Apocalypse Rebirth: 3000 million won at the beginning

Chapter 2227 The Mist, the Rope of Life

It is located 650 kilometers away from the Zhangye agricultural and pastoral base.

The border area between Outer Mongolia and Inner Mongolia.

Juyan Lake.

This place once nurtured the Juyan culture, and the ancient Juyan people lived here.

Ancient poets left behind the famous lines: "A lone plume of smoke rises straight from the desert, the setting sun hangs round over the long river."

The scene described by the poet is right here.

Before Juyan Lake dried up in the last century, the government carried out unified management of the Heihe River around 2004, and Juyan Lake was restored. Relying on the meltwater from the Qilian Mountains in the south, it has maintained a water storage state.

The Heihe River splits into two streams, east and west, at the Bayanbogde sluice gate, forming two lakes.

The eastern part is East Juyan Lake, and the western part is West Juyan Lake.

Due to its unique geographical environment, East Juyan Lake maintains a freshwater lake ecosystem, while West Juyan Lake is a saltwater lake.

Under the natural disaster of sea fog, thick sea fog also spread over Juyan Sea, with the fog swirling and the lake water and fog intertwining.

The leaves of the reeds on the shore were covered with water droplets condensed from the mist.

Near East Juyan Lake, there is a small house built of rammed earth, surrounded by a yard of about one acre in size.

All of them are made of rammed earth. Because the area is sparsely populated and materials such as cement are extremely scarce, the walls and houses are made of rammed earth and stone.

The roof of the house was constructed using locally sourced materials, including a large quantity of reeds from Juyan Lake and nearby poplar trees.

Sea fog blanketed the area.

A plume of smoke was seen escaping from the long chimney above the house.

The windows of this small house were all sealed with plastic sheeting, and some corners were even stuffed with wads of cloth.

Even so, there are still some gaps that are hard to see, through which sea fog can seep in.

This also resulted in high indoor humidity, with water droplets still clinging to the kitchen knife on the cutting board.

However, because the windows were sealed off, most of the sea fog was blocked from entering the room, which also made the sea fog concentration inside less high. Compared to the complete lack of visibility outside, at least you can walk around normally inside and see the road clearly.

Inside the small house.

Next to the stove in the kitchen.

A young man's voice came through:

"Brother-in-law, could you open the door? I feel like I'm running out of oxygen in here."

A middle-aged man, sitting in a wooden chair, was trimming his toenails with nail clippers by the light of the stove fire.

Upon hearing the young man's voice, he said somewhat impatiently:
"I'm clipping my nails, go ahead."

The young man looked up at his brother-in-law, muttered a few words, and reluctantly got up and walked towards the door.

squeak~
He walked to the gate and opened it with a bang.

This door is the kind of steel door from before the apocalypse, with an upside-down "福" (fortune) character welded onto it.

I don't know where they stole it from, it's completely out of place with the style of this house.

As soon as the door opened, due to the temperature difference between the inside and outside of the house, he felt a chilly wind blowing in from the outside, while the heat inside the house was blowing out from above his head.

This creates an effect where cold air enters from below and hot air exits from above.

The sea fog blew into the house, and soon the house was shrouded in mist.

There's nothing we can do about it. Although there are still some gaps in the house, closing the doors and windows won't cause suffocation.

But staying inside for a long time can still feel a bit stuffy.

After only two minutes of ventilation, the young man slammed the door shut.

When he turned around, the house had transformed into a fairyland.

He was extremely familiar with the house, and he walked slowly towards the kitchen stove, touching the walls along the way.

The house has only three rooms. The largest room is a storage room, which stores more than 100 tons of grain. There are not many things on the floor of the storage room, but there is a cellar of more than 100 square meters below the storage room.

The second room is a combination of a wood-burning room and a kitchen.

The third room is the bedroom.

The living room was cluttered with various items, with several guns hanging on the wall and several barrels of diesel fuel piled in the corner.

The young man walked along the wall to the kitchen, saw the flames on the stove, and then sat down in the chair he had just been sitting in.

After sitting down, he felt quite bored.

Although my brother-in-law next to me couldn't see clearly because of the sea fog, I could still faintly hear him clipping his nails.

"Brother-in-law." The young man was so bored that he took the initiative to strike up a conversation.

"What?" the middle-aged man asked after a moment's pause.

"Do you think the big boss and his gang were killed by the people from the camphor tree faction?" the young man asked curiously.

After hearing his question, the middle-aged man continued clipping his nails, clearly uninterested in the matter.

"You've asked this hundreds of times already, it's none of our business, who cares?"

The young man looked conflicted and continued:
"You said that even if the boss is killed, we can still go back, right? This place is the middle of nowhere, you can't even see a ghost. If we hadn't brought so much food with us, we would have starved to death long ago."

Upon hearing this, the middle-aged man's tone became somewhat angry.

"If you want to go back, then go back, but don't bring me and your sister with you."

"In this apocalypse, which power doesn't devour people without spitting out the bones? What good would it do you to go back? It's better for us Sang people to stay here comfortably. Besides, this place is remote and there aren't many zombies, so it's safe enough. If you want to run back to your death, that's up to you."

The young man looked embarrassed.

The middle-aged woman, who hadn't spoken until now, was wearing thick clothes. She picked up a fan and vigorously fanned away the steam, then hung the blanket on a tree branch above the stove to dry it.

“Xiao Nong, don’t even think about running away. You still have to listen to your brother-in-law. If it weren’t for your brother-in-law leading us out, given the boss’s temper, the three of us would definitely have been killed by him based on the output of that Zhangye agricultural and livestock base that quarter.”

Zheng Nong pursed his lips. Although he wouldn't admit it, what his sister Zheng Xiufang said was indeed true.

The three of them were people who escaped from the Zhangye agricultural and pastoral base two years ago.

At that time, the Northwest Base led by the big boss was fighting against the Big Camphor Tree. Although a hot war had not yet broken out, both sides had sent spies to the enemy base to conduct reconnaissance.

However, the camphor tree discovered the spies from the Northwest Base, while the Northwest Base did not discover the Black Hand and Zheng Shiwu who had fled to their side.

At that time, a severe snowstorm caused significant losses to the Zhangye Agricultural and Livestock Base, a major grain-producing area in the Northwest Base.

Due to limited materials and technology, they built only a very small number of greenhouses, and most of their crops were grown outdoors.

After the heavy snow, the yield of grain crops decreased significantly.

Zhou Songming, who was in charge of the Zhangye agricultural and pastoral base at the time, had not slept for two nights.

He decided to defect from the Northwest base.

Because of the sharp decline in grain production, the bigwigs will definitely hold someone accountable, and given their past temper, he will most likely be executed.

In order to survive, he had no choice but to take his brother-in-law and wife with him and secretly make preparations. Over several days, they went to the warehouse and loaded two large heavy trucks with grain and other supplies, as well as several barrels of fuel.

Since he was in charge of the Zhangye Agricultural and Livestock Base at the time, he had the authority to do this.

Those two heavy trucks were true hundred-ton kings, each over ten meters long.

These two vehicles carried a considerable amount of supplies for the Zhangye agricultural and pastoral base.

Because Zhou Songming fled with supplies, the food shortage at the Northwest base led by the big boss was further exacerbated.

The Northwest base was already short of food, and Zhou Songming took away nearly two hundred tons of grain from the Zhangye agricultural and pastoral base in one go, which was like stabbing the big boss in the heart.

Two hundred tons of grain—that's enough to feed 1.5 people for a month.

They snatched away the big boss's trump card in one fell swoop.

Zhou Songming ran away, taking his brother-in-law and wife with him in the middle of the night. He chose the perfect moment; just as the snow melted and the roads returned to normal.

On the third day after he and his family fled, the big boss sent people over.

The big boss just missed Zhou Songming.

Zhou Songming traveled overnight, rushing north for six or seven hundred kilometers, crossing no-man's land, and finally reaching the border.

Juyan Lake, where we are now located, is bordered by the vast Badain Jaran Desert to the south, the Gobi Desert to the north, and the barren desert to the west.

There wasn't a single living person within a radius of 100 kilometers.

The big boss had sent people to look for him before, but the Northwest was such a vast area that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack for the people he sent out to find Zhou Songming.

Some even speculated that Zhou Songming had defected to the camphor tree base with food and supplies.

In addition, a bunch of messy things were bothering him at the Northwest Base at the time, so after he sent people to search for it but couldn't find it, he stopped searching.

Not long after, Li Yu led the troops from the camphor tree and completely took over the Northwest Base in one fell swoop.

The big boss also died from gunfire.

Flames were burning on the stove in the kitchen, and the room temperature was gradually rising as the flames burned.

The water vapor in the air condensed into water droplets, and the walls of the house were covered in water.

Zhou Songming's wife, Zheng Xiufang, took a piece of burlap and wiped the water off the wall, then wrung it out.

After cutting his nails, Zhou Songming braided ropes using reeds.

Juyan Lake may not have much in common, but it has an abundance of these reeds, which grow all over the lake. Now that the sea fog has arrived and the moisture is so rich, the reeds are growing even better than before.

Under the sea fog, they had to light a fire to maintain their visibility.

Moreover, the temperature is currently around minus seven or eight degrees Celsius, so they have to use a fire to keep warm.

Although reeds can be burned, they burn extremely quickly; dry reeds are practically the king of flammability.

Before long, a large bunch of reeds will be burned.

Therefore, it can only be used as an ignition source, not as a long-term burning material.

Fortunately, many poplar trees were planted in the northern part of Juyan Lake before the apocalypse to prevent wind erosion and fix sand dunes. These poplar trees are drought-resistant and cold-resistant, and they survived even in several natural disasters.

The sea fog came suddenly, catching them completely unprepared.

Since they didn't have enough poplar wood to burn, they had to find a way to cut down some new poplar trees.

So they made reed ropes indoors.

Then they tied the woven reed ropes around their waists and walked north until they reached the poplar forest, where they cut down the poplars for fuel.

Without ropes to tie them to their bodies, they would most likely get lost once they went out and probably never be able to get back to the house.

In front of the stove.

Zheng Nong would occasionally open the iron plate on the stove and throw in a few pieces of poplar wood.

Some of the poplar trees, having gotten wet, were thrown into the fire in the stove, where they immediately made a sizzling sound.

Thick black smoke billowed upwards from the chimney.

The stove they built is extremely airtight, so the smoke can only rise and won't enter the room, so even if there's a lot of smoke inside the stove, it won't choke them.

The stove flames continued to burn for several hours.

The indoor moisture has evaporated, and the view inside the room has become much better.

Zhou Songming simply moved the recliner over, wrapped himself in a blanket, and took a comfortable nap there.

squeak~
Zheng Xiufang added a few more poplar trees, the sound waking Zhou Songming and the dozing Zheng Nong.

"What time is it?" Zhou Songming rubbed his eyes and sat up from the recliner to ask.

Zheng Xiufang glanced at the mechanical watch on her wrist. "It's 11:30 a.m.

"There aren't many poplar trees left. If you have time today, go and cut down some more."

Zhou Songming nodded. He saw steam rising from the iron pot on the stove and, judging from the smell, knew it was corn porridge being cooked again.

Unfortunately, the main crops taken from the Zhangye agricultural and pastoral base were corn and wheat.

Before the sea fog arrived, they had plenty of sunshine here, so they dried all the corn and put it in a sealed cellar.

The storage time is relatively long.

In addition, they also planted some crops in the yard, which were able to grow normally thanks to the water of Juyan Lake.

They haven't seen any other survivors in the past two years.

Even zombies are rarely seen, since there are almost no cities within a hundred kilometers of this area, and not even large areas of greenery.

The only lake, Juyan Lake, was like a paradise, far away from humans and zombies, allowing them to live peacefully there for two years.

The corn porridge is ready.

The three of them held large bowls, drinking porridge and chatting.

Zhou Songming slurped up a mouthful of corn porridge and looked at Zheng Nong, saying:
"Xiao Nong, come with me later. If we go together, we can bring back more wood in one trip."

Zheng Nong nodded indifferently and said, "Okay."

After they finished their corn porridge, Zheng Xiufang stuffed two pieces of dried cornbread and two bottles of water into their backpacks.

Zhou Songming took a pistol from the wall and tucked it into his waistband.

Although he hadn't seen any zombies in a long time, this habit was already ingrained and it would be difficult for him to change it.

He then picked up a sharp axe and a saw from the wall.

"Xiao Nong, bring the rope for tying the wood."

"Oh." Zheng Nong slung the rope over his shoulder.

Then, the two tied long reed ropes together and stood at the doorway, one in front of the other.

Zhou Songming glanced at Zheng Nong behind him and checked whether the rope was tied tightly.

"Let's go."

To save on rope, they used the same rope, but they were about two meters apart.

Zhou Songming pushed the door open, and sea fog blew in.

He was completely lost and confused, unable to see anything, not even things a meter away.

He carried a long stick as a white cane, and had a machete and a saw on his back.

Zheng Nong carried a rope for tying the wood and a backpack.

"Let's go." Zhou Songming took a deep breath and walked towards the courtyard gate, following the direction he remembered.

Following their rhythm, Zheng Xiufang gradually released the rope from the rotating axle in the center of the living room.

If anything happens, Zhou Songming will notify Zheng Xiufang by pulling the rope.

They cannot untie the ropes, no matter what happens outside.

Around noon, although the sea fog was thick, at least it was a hazy white expanse, unlike the pitch black night when you couldn't see anything.

Even with my eyes squinted, I could still see shadows within a meter.

"Xiao Nong, hurry up!" Zhou Songming felt the rope behind him being pulled and reminded him.

"Here it comes. I think I stepped on something just now," Zheng Nong muttered.

"Stay close to me."

"it is good."