In the residential community where Wei Xuan lived, each building had a basement floor. Although these basement rooms were relatively small and filled with various items, with proper cleaning and sealing, they could be transformed into excellent natural ice cellars!
Although the stored ice was likely to melt during the peak of summer, storing some ice was better than doing nothing at all, right?
Wei Xuan didn’t possess any earth-based abilities or similar powers, so he couldn’t create large-volume structures.
Otherwise, he could have simply connected the basements of one or two buildings and turned them into sealed containers for storing water during periods of higher precipitation. Then, when a drought hit, he could temporarily extract and purify the water for use.
Therefore, he had to come up with this somewhat clumsy method and make as many preparations as possible.
With a determined mind, as he had nothing else particularly urgent to attend to, Wei Xuan chose a relatively empty basement in the community, intending to use one of the rooms near the entrance as a potential ice storage space.
He first cleared out all the rooms in the entrance area and then laid a thick layer of waterproof fabric in one of the rooms.
He stacked up cotton blankets and other items collected during the summer near the entrance, preparing to use them later for insulation. Then… he could start making ice blocks.
Wei Xuan had considered more reliable methods of building an ice cellar. But to create a more effective ice cellar, he would need to insulate the walls and floors, adding insulation layers and such.
However, Wei Xuan didn’t have suitable tools at hand, and he didn’t dare to excavate or dig extensively in the community, fearing that he might accidentally cause a collapse of one of the buildings. So, for now, he had to settle for this temporary solution.
The selected building was relatively secluded but not one of the houses that would be directly hit by the sun early in the morning. Wei Xuan cleaned all the other rooms on the same floor of the basement while being accompanied by Du Hang, to prevent all the rooms from being flooded when the ice layer melted during the summer.
All in all, this room was just a temporary choice for Wei Xuan’s experiment. If the results were satisfactory, Wei Xuan planned to explore the city after the weather warmed up and find suitable materials to create more effective underground cellars in the community.
After completing these tasks, Wei Xuan began another round of collecting clean snow throughout the community.
He thoroughly cleaned up a room in a certain building and filled it with pots and containers filled with collected snow. He brought unused electric heaters to heat and melt the snow.
Although the efficiency of collecting solar energy during winter was indeed not as good as during summer, Wei Xuan had managed to find quite a few solar panels beforehand. Even if it was a bit extravagant to use electricity, it was enough to meet the daily consumption.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Apart from using electric heaters to warm up the room, he also found several dedicated water heaters from the nearby convenience store. He plugged them in and threw them directly into the buckets and containers full of snowflakes to accelerate the melting process.
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These plastic boxes were the storage containers Wei Xuan had retrieved and organized from supermarkets or similar places before the apocalypse.
Now, they served perfectly for freezing ice blocks. As long as he didn’t fill the boxes too full with melted snow water, he could easily freeze a box and have Du Hang carry it to the basement. The layers of plastic sheets and blankets outside would provide adequate insulation.
Using these storage boxes to hold the ice blocks meant that even if they eventually melted into water, as long as the boxes remained intact, the water should stay inside!
The only regret Wei Xuan had now was that he didn’t have a large quantity of these boxes. At most, they would be enough to fill one room in the basement. Come next spring, it seemed that he would have to take Du Hang with him again and collect more boxes for future use.
The severe cold of winter did not diminish its power with the arrival of the New Year. Among the survivors who made it through the year, many helplessly discovered that the food they had stored before winter couldn’t sustain them until spring.
Some timid individuals resigned themselves to staying within the base, relying on the daily ration distribution. The bolder ones, however, resorted to engaging in robbery and extortion within the base.
But when even those who could be robbed had become too impoverished to have any surplus food, those daring individuals had no choice but to turn their attention outside the base.
At this moment, people who were audacious and had big appetites but couldn’t find enough to eat within the base gathered together. They converged on certain individuals’ residences, driving away incompatible neighbors, and discussed their future plans with the contacts they had made.
“We have to go out,” the person leading the gathering said, scanning the people around them and speaking in a low voice.
“Absolutely! The snow outside is so heavy, and I heard that many zombies are buried in it! As long as we’re careful, we should be fine.”
The others nodded in agreement. Before coming here, they were all well aware that those lacking the courage to venture outside wouldn’t have shown up at this gathering in the first place.
“But what if we encounter a blizzard when we go out?” someone cautiously raised a concern.
The person taking the lead had a cigarette butt in his mouth but hesitated to light it. Frowning upon hearing the question, he said: “I have a friend who is in the military. I heard there are people there who used to work in the meteorological bureau, and they said there shouldn’t be any blizzards from now until February.”
Upon hearing this, the others felt a slight relief.
One person laughed and said: “The meteorological bureau wasn’t reliable in the past. Are you sure those people can accurately predict the weather?”
Another person was also curious and asked: “Why did your friend ask about the possibility of snowfall? Is the military also going to the city to find things?”
The person leading the gathering smiled triumphantly at this moment, looking around at everyone present.
“My friend heard that… do you know about the new military forces that have been established? They are planning to leave the base by the end of January to retrieve important supplies! The higher-ups in the base have even had several experts confirm the recent weather multiple times!”
“Really? They’re going for supplies in January?”
“Could it be the food warehouse?!”
“It’s possible, but it could also be weapons!”
“Yeah, yeah!”
“If even the military is going out, we shouldn’t have any problems going out too, right?”
“Exactly! Bring some lighters, and dress warmly. What doesn’t the urban area have? We’ll find some furniture and start a fire. If we take the risk now, we can avoid going in later only to find that the good stuff has been taken by the military!”
For survival, in this icy and snowy world, a group emerged from the largest base near T City.
Since the snow was too heavy and regular vehicles couldn’t travel, these people somehow managed to obtain two modified off-road jeeps. Each jeep was packed with an excessive number of passengers, slowly making their way toward the city area, leaving deep tracks in the pristine white snow…
“…Finally, they’re all frozen.” Wei Xuan stood at the entrance of the basement, full of emotion. After confirming that all the boxes inside were tightly wrapped in plastic sheets and quilts, he took a step back and closed the door to the room.
In this room, apart from the waterproof cloth initially laid on the floor, thick quilts were nailed to the surrounding walls, ceiling, and even inside and outside the door for insulation.
This was no small project, and Wei Xuan was most grateful at this moment for having Du Hang with him.
After his intelligence had been developed, Du Hang found these basic tasks incredibly easy to handle! In places where a hammer was needed to nail down the quilts, he raised his hand and the nails would firmly secure the quilts to the wall!
With such tremendous combat and operational capabilities, why wait for a better time?
“Let’s go, let’s go. We’re going to deal with the strange snow!”
The work of the past few days had given Wei Xuan a new understanding of the speed of replenishing their energy supply. After confirming that the solar energy collected each day could meet the surplus consumption, he needed to change the way he dealt with the strange snow—waiting for the ice blocks to dry would be much slower than allowing them to turn back into liquid and evaporate!
So after returning this time, Wei Xuan dragged Du Hang to move all the available radiators, thermos flasks, and other heating devices from the neighborhood to their own sixth floor.
He would warm them up in the rooms where the strange snow ice blocks were stored, allowing them to melt completely and evaporate as quickly as possible.
There was no other choice. The efficiency of evaporating the strange snow had been too slow and poor before, and Wei Xuan wanted to leave some containers and store more normal water for use after the spring next year.
In other seasons, Wei Xuan might not be able to guarantee this, but at least in early spring, the T City where he resided was usually a place with little rainfall. Even if it rained, it would only occasionally drizzle lightly, barely collecting any water.
Far-sighted Wei Xuan decided to be prepared for the future. Since there was so much clean snow inside and outside the neighborhood, it would be a waste not to make better use of this abundant natural resource.
Wei Xuan, who had initially planned to enjoy a cozy winter, had once again found himself with a pile of work. Fortunately, even if he became busy with these tasks, they would only take a short amount of time.
Once he finished handling them, he could simply rely on the power of nature to yield results. On average, he couldn’t even spend half a day on his planned tasks.
While Wei Xuan was busy experimenting with the accumulated snow in his neighborhood and while the official forces in the base were being mobilized and integrated, a group approached from the northwest direction of T City. Without attracting too much attention from the zombies buried deep under the snow, they infiltrated the city area…
Thanks for the update
trouble’s coming,,,
Thanks for the chapter!
Maybe we’ll meet people in future?
Thank you for your translation 💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛
Trouble indeed! Thanks for the update 🤣❤️🤣❤️🤣
Thank you sm for the updatess. so happy to be able to read these chapters after a week of hard work ❤️❤️❤️
Wei Xuan continues to impress me with his everything!
i know i dont say it every chapter, but thank you for the updates