdoors.

Fortunately, each shelter had a limited amount of clothing suitable for outdoor activities, so these people couldn't successfully hijack a vehicle.

Even so, there were casualties among the escorts. Haiyang was attacked several times on his trips. If it wasn't for the cudgel given by Dong Tianyu, he would have either been killed or crippled.

Actually, Haiyang didn't want to go out, but because some shelters had fallen into riots, the officials only provided seven days' worth of supplies each time, and the amount of supplies given to each person was also reduced a lot.

Everyone in the Dong family had cudgels as weapons. Dong Tianyu hadn't expected that it would be very easy to keep cudgels in the community shelters. But when the officials took over completely and the members of the Officials moved in directly, the threatening power of the cudgels dropped drastically. To prevent any incidents, the military directly arranged for soldiers with live ammunition to stay in each subway station shelter.