Wen Shiyun never imagined that one day he would actually witness a scene that usually only appeared in novels or sci-fi movies.
His first reaction wasn’t amazement, but to lean forward and grab Lin Su’s hand, turning it over and over to examine it, anxiously asking, “This… space, does it have any effect on your body? It won’t harm you, will it?”
Seeing him so worried, Lin Su didn’t immediately pull her hand away. She continued, “So far, no problems have appeared. But I don’t fully trust this space yet. That’s why a small portion of this batch of coal will be transported directly by truck to my warehouse in An City.”
Most of the supplies Lin Su prepared were stored in the space, while the remainder was kept in a warehouse not far from home. This served two purposes: first, to avoid drawing attention; second, in case the space malfunctions someday, she wouldn’t lose all the supplies at once.
Hearing Lin Su’s arrangement, Wen Shiyun nodded repeatedly. “Exactly, that’s how it should be. By the way, the basement in my house is empty. If you want to store supplies, you can put them there too.”
Lin Su looked at him helplessly. “Aren’t you planning to prepare supplies for your own family?”
Wen Shiyun chuckled, “You definitely wouldn’t leave us out.”
And he was right, given the decades-long friendship between their families, Lin Su naturally included Wen and his father when preparing supplies.
At that moment, the atmosphere between them grew a little ambiguous. However, Lin Su had always regarded Wen Shiyun as a brother and had never considered that possibility, so she quickly steered the conversation to another topic.
Naturally, she didn’t notice the fleeting shadow of melancholy in Wen Shiyun’s eyes.
After more than an hour, Lin Su had relayed all the information she had gathered from live comments as well as the current status of supply preparation.
Wen Shiyun had already opened Lin Su’s computer and was reviewing the supply list she had prepared. They had gone directly from the airport to Wen Shiyun’s private office at the coal mine.
By the time Lin Su took a couple sips of water, Wen Shiyun had already finished reviewing the list.
“You haven’t prepared much gasoline or diesel. I have channels to get some,” Wen Shiyun said.
As he spoke, he suddenly remembered hearing a few days ago that a nearby smokeless charcoal factory might be going out of business. A few warehouses full of smokeless charcoal were looking for buyers, but with the extreme heat these days, the coal wouldn’t fetch a good price immediately. Seeing Lin Su’s supply list, he noticed she hadn’t prepared much smokeless charcoal.
Smokeless charcoal was also useful, so Lin Su naturally nodded.
After discussing the supplies Wen Shiyun would help collect, Lin Su brought up how the coal would be transported.
The mine was a large, crowded place with lots of people, unlike her private warehouse where she could immediately store materials in the space. Lin Su planned to rent a large warehouse nearby, first transport the coal from the mine there, and later collect it into the space herself.
Wen Shiyun said, “That works. It’s the best approach. You don’t need to worry about the transfer warehouse; I’ll handle it. You go ahead and collect the other supplies as planned. I’ll take care of the coal. Once you’re done and return, we’ll help you bring the coal back together.”
This coincided perfectly with Lin Su’s original plan. However, she didn’t leave immediately. Instead, she followed Wen Shiyun around the mine, met with Uncle Wen, had lunch, and was only then driven to the city.
“Are you sure you don’t need me to go with you?”
Lin Su shook her head. “You should quickly clear the orders you have on hand.”
If the apocalypse hadn’t happened, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But if it really did, nobody could survive at a coal mine in this kind of extreme heat. It was better to settle things here as fast as possible.
After saying goodbye to Wen Shiyun, Lin Su stayed in Xishi City for a full day. During that time, she swept through all of Xishi’s local delicacies.
She packed 1,000 meat-filled buns, 5,000 jin of chestnuts, 5,000 boxes of famous hanging persimmons, and 5,000 portions of cold noodles, each neatly packed in takeaway containers ready to eat. She also collected local specialties like stone cakes, steamed cakes, kiwis, beef and mutton products, and Xifeng liquor in large quantities.
Once she finished Xishi, Lin Su officially began collecting inventory from her own chain of supermarkets.
The Lin family supermarkets were headquartered in An City, which alone had over twenty branches. Other stores were scattered across neighboring provinces, with the southernmost location in Guang Province.
Since she had already instructed the store managers to send portions of inventory to her designated warehouse, Lin Su’s speed in collecting supplies was very fast. Occasionally, she would stop for half a day or a full day to gather local delicacies into her space.
Of course, along the way, the live chat comments would pop up from time to time, trying to get attention. But all of it was nonsense, none of it contained the information she wanted.
For example, while she was collecting supplies, a message might suddenly appear: 【Has cannon fodder Susu awakened? Oh yeah…】. Or while storing local delicacies in the space: 【Looks so tasty! I’m jealous…】
Such nonsense left Lin Su completely speechless.
Fortunately, she was immune to the live comments and kept working diligently every day without stopping.
Thanks to her high-efficiency collecting and the support of her private plane, by the time Lin Su reached the final stop of this trip—Yangcheng in Guang Province, it was already August 21st.
As soon as she got off the plane and walked about fifty meters, she felt completely soaked in sweat.
The temperature in Yangcheng was extremely high, with the sun blazing overhead. Lin Su felt as if her head, even under her hat, was about to smoke from the heat. Finally reaching the city, she noticed almost no pedestrians outside and very few vehicles. When she arrived at the shopping center where her supermarket was located, she realized it was packed with people.
All of them were there to escape the heat and enjoy the air conditioning. But outside, temperatures had already surpassed forty-five degrees Celsius. With so many people crammed inside, even the strongest central AC couldn’t cool it properly. After all, each person was exhaling carbon dioxide, and the AC simply couldn’t keep up.
Lin Su made her way through the crowd toward her supermarket.
However, as she walked, she suddenly heard shouts coming from the glass doors of the mall.
Then came cries for help and calls to dial 120.
With so many people around, those who hadn’t seen what was happening became unsettled. Seeing this, Lin Su feared a stampede and quickened her pace, running straight into the supermarket.
After inspecting the store, she finally understood what had happened outside.
An elderly woman had fainted near the glass doors from the extreme heat. It was said to be heatstroke, and at the hospital she was diagnosed with heatstroke progressing to heat exhaustion.
“President Lin, you’ve seen it yourself—Yangcheng’s weather lately is unbearable. On top of that, electricity prices have spiked, and they’re implementing rolling blackouts at night. So the mall has become a place for many people to escape the heat. But malls have limited capacity. If too many people gather, accidents are bound to happen.”
Hearing this, Lin Su roughly understood what the supermarket manager was getting at.
Sure enough, he continued: “You saw it yourself when you came in. Too many people are crowding in here to enjoy the AC. It’s not that we won’t let them use it, but this many people packed together is really unsafe.”
To be honest, of all the cities Lin Su had visited, Yangcheng was the hottest. Even in An City, temperatures hovered around forty degrees Celsius, but Yangcheng had already broken the forty-five-degree mark.
Listening to the manager’s report and seeing the supermarket packed with people, Lin Su finally said, “Starting tomorrow, the supermarket will only operate through service windows.”
Service window sales, as the name implies, means customers cannot enter the supermarket to browse. Like a school cafeteria, rows of windows are opened. Customers tell the staff what they want by brand or product name, the staff quote a price, and if acceptable, they hand over the goods for checkout.
The supermarket already had the infrastructure for this. The current situation was too complicated, so many people crammed inside could lead to accidents, but completely shutting down the store wasn’t practical either.
Lin Su had been to many places and knew that many markets had already stopped operating or adjusted their hours, mostly because daytime temperatures were too high. Unless people stayed in air-conditioned spaces, survival was nearly impossible.
After arranging the supermarket operations, Lin Su went to the warehouse to collect supplies and also bought plenty of local Yangcheng delicacies.
By the time she boarded her plane to the Northwest, she heard that a supermarket not far from her own in Yangcheng had suffered a stampede.
The cause of the incident was simple: too many people crowded in, someone screamed, and everyone panicked, thinking an accident had occurred. They rushed toward the exits, resulting in a stampede. Moreover, the crowd and thin air caused many people to suffer from oxygen deprivation.
Lin Su checked social media for reactions to the incident. Most of the comments criticized the supermarket for failing to ensure safety. Many even held the supermarket primarily responsible.
Seeing this, Lin Su was glad she had acted decisively. Considering the conditions she had observed in other supermarkets along the way, she decided to immediately issue instructions to all her stores to implement service-window sales. Even if it meant losing many customers, she was determined.
She did not want any accidents at such a critical moment.
Since getting off the plane, Lin Su had been handling this matter. Only after everything was settled did Wen Shiyun, who had come to pick her up, ask, “All done?”
Although Wen Shiyun wasn’t involved in the supermarket business, he had heard about the situation. In fact, the conditions at the supermarket where the accident occurred were mirrored all over the country.
High electricity costs were one thing, but with the heat, people naturally became irritable. Even driving on the road, arguments, fights, and even brawls between drivers were increasingly common.
The root cause was the extreme heat, everyone seemed to have a fire inside, ready to erupt.
“All right. We’ve done everything we can. Let’s just hope nothing else happens.”
Wen Shiyun didn’t say much when he saw this. Instead, following their previous plan, he took Lin Su to several locations, warehouses of various sizes. After a full day of work, getting all the supplies from the warehouses into her space, it was already past eight in the evening.
Surprisingly, there were more people walking around outside at this hour. The two of them found a small local restaurant to eat.
The restaurant was fairly crowded, many families having dinner together. While waiting for the food, Lin Su noticed quite a few children running around inside.
After the sun went down, the temperature dropped to the low thirties, and the restaurant had air conditioning. Naturally, the children became lively.
Normally, Lin Su might have thought of such children running around in a restaurant as spoiled brats. But thinking about the world that was coming, her gaze toward them was filled with sympathy.
In the future, in that harsh world, even if these kids wanted to act spoiled, they wouldn’t be able to.
Wen Shiyun noticed what Lin Su was thinking. His smile faded slightly, but he silently resolved to protect his family. For him, family wasn’t just his father, it also included Lin Su and her parents.
Lin Su spent a day in the Northwest. On the morning of August 25, after the Wen family father and son finished handling the coal mine matters, they boarded a plane with Lin Su, naturally heading for An City.
At Qingshui Mountain Villa in An City, Lin Su’s family’s Building No. 1 had already been renovated by August 15. After that, the renovation crew moved to the neighboring Building No. 2, the Wen family’s residence, to start the same renovations.
Lin Su’s father naturally served as the main overseer, while her mother prepared various cooked foods at home.
That same afternoon, Lin Su’s parents sat at the dining table, eating while watching TV.
The news kept coming, all bad: reservoirs drying up in one place, power grids collapsing from excessive load in another, cars spontaneously combusting from heat on some highways, or reports of heatstroke victims dying.
In short, the bad news kept piling up day by day, to the point that these two elders didn’t even want to watch TV. But if they didn’t watch, they feared missing important information.
At that moment, the news showed that all the pigs at a pig farm had died from the heat. Suddenly, the anchor seemed to receive breaking news. The anchor’s voice then came through the TV:
“We interrupt this program for an urgent news update. At 12:21 PM Beijing time, a private jet experienced a landing explosion at An City Airport in Ping’an Province…”
After that, everything the anchor said was completely drowned out for Lin Su’s parents. Because their precious daughter happened to be landing at An City Airport at that exact moment. And their plane was also a private jet…