“Attention, residents! Attention, residents! Please line up to collect water. You should all have received the notice. Today, each person can receive two liters of drinking water. Elderly people and children can get an extra liter. Each household may send a representative to collect water.”
“There is enough water, there is enough water. Please line up properly and avoid crowding…”
Community staff stood by the water truck, holding megaphones, carefully reading out all the instructions to the residents.
Hearing that each person only got two liters, many people began murmuring. Although the water had been cut off early this morning, the water pressure last night had been very low. Even with taps fully open, some households had only managed to fill a few buckets.
With the weather so hot, just flushing the toilet today already used up one bucket of water. And that was using water sparingly. Many people had assumed that once the water truck arrived, there would at least be more than two liters per person, even if not unlimited.
A lot of people started chattering and complaining. Although it was already past seven in the evening and the streetlights were on, many felt an inexplicable irritation.
The community staff clearly had anticipated this. Calmly, they directed everyone to line up, ignoring complaints selectively.
Father Lin and Wen Shiyun had brought sealed plastic water containers from home after receiving the notice. Since there weren’t many residents in the villa district, they quickly got in line.
Naturally, they heard the complaints around them, but showed nothing on their faces. Inside, both felt grateful, if it weren’t for Lin Su, they might also be worrying about the water shortage right now.
He Qingfei, who didn’t have work today, came over to ask about Lin Su’s whereabouts.
Father Lin chuckled and said, “She went over to Qingshui Lake to check out the commotion…”
By Qingshui Lake, Lin Su stood watching two groups of people conducting water transactions and was utterly speechless.
Fifteen minutes earlier, after receiving the notice that the water truck had arrived, many people who had been waiting in line left. Most of them were residents of the high-end district. Once they left, there weren’t many people left fetching water.
Those who were still collecting water watched in surprise as Old Cheng arrived, leading a group, and began laying down a large-diameter pipe over twenty centimeters wide toward the lake.
At first, people didn’t realize what Old Cheng intended to do. But when they heard the rumbling of the water pump starting, everything became clear.
The pump’s power sent wave after wave of lake water into a one-person-high plastic water bucket. Once that bucket was full, another bucket was immediately put in place.
Lin Su had no idea where Old Cheng had gotten so many plastic buckets. But as bucket after bucket was filled, the remaining people stopped collecting water. Everyone stared at the unusually high-output water pipe.
Then the first person went up to ask Old Cheng if he could put some water in his bucket. The answer: ten yuan per small bucket.
The man looked at the muddy lake, thought for a moment, then pulled out his phone and scanned 20 yuan to Old Cheng. Less than a minute later, he carried two full buckets of water home.
Once the first person paid, the second followed quickly, and soon everyone left collecting water had paid Old Cheng and carried full buckets home.
Watching Old Cheng’s smug, self-satisfied look, Lin Su knew things were going to go badly.
Sure enough, the next evening, when Old Cheng pushed his equipment to Qingshui Lake again, there were already nearly ten people pumping water there. These people were pumping water while loudly selling it, pricing it a few yuan cheaper than Old Cheng had yesterday.
Yesterday, Old Cheng had brought plenty of large plastic buckets of water directly to the villa district to sell. And it sold quite well.
Many households in the villa district had even managed to get drinking-water purification tablets. Using lake water for flushing toilets and laundry wasn’t a problem.
So yesterday Old Cheng had made a small fortune and was planning to make another big haul today. Who would have thought that so many people would come to compete with him for business?
Lin Su only learned about the situation at the lake after the conflict occurred.
She had already anticipated that things at the lake wouldn’t be peaceful today. So after eating, she stayed home to help process food.
Lin Su had bought lots of frozen foods: buns, steamed bread, dumplings, shumai, glutinous rice chicken, and more. She kept them in her space so they remained frozen solid.
Worried that days ahead might not be so comfortable, Lin Su planned to cook as much of the raw food in her space as possible. She would then use disposable food containers to portion everything, making it easy to take out and eat whenever she went out.
Just as Lin Su had steamed a batch of glutinous rice chicken and opened one, she saw a short video appear in the community group on her phone, showing a fight.
The video was filmed at Qingshui Lake. Old Cheng was being pinned to the ground and beaten by several burly men.
Listening to him crying and shouting for his parents, Lin Su felt no sympathy at all. She took a bite of the soft, fragrant glutinous rice chicken and looked at the many comments under the video, people gloating over his misfortune. She didn’t even know what to say.
Qingshui Lake was already not that large, and a lot of its water had evaporated due to the heat. The water level was naturally low.
And yet, people were like locusts, using pumps to drain the lake as fast as they could. Even if it took just a few days, or at most a month, Qingshui Lake would definitely dry up. When that happened, households without stored water wouldn’t know what to do.
Soon, another video was posted in the group.
The new video showed community staff, property management, and even the police at the scene. It seemed that the situation at Qingshui Lake would soon be dealt with.
Sure enough, after Lin Su finished her glutinous rice chicken, the community posted an announcement in the main group.
The notice was simple: the fight had been handled.
First, Old Cheng and the others pumping and selling water at Qingshui Lake had to hand over all the money they had made to the neighborhood, to be used as public funds.
Second, no one was allowed to use pumps at Qingshui Lake in the future. Residents could fetch water by hand, but not pump it to sell.
On the surface, the issue seemed resolved. But Lin Su knew that while the situation was under control for now, temporarily keeping these unscrupulous people in check, once things really became desperate, these people would surely try to jump back into the fray.
Beijing time, August 31, 11:15 PM.
The Lin family’s living room held the three members of the Lin household, along with the father and son from the Wen family. The five of them sat on the sofa, air conditioning on, eyes glued to the television.
The TV was showing global news.
The broadcast covered temperature changes around the world, and the resulting effects on crops, water resources, and human societies.
The footage showed hardened, cracked riverbeds, withered forests, and gaunt figures collapsed under the scorching sun… Combined with the narration, these scenes filled many viewers with a subtle fear of an apocalyptic future.
“Will… will our area ever become like this?”
Mother Lin, normally straightforward and confident, couldn’t hide the tremor in her voice at the sight.
The scenes on the screen were from the equatorial region. Reports said that some people there had migrated to other countries, while others stayed, living underground during the day in deep caves and emerging at night to scavenge for food.
That wasn’t living, it was barely surviving.
Facing her mother’s fear, Lin Su shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Everyone present knew about the live-screen updates online, though it had been a long time since any appeared.
“It’s okay. Look at us, we’re fine, aren’t we?”
Father Lin and Father Wen, noticing the tense atmosphere, quickly spoke a few words to ease the mood.
Meanwhile, Wen Shiyun was scrolling on his phone.
Wen Shiyun had access to certain online channels. He had previously used them to spread posts about natural disasters and the apocalypse.
Now, on those channels, many people were posting updates about their own countries. Some of the information wasn’t available on the news, but the latest developments could be tracked online.
One image caught Lin Su’s attention: the sky filled with red light. In the area shown, the local time was approaching 4:00 AM. But looking at the blood-red sky, it didn’t resemble the dim, gray light of early morning at all.
When Lin Su saw the phone Wen Shiyun handed over, she was startled by the fiery sky.
“What is this red light?”
A few of the elders gathered to look at the image as well. After seeing it, everyone’s mood grew even heavier.
With so many people on the Green River Star network, Wen Shiyun was certainly not the only one who had seen this image.
When officials saw such photos, they immediately gathered experts from relevant fields to study and discuss them. Both domestically and internationally, no one could explain why the sky was showing such an abnormal phenomenon.
By September 1 at 12:00 AM, the outside world was completely silent. The usual nighttime noises of people strolling around were gone.
Half an hour earlier, every citizen had received a text message. The notice bluntly stated that in four hours, the country would experience a blood-red sky. With the cause of this anomaly unknown, everyone was instructed to stay indoors, close doors and windows, and, if necessary, take shelter in basements.
The Lin family chose to stay in their basement. The Wen father and son also didn’t go home tonight, planning to endure the night together with the Lins.
The Lin basement had been renovated, and both the ventilation and dryness made it extremely comfortable.
But Lin Su couldn’t enjoy that comfort. Carrying her laptop downstairs, she immediately fixed her eyes on the screen, which showed a live view of the sky outside.
This was the Lin family’s surveillance system, with the cameras angled to monitor the sky.
“Mom, Dad, Uncle Wen, if you’re tired, you can rest first,” Lin Su said.
She knew her own anxiety was making the elders worry.
Wen Shiyun chimed in: “Yes, you should all rest. I’ll stay with Susu and watch what’s happening outside.”
They said that, but the elders couldn’t sleep.
It wasn’t just them. Around the world, whether people had already seen the blood-red sky or were about to, no one could sleep.
It was far too eerie.
Online speculation about the blood-red sky ran wild, but everyone knew there was nothing they could do except wait.
When the first ray of light appeared in the sky, it wasn’t white, it was blood-red. Everyone knew immediately:
It’s here…
As the red light spread across the sky, even through the screen, Lin Su felt a deep sense of terror.
The crimson seemed to press down on her chest, as if trying to suffocate everyone who saw it.
As the red light appeared, Lin Su noticed the mercury in the indoor thermometer skyrocketing.
Even in the basement alone, the room temperature had climbed to 45 degrees Celsius. Just a minute before the red light appeared, it had been only 30 degrees, and the air conditioning wasn’t even on.
With the sudden heat surge, Lin Su didn’t dare turn on the AC immediately. Instead, she switched on the solar-powered electric fan to relieve everyone’s discomfort.
At the same time, the long-absent live-screen comments finally began to appear…