Country Love: Xie Dajiao, 37, is pregnant!

After finishing his call with Zhao Yutian, Lin Chen immediately dialed Wang Xiaomeng's number.

The call connected quickly, and the sound of machinery in the workshop came through the receiver. Wang Xiaomeng had just finished her work and was wiping the water off her hands.

"Hey, Brother Chen."

"Xiao Meng, you'd better listen to my instructions."

Lin Chen's tone remained serious:

"There might be a blizzard tonight. Make sure to have someone thoroughly inspect and reinforce the roof of your bean product factory and warehouse. Make sure the roof beams are firmly secured. Move all the raw materials piled up in the yard into the warehouse and seal them up. Don't let them get soaked by the snow."

Wang Xiaomeng paused for a moment, then said softly:

"I heard it mentioned on TV this morning, that there's going to be moderate to heavy snow. Is it really that serious?"

"It's better to be prepared. What if it's an extreme disaster, not just a regular heavy snow? If you don't prepare now because it's too much trouble, the warehouse might collapse and the raw materials might be destroyed when the snow comes down. The losses will be significant."

Wang Xiaomeng agreed without hesitation. She knew Lin Chen too well. He was always calm and never made alarmist claims. Anything he specifically reminded her of was absolutely reliable.

"I'm stopping construction right now and arranging for workers to take over. The roof has been reinforced and is now secure."

After hanging up the phone, Wang Xiaomeng didn't waste a moment and immediately summoned all the workers in the factory to temporarily stop production.

All afternoon, the entire factory was busy, with the eaves of the warehouses being reinforced with densely packed wooden beams.

Others were puzzled, wondering why they were doing all this on such a fine sunny day.

Wang Xiaomeng didn't want things to turn out this way either, but she remained convinced that listening to Lin Chen was the right thing to do.

Around four o'clock in the afternoon, the setting sun hung over the western mountains, with no sign of wind or snow.

The village committee's landline suddenly rang. It was a call from the town government, saying that there might be heavy snow tonight and requiring all villages to immediately broadcast a notice urging villagers to take precautions against frost and check for potential hazards in their houses. It's the same rhetoric every year anyway.

After Changgui finished the call, he casually tossed the receiver onto the table, looking completely unconcerned and not taking it seriously at all.

Like everyone else in the village, he believed that the spring snow wouldn't cause a disaster, and that the town was just going through the motions and engaging in formalism.

He picked up the megaphone and shouted twice into the equipment, his voice devoid of any urgency:

"Hey everyone, listen up! There's a notice from the town that there's going to be heavy snow in the next couple of days. Everyone should take good care of their greenhouses and be extra careful. Don't let anything else happen."

After shouting, Changgui turned off the broadcast, locked the village office gate, and strolled home slowly with his hands behind his back, still thinking about the Fifteenth Yangko Team.

At this moment, the Big Foot Supermarket is still crowded with chatting villagers, surrounded by smoke and laughter.

The announcement over the loudspeaker was clearly broadcast throughout the village, but to the villagers it was no different from a whisper in their ears.

"See that? It's the same old routine every year. As soon as spring arrives, they're talking about snow and frost prevention, but when has anything really gone wrong? It's all just pointless! It's so warm today, there won't even be a breeze tonight!"

"Exactly! Those officials in the town sit in their offices all day doing nothing but issuing these useless notices, making a mountain out of a molehill! If there really was a massive blizzard, wouldn't they have issued an early warning? Who would believe this last-minute announcement!"

"That's right, it's just a formality every year, just going through the motions. By the way, Big Foot, I'll put the drums and gongs for the Yangko dance troupe in your room for the night of the fifteenth, so you don't have to carry them back and forth."

"Okay, put it here, just so it doesn't cause any problems. Hey, move it a little further in, it's blocking the way. Yes, just put it there."

The room was full of people, chatting casually and relaxed, without a trace of wariness.

The entire Xiangyashan area was completely deluded by the illusion of a mild winter.

The makeshift chicken coops, duck sheds, vegetable sheds, and storage rooms in every household in the village were left uninspected and unreinforced.

Farmers who cultivate the land all look forward to snow, believing that the melting snow in spring will moisten the soil and make it easier to plant crops in the spring. Livestock farmers, on the other hand, don't care at all, thinking that it will only be cold for a couple of days at most, and they can just tough it out.

Everyone thought that this snowfall was at most a minor disturbance at the beginning of spring, and nothing serious.

Only Lin Chen remained absolutely clear-headed amidst the village's relaxation and celebration.

In the afternoon, he carefully inspected the villa inside and out again. The generator was running normally, the gaps in the doors and windows were sealed again, and all the emergency supplies were put in place.

……

11 p.m.

The gentle breeze suddenly turned violent, and a biting north wind swept through the entire village. The howling wind pierced through the treetops and lashed against the courtyard walls, creating a desolate and frightening sound.

The wind grew stronger and stronger, with gale-force winds of level six or seven continuing to howl. The tree trunks outside the courtyard wall were being blown wildly and were almost bent over. Note that these were real tree trunks shaking.

Before long, fine snowflakes began to fall, hitting the glass with a dense and piercing sound.

At first, it was just snow pellets, but in just over ten minutes, it turned into a heavy snowfall.

A fierce wind, carrying blizzard, swept down from the sky, instantly engulfing the entire mountain village in a white blanket of snow.

This was not the gentle spring snow the villagers remembered; it was a real blizzard.

Amidst the wind and snow, the gale whipped up the accumulated snow, piling it up everywhere, especially in front of doorways, corners, and sheltered spots under the eaves.

The snow on the plains also thickened rapidly, with the snow piled up layer by layer by the strong winds, growing at an alarming rate.

By this time, everyone in the village was fast asleep, with all the doors and windows tightly closed and the houses quiet. They were all awakened by the noise outside, but they just muttered something like, "It's really snowing," turned over, and went back to sleep. No one got up to check, and no one paid any attention to it.

The snowstorm continued all night, getting heavier and heavier, showing no signs of stopping.

After midnight, the temperature plummeted, dropping below minus twenty degrees Celsius, and the ground froze again.

It was the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, at six in the morning.

The sky over Ivory Mountain was still dark, with no sign of dawn. The entire village had completely changed.

Liu Neng was awakened by the cold.

At night, the doors and windows were not sealed properly, and the cold wind kept blowing into the room through the cracks in the doors and windows. The quilts on the kang (a heated brick bed) were chilly, and people who slept there felt cold all over.

He groggily sat up, wrapped in his cotton-padded coat, shivering from the cold. He got up to push open the door for some fresh air and to gather some corn stalks to start a fire for cooking.

But when I pushed hard with both hands, the door didn't budge, as if someone was blocking it from the outside.

"Huh? What's going on? This is weird!"

Liu Neng was stunned for a moment, puzzled. He mustered all his strength and pushed the door again. The door was still firmly in place, but this time a small gap appeared. Outside, everything was covered in white snow.

"My dear wife! My dear wife, get up quickly!"

Liu Neng hurriedly called to Liu Ying's mother inside the house:

"We can't open our front door! Something's wrong, something's happened!"

Liu Yingniang rubbed her sleepy eyes, put on her clothes, and came out. The two of them pushed the door together, and finally the door was squeezed open with a wide crack.

Upon pushing the door open, a biting wind carrying snow rushed into the room, startling the two people and leaving them completely dumbfounded.

Outside the gate, a thick wall of snow, as tall as a person, blocked the entrance completely.

After a heavy snowfall overnight, the snow on the flat ground was about 30 centimeters deep, and in the corners of the yard and the sheltered spots at the gate, the snow piled up to more than a meter high.

The vast expanse of white snow covered the world, burying the low walls, flower beds, and miscellaneous items in the yard so completely that their outlines were almost invisible.

"My goodness! This...this snow is incredible!"

Liu Yingniang looked around, somewhat puzzled, and said:

"Old man, don't you feel like something's missing today? Why is it so quiet?"

Liu Neng boasted:

"That's why I say you're uncultured. They said on TV that when it snows, it's quiet because all the sound is absorbed."

Liu Yingniang looked outside again, then slapped her thigh:

"Don't play dumb! Our chicken coop collapsed! It was all crushed by the snow!"

The makeshift chicken coop we built ourselves had a thin roof and weak supports, and it couldn't withstand the heavy pressure at all. The roof collapsed completely.

"Oh, my chicken! My old hen!"

Liu Neng was so distressed that he kept slapping his thigh and paced anxiously in the house, feeling as if his heart was being torn apart.

He wanted to go out and rescue them, but the door was blocked by the snow wall, and he couldn't get out at all. He had no way to use his strength and could only watch helplessly, stamping his feet in frustration.