Cave Refuge

Although the thunder had hidden among the clouds and no longer appeared, the survivors who had grown accustomed to hiding on the first floor did not immediately move up to the second floor. Instead, they continued to curl up on the first floor, waiting for the nasty weather to end.

Unfortunately, their wish was dashed once more. The current rainfall was unlike the previous two bouts of severe weather, which had started intensely and ended swiftly without dragging on.

The rain, which seemed to pour down from the heavens, did not end as quickly as Zachary had guessed. Instead, the downpour continued to intensify. In just a moment of distraction, the situation outside could no longer be described simply as rain but rather like a faucet with high water pressure turned on, presenting a torrential and fierce flow before everyone's eyes.

In fact, in addition to having underground drainage facilities, the campsite was deliberately built on a gentle slope by Ye Liuyun. Precisely because of this, what seemed to be a level ground actually had a certain degree of inclination.

The angle of slope, however, was not steep. Similar to a bathroom floor, which appeared roughly flat but actually had a certain angle, if water accumulated on the ground, it would tend to flow in one direction.

If it were just a light rain, perhaps this sloping runoff would have been beneficial to the campsite, but with the current excessive amount of rainfall, this surface runoff had no practical effect on the increasing water levels on the ground.

As the water levels continued to rise, the accumulated water gradually invaded the first floor of the buildings. When the survivors hiding on the first floor noticed water entering the building, they had no choice but to retreat to the staircase connecting the first and second floors.

According to their reasoning, since the second-floor ceiling had been struck by lightning—even though the lightning did not penetrate the roof—the powerful impact had still caused significant damage, albeit the cracks were too tiny to see.

If the weather outside were better, those tiny holes would not have had much impact, but during a torrential downpour like this, even the tiniest of holes in the roof would allow some rainwater to drip into the room.

Because the second floor's roof was leaking and the first floor was taking on water, most survivors considered the staircase a good place to be: above, it would not leak, and below, it wouldn't be submerged.

It's just that initially, they only thought about the advantages of seeking refuge on the staircase and did not consider the problems they might face there.

At the moment, since all the glass windows on the second floor had been shattered by the gale-force winds carrying debris, even though it was raining outside without fierce winds, a considerable amount of rainwater was still making its way into the rooms through the broken windows.

After all, those people had just sought shelter on the first floor and only thought to cover those windows with anything they could find, as if they had forgotten about the second floor and did not attempt to fix its shattered windows. Thus, naturally, more and more rainwater entered the rooms from the damaged second-floor windows.

The rain not only entered through the damaged windows but also penetrated the second floor's rooms through the fine holes created by lightning strikes at the top of the building.

Although the amount of water entering the house from these two sources was not great, the continued rain could lead to accumulation. Should the second floor begin to flood, the best method of drainage would be to allow the water to flow down the stairs to the first floor.

However, once the rainwater from the second floor started to trickle down the stairs to the first floor, the previously dry staircase would inevitably become wet and slippery, causing discomfort among the survivors who had taken refuge there.

Judging by the height of the backyard steps, Mr. Thompson, while keeping a close eye on the situation outside the window, turned and asked Dong Tianyu, "The floodwater must be around twenty or thirty centimeters deep by now, right? If the water level rises further, perhaps the campsite will truly face internal flooding."

When they first constructed the camp, didn't they build a huge underground tunnel that was two meters high and wide? Although the rain is heavy, can such a short span of downpour really fill up such a large tunnel?

Because many people had personally entered and observed the underground tunnel when it was built for drainage, when they saw the accumulated water on the ground, many of them harbored the same skepticism as Mr. Thompson. Could such a large underground tunnel be filled by the surface water in just a few minutes?

Although many in the camp were beginning to question, nobody was willing to brave the pouring rain to check the conditions on the streets.

If it wasn't raining, even if there was standing water on the road and the water on the ground had risen above the height of an average person's ankle, many would likely not continue to wait at home for the water to recede. Instead, they would venture out to enjoy the pleasures of playing in the water.

Regrettably, now there was standing water, but the downpour persisted, dampening people's enthusiasm to go out and play in the water.

When the water depth in the camp reached over half a meter, the rain, which had been falling as if it had been poured from a bucket, finally began to lessen. At this time, most of the ground floors of the houses in the camp were basically submerged, with some families whose bedrooms were on the first floor, some sitting on their beds, and others on their coffee tables or desks to avoid the water.

Just as they discovered that the rainfall was diminishing and thought this horrid weather was finally coming to an end, hoping to seize the opportunity to go out and play in the water, they suddenly realized that although the precipitation in the sky was reducing,

the rain, which had been falling like columns, had instead begun to change form, solidifying into small balls—hailstones.

At first, perhaps the temperature in the clouds was not low enough, so the hail that fell was mostly mixed with the rain, but as the temperature within the clouds continued to drop, the proportion of hail in the rain steadily increased. Eventually, the rain mixed with hail dwindled, leaving behind hailstones the size of baby fists.

Although the hail, transformed from rainwater, fell with a strong impact, no survivors were wandering aimlessly outside. Although some left their houses to check out the situation, they mostly just roamed near their doors and did not plan to stray far from their homes.

For this reason, those survivors who had stepped outside became instantly alert upon noticing the hail mixed with the rainwater and did not linger outside, promptly returning to their houses.

As the proportion of hail in the rainwater grew, the survivors had already returned to their homes. So by the time the rain clouds had condensed entirely into hail, even though it fell with strong force, it did not cause much harm to the survivors.

It was alright for the hail that landed directly on the ground since, despite its force, let's not forget that there was half a meter of water on the ground, meaning the most it could do was make a rather large splash upon impact, without inflicting much damage on the ground itself.

But let's not forget, besides the ground covered with water, there was another place that would suffer direct damage from the falling hail— the rooftops.

Some rooftops had already been subjected to Thunder Dragon's assault; although not pierced directly by Thunder Dragon, while they seemingly withstood the lightning's strike, their structural integrity was compromised by the storm, or else leaks wouldn't have appeared during the rain.

Everybody actually knew that once a crack appeared on the surface of an object that was originally solid, even if the crack was minuscule, the overall structure had been compromised, thus inevitably losing its once formidable defensive capability.

There's an old saying: a mighty dike gives way because of an ant hole.