At the same time, An City Airport.
The sounds of burning objects exploding, screams, alarms, and airport announcements all overlapped chaotically.
It was already extremely hot just after noon, and the airport had no greenery to provide shade. The runways were made of concrete. Under these conditions, the entire airport felt like a massive steam chamber.
The thick smoke, carried by the rising heat, seemed to hover directly above everyone’s heads.
In such an environment, many people ignored the airport’s evacuation announcements. Panicked, they rushed with the crowd toward various exits.
The resulting secondary injuries were even more severe than the private jet explosion itself.
Lin Su, whose parents were worried about her, was now hiding with Wen Shiyun and Father Wen in a corner of a lounge in the terminal. Outside the lounge door, a crowd was pressing in.
Through the small window in the lounge door, Lin Su could clearly see the thick smoke on the tarmac drifting toward the terminal.
The earlier explosion had shattered the entire glass wall of the terminal facing the runway.
Now, the smoke was slowly creeping through these openings. A sharp, acrid stench began to fill the air.
Inside the lounge, aside from the three of them, there was no one else. Wen Shiyun also noticed the pungent odor. He immediately grabbed several disposable towels from a nearby cabinet, wet them under the tap, and handed them to Lin Su and his father.
At the first whiff of the smell, Lin Su wanted to take gas masks out of her space. However, she stopped immediately, realizing the lounge was under surveillance.
Taking the damp towels, Lin Su covered her mouth and nose, her eyes fixed on the scene outside.
Fifteen minutes had passed since the explosion. Nearby firefighters, police, and medical personnel had already arrived.
Once the authorities were on site, they quickly regained control of the panic.
At this point, Lin Su and the Wens emerged from the lounge.
The stench outside was even stronger, irritating to the point that it made their eyes uncomfortable.
The plane that had exploded in the distance had, in a very short time, been reduced to a burnt-out shell. The planes parked on either side were also damaged, scorched beyond recognition. Lin Su noticed a small patch of paint remaining on one of the planes’ fuselages and felt it looked vaguely familiar.
The thought flashed through her mind but quickly passed. Soon, she spotted her own plane parked in the distance, completely unharmed, and couldn’t help feeling relieved.
Because she knew she wouldn’t be using the plane for a long time, Lin Su had specifically applied for a parking spot, which turned out to be extremely useful now. Even though she probably wouldn’t need the plane in the future, she didn’t want such an expensive asset to be destroyed by the fire.
“Let’s go. We should head back first.”
Father Wen spoke up at this moment. Noticing that Lin Su kept glancing at her phone, he chuckled: “The signal hasn’t come back yet. Let’s drive back quickly. Once we get closer to the city, the signal should return.”
Exactly, somewhere along the way, the airport’s signal had cut off after the explosion. Lin Su hadn’t brought a satellite phone, so there was no way to report to her family. Right now, her parents must have been worried sick.
And worried sick they were.
Father Lin and mother almost drove straight to the airport. But after the accident, all the roads leading there had been blocked. Even if they wanted to go, they couldn’t. On top of that, calls to their daughter and the Wen family weren’t going through. No wonder the two of them were nearly terrified.
Fortunately, while it was hard to get into the airport, leaving it was still relatively easy.
After registering their information, the three of them headed for the parking lot to get the car and leave. But just then, Lin Su heard a woman yelling not far away.
She turned her head and saw, sure enough, someone she knew.
The woman immediately noticed Lin Su’s gaze and shouted loudly: “Lin Su, come over and help me!”
Her tone was full of arrogance and self-importance. Lin Su didn’t hesitate for a second and turned away.
The woman left standing there stomped her foot in frustration.
As Lin Su walked away, she couldn’t help thinking about the paint she’d seen on the plane earlier, whose plane could it have been?
“Th… that woman is Zhou Mi, right?”
Wen Shiyun spoke up, his tone carrying some uncertainty. Zhou Mi had been their high school classmate, though she and Lin Su had fallen out back then. After high school, Zhou Mi went abroad to study, and they hadn’t seen each other since.
Judging by how she looked, Zhou Mi had probably just returned to the country.
Lin Su nodded: “Yes, that’s Zhou Mi. It’s been years since we last met. How does she have the nerve to act so arrogant?”
While the two were talking, Father Wen had already started the car and was driving toward Qingshui Villa.
Lin Su immediately put Zhou Mi out of her mind and kept staring at the signal bars on her phone. After about half an hour of driving, the signal finally returned. At the same time, her phone lit up with a flood of messages and missed call notifications.
Lin Su immediately called home to report that she was safe. The call lasted until she saw her parents in person, only hanging up then.
The Wen family hadn’t met Lin’s parents for almost a year, so naturally there was a lot of small talk.
After explaining the accident and recounting the past few days of their trip, Lin Su finally had time to inspect her own renovation.
Old Uncle Wu’s skills were impressive. From the surface, the house looked completely unaltered, giving no hint that it had been renovated. But with three layers of thickened walls, triple-layer tempered glass, and upgraded underfloor heating, Lin Su felt confident that this house could help them survive the early stages of the apocalypse safely.
Nearby, Uncle Wen was discussing the renovation of the Wen family’s house with Father Lin. Lin Su opened her phone to check the news from the airport.
As expected, the private plane that exploded had been carrying quite a few chemicals. Apparently, the plane’s owner ran a chemical factory and had thought it convenient to transport some samples in the cabin along with the flight.
The initial cause of the explosion was determined to be high temperatures.
At the same time, the explosion affected a number of other planes on the airport tarmac and runway, a total of seven aircraft were impacted. The worst-damaged plane belonged to the Zhou family.
Seeing this, Lin Su understood why Zhou Mi had such a fiery temper. That plane wasn’t cheap, millions of dollars literally gone up in smoke. But Lin Su didn’t pity Zhou Mi one bit.
What was truly pitiable were the injuries and people sent to hospitals.
The comment sections were full of reactions. Naturally, the family owning the chemical-laden private plane was heavily criticized online. Every member was scrutinized and insulted, and the airport itself was also on the list of targets.
Some commenters, with sharp senses, had even noticed the dangers caused by the high temperatures.
Almost all the accidents reported in the news these past few days were caused by extreme heat. Lin Su casually scrolled through social media and realized that compared to plane explosions, car self-ignition incidents had become shockingly frequent.
No wonder there had been no traffic jams on the way back from the airport.
Online, people were already speculating how long this heatwave would last. Some had even started stockpiling supplies, posting photos of their stockpiles.
Seeing such posts, Lin Su wasn’t sure whether to praise the poster for being smart or call them foolish.
Posting so many supplies openly was essentially leaving a ticking bomb. Once the disaster hit, it would be catastrophic.
Under this post, many others were also showing off their stockpiles.
Lin Su looked carefully and saw that everyone’s stockpiles mostly consisted of instant noodles, sausages, chili sauce, chocolate, bottled water, things easily available at supermarkets.
At that moment, Wen Shiyun came over: “Should we start the next phase of our plan?”
The power of a single post is limited. But when tens of millions of countless posts, all containing the same content, appear simultaneously, that kind of force becomes a little terrifying.
Especially when these posts are turned into short videos and shared online, the resulting impact is even greater.
In just one night, many people had heard about a “doomsday” claim. Naturally, no one knew who first made the statement, but everyone learned that the apocalypse was coming.
After such news appeared, it quickly vanished from the internet. Many people saw it, laughed, and moved on. After all, over the past decades, new doomsday rumors seemed to appear almost every year. But those who were attentive or clever began to take notice.
The next morning, when Lin Su woke up, she saw Wen Shiyun arriving with breakfast. She smiled and nodded at him. The two of them tacitly avoided mentioning last night’s online discussions and instead started discussing the receipt of the remaining supplies over the next few days.
For example, the fifty containers of frozen fish that Lin Su had ordered before heading to the Northwest had already arrived at the port the day before yesterday. However, An City isn’t a coastal city, only a large river connects it. The cargo still needed to be transferred inland by barge, and it was expected to arrive on August 29.
Other supplies like gasoline, diesel, and weapons would also gradually be stored in her space over the coming days.
Unlike Lin Su, who had ample supplies, not far away in the high-rise district, Cheng Jiajia was still stunned by the posts she had seen last night.
She hadn’t slept all night, endlessly scrolling through posts on various social media platforms. The doomsday scenarios described in the posts were vague, but the timing corresponded exactly with the impending apocalypse. This terrified Cheng Jiajia.
She feared that someone had, like her, been reborn and was waiting for the zero-cost purchases. Her money was all spent, her cards maxed out, and her online loans had landed her on the blacklist. Cheng Jiajia had no money left to buy anything. If others competed with her for the zero-cost purchases in the future, she would be in a terrible situation.
The anxiety over this issue kept Cheng Jiajia awake through the day.
And soon, another piece of news came that made it even harder for her to sleep.