Cave Refuge

Time flew by, and more than a year had passed since Dong Tianyu's transaction with Ye Liuyun.

After their initial trade, Dong Tianyu had had a few more transactions with Ye Liuyun. However, he still had no intention of joining the Mutual Aid Centre, and his dealings were solely with Ye Liuyun himself.

Over the course of a year, the survivors in Pengcheng had gradually adapted to life on the water. Although their large vessels were still those left over from the past, there were now quite a few more small wooden boats.

The pedal boat that Dong Tianyu rode was no longer the only one. These single-passenger vessels, like the bicycles of the 1950s, though valuable, were not rare in Pengcheng.

Though local thunderstorms still appeared in the sky from time to time, the survivors gradually adapted to this lifestyle, no longer lost as they were when the flood first came.

Dong Tianyu's life once again became routine. Apart from occasional visits to the office building to see his parents and getting nagged by his mother about marriage, his peaceful life saw no turmoil.

Even the initial plan to use firearms to deter and control the other powers on Nameless Mountain was not executed. Those people seemed to ignore Dong Tianyu, who was in the northern part of the mountain. Apart from patrols passing by the foot of the northern side of the mountain, they never came near the platform near his cave mansion.

The food salvage team appointed by the officials had retrieved all the food that had sunk into the water three months ago.

In order not to leave the survivors living on various mountains idle, the officials had early on distributed these survivors into different tasks.

The physically strongest batch joined the salvage team, the sub-healthy joined the construction team, and the weakest batch processed the salvaged food.

They first dried the damp food, then ground it into powder, and finally pressed it into moulds to make bricks of grain the size of a piece of soap.

This method of production was basically the same as the once popular practice of pressing milk powder into tablets.

To ensure nutrition and yield, the powdered grain was not made directly into grain bricks, but various types of grains were mixed together and then made into mixed-flavour grain bricks.

The finished product, the grain bricks, were very hard, easily able to crack walnuts or even act as a hammer to drive nails.

Although the finished product was only the size of a soap, when put in a pot and mixed with ten times the volume of water, it could be cooked into a thick porridge that could satisfy a family of three.

In addition to these basic grain bricks, some high-grade grain bricks had added oils and vegetable powders. Although the taste was not great, they could provide all the necessary nutrients for survival.

Of course, both high-grade and ordinary grain bricks were supplied to ordinary survivors.

Several forces that had occupied the mountains and started to cultivate crops, or had opened up farms on rooftops, gradually received some food. However, these food resources were extremely scarce.

The main food source for most survivors was still the grain bricks.

However, most of the survivors did not know that a crisis was looming.

The number of grain bricks in Pengcheng's storage was dwindling. The high-ranking officials had noticed this situation and were discussing how to solve it.

The fact that Pengcheng's food stores have held up so long is impressive, considering that they haven't obtained food from the land since the electromagnetic pulse occurred.

Pengcheng's geographical location is quite good, located in a plains region, but with the city's development, many farmlands no longer grow food, but have switched to cash crops instead. Therefore, most of the grains sold in Pengcheng actually came from other places.

However, Pengcheng's food storage was well managed, especially when a new batch of officials arrived from another city. Their first action was to conduct a thorough inspection of the grain storage situation.

Those granaries with less food were reformed by replacing the old stocks with new stocks. Thus, when the natural disaster struck, the granaries in Pengcheng were, luckily, all filled to capacity.

This is why, no matter what kind of natural disaster Pengcheng faced, they had never experienced a real food shortage until now.

But no matter how much food they had stored, they couldn't keep up with continuous consumption. From the end of the viral outbreak to now, almost three years have passed. During these three years, the survivors in Pengcheng had been continuously consuming the stored food. Although they were not completely without food production, the amount produced was extremely low compared to consumption.

Following the restoration of communication, a variety of problems had emerged in one city after another, with food shortage being one of them.

But now, the Great Summer didn't see a resurgence of the situation where everyone gathered to help those in trouble. Instead, everyone started to mind their own business.

It makes sense that this would happen, after all, the issues occurring in other cities were likely to happen in their own city as well.

Like food shortage, since everyone had yet to find a universally stable way to obtain food, like growing crops in the fields as before, they dared not casually give away their city's stored food.

Furthermore, transport was highly inconvenient at the moment. Even if all the electronic equipment on the transport ships were repaired, the difficulty of obtaining fuel had risen exponentially.

With the exception of coastal cities that had the opportunity to obtain fuel from old transport ships, it was extremely difficult, and nearly impossible for inland cities to acquire fuel.

Moreover, transport ships were highly valuable now. No one dared to say for sure that after a transport ship delivered food, it wouldn't be commandeered by the receiving party.

So, regardless of how any city cried for relief in the communications, most city leaders merely offered verbal support, but made not a single mention of actual aid.

It was initially believed that the floods would slowly recede, just like the Cold Catastrophe, but surprisingly, even after a year, there was no sign of reduction in the floodwaters that consumed the land. The entire Pengcheng appeared to have turned into a water city.

Although the survivors had gradually adapted to this lifestyle, the officials had not yet found a truly reliable source of food.

The survivors of Pengcheng gradually noticed that the grain bricks produced by the officials were no longer comprised solely of various types of powdered grains - they now contained a mix of other powders.

At first, there wasn't much of this other mixed powders. Everyone thought this was an attempt by the officials to change the taste of the grain bricks.

However, as time went on, the amount of 'impurities' in the grain bricks became more and more, and the proportion of cereals became lower and lower.

Slowly, the grain bricks no longer filled them up as they used to. Now they felt hungry again not long after eating, whereas previously, two meals a day would easily keep the hunger at bay.

Some observant individuals detected this change, and many began quietly stocking up on food in case of emergency.

Because of this situation, the volume of transactions at Ye Liuyun's Mutual Aid Centre soared, with food being the most frequently traded item.

Seeing the surging price of grain in the Mutual Aid Centre, Ye Liuyun immediately realized the severity of this situation.