Rebirth in the end times: The whole family keeps a low profile

Two months after the natural disaster, people had just adapted to life without water and electricity, but unexpectedly, their mobile phones began to have no network. It didn’t matter to others because their mobile phones had run out of battery long ago and all the electrical appliances had become decorations.

However, the Su family has been relying on the Internet to collect information from the outside world for some time. They are still a little uncomfortable with the sudden loss of the Internet and can only rely on the radio to learn about information from the outside world.

Everyone lived the most primitive life, making fire and cooking every day, and there was almost no entertainment at night. As soon as it got dark, everyone returned to their rooms early.

In order to reduce fuel expenses as much as possible, some people in the village gathered together to make a fire and cook.

Basically, those who have a good relationship live and eat together, and even sleep together.

More people began to find ways to buy food from outside. At first, everyone wanted to exchange the extra food they had, but later, when the price of food increased tenfold or twentyfold, no one was willing to exchange their own food for supplies.

Tan Chuang also realized how valuable his chickens, ducks and geese were now. Every day, someone said they wanted to exchange their chickens, ducks and geese. He was extremely glad that he had listened to the Su family's advice and kept most of them for himself.

Today, the intersection of the village road and the provincial road is particularly busy. Every household takes their ID card and walks for 30 minutes to the material collection point to receive supplies. The government distributes supplies once a week, with each person receiving 3 kilograms of rice and 5 kilograms of coal. There is no more.

Even so, almost every household in the village actively lined up to receive supplies.

As long as you bring your ID card and match it with the verification list given by the village chief, you can receive the supplies.

There has been a cold wind blowing every day recently, and the snow on high ground has been slowly blown to low-lying areas. Gradually, the snow in some windward areas on the back mountain has been decreasing.

Su Yun knew that after the snow in some places on the back mountain was blown away by the strong wind, the terrain on the mountain became much flatter, but if this continued, the village entrance with low terrain would suffer.

Fortunately, no one was killed in the previous life, so Su Yun didn't intend to care this time.

After two months of closed training, the children felt that they had grown a lot. Their physical endurance and agility had been significantly improved, and they were more resistant to cold and frost than before.

Dad Su’s safety education is very thorough from the physical, mental to the ideological level. The children now fully understand what they can and cannot say in front of outsiders, and would rather keep silent when they are unsure of something.

Dad Su said that if you want to have enough food to eat, you have to control your mouth. No matter what happens at home, you can't tell anyone else. You can't say anything unless the adults tell you to.

Su Zhangming and Wang Jie never stopped exercising. They gave shooting training to several children on time every afternoon, and sometimes asked several boys to undergo intensive training in cold resistance.

None of the children wanted to give up. One, two, three of them held their breath and exercised. As a result, their bodies became much stronger than before.

Su Yun and Zhang Lili teach the children cultural lessons every morning, and the teaching materials downloaded previously also play an important role in achieving twice the result with half the effort.

Whenever Su's mother and sister-in-law have time, they take out the specialties and vegetables received from Su Yun's space and wash or semi-process them. They don't know how long it will take for the natural disaster to end, so they can only make some preparations every day.

It is now minus 45 degrees Celsius during the day and minus 60 degrees Celsius at night. The wind outside is getting colder and colder, and it feels like it can blow people up to the sky. Although the village has more than 300 households and more than people, only a few people dare to go out during the day to exchange food and collect firewood.

Early in the morning, Su Yun got up and prepared the necessary supplies for the children to go out. Each of them had a mountaineering bag, which contained a thermos filled with hot water, a bag of compressed biscuits, a first aid kit, a Swiss Army knife, a fully charged walkie-talkie and a bow and arrow for shooting training. Everyone wore windproof and warm cold-proof clothing, thick gloves and special snow boots, which would basically not sink when walking on thick snow.

Su Xiaogu and Su Ma took their little cousin Jiang Sisi to look after the house, while the rest of the people went up the mountain to gain experience.

The children ate delicious corn dumplings and multi-grain vegetable cakes, each with a cup of warm soy milk and tea eggs, and were looking forward to going out for the first time after the extreme cold today.

After breakfast, everyone put on all their equipment, carried their bows and arrows and backpacks, and went out.

We went up the mountain directly from the path behind the house. The snow was blown away by the strong wind, and the overall terrain was relatively flat, so the progress was not slow.

Dad Su led the way in front. The original road was covered with snow, and they could only determine the direction by feel and the branches of the pine trees exposed in the snow.

After walking for half an hour, there was nothing but white snow and half-exposed pine branches. The children could occasionally see squirrels jumping on the distant pine branches, but the squirrels ran away before they could get close to them, leaving behind a trail of footprints in the snow.

Wang Jie protected everyone and walked at the back. They walked to a relatively tall pine tree with half of its branches buried in the snow. The branches exposed in the snow were very dense. When they walked nearby, they did not get any closer because the snow under the branches was relatively soft. Su Zhangming carefully pushed aside the branches and leaves and slowly approached. Usually, there would be birds building nests on such a large pine tree. Sure enough, he found several empty bird nests.

Su Zhangming climbed up by stepping on the branches. Under normal circumstances, Zhang Lili would definitely be nervous and would even stop him from doing such a dangerous thing. However, the pine tree was not that tall and there was thick snow underneath, so he looked quite safe.

Not long after Su Zhangming climbed up, he found a nest of frozen sparrows. He took down the entire nest. Three boys gathered around the nest and looked at it. There was also a nest of sparrow eggs called ice balls inside. His nephew Su Bowei used a small branch to look through the eggs in the nest and seemed very disappointed.

Su Zhangming brushed off the snow on his body and looked up at the large mountain range behind the mountain. The bare pine trees looked like many dark green triangles growing on the white hills, among which many old pine trees looked particularly sturdy.

Pointing to a pine tree not far away, he said, "Uncle will take you over there later. You have to climb up and see for yourself."

The little guys were so excited that they handed the bird's nest to Su Yun and ran away with Su Zhangming.

These guys have never climbed a tree since they were little, and they got the chance this year to have a stab at it. Su Zhangming also wanted to train them. There will be constant natural disasters in the future, and if they just stay like flowers in a greenhouse, they will never grow up.

After finding a few relatively sturdy pine trees, the children practiced climbing trees under the guidance of Su Zhangming and Su's father. Su Yun and Zhang Lili picked up binoculars and began to observe the surrounding environment.

Su Yun looked for a few minutes without any results. Zhang Lili beside him lowered her voice and said, "Sister, I found several rabbits at nine o'clock. Look quickly."

Su Yun quickly picked up the telescope and looked over. There were five or six snow-white rabbits foraging in the snow. If you didn't look carefully, you couldn't see them at all. Their foraging movements were very slow and they didn't notice Su Yun and the others here at all.

He lowered his voice and told the children to put on bows and arrows and slowly approach the rabbits. The children were eager to try, and several of them semi-surrounded the rabbits. When they were seven or eight meters away from the rabbits, Wang Jie signaled everyone to stop with his hands. Su Zhangming gestured to the children to shoot with bows and arrows. Maybe it was because the temperature was too low, the rabbits were not as flexible as before.

The three children got ready to shoot and glanced at Wang Jie. Wang Jie saw that the time was right and gestured. Su Bowei and Qiqi immediately released their bows and arrows. When Tang Tang lagged behind and shot, the rabbit had already run away. Fortunately, his nephew Su Bowei shot a leg. Qiqi and Tang Tang missed. The rabbit was frightened and ran around everywhere, except for the rabbit with an injured leg that could not run and stayed where it was. Everyone picked up their bows and arrows and shot at the fleeing rabbit.

In the end, three rabbits ran away. Su Bowei injured one, Wang Jie shot one, and Su's father caught one directly. He tied up the little rabbits and hung them on the back of the children's backpacks, one for each child. They looked so cool.

The little ones didn't mind the rabbits behind them adding weight to their backpacks and were excitedly discussing whose one was cuter along the way.

Take these rabbits back and try to raise them. Su Ma raised rabbits herself many years ago and has some experience in this area.

After walking around the back mountain for another two hours, the group arrived at the upstream of a nearby stream.

The originally 5-meter-wide stream was covered by heavy snow at the edges, and the water flow was slower and frozen on the sides, so it looked only half its previous size.

Based on his previous memory, Dad Su tried hard to find a place with big rocks and shallows below to stand.

Su Yun had caught some small fish, shrimps and crabs in this stream with his grandfather before.

Su's father found a relatively safe place for them to stay, and Su Yun pretended to take out a few children's fishing nets from his backpack to help the children catch some small fish and shrimps hiding behind the rocks.

Perhaps the 5-meter-long stream was frozen and compressed into a 2-meter-long stream, and the small fish and shrimps were concentrated behind the relatively warm stones. Soon, the bucket that Zhang Lili was carrying was filled with various small shrimps and fish, and even a lot of crabs.

Well, it seems that since no one has been fishing in the past few months, there are quite a few good things in the stream.

In the past, everyone was used to fishing in the nearby rivers. Now it’s so cold that probably no one would dare to go into the water, so as long as you find the right place to fish and cast the net, you will definitely get a lot of catches.

The Su family has no shortage of these resources, and they are very willing to share them. They will invite a few friends who are good at playing to go online together someday.

Near noon, everyone had lunch on the flat ground beside the stream.

We spent the entire afternoon fishing for fish and shrimp by the creek. Adults and children all joined in, each carrying a small bucket and a fishing net.

Su Yun can catch half a pound of small shrimps and fish with one cast of the net.

The larger shrimps are as big as a thumb, while the smaller ones have no meat at all and can only be dried and cooked into porridge.

There are several varieties of small fish, including small spotted fish, boat nail fish, crucian carp and whitefish. The big ones are as big as an adult's palm, and the smaller ones are two fingers wide.

All in all, we gained a lot from this trip, and in the end everyone's buckets were full before we returned with a feeling of unfulfilled desire.

On the way, Su Yun quietly collected several buckets of fish that were frozen to death as soon as they were brought ashore and put them into the space. The small fish and shrimp were frozen to death shortly after they were caught, leaving two buckets of lively crucian carp outside.

The children were walking in front, and with Zhang Lili's cover they didn't notice Su Yun's little movements.

It's just in time for dinner if we go back now, and after a busy day, everyone has no time to think about anything else.

When we were almost at the back of the village, we ran into Taozi's family who were out collecting firewood. The cold wind blew away some of the snow on high places, and the dead branches exposed on the surface were easily discovered.

Peach's father, Peach's mother and Peach's brother were pulling a wheelbarrow to dig out the branches that emerged from the snow.

Su Zhangming greeted them: "Uncle Min, you came out to collect firewood in such a cold weather."

Brother Taozi’s name contains the word “Min”, so everyone is used to calling his parents Min’s father and Min’s mother.

"You're still taking the children to the back mountain in such a cold day. Aren't you afraid that they will freeze to death?" Min's father asked in surprise.

His grandchildren have never gone out since the extreme cold, and they would have come out in the cold wind to collect firewood if they were not worried about not having enough coal at home.

Looking at the bucket in Su Zhangming's hand, he hurried forward to take a look, with a hint of envy in his eyes. Then he saw the rabbits hanging on the back of several children's backpacks, and he felt a little excited in his heart. He decided to try his luck tomorrow.

Those fish and rabbits cannot be given to others at a low price.

"You guys even caught a rabbit, that's amazing."

At this moment, Dad Su just wanted to go home and warm himself by the fire, hoping that this kid would stop nagging.

"I haven't been out for a while, so I took the kids out for a look. Luckily, I found a rabbit that was almost frozen. Oh, by the way, didn't your family plant a lot of rice last year? I just wanted to ask if you have any extra food. Would you be willing to exchange these fish for it?"

Min's father immediately shook his head: "The food has been distributed to relatives and friends. Last time, a lot of coal was exchanged. There is not much left."

At this time, Min's father was thinking: Are you kidding me? I will go to the back mountain to catch fish by myself tomorrow. I will definitely catch more than you. Why should I waste food to exchange with you?

Su Zhangming was not angry either: "Uncle Min, if you have extra, please give us some. If not, forget it. We will go back first. The children have been out for a long time and are eager to go home."

Min's family is a major grain producer in the village, so they will definitely not be short of food. With the current market conditions, the price of grain changes every day, and only a fool would buy it.

Even if other people in the village had extra food, they were unwilling to sell it to the Su family. Apart from Alan, her grandmother, her grandfather's family, and the village chief's family, no one in the village cared whether the Su family had enough food. Even many people who had envied the Su family before were now watching with an inexplicable mentality of watching a joke.

After Su Zhangming finished speaking, he left with his men without stopping. Only the Min family knew whether they had extra food, and Su Zhangming had never thought about really exchanging anything with him.

At 4 o'clock in the afternoon, Su's mother had already prepared dinner. The temperature in the kitchen was just right, making people feel warm all over. The children washed their hands and ate directly on the kang. When Su Zhangming saw the dishes on the table, he couldn't stop drooling.

A big pot of fresh, spicy and delicious beef trotters. Each trotter is stewed till soft and tasty. Even the soup can make you eat a few more mouthfuls of rice.

We specially made a big pot of spicy beef trotters and clear soup hotpot. Everyone only ate a small part of it. The rest was put in an aluminum pot with a lid and placed in the space. When we put the food in, the pot was still bubbling.

The Su family's kitchen was bustling with laughter and joy. Fortunately, the Su family did not have any neighbors living very close to them, otherwise if others knew that the Su family still had free water and electricity, they would be so jealous that people would die.

"Dad, are we going to go fishing in the back mountain tomorrow?" Su Zhangming knew that he was met by Min's father in the afternoon, and it would not be long before everyone in the village would go fishing.

"Let's get some people to go fishing tomorrow morning. We don't have to worry about the fish going bad in this weather, so we can just bring some back and store them."

Su Yun took out the fish he caught in the afternoon from the space. Five or six buckets full of fish and shrimp scared Su Ma.

She thought she was extremely lucky to have caught only two buckets of crucian carp, but she didn't expect that there were even more fish and shrimp in the space. Although they were all dead, they could be cleaned up and stored as dried fish, and she could take them out and eat them anytime in the future. The most important thing was that these were all in the clear, so it would be convenient to give them to others in the future.