Chapter 20: The World's Fire
"Okay, I remember you, Wang Xinning, right? Contact me if you need anything else," the official said with a smile.
Wang Xinning, returning to his six-person dormitory, placed the lettuce, sugar, chocolate, and medicine on the table. With his roommates still working outside, he had some privacy.
He noticed an extra photo frame in the bag – not part of the agreed trade. He picked it up, gazing at the photo of his daughter's gentle smile.
"Thank you," Wang Xinning whispered, his eyes glistening. He gently touched the frame, then looked at the lettuce leaves, still glistening with droplets, his capital for a new beginning, his ticket to reuniting with his daughter.
Meanwhile, Su Wu, having completed the trade, dismissed the returned truck. Among the hardware he had given as a bonus, he discovered some unexpected components that, combined with the recently acquired chips, perfectly filled the gaps in his shelter's upgrade project. The estimated completion time plummeted from over 1,200 hours to less than twenty.
"What a good person," Su Wu thought, touched by the image of the middle-aged man and his daughter. He resolved to help Wang Xinning if the opportunity arose.
The shelter upgrades proceeded smoothly. As if in a game, Su Wu idly browsed the forums and slept, the upgrades progressing automatically. His shelter level on the system panel rose from 76% to 100%, then advanced to "Livable Personal Shelter (0%)."
This upgrade didn't increase his daily survival point income, but that night, he received a bonus of 50 survival points, replenishing his reserves.
June 14th.
The average surface temperature reached 57 degrees. Few people remained active outside. Many vehicles could no longer function. Su Wu spent the day online, chatting in forums and groups, gaining a better understanding of the outside world and befriending a girl named Chen Xin. She was the same person who had asked for help in the Doomsday group and had heeded Su Wu's advice to move inland. Coincidentally, she had also relocated to Jianghe City.
June 17th.
The surface temperature soared to 60 degrees. Wildfires raged across the globe, except for the North and South Poles. Toxic smoke filled the sky, forming thick clouds. The sky near the largest fires turned a fiery red.
In the suburbs of Jianghe City, near Su Wu's farm, the sky was a dull gray even at noon. Visibility was limited to a hundred meters, even with high beams.
The global fire had reached the mountains near Su Wu's farm. Unlike the smaller fire a week earlier, this one engulfed the entire mountain range, consuming everything in its path. It even threatened to spread towards the city.
"The situation is dire," Su Wu observed from the control center, remotely monitoring the camera on his farm's roof. The mountains behind the gravel beach were completely engulfed in flames. The scale was immense, even through the thick smoke. Su Wu felt insignificant in the face of such raw power.
The fire raged for over ten hours, from day to night and back to dawn. The situation worsened. The smoke clouds thickened, and a strong wind carried burning debris, spreading the fire to distant villages and factories, and eventually to the city itself. The city became a fiery inferno.
"Warning: Toxic gases detected," the shelter's system announced. "Closing all external hatches and activating high-power purification."
The gravel beach protected Su Wu's farm from the immediate flames, but the toxic smoke and ash were unavoidable. The high concentration of pollutants pushed the shelter's purification system to its limits, triggering frequent warnings.
Su Wu sat in the control center, feeling the increasingly powerful airflow from the air conditioner. He knew the changes reflected the external pressure. The surface was now uninhabitable. His only refuge was this small underground space.
Hours passed. As the smoke settled, the air quality gradually improved, and the purification system returned to normal. Su Wu, his nerves finally relaxing, drank a glass of ice water. He then restarted the excavation of the third floor.
He went online again, discovering that others had also suffered during the fire. A large-scale network outage had affected over three-fifths of the world. In Jianghe City, nearly all shelters within the city limits had lost contact. Only those in remote suburbs remained online.
But even being online didn't guarantee safety. One suburban shelter in Jianghe City, whose inhabitants had oxygen generators and tanks, was the only one with survivors. Hundreds of others had died from suffocation and toxic fumes.
(End of Chapter)