Cave Refuge

Moreover, the warehouse didn't only have grains; there were plenty of meats, canned food, dried vegetables, cigarettes, and alcohol stored by Dong Tianyu as well.

To be frank, when compared to the combined resources in the hands of the West City District Headquarters members, what was in the warehouse could be of higher quality.

To avoid other people's envy, the three families divided up the warehouse content. The remainder was simply donated.

Indeed, as the saying goes, 'when the wind blows, the balls cool off – wealth leaves, and people are in peace.'

Besides food, the most stored items in the warehouse were water purifying consumables. But these items were designed for water use, so even when the the floods came and the warehouse was submerged, these items would not be damaged.

Once the salvage team started working, these water purifying consumables would no longer be scarce.

Items like these, unlike necessities, were not essentials to survival, so the professional salvage teams sent by the officials were borrowed by the South District and East District to go to the granary to rescue food.

On the other hand, spontaneously formed private salvage teams made agreements with the warehouse owners. The owner would provide the exact location of the warehouse and a list of items stored inside, and the salvage team would then perform the salvage operation.

The salvaged resources would be allocated between the two parties based on their proportion of contribution, which would be determined by the difficulty of the salvage and the specific resources.

Of course, in the beginning, since these were individual transactions, the process was highly informal. Many warehouse owners were at a disadvantage once the goods were salvaged.

Upon hearing about these circumstances, many owners would rather have their goods remain submerged than hire people to salvage them.

As a result, some salvage teams became underwater hunters who specialize in diving underwater for resources.

The remainder of the salvage teams sought the officials with the warehouse owners, hoping to attain smooth transactions with the intervention of the officials.

Once the officials got involved, two notaries would be arranged to guarantee fairness during the distribution of salvaged goods.

Indeed, as you would understand, the officials collected 10% of salvaged goods as a notarization fee.

The Thompsons did not surrender those resources for nothing. Haiyang and Dong Tianyu's brother-in-law successfully joined the West City District Command Post, becoming notaries in the newly established Justice Center.

This entry unlike the last time in the refuge center, where Mr. Thompson and Hai's father had joined as affiliated personnel, they bypassed the temporary worker position and became officially registered members.

It was evident from this; even after removing the easiest-to-preserve and most valued items, the remaining resources in Dong Tianyu's warehouse were very worthwhile.

Truthfully, before the calamity, those items might not have been high in value. But after the Cold Catastrophe and the flood, the scarcity of many goods increased multiple times in value.

After having a long chat with his father, Dong Tianyu got a general understanding of how his parents had been living relatively comfortably during his absence.

Even his grandpa, who previously had to be bedridden all all the time, seems to have miraculously recovered considerably since leaving the refuge center. Although still nowhere close to juxtaposing with the healthy elderly.

But now, Griffin Benjamin doesn't need to bedridden anymore and can pick up his small stool and chat with some other old men outside, reminiscing about the past.

Perhaps it's just that many creatures have become extinct throughout the historic turmoil, while human beings not only survived but have embarked on constantly changing the environment.

Whether in the industrial age where environmental exploitation led to economic development, or in the environmental protection age of planting trees, we undoubtedly are continuously molding the Earth's environment according to human will.

Dong Tianyu chatted with his father for a long time. It wasn't until he heard the door open and saw his mother come in that he remembered his mother's singing activities had ended.

When Mrs. Thompson saw her son and husband conversing in the living room, she was overjoyed. She walked briskly over to Dong Tianyu and carefully checked out her son.

Looking at her son neatly attired, she knew he hadn't suffered hardships outside.

After hanging out with other women, Mrs. Thompson, who had been isolated and occasionally helped her eldest daughter take care of the kids, was no longer the 'sheltered lady.' She grew to understand the outside world a bit more.

Despite the flooding that submerged Pengcheng city, the lifestyle of most survivors there is arguably better than when they were taking refuge underground during the Cold Catastrophe.

Perhaps human beings in the course of era changes have discarded many instincts, but the adaptability engraved in our genes is the crucial reason human beings do not face extinction in any situation.

Whether it was the pervasive cold of the past, or the current city-submerging floods, although humans cannot directly change the external environment, they can rapidly adapt to it.

Take Pengcheng, this inland city, for instance. Even though many people can swim because of Jade Dragon Lake, those who truly understood diving were not many, let alone those who can dive independently to around ten meters underwater.

But after the flood, Pengcheng's water level rose approximately thirty meters, and the doors of many warehouses storing resources were completely submerged.

Now, merely one or two months after the flood, some survivors can reach the submerged ground without any aid and carry out basic transport operations.

For perspective, this water-depth diving would only have been possible for very professional divers in the past. Ordinary people diving deeper than 10 meters would risk physical harm due to water pressure.

It has to be said sometimes when pushed hard enough, people can do almost anything (except maybe math problems).

Of course, those individuals who dived desperately suffered some physical damages. Therefore, even a regular person can now tell at a glance if someone else has been engaged in the high-risk salvaging job of trading resources for their lives.

Looking at her son's smooth skin, Mrs. Thompson knew straight away that Dong Tianyu's daily job did not include deep-diving.

However, after a detailed observation, Mrs. Thompson looked a bit puzzled and asked Dong Tianyu, "Son, why does your skin now look even better than before?"

Dong Tianyu, like many other average men, only used ointments, soap, and shampoo for daily skincare. Sometimes when he ran out of shampoo, he simply used soap as a substitute.

But for some reason, even without using any skincare product, Dong Tianyu's skin was still better than his cousins'.

Though as he aged, his unmaintained facial skin became a bit rough, but, strangely, the skin on the back of Dong Tianyu's hands still remained smooth and delicate. Not to compare it with an infant's, but it was still fairer and softer than most people's. This made his cousins very envious, and they would hold his hands for a long time every time they met him.