Cave Refuge

Because of the blisters, the rooftops that should have withstood the hail could not endure until the end as more and more hail fell, and many houses' rooftops eventually shattered and collapsed.

Fortunately, the survivors were all very clever, and they generally took shelter in the stairwell between the first and the second floors. Thus, even though the second-floor rooftops collapsed, there were no casualties in the end.

Mr. Thompson, hiding inside Dong Tianyu's Companion Spiritual Treasure, naturally noticed the increasingly severe weather outside. Watching more and more hailstones fall into the puddles, turning the water on the surface into icy water compound, Mr. Thompson's concern unconsciously showed on his face.

The continuous hail not only rapidly dropped the temperature of the accumulating water but, more importantly, as the hail grew larger and larger, the water level of the puddles on the ground also kept rising.

The original water level, which was only about half a meter deep, rose considerably, although it did not reach the point of completely submerging the first floor; it did reach a depth of nearly one meter.

Compared to the survivors sheltering in the damp stairwells, Father Dong and Mother Dong, although a bit anxious and worried, were in a quiet and dry environment.

After all, with the deep-sea Submersible Navigation capability of the Companion Spiritual Treasure, not to mention facing the water only about one meter deep, even if a flood came again, it wouldn't significantly affect the treasure's internal space.

The hailstorm appeared as urgently as the previous weather events and ended just as abruptly.

The water on the ground did not rise as the survivors had imagined; once the hail completely stopped, the water depth inside the camp was only about one meter.

Just as Mr. Thompson was looking outside, prepared to see the situation now that the hail had stopped, he was directly stopped by Dong Tianyu, "Dad, let's not go out at this time, we should wait. After all the water in the camp has receded, we'll go out."

Hearing Dong Tianyu say this, Mrs. Thompson also persuaded from the side, "Yes, right now the outside is all water, and there was just hail. The temperature of the water outside must be very low. If you catch a cold, wouldn't that just be suffering for nothing?"

Hearing his wife's persuasion, Mr. Thompson was not particularly concerned. Now, not to mention Mr. Thompson, even most of the other survivors in the camp, except the younger children, had a Cultivation Level, and their physical health naturally needs no explanation.

The possibility of catching a cold and getting sick, as mentioned by Mother Dong, was almost nonexistent, but seeing his son and wife both opposed to going out, Mr. Thompson was not insistent on leaving and decided to stay put and rest for the night.

As it was already late, the three of them took out beds from their respective Storage spaces to make do for the night.

Compared to the comfortable sleep the Thompson family of three had inside the Companion Spiritual Treasure, the conditions of the other survivors in the camp were not as good. The water had submerged the first floor, and hail had punctured the top of the upper floors' roofs, which meant that unless the building had many floors, items on both the first and second floors were essentially in the water.

However, since most buildings in the camp only had two floors, the situation most survivors faced was more or less the same. Only some survivors hadn't taken all their belongings out of their Storage spaces, so those items in the Storage spaces were fortunate enough to escape the fate of being soaked.

Just when most people in the camp thought that the weather would return to normal after the hail ended, everyone failed to notice the temperature gradually dropping.

At first when the temperature drop began, most had noticed but did not take it seriously. Everyone understood that it is not cold when it snows but gets colder when it melts—the hail had just fallen and was melting slowly in the water, so a drop in temperature seemed normal to most.

What no one noticed was that the hailstones, which were supposed to melt gradually in the water, not only did not do so as expected but even swelled and grew larger in the water.

If someone had noticed this change with the hailstones in the water, they might have realized that the reason for the outdoor temperature drop was not due to the hailstones immersed in the water, but rather, the weather itself was getting colder.

Because most people in the camp had become Martial Artists, even though not everyone had reached the point of immunity to the elements, changes in normal outdoor temperature now had exceedingly little impact on their bodies.

Although most survivors in the camp were not sensitive to changes in the outdoor temperature, there remained a few very young infants in the camp who had not begun the process of Cultivation.

As the outdoor temperature continued to drop, they were the ones who felt the change in temperature directly. If it were the older children who had learned to speak, they would have told their parents that it was getting cold and they needed to layer up.

But those who could neither speak nor even crawl could only cry loudly upon sensing the change in temperature. Fortunately, whenever children cried loudly, people would instinctively hold them to comfort them, and when the infants felt the warmth of an embrace, they gradually quieted down.