Chapter 43 - 43

Chapter 43 Coal YardGu Lingxiao thought that Su Xiaoyu was skilled enough to take on seven or eight people, so going out alone wasn't out of the question. Therefore, he handed her the gun he was carrying, just in case.He repeatedly instructed me not to panic in any situation, and to find a way to escape if I couldn't control the other party.Su Xiaoyu felt that Gu Lingxiao was a bit too long-winded, but his words were also very heartwarming. It's nice to have an older brother like that.I felt a chill as dawn broke.I glanced at the thermometer on the wall; it showed the room temperature was already zero degrees Celsius. The temperature is dropping quite quickly. It's been around seven or eight degrees Celsius on average each day.When it rained before, the temperature stayed around 20 degrees Celsius, not particularly cold, but not particularly chilly either.The temperature has already dropped to 0 degrees Celsius in just a few days, so we must speed things up.I got up, got dressed, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. I smelled the meat sauce noodles. I have to say, that pig is really good; we've been eating meat every meal these past few days.Upon entering the kitchen, I saw that the meat sauce had just come out of the pot, and Lin Xiuxiu was putting noodles into it. They weren't dried noodles but hand-pulled noodles, and there were two large trays of noodles on the stove."Show! You're like a mind reader, how did you know I wanted noodles this morning?"Lin Xiuxiu first stirred the noodles in the pot with chopsticks before turning around."You said yesterday at dinner that you hadn't had my noodles in a long time, so I thought I had some noodles and meat at home, so I made you meat sauce noodles."That's all I made; I don't know if it'll be enough.Su Xiaoyu deftly took a head of garlic from the refrigerator. "Eating noodles without garlic is like missing half the flavor," she said."I'm not going upstairs to eat today. Once the noodles are cooked, quickly serve me a big bowl. I have to go out after I finish eating.""Are you going out alone?" Lin Xiuxiu asked.Su Xiaoyu leaned against the stove, head down, peeling garlic. She did it very quickly, soon having a small handful in her hand."Yes! They're all busy today. I'll go check out the coal market. The temperature is getting colder and colder; we need coal to power our stoves."Lin Xiuxiu thought about how she had been living these past few days and didn't know when it would end. Fortunately, she had Su Xiaoyuwith her, but she was still a little worried aboutOrphanage."Xiaoyu, if we leave here, I want to go to Orphanage to see how the headmaster is doing."Su Xiaoyu put the peeled garlic into a bowl, mentally calculating the days; it seemed the director had already passed away by then. A few days later, a group of people came, took the Orphanage children back to the base, and then didn't care for them much anymore.Children under 18 can receive a free meal every day, which is actually just a bowl of thin porridge and a few pickled vegetables.Anyone over 18 years old has to do tasks themselves, even if it's just cleaning up the base. Once they earn contribution points, they can exchange them for food.The contribution points earned from cleaning are very low; two days of cleaning won't even get you a single steamed bun, at most two bowls of porridge, and even then, it's the kind with more soup than rice.After all, there are a lot of people in the base, at least tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands.A day's worth of eating, drinking, relieving oneself, and sleeping requires many things; if one doesn't go out to find supplies, one will only go hungry.This is why she doesn't go to the base.Now that there's another group of people, she wants to establish a base if possible, so she won't have to work for others.Of course, this was just a thought. Although he had collected so many supplies, it was nothing compared to the thousands or tens of thousands of people he had to support. So, after thinking it over, he decided to wait until he could get through the extreme cold first.Perhaps after the extreme cold passes, natural disasters won't be so severe.I finished a big bowl of noodles and felt warm and comfortable inside.Lin Xiuxiu ladled out another bowl of noodles and placed it on the table."Don't eat with them today, eat more. You always seem like you're not getting enough to eat."Su Xiaoyu took a bite of garlic and then said, "I won't eat anymore after I finish this bowl. They can eat quite a lot too. They were exhausted yesterday, and today they still have to install insulation in the house."Lin Xiuxiu: "I know, so I plan to make a pot of bone broth for lunch today."Su Xiaoyu slurped up another mouthful of noodles, finding it very comforting, and tossed the last clove of garlic into the noodles."Put some dried vegetables in the soup with the bones. Don't be stingy with them. I'll go look around again today and maybe I can get some more."Lin Xiuxiu frowned, thinking it was dangerous for her to go out alone while cooking for herself, and tried to dissuade her."There must be a lot of people looking for supplies these days, so be careful going out alone. Why don't you ask them to send someone with you? That way, you can have someone to look after you if anything happens!""It's okay, I know what I'm doing. Besides, we can't rely on others forever." Su Xiaoyu finished the last bite of noodles, took a tissue from the tissue box to wipe her mouth, and then casually patted Lin Xiuxiu's head."Wait for me at home, I'll bring you something delicious!"Lin Xiuxiu could only compromise, "Alright then! You must be careful out there."Su Xiaoyu went to the bathroom to wash her hands, grabbed her prepared items, and went out.The water outside is still quite deep, so we still have to rely on speedboats to get around.When I went out yesterday, I saw quite a few people with speedboats or inflatable boats, so they weren't too conspicuous now.As we drove the speedboat away from the residential area and onto the main road, we saw several speedboats ahead, each with about two or three people on board.There were men and women, and some of them even had supplies that had been found on them.When natural disasters and man-made calamities strike, people lose all sense of decency; as long as they can get food and water to survive, that's considered a skill.She adjusted her direction and headed to the coal yard, which was a very remote place. She had bought coal there before, otherwise she wouldn't have known the route.As we drove further and further out of the way, we could see hardly anyone, which was actually quite nice.I took out a bucket of fried chicken from my spatial storage. I've been craving this lately, and it tasted so delicious.We finished eating just as we arrived at the entrance to the coal yard. Because it was on a slope, there was a huge, deep, and very large water pit at the entrance, and the dark water looked quite scary.We need to get the coal from the coal yard before the base arrives. If we wait until the extreme cold weather comes, those people will risk their lives to come to the coal yard.I moored the speedboat to the side and looked around; there seemed to be no one there.At this time, everyone should be busy collecting edible things, and no one has thought about collecting coal yet.The road is much cleaner than before after being washed by the heavy rain; otherwise, it would have been a black surface.Walking along the road, we soon arrived at the coal storage area. When we came to collect the coal, we only collected the medium-priced coal and did not collect the high-priced coal.So when I arrived here, I went straight to the high-priced area. When I passed by the small houses, I looked inside to make sure the doorman wasn't there. I guess he ran home when the natural disaster happened. That's good, it saves me from having to knock him out.