In the next three days, Ye Xuan drove to two other large supermarkets nearby. Like he did in the first one, he cleaned up the zombies and took away the items other survivors might find difficult to store.
During this period, he detoured to C University several times, but unfortunately several roads were either blocked by vehicles, meaning he had to walk entirely, or he had to pass through the large residential area of the hospital where zombies had gathered. Ye Xuan wanted to try but after evaluating his own strength several times, he still did not dare to break into such a high-risk area.
On the sixth day of the apocalypse, Ye Xuan woke up in the morning and was about to go out, when he found out that snowflakes were already falling outside. He glanced at the thermometer on the wall and realized that the outdoor temperature was already below zero. He himself had a relatively high resistance to cold and heat, and was not particularly sensitive to temperature changes. The extreme temperature drop was about to begin.
This snow would fall for several days, and it was not easy to travel in a snowstorm, so Ye Xuan gave up his plan to collect supplies.
After suddenly being free, Ye Xuan had a lot of time to do other things. From his memories, the water and electricity at home would be stopped after the heavy snow. He had complained about the water and electricity problems before, but it was only later that he realized that their community was more lucky. There were few zombies near the water and electricity facilities, so it took a long time before they stopped working. For example, in one of the supermarket that he went to these days, the water was still good but the electricity circuit had long been destroyed by the brainless zombies.
People like him who could maintain their water and power supply until it snowed were already a relatively lucky group of people.
Since the water and electricity were about to run out, Ye Xuan was not going to waste resources. He took advantage of these few days at home to frantically cook all kinds of food to store in his space. Before the apocalypse came, he would usually cook some simple meals. In the post-apocalyptic years, he was not used to living with others. Basically, he would eat and live by himself, and his cooking skills could be considered to a master level.
In the past few days, from steaming buns to cooking soup and cooking basically everything that came to mind, Ye Xuan had made a bunch of food. Anyway, his space could keep food fresh, so he didn’t have to worry about it getting cold or spoilt.
He still insisted on using his abilities to grow some seeds at home, constantly practicing and striving to break through to tier 2 in the shortest possible time.
Ye Xuan was busy making food reserves and improving his abilities at home. His schedule was completely full. On the fifth day after Ye Xuan’s house was cut off from the water, and on the third day after the power cut, the snow finally stopped. He roughly calculated that the snow had fallen for a total of ten days. Although it fell intermittently, the amount of fallen snow was large.
City C often experienced snow in winter, and Ye Xuan had prepared for it a few years ago. This year, he had prepared a lot of tools for clearing snow. He cleaned the snow on the roof several times, and it didn’t take long completely clear it. He made sure the solar generator was working properly before starting to clean the yard with a shovel.
Ye Xuan was sweeping the snow when he heard a knock on the door. When he went over, he saw that there were actually five community security guards and four community residents standing in front of his house. They looked quite intimidating.
Ye Xuan didn’t open the door and asked, “Is there something wrong?”
The leader was a middle-aged man in his forties named Hong Bin. Ye Xuan remembered that he was the manager of a company before the apocalypse, and he should have avoided his usual working hours when the accident happened. He didn’t get annoyed when he saw that Ye Xuan didn’t want to open the door, but said with a smile, “Ye Xuan, we are here to talk to you about collecting supplies.”
When he said that, Ye Xuan had a lot thoughts running in his head.
While it was still snowing, Ye Xuan saw Hong Bin’s family and the security guards cleaning up the villas that contained only zombies, and also moving a lot of things out.
The security guards were not residents and did not have many things here. After the apocalypse, they had found an empty villa in the community to live in. How much food they could get depended on God’s will. Hong Bin and his wife, two sons, and a nephew all lived in one house. These five adults had not turned into zombies, and more people meant more food was eaten every day. It was estimated that even if they had stored things, they would consume a lot. Now they should have nothing to eat.
Ye Xuan said: “Right now there is snow everywhere inside and outside the community, and cars can’t go out at all. How can we collect supplies?”
The current snow was probably as high as Ye Xuan’s knees, and driving out was almost a stupid idea. He could go out with something like a sleigh, but what about these people who wanted to collect supplies? What did they plan to use for transportation without a car?
When Hong Bin came to him, he naturally would have thought about this issue. He continued: “We thought about having all the residents of the community clean up the snow first, and then we will organize everyone to collect supplies. This snow lasted for ten days, and there is not much food left at home. It will be too late if we don’t deal with it now.”
Ye Xuan automatically ignored the words about organizing everyone to collect supplies, and said, “With what you said, after sweeping the snow in the community, will the snow outside disappear by itself?”
“The snow still needs to be cleaned up a little bit. We can’t let everyone starve to death.”
Ye Xuan understood that either this group of people had no food at home or the surplus food left can’t keep up with the snow. They dared not to go rob other people, and felt that they couldn’t figure out a way to the supermarket with their own strength. They could only make him join their party.
Not to mention that many people together had a lot of strength and with his own participation, it would be easier for them to persuade others to join.
Unfortunately, Ye Xuan didn’t want to do this job.
He shook the big shovel in his hand and said, “Sorry, I haven’t finished sweeping the snow in my house, so I’ll wait a few days for the snow to melt before discussing this matter. You don’t have to worry too much, the sun is shining today. The snow is already showing signs of melting, and it shouldn’t take a few days to go out.”
Ye Xuan’s words had good intentions. Human effort was too slow to clean up the snow. Was it possible to clean up all the snow in the community and clear a road to the supermarket? Wasn’t that nonsense?
But some people didn’t appreciate it.
A security guard standing next to Hong Bin suddenly rushed up and threatened: “You won’t participate? If you don’t participate, don’t think that we will ever help you in the future!”
With Ye Xuan, he might not be willing to listen to others if they talked to him, and even if he was threatened, he would still not listen. He sneered and asked unceremoniously, “Who is looking for help now?”
As far as he saw through this small window just now, except for Hong Bin, who was wearing a little less, everyone else was wrapped in thick down jackets or military coats, and their faces were flushed from the cold. These were trademarks of ordinary people.
As for Hong Bin, Ye Xuan remembered that he was a person with speed abilities, and he belonged to the more popular category in the early days of the apocalypse. In addition, people were more aware of the current state of affairs, so he would be fine in the next year or so. As such a smart person, Ye Xuan didn’t think he would die and wouldn’t fight against him.
Sure enough, Hong Bin stopped the security guard and said to Ye Xuan, “Okay, then I’ll wait a few more days, and we’ll talk about this again when the snow melts.”
“Okay.” Ye Xuan agreed immediately. Hong Bin, the superhuman, made a decision and it was easy to handle. As for those threatened him, Ye Xuan really wasn’t afraid of them.
Ye Xuan sent away the people who invited him to form a team, cleaned the yard, and just after clearing a road that could be used for entry and exit, he found out that the vine had climbed up on his arm at some point, and a strange pattern had appeared. This was a warning sign.
Unlike those mutant plants with a single function, the vine looked ordinary, but it actually had quite a few other functions. Some branches could be used to collect crystal nuclei in zombies’ brains, some could be used to help strangle zombies in battle, and some could be used to guard homes. As long as Ye Xuan had energy or crystal nuclei, he could use them indefinitely.
But there were some very special functions that could only be used on specified objects.
For example, it could create a small branch, and after it was attached to a person, it could sense the person’s physical condition. It was usually invisible, but if the person was seriously injured or dying, the vine would automatically warn him. If Ye Xuan’s current power level was higher, he could automatically protect that person’s heart with wood-based powers.
And Ling Jiaze was Ye Xuan’s only designated target.
Ye Xuan knew that Ling Jiaze had not turned into a zombie at the onset of the apocalypse. However, because of his poor strength and poor perception ability, he couldn’t determine Ling Jiaze’s specific physical condition.
However, since he knew that he was alive, Ye Xuan was not in a hurry to break through the defense line of zombies and go to C University.
But now something had happened to him.
Ye Xuan couldn’t tell what kind of feelings he had for Ling Jiaze. It was definitely not love at first sight and they were still a long way from being close friends, but when he saw the warning from the vine, he couldn’t deceive anyone. Ling Jiaze could not die.
Ye Xuan set up defensive vines in the yard again, avoided the others and left the community. He took out a snowmobile from the space on the road.
People in the post-apocalyptic world had encountered this kind of snow that was almost knee-high more than once. Zombies were not afraid of low temperature, but the piles of snow still limited the movement of zombies to a certain extent. Many tasks in his previous life were performed after it snowed. Therefore, in addition to large-scale cleaning with snow plows, people had also developed a number of practical snow-clearing methods, such as blowing snow aside with wind, forcibly melting snow with fire, and some people even had special snow-controlling abilities.
Ye Xuan’s wood-type abilities were rather useless in this weather, but he was inspired by these methods and he also developed a rather unique method. When passing through snow, the snow blocking the road was put into the space.
Space ability users had already tried this method, but their space was not large enough, and their energy couldn’t keep up with this long-term snow harvesting. But Ye Xuan was different. His space was large enough, and there were vines that assisted in harvesting snow, which could completely complete this complex operation.
With all these, Ye Xuan really couldn’t think of a reason why he hadn’t gone to Ling Jiaze earlier.
