Chapter Thirty-Seven: Aftermath of the Storm

  10 minutes later, a chaotic noise came from the semiconductor of Er Sha, and a male broadcaster's deep voice said somewhat nervously: "Attention all citizens, attention all citizens, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake has just occurred in this city, with its epicenter in Yaocun Village, resulting in partial house collapses, currently no casualties have been reported, the municipal government is organizing disaster relief teams, please do not panic, the following are announcements of precautions and emergency measures during the earthquake...

  I rushed into Jing Ke's house, turned on the radio, and paid attention to the concise instructions, including what items should be prepared during this period and where to hide during an earthquake. By the way, I did some knowledge popularization. There are three golden places to hide during an earthquake: under a small toilet, under a table, and in a wall corner. My understanding is that you have to treat yourself as a pervert, just like Liu Bang did it very well.

  Half an hour after the broadcast, many inexplicable things in the city began to sell out, including lighters (which can be buried in bricks to illuminate and smoke), whistles (which can be blown when buried in bricks to find people), small knives (what's the use of this? Is it for self-amputation? How terrifying!), flashlights. Long queues formed at the entrance of steamed bun shops, followed by bread, crackers, instant noodles being swept away. Many people rushed to grain stores.

  Qin Shi Huang looked at the flustered people outside the window and said to me in discontent: "You're really good for nothing!" I saw that Bao Zi was not around, so I jumped up and scolded: "Now you know how to love the people? Who built the Great Wall of China?" Suddenly, a clever idea struck me - could it be that Meng Jiang Nu's wailing had triggered an earthquake when she first cried out in grief over her husband's death during the construction of the Great Wall? If so, then we two are quite a match, except that her reputation is better than mine.

  Baozi checked for a week, worriedly telling me: "There's a crack on the wall of my and Xiaonan's bedroom, we have enough flour to eat for another week, I'm just afraid it'll be hard to buy vegetables."

  "I shouted: 'Fei Ge, let's go with our brothers to grab rice, grab noodles, and grab cabbage!'"

  Liu Bang suddenly said in a stern tone: "Heavenly disasters and human calamities, whoever hoards goods to raise prices will be killed without pardon. If I were to handle this matter, I would kill one to warn the others and stabilize the people's hearts - when can the mahjong hall open its doors?"

  Later events proved that Liu Bang was still somewhat wise in overseeing the overall situation, and the government quickly introduced relevant policies to strictly prohibit price gouging. At first, it was repeatedly banned, but after sealing off two grain and oil stores, order began to recover. Those large supermarkets like RT-Mart, Carrefour, and Tesco basically had experience in dealing with similar events, prices were held down and did not move, after welcoming several shopping peaks, they finally began to return to normal.

  After having no worries in life, people start to worry about the safety of the future. The broadcast said that although there is a possibility of aftershocks after an earthquake, it is unlikely to exceed the intensity of the first time. The broadcast also told us that a better way to protect ourselves is to sleep under the bed, and families with conditions can sleep in the toilet. It is not recommended for people to set up earthquake shelters or go camping outdoors.

  This last one, however, seemed to remind people that camping tents and sleeping bags began to sell out. Parks and school playgrounds were instantly packed with all sorts of tents.

  This earthquake caused very minor damage to houses, as long as they were not built in the past few years, basically all of them were safe and sound. However, many panicked people preferred to sleep in tents, most of whom were wealthy.

  The casualty data for this event has also been released, with a total of 14 deaths, mostly farmers from rural villages who were crushed to death by collapsing houses, with 9 being killed instantly and several more being buried under the rubble. Unlike them was a guy who had just moved from the 2nd floor to the 18th floor, who was sleeping soundly at noon when he heard someone shouting "earthquake", without thinking he climbed out of the window...

  There was also a small unexpected event, a young man went to get a tattoo, originally wanting to get a sword tattooed, but as soon as the earthquake happened, the tattoo artist's hand shook and drew a long wavy line. This guy was quite open-minded and said: "Then give me a golden snake sword tattoo."

  Apart from the public security bureau, waterworks and power plants which are essential departments, students and most of the factories have temporarily stopped work. This year, our city's excellent teachers have no quota limit, all teachers who did not only think of themselves to run first and sent students to escape during the earthquake, including teaching assistants, one is counted as an excellent teacher.

  This happened more than half a month after Jin Shao Yan left. This kid is lucky and doesn't have to be frightened twice.

  Now safety issues are also on my agenda. As the saying goes, "A gentleman does not stand under a wall that is about to collapse." Let these people stay with me in this cracked house and wait for fate, without even asking for their opinions, which is not good. When I asked them if they wanted to move out and live in tents, they all asked me in unison: "Are you kidding?"

  My only thought at the time was to fart again in front of them to prove my innocence, but this fart is a stream of gas, it's not something you can control, you can't just let it out or make it make noise. It's hard to hold it back, but even harder to force it out. I shouted hoarsely: "The earthquake really has nothing to do with my fart!"

  Several men looked at each other in dismay, Qin Shi Huang said: "Don't go around talking about this matter, you see, it's scary." Liu Bang nodded and said: "Yes, let's just pretend we don't know anything about it from now on." Xiang Yu said: "Let it be, what's there to be afraid of?"

  I gave up the idea of explaining, placed a beer bottle upside down on the windowsill, turned around to see Jing Er's eager expression, sighed and casually threw the bottle aside, if I'm going to die then so be it, I'll just die with these few people.

  At this time, Liu Laoliu's voice shouted loudly at me from downstairs. I rushed out in one breath and saw that Liu Laoliu was actually riding a Baojia electric motorcycle, with one foot on the ground and an 18-yuan Lanzhou cigarette in his mouth. I said: "Hey, got rich?"

  Liu Lao Liu narrowed one eye and nodded at me, taking the cigarette out of his mouth. "Not bad," he said. "The park is full of people who are bored and looking for fortune-telling. This car belongs to a friend of mine who does divination, I came just to remind you to get ready. In three days, 300 troops from the Yue family will arrive. I have to hurry back, there's still a line waiting for me. Besides, if I don't go back now, the owner of this car will report it stolen."

  "Didn't you say you'd borrow from someone else?"

  "I told him to borrow the earpick on the keychain, didn't say to borrow the car too."

  I grabbed him: "You can send someone for me, but you have to send them to a place I specify, can you do that?"

  Liu Laosix waved his hand: "Can't be done, there are fixed transmission points."

  "I said with a suppressed tone: 'Then you must come later, you can't bring an entire camp to my place in broad daylight, can you?'"

  Liu Lao Liu thought for a moment and said: "I'll try this out, do you have anything else?" He looked at me tightly grasping his hand.

  "I asked him nicely: 'Will there be another earthquake in the future?' This is what I most want to know, and also why I'm being nice to him."

  Liu Lao Liu puffed on his cigarette, pinched his fingers and muttered: "Let me calculate for you, Jia Yi Bing Ding Zi Chou Yin Mao one plus one equals two, one plus two makes three...".

  "Stop pretending, aren't you a god?"

  "There's a rule above, unless absolutely necessary, one cannot use magical powers among humans at will. But my divination is really quite accurate - there'll be an aftershock tomorrow at 3 am... anyway, that's what I told others, whether you believe it or not."

  I found out, I couldn't beat this old rascal, he understood the mentality of hooligans very well.

  I didn't freak out about the early arrival of 300 people this time because I, being clever, thought of an emergency solution within less than 2 hours after the earthquake. I have already ordered 100 tents from a local online retailer that sells camping gear, each tent can accommodate 5 people, so my current capacity is 500. Then I'll lead them to set up camp in the outskirts, at this time, no one will suspect anything, and finding houses can be put off for now. However, I plan to wait a few more days, I reckon the housing prices will drop significantly!

  That night at 2:30, I woke up my five-person group and Baozi with full confidence. They hadn't slept well when I said there would be an earthquake at 3 o'clock. Except for the two girls who were deeply skeptical, I noticed that Liu Bang really didn't dare to walk behind me anymore. We put on our outerwear and walked out of the house, standing in the square across from our street, shivering with fear. At 2:45, many people came out of our street one after another. At 2:55, Old Man Zhao and his group were the last to leave their house, filling up the square. At first, everyone was a bit embarrassed, and the conversation starters were all: "You also heard about it?"

  At 3 o'clock, the ground was as quiet as water, and no one spoke, everyone stared at their feet. At 3:15, some people began to relax, and they asked each other, many said: I heard it from Liu Baxian under the park wall.

  I knew something was off, that day we waited until dawn, but there was no sign of an earthquake at all. People were yawning and going back to their homes to sleep. On the radio that day, there was a serious announcement saying that someone had taken advantage of this special period to spread rumors about an impending earthquake, with unknown motives. The public security agency was already searching for him, his nickname was Liu Half Immortal, official name: Liu Old Six.

  Divider

  I recommend a book, "Tomb Raider in Another World". When he asked me to recommend it, he said I was his mistress. The problem is that he's a man and I didn't agree.

  Hehe, here is the link

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