Apocalyptic Charity Plan [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 9

Jiang Fanxing no longer dared to enter the Ice and Snow World, so he returned to the Scorching Heat World. Since he could not find an official organization, he had to act alone. In this high-temperature environment, the most vital resources lacking were food and water. He had no solution for food, but as for water, he looked toward the Ice and Snow World. There was plenty of it there.

After walking for nearly a day, feeling as though his soles were worn out and experiencing a stinging sensation in his feet, Jiang Fanxing turned back. He went to the nearest village and found a relatively clean and tidy house. He condensed some water to take a shower and soaked his feet in a basin. After cleaning up, he spread his sleeping bag on the kang and fell into an exhausted sleep.

The next morning, he began searching the village for water containers. In rural areas, plastic buckets were common, but the extreme heat had caused them to deform. Although the temperature had not yet reached the point of decomposition for the plastic, the lids could no longer fit the buckets tightly. Fortunately, he found two airtight aluminum alloy oil drums at a house that owned a car. Even better, there was no gasoline inside, so no residue was left behind.

He condensed some water to give the two oil drums a quick rinse. Afterward, he found some thermal mugs, glass cups with lids, and a large stack of ceramic bowls. Considering the openings on the oil drums were small and difficult to fill with snow, he specifically searched for a plastic funnel.

He had enough containers, but transporting them was a major problem. As Jiang Fanxing paced around the village, he pondered how to carry everything. Suddenly, he noticed a tricycle, and his eyes lit up. Not long after, Jiang Fanxing pedaled the tricycle, now loaded with supplies, toward the Ice and Snow World.

About half an hour later, a fatigued Jiang Fanxing reached his destination. After taking a short rest, he took the oil drums and a shovel toward the boundary line between the two worlds.

By this time, it had stopped snowing in the Ice and Snow World, and it looked peaceful and beautiful. Jiang Fanxing had not forgotten his previous encounter. Having no desire to experience being frozen again, he stood firmly in the Scorching Heat World, reached across the invisible barrier with his shovel, and began to dig for snow.

As soon as the snow on the shovel entered the Scorching Heat World, it quickly melted into water. After a few attempts, there was only a shallow layer of water at the bottom of the oil drum. Realizing this was not an efficient method, he pushed the oil drums into the Ice and Snow World and used the shovel to fill them with snow. Once they were full, he pulled them back. When the snow had half-melted, he pushed the drums into the ice world again. Once refilled, he retrieved the oil drums and sealed the lids.

Although this method did not fill the oil drums completely, it proved the feasibility of gathering water there. Repeating this process until all his containers were full, Jiang Fanxing climbed onto the tricycle and headed toward the village where Li Zhenyang was staying.

At the same time, Xie Yunqing and his team arrived at the boundary line by vehicle.

“Wait, what is that?” Xie Yunqing asked.

Lin Zihan, who had the best eyesight, looked in the direction he was pointing. About two thousand meters away at the boundary line, she saw a shovel. Confused, she concentrated her focus and spotted footprints and tire tracks nearby.

“Captain, there are signs of human activity!” she exclaimed.

Hearing this, Xie Yunqing and the others were surprised. They had been out for three days without encountering a single survivor. As time passed, their hearts grew heavier. In such a difficult environment, every second could claim countless lives. The saying “time is life” had become reality in this moment.

Xie Yunqing turned on his walkie-talkie to speak to the rescue team members in the other vehicle: “We have discovered potential traces of survivors. We are changing our route; follow us.”

“Copy that.”

After receiving the reply, he looked at Zhang Zhiyuan, who was driving: “Go over and take a look.”

“Received!”

Two minutes later, they arrived at the scene. Xie Yunqing and his team quickly stepped out of the vehicle. They did not rashly enter the extreme world but instead observed the tracks Jiang Fanxing had left behind while standing in the Ice and Snow World.

To lighten his load and to show those survivors that the Ice and Snow World existed, Jiang Fanxing had deliberately left the shovel at the spot where he collected snow. He did not know that the symbol he left behind would be discovered by others before any survivors could verify it.

Xie Yunqing stopped in front of the tracks. His eyes scanned the area until he determined from the fresh marks that only one person had been there, and that person definitely had not gone far. He followed the direction of the tire tracks, trying to deduce the person’s intentions, and concluded they were simply trying to save themselves.

However, one thing was strange: how could that person endure the nearly 70-degree heat while riding a vehicle? Could the person be a member of a rescue team? He looked at the clothing provided by the survivor base and dismissed that thought. According to the base leader, only twenty of these thermal-control suits had been produced. Their convoy consisted of two vehicles with four people each; all eight of them were wearing the suits. Since they were the first batch to test the suits, the person they were tracking could not be part of the rescue team.

At this moment, Zhou Peng reached his hand into the Scorching Heat World. The handheld weather instrument in his hand immediately spiked from -67°C to 67.8°C, leaving him stunned.

“Captain, the temperature on the other side is nearing 70 degrees Celsius!”

To put it in perspective, in the history of droughts in China, the “hottest summer” occurred in the eighth year of the Qianlong Emperor’s reign, when temperatures only reached about 45°C. Most regions suffered, rivers and wells dried up, crops failed, and the people could not make a living. The temperature in this Scorching Heat World was nearly double that, and the resulting disaster was beyond imagination.

Xie Yunqing became more cautious: “Move out immediately, follow them!”

“Yes!”

The convoy set off again, heading directly toward Jiang Fanxing.

Jiang Fanxing was towing a cart full of water, nearly dying of exhaustion on the way. If he were not afraid that using the electric mode on the tricycle in the heat would cause the battery to explode, he would never have wanted to experience manual mode.

He left the tricycle at the entrance of the village, grabbed a thermal mug in one hand and an electric baton in the other, and walked into the familiar village once again. To his surprise, after searching all the survivors’ dwellings, he found only a few familiar-looking corpses; all the other survivors were gone.

“Where did they go?”

Jiang Fanxing was suspicious. That group of people could not have just vanished. He had not seen any signs of outsiders in the village, which left only one possibility: they had gathered somewhere and were hiding.

He searched house by house. By the end, his face turned grim, and his pace quickened as he headed toward the cowshed where Li Zhenyang was hidden.

Sure enough, Li Zhenyang’s place looked as if it had been ransacked. The belongings that were once neat were now scattered all over the floor. At that moment, faint human voices came from the backyard, and his eyes sharpened. Those people had discovered the secret room in the cowshed!

Jiang Fanxing tossed the thermal mug aside, pulled out his Swiss Army knife, and rushed toward the backyard cowshed. The cowshed was full of people. They were holding the food and water he had painstakingly transported, frantically eating and drinking. What enraged him most was that the child was being held over a fire!

“You are courting death!”

He switched on his electric baton and charged at the person closest to the child. With a sharp crack of electricity, the man immediately twitched and collapsed.

The situation happened suddenly, but these people had been well-fed since last night and had plenty of energy. With old grudges and new ones combined, the moment they saw Jiang Fanxing, they were incensed.

“You actually dared to come back!”

“If you had not been so selfish and given everything to that brat Li Zhenyang, my brother would not have died!”

“Kill him! Send him on his way with Li Zhenyang!”

More than a dozen people rushed toward Jiang Fanxing with bloodshot eyes, unafraid of his weapon, wanting only to tear him apart.

Li Zhenyang was like a little lamb, his hands and feet tied, hanging upside down from a wooden beam with a fire underneath him. Last night, he had been found by these former uncles and elders, who robbed him of his food and water before knocking him unconscious. He had not cried until this morning, when those people discussed roasting and eating him. But now, seeing his brother “Green” being swarmed by those men while trying to save him, his small eyes filled with tears, and he sobbed loudly, his small body swinging as he tried to get down from the pole.

Someone had splashed mineral water all over Jiang Fanxing’s electric baton. Although the baton was supposed to be waterproof, he had used it many times without recharging it; now, it failed to work.

He discarded the baton, held his knife across his chest, and glared at the group: “Get lost if you do not want to die!”

The crowd was not afraid of him. Although they were thin, they were still bigger than Jiang Fanxing, and they had the advantage of numbers. A man with an unrecognizable face glared at him and said to the others: “Think about what this guy did to us! We cannot let him go!”

These people held a grudge because Jiang Fanxing had forced them to work under the scorching sun in exchange for water. Seeing that a child like Li Zhenyang had received the food and water that Li Dadao had looted from them had only deepened their resentment.

Jiang Fanxing was pummeled by their fists and slaps. Someone even tore off the silk scarf covering his face and struck him. In that instant, the sickening feeling of skin-to-skin contact flooded his heart, almost awakening the terrible memories of his childhood.

His eyes grew ruthless, and he stopped holding back, thrusting the army knife deep into the men. Blood flowed from the blade onto his hands, which only worsened the revulsion in his heart. His eyes took on a frightening, greenish hue, and his attacks became even more vicious.

When people are pushed to the edge, they unleash incredible fighting power. Both sides fought for their lives, and the sounds of screaming and roaring echoed throughout the entire village, serving as a beacon for Xie Yunqing and his team.