“We’re all fine, all fine, don’t worry. Brother, how are you guys? Is everything okay at home?” Jiashu shouted loudly over the phone.
Everyone let out a long sigh of relief, including Shen Xi.
Although she wasn’t close to Gu Jiashu, seeing how worried Uncle Gu had been every day made her heart ache.
Knowing that his family was safe finally eased the weight off everyone’s minds.
“Let your mother take the phone, quick!” Gu Zhengchu grabbed the phone and yelled across.
The long anxiety had even made the old man’s eyes red.
“Uncle, I’m not with my mom right now… but, don’t worry, she’s really okay.”
Being shouted at by his uncle made Jiashu stammer as he spoke.
Through his explanation, everyone finally understood that the city’s earthquake preparedness and public safety measures were far better than in the countryside.
In Jiashu’s neighborhood, the property management had requisitioned the indoor tennis courts to serve as temporary shelters for residents.
Outside the tennis courts was the community’s central garden, fully open-air.
It was convenient to stay there to avoid wind and rain, and easy to evacuate outside if there were tremors.
Having already spoken with Uncle Gu and his cousin-in-law, Jiashu had taken the earthquake very seriously.
He and his girlfriend had packed up the household items early and moved his mother into the tennis courts.
As a result, the earthquake’s impact on Jiashu’s family was relatively minor.
Even their valuables were mostly unharmed because they had been packed in advance.
They had been trying to contact this side, but the phone lines were completely down.
It was said that several mobile network base stations had collapsed due to the earthquake, leaving a large area without signal.
On top of the unreachable phones, water and electricity were also out, as both electrical wiring and underground pipes had been damaged.
“They should move over here and stay with us. The city is such a mess, no water, no electricity, and it’s so hot. How could they live there? If they come here, everyone can look after each other.”
Shen Jianyi, sitting nearby, listened as Jiashu explained everything. The more he heard, the deeper his frown grew, and he couldn’t help but suggest it again.
“No, no, that’s not necessary, thank you, Uncle,” Jiashu replied quickly from the other end.
He said, “It shouldn’t take much longer, they’re already rushing repairs. Look, the phones are working now, aren’t they? Besides, many roads are broken, so cars can’t get through. Even if we wanted to come, it wouldn’t be convenient.”
At this, he couldn’t help complaining again: “Uncle, it was really wise of you not to live in the city. The elevators in our building are all down. My brother’s apartment is on the nineteenth floor, if we actually lived there, we couldn’t even get downstairs.
And Tingting’s brother’s place is also high up. After the quake, we couldn’t get in touch at all. She was worried and insisted that I come with her to check.
It took almost two hours to walk from our place here, and we still have to climb fourteen more floors!
My god, this is going to kill us!”
He howled on the phone, then couldn’t help laughing at himself.
Since all their relatives had been contacted and were safe, the tension finally eased, and Jiashu naturally became a bit chatty.
They really must have walked a long way. Tingting beside him was gasping for breath and could barely speak, yet he was still talking happily.
The Shen family, already curious about what was happening outside, found themselves entertained by this “live broadcast” of the situation.
The call had lasted almost ten minutes, and neither side had hung up.
The doorbell rang again. Everyone was so absorbed in the conversation that no one moved, so Shen Cong got up to open the door.
Standing at the door were Xiao Yu and his mother.
Seeing Shen Cong, Xiao Yu’s mother patted her son on the head and looked apologetic. “Xiao Shen, I need to go shopping. This little rascal refuses to come with me because he wants to play with Tongtong. Can I leave him here with you for a bit? I’ll come back to pick him up.”
“Sure, you can leave him—” Shen Cong smiled and agreed.
But before she could finish, a deep, muffled rumble suddenly sounded.
Then it felt as if thousands of horses were charging under their feet, the ground shook violently!
Xiao Yu’s mother staggered, tripping into the yard and landing straight on the threshold!
The pain made her scream sharply.
Xiao Yu was knocked down with her, but fortunately, she had held him tightly in her arms as she fell.
Shen Cong was no better off.
The violent tremor hurled her across the yard! Her head slammed heavily against the wall several meters away with a thud, sending stars flashing before her eyes.
The earthquake had come!
It was really starting in Beining!
Shen Cong’s vision went black, and a roaring buzz filled her ears.
At that moment, she hardly even felt the sharp pain, her mind kept repeating the same two thoughts over and over.
The sudden disaster left her utterly desperate.
“The earthquake! Dad! Mom! Run! Run!” She lay on the ground, screaming hoarsely at the top of her lungs.
The house was in chaos.
Gritting her teeth and ignoring the darkness swirling before her eyes, Shen Cong forced herself up, staggering toward the door.
But just as she neared it, she froze in shock.
She couldn’t believe what she saw outside. Her pupils constricted, and her whole body trembled uncontrollably.
The overwhelming fear made her throat feel completely clogged, she couldn’t even scream.
What a horrific scene of human disaster this was!
She fixed her gaze on the ground not far from her feet and watched in terror as a massive crack began forming, accompanied by a spine-chilling crackling sound.
The fissure gaped wide like a demon’s mouth, terrifying and sinister.
It kept widening, growing larger and larger, greedily devouring everything on the surface.
And that wasn’t enough, it seemed to be waiting for people to fall in themselves.
Shen Cong’s heart nearly leapt out of her chest.
“The ground’s splitting! The ground’s splitting! Everyone, stay inside! Go back! Go back! Get in the bathroom! Get in the bathroom!”
She suddenly screamed, her voice sharp and piercing, filled with a terror and panic unlike anything she had ever felt.
Her cry struck everyone like a hammer to the heart, cutting through the chaos with terrifying clarity.
The Shen family, already at the door, skidded to an abrupt halt.
They had no idea what was happening outside.
If Shen Cong was this panicked, it had to be something catastrophic.
No one hesitated; everyone immediately turned back and ran, racing toward the safest place they could find.
The ground twisted and fractured like the surface of a stormy sea.
Buildings could not bear the strain and collapsed one after another with deafening crashes.
In the face of such a colossal natural disaster, humans felt infinitesimally small.
There was no controlling their fate, only submitting to the will of nature.
They ran frantically under the sky, screaming, struggling in hopeless desperation.
Time and again, they fell, and time and again they forced themselves to rise.
Each person was thrown off balance by invisible forces, staggering, teetering, once they fell, they might never get up again.
Yet they all continued to fight with everything they had.
The open security door banged against the walls, ringing with a sharp thud-thud.
Amid the cracking sounds, every window in the building shattered into tiny pieces.
Shen Cong was thrown to the ground again.
This time she landed on her back, crashing onto the concrete, groaning from the pain, feeling as though she was about to lose consciousness.
But the pain also sharpened her focus, allowing her to assess the situation in an instant.
Going outside was impossible, the massive fissures could not be jumped across.
If death was unavoidable, it was better to stay inside.
The house had been reinforced; as long as the cracks didn’t reach this part of the building, there was still a chance to survive.
“Inside with me!” she shouted at Xiao Yu’s mother, who was frozen on the ground, clearly paralyzed with fear.
Gritting her teeth, she stood up, grabbed Xiao Yu under her arm, and ran toward the house.
At that moment, Gu Kai also rushed out from inside.
He lunged at Shen Cong in panic, gripping her hand tightly.
“Hold him!”
Without hesitation, Shen Cong shoved the child into his arms, then turned to grab Xiao Yu’s mother, who was struggling to get up.
The three of them supported each other and ran into the Shen family’s bathroom.
The bathroom was small, only about three or four square meters, and had no windows.
But it was the sturdiest part of the entire house.
Its small size, the beams overhead, and the two load-bearing walls made it especially suitable as a shelter during an earthquake.
When the house had been renovated, everyone had considered worst-case scenarios, so they had reinforced this room specifically for safety.
To prevent unnecessary injuries, Shen Cong’s father had even had the mirrors and the shower removed.
So once it became clear that the outside was far more dangerous, Shen Cong’s immediate instinct was to hide here.
The bathroom was cramped; ten people pressed tightly together, shoulder to shoulder.
After the initial earth-shattering quake, the aftershocks never stopped.
They came in waves, each one strong enough to jolt the body.
Everyone felt as if they were floating on a stormy sea, tossed and thrown, completely unable to control their movements.
Time and again they were slammed and knocked down.
Tables toppled, antique shelves fell, bowls, basins, and vases shattered across the floor…
Then, another aftershock—
Outside came a tremendous crash, followed by the sound of something heavy falling to the ground, shaking the entire house!
A wave of sheer terror swept over them, and in that instant, every person had the same thought—
It’s over, the house is collapsing!
“Ah! Ah! Ah!” The children screamed first, their cries piercing and frantic.
Then came the desperate, hoarse wails of panic from everyone else.
The adults pressed the children tightly in the center.
They formed a circle, shoulder to shoulder, all straining to stand straight, ready to use their backs as the last shield for the kids.
With a soft click, the barely surviving light finally went out, plunging the entire room into darkness…
No one knew how much time had passed, but the continuous shaking finally seemed to stop.
Shen Cong reached out and nudged her husband, who she had held close, shifting slightly to signal that it was time to move.
Following her movement, everyone gradually came back to their senses and slowly released their grip.
After loosening their stiff limbs, Shen Cong led the way, carefully testing each step as they moved toward the door.
The earthquake had stopped.
The sky was a deep, ominous red, giving everything a strange, unnatural hue.
It wasn’t completely dark yet, but outdoors felt like a late winter afternoon around four or five o’clock, dim, cold, and eerie.
The yard was already a complete mess.
But at this moment, no one cared about that.
They crossed the yard and forced open the security door, which had cracked and jammed at an angle in the frame. Even though they had braced themselves, everyone involuntarily drew a sharp breath.
Directly in front of the Shen house, no more than three meters away, a massive chasm had opened as if it had fallen from the sky.
The rift was at least ten meters wide, bottomless, and stretched infinitely to both sides.
No one knew how long it was, the visible part extended beyond the eye’s reach with no end in sight.
On the far side of the chasm, everything within sight was reduced to rubble.
The house was gone, the garage was gone, and no people could be seen.
Xiao Yu’s mother’s legs gave out; she collapsed to her knees with a thud, unable to hold back a sob.
Her home had been directly opposite the Shen family, separated by just a driveway.
Now her entire house was gone.
A perfectly fine villa had vanished without a trace.
No one could tell whether the house had fallen into a fissure or had been completely destroyed.
But everyone knew one thing: if it weren’t for the fact that Xiao Yu’s mother had happened to come to the Shen house with her child at the exact moment the earthquake struck, then—
The consequences would have been unimaginable!
Xiao Yu’s mother broke down, wailing uncontrollably.
Everyone felt a deep, shared sense of dread.
They stared at the devastation outside the door, completely stunned, unable to think.
Even seeing it with their own eyes, it was hard to believe; it all felt like a nightmare.
After about ten minutes of stunned silence, Xiao Yu’s mother finally reacted.
She scrambled to her feet and, almost crazily, tried to rush toward the chasm.
“What are you doing?!” Cheng Ru hurriedly stopped her.
“I have to find Xiao Yu’s father! The house is gone, everything is gone! If I don’t find him, how are Xiao Yu and I supposed to survive?” she cried, breaking down again.
“How do you expect to find him?” Shen Cong asked, looking outside without turning her head.
Xiao Yu’s mother’s eyes were full of despair; she couldn’t answer, only sob.
Indeed, how could she possibly find him now?
Shen Cong ignored her.
Her own emotions were in complete chaos, a tangled mess, leaving her no energy to console anyone else.
Because of her rebirth and her memories of the apocalypse, Shen Cong had always been fairly confident.
She had believed she could prepare in advance and lead her family through any disaster.
But this sudden, massive earthquake shattered all her confidence into pieces.
She clearly remembered that in her previous life, the earthquake had started in a coastal city and was set to occur a week later.
At no point had Beining ever experienced such large-scale ground ruptures, and this villa area, and the nearby Yingshui Village, had never been destroyed.
That was why, after being reborn, her first choice had been to settle here, to make this place her refuge.
But now, everything had changed.
The ground fissures that were supposed to hit Xishan had instead become a minor quake in Lin County, while Beining had borne the full brunt of the destruction.
This time, her family had been lucky to escape, but what about next time?
Would even greater, unpredictable disasters strike in the future?
When that time came, what could they do?
Would she and her family be able to survive together?
A nameless, creeping fear rose in Shen Cong’s heart.
She looked at her family, each of them standing at the door, faces etched with despair, utterly at a loss.
Her husband, though motionless, seemed tense from head to toe, as if every muscle in his body was keyed with anxiety.
Gu Kai sighed with worry.
He stepped forward, wrapping Shen Cong’s cold body in his arms, and then turned to the others: “It’s getting dark, and it’s too dangerous outside. Let’s go back inside for now. We can discuss everything once we’re safe.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
Cheng Ru pulled Xiao Yu’s mother close and helped her and the child back into the house.
Gu Kai stayed close to his wife the whole time, silently offering his support.
As they neared the front door, Shen Cong paused. “You all go in first. I want to check the backyard.”
“I’ll go with you,” Gu Kai said.
The backyard was even worse.
The two steel-framed structures they had built were completely destroyed. One had toppled entirely onto the open ground, while the other had collapsed halfway, split as if someone had cut it cleanly in the middle.
The house had only been built a week ago, and yet it had met such a fate.
It was impossible not to feel distressed.
But more than distress, Shen Cong felt sheer terror, an overwhelming fear of the unknown.
She stood in the corridor, motionless, staring at the devastation. For a long time, she couldn’t speak a single word.
Gu Kai squeezed her hand firmly and stepped forward to take a careful look around.
Then he came back and said to Shen Cong, “It’s not too bad. Only a few spots of the steel frame are damaged. Once things settle down, we can call Old Zheng and have them send someone to fix it. It’s really not a big deal.”
Shen Cong glanced at her husband, pressing her lips together in silence.
She understood perfectly well, he was trying to comfort her!
No one could predict what might happen next.
Whether they could even reach Old Zheng was uncertain, let alone have him come over for repairs.
Seeing that his wife had understood his thoughts, Gu Kai didn’t avoid her gaze.
Instead, he took Shen Cong by the hand and walked through the backyard with her, then said, “Look, the basement is basically intact, and the walls are fine. So in reality, we’ve only lost these two houses, and they can still be repaired. Compared to others, aren’t we already pretty lucky?”
He bent his head and kissed her on the hair, speaking softly to soothe her: “Congcong, you’re human, not a god. Don’t take all the responsibility on yourself.
You still have me, your parents, your sister… We’re a family. When there’s trouble, we face it together.
Don’t be afraid, we’ll get through this.”
Shen Cong’s tears flowed freely as she pressed herself against her husband, unwilling to rise for a long time.