Chapter 319: Great cold wave

That night, it was freezing cold. The Tianma Islet camp's population exploded by a factor of two, with nearly thirty more people, so they had to arrange two more people to burn the boiler and patrol.

Several chimneys in the camp were puffing smoke in the night, and zombie corpses and firewood were burning fiercely in the heating furnace. Hot water rushed repeatedly in the pipes, providing cozy warmth for everyone in the camp.

A night passed quickly. The second day was cloudless and windless, and the sky was still so cold.

Zhang Su woke up, and the first thing he did was pay attention to the energy slot problem.

He first put his attention on the backup energy slot, very happy that the first bar was already full, and the second bar had accumulated more than 80%. In other words, after one night, the backup energy slot recovered 150%!

This speed made him breathe a great sigh of relief. If sleeping could recover so fast, then basically the cooldown time was one day, which was completely acceptable.

But when he moved his attention to his own energy slot, he immediately frowned.

Before going to sleep, he clearly remembered that it was 89%, but after waking up, it was 93%. So, sleeping one night only recovered 4%?

Zhang Su was puzzled. Before going to sleep last night, he didn't do any physical exercise like hee-hee-hee, nor did he have any terrible nightmares. The warm quilt was very comfortable. The body's energy only recovered 4%?

Can't understand...

While thinking and cleaning up, even more incomprehensible things came.

"Last night, Xiaoxue measured the temperature and found that after the first round of sudden drop, it didn't stabilize, but continued to cool down slowly. The lowest temperature last night reached minus 30 degrees, which has broken the extreme value of Qincheng."

Zhong Xiaoshan walked in from outside, carrying a thick cold air, saying somewhat heavily, and then said: "You are not wearing enough, put on a real hat..."

Saying that, she took a thick cotton hat from the wardrobe and handed it to Zhang Su.

Minus 30 degrees was nothing in the Northeast, which could reach minus 50 degrees, but for Qincheng, it was already an extreme cold disaster. When the house was built, it wasn't considered that low, and the cold protection effect would start to be discounted.

Plus the fact that many facilities were now in a paralyzed state, it tested human survival ability even more!

The only thing to be thankful for was that it was just dry cold, not snowing, otherwise the situation would be several times worse...

They didn't know that it wasn't just Qincheng that was so cold; the whole planet was experiencing the same climate. Under this wave of extreme climate, except for the North and South Poles, which were originally extremely cold, other regions also entered the quick-freeze mode...

People in high-latitude regions who had long experienced cold were okay. Although it was more difficult, they wouldn't lose their lives because of this. But those survivor camps in regions where the temperature was above zero all year round, including tropical regions, didn't even have the common sense to deal with the cold. In this wave of great cooling, many people were frozen forever.

A camp as comfortable as Tianma Islet couldn't be said to be non-existent, but it could only be said to be an extremely rare existence on a global scale. If more survivors knew that there was such a safe camp 20-plus kilometers north of Qincheng, I'm afraid they would risk their lives to explore it.

"This damn weather."

Zhang Su frowned, not understanding what was wrong with this world. Facing the zombie crisis, just getting a little bit of a way, the cold wave followed closely, as if it was afraid of seeing humans live a few good days, and kept driving them to the dead end.

"Husband, I think... we have to pull more zombie corpses from the Green Dragon Legion side!"

Zheng Xinyu was also wearing things. She still had to go out to work today.

"Right!" Zhang Su nodded seriously: "Very necessary!"

Nowadays, the camp's heating mainly relies on zombie corpses. Before, in the climate environment, one furnace burned one head a night, and adding ten-plus kilograms of coal was enough. But facing the cold disaster that broke the extreme value, the loss of hot water in the pipes would rise sharply, so the firepower must be increased. It was estimated that one furnace would have to burn two heads a night!

Once energy is short, cold will take people's lives faster than grain shortage. In the winter of ancient times, how many people entered their dreams at night and never woke up again? Once it really reached minus 30-plus degrees, "frozen to death" would no longer be a complaint!

Nowadays, Tianma Islet's zombie corpse inventory is not much. Fortunately, there are piles of corpses at the barracks, just afraid that the carrying capacity is insufficient.

"All vehicles go out today. Let's go, eat first!"

Zhang Su decided that today, besides transporting the remaining weapons and grain from the barracks back, he must transport as many zombie corpses as possible. They were all precious fuel. Zombie corpses of the same weight were more resistant to burning than coal.

Little Lucky's restaurant could no longer accommodate more people to eat together. Because considering the imminent diversion to other villages, there was no need to open a new restaurant. The people who joined the camp last night waited quietly for the second round of dining, not only without any complaints but also feeling deeply uneasy about eating without working.

"Everyone."

Zhang Su didn't leave after eating. He stood up and said loudly after seeing everyone looking at him, and then said: "Do you know why the Green Dragon Legion attracted a 100,000-level zombie horde?"

??

A very strange question, making the people at the scene fall into thought one after another. The vast majority of people were following Zhang Su's train of thought to think about why, while people like Ma Changshou, Pan Guoliang, and others felt a thud in their hearts, secretly thinking, could it be that the culprit of this matter was the person speaking?

"Because..."

"Because zombies can sense humans."

Zhang Su was about to announce the answer directly, but didn't expect Xie Yanshan to speak too. He smiled, raised his hand to signal, and said: "Let Mr. Xie speak."

"Then I'll show my ugliness..."

Xie Yanshan could see a blurred figure following Zhang Su's voice, nodded apologetically, then stood up and said: "Zombies are suspected of evolving the ability to sense human magnetic fields. Everyone knows that zombies will slowly gather. When zombies gather to a certain scale, the sensing ability will be triggered, and then they will move toward the survivor camp and attract zombies along the way."

"We have done many experiments and were very lucky to get the critical number of zombies that trigger sensing: 101! You must have questions about this number. We were the same at the time. We analyzed a lot, but in the end, we only knew that this is an ordinary prime number. If you have to say what is unique, it is the first of the three-digit prime numbers, that's all."

"When the zombie horde gathers to 101, they will trigger sensing, but it will not be triggered every time just after reaching this number. The fastest situation only took less than half a day, but there were also slow ones. Before, there was an experimental group, uh... ten-plus days passed, until the zombie horde attacked, it didn't trigger sensing. There should be secrets we haven't discovered yet!"

Xie Yanshan spoke eloquently.

The vast majority of people at the scene were in a state of complete confusion. Many people actually didn't even understand what a prime number was. Anyway, just listen, it felt very awesome.

Zhang Su listened very seriously. He didn't expect the Green Dragon Legion's scientific department to research so deeply. Although knowing the critical number of triggers couldn't change anything, it was also a kind of understanding...

"What about the number of people? Mr. Xie, how many people gather to attract zombies? Is there data?"

"I'm sorry... the number of people rose to 20, and they didn't succeed in attracting the attention of zombies. Later, we stopped the experiment on the number of people, because we inferred that the attraction phenomenon mainly occurs at the macro level, requiring a long time to form, not overnight, so it is difficult to draw conclusions. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the population size is positively correlated with the scale of the zombie horde attracted."

"My words are finished."

Xie Yanshan finally made a concluding remark, and then sat down, just like speaking at an academic seminar, quite formal.

After listening to Xie Yanshan's words, the crowd looked at each other, especially the folks from Xidaying Village. The vast majority of them hadn't thought about this problem, and occasionally a few people noticed it but couldn't figure it out. Hearing such a logical summary, they were very surprised.

No one discussed it. Everyone was still very cautious, knowing that the leader still had words unfinished.

"I have a question."

Zhang Su frowned and said: "Since no conclusion was drawn on the number of people, how did you determine that the number of zombies reaching 101 will trigger attraction?"

"Oh, right, I forgot to say!" Xie Yanshan stood up again and said: "At that time, we chose a closed experimental environment. When the number of zombies was less than 101, they were scattered and didn't form a whole. But when we put the 101st zombie into the warehouse, the zombie horde changed. The zombies began to gather and then entered the trigger waiting period, which can also be understood as them conducting collective sensing. After the sensing ends, they start to move in a certain direction!"

"We thought at the time that the zombie horde would move toward the most densely populated accommodation area in the barracks, but after observation, we didn't find a pattern. Later, we conducted tests and couldn't successfully attract the zombie horde. I mean using special magnetic fields to attract, not using sound to attract directly. Please don't misunderstand. I'm done."

Xie Yanshan sat down again, very standard.

"So that's how it is."

Zhang Su nodded thoughtfully, and then said: "Mr. Xie's research direction coincides with our attraction theory. The more people, the larger the scale of the zombie horde attracted. Originally, it was freezing cold, and I planned to let some people move to Madianzhuang after spring, but now Tianma Islet is overcrowded, so I decided to start the satellite village plan in advance!"

Knowing that more people would attract more zombies, the crowd nodded in agreement with Zhang Su's plan.

Zhang Su pointed to Ma Changshou and said: "Village Chief Ma, today..."

"No Village Chief Ma, Boss Zhang, you call me Old Ma in the future, that's lifting me up. Village Chief, I dare not!"

Ma Changshou interrupted Zhang Su's words somewhat rudely, but the meaning expressed made people feel very good.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 320 =====