Chapter 1876

February 25, the day before the Qi rain.

Xia Qing sent the three boxes of honeybees in her territory to the beekeeping shed in Territory No. 1 for foster care. The beekeeping shed in Territory No. 1 was a standardized glass shed. Ma Ma Shuying, who was responsible for beekeeping, was an expert in this field. Putting the bees in Territory No. 1 could minimize the loss of the bee colony during the Qi rain period.

After sending the bees, Xia Qing drove to the Ninth Center to check the preparations for the Qi rain period at the Ninth Center.

The 437 new sheds at the Ninth Center had been built. These sheds were all steel-framed structures that could resist strong winds. But the newly installed rainproof cloth and insect-proof nets could not withstand the violent attacks of hail.

For this reason, the Ninth Center held a meeting of leaders at the middle level and above, and Zhang Tao, the technical director of the Ninth Center, also attended the meeting.

Everyone thought of many ways, and finally decided to adopt the suggestions of Xia Qing and Mao Mao Chuntai, the Minister of Agriculture: the new sheds and the large sheds where wheat had been planted would take the same protective measures—adding two layers of thick straw mats.

Straw mats could resist hail, but would they bring side effects during strong winds? Then untie the fixing ropes and let the strong winds blow the straw mats away!

Straw mats were made of rice straw and weeds, and their value was lower than the value of the soil improvement agents invested in the new sheds.

If straw mats could keep the soil in the sheds from being rained on by the Qi rain, there would be no need to use soil improvement agents again after the Qi rain, and water could be poured and rice seedlings could be planted directly.

This part of the investment was worth it.

After returning to her territory, Xia Qing moved steel bars, hardwood, steel plates, and new material boards out of the warehouse of the rack building to reinforce the houses in Territory No. 3.

These steel bars and iron plates were shipbuilding materials she had saved, and now they were going to come in handy.

"Is everyone there?" While everyone was busy making disaster prevention preparations, Tang Huai, who was so idle that he was growing hair, went online and called his allies to chat: "How does everyone plan to deal with hail bigger than a fist?"

Wen Lord Wen Nengjie, who was standing on the roof, was the first to respond: "Brother Huai, I am laying straw curtains on the roof."

Straw curtains, straw mats, and straw felt refer to different names for the same thing in different regions. The survivors in the Northern District 1 territory also mixed them up, but everyone understood.

Tang Huai responded immediately: "Straw felt has good elasticity and can slow down the impact of hail."

Wen Lord Wen Nengjie responded: "It's also a method with no other choice. I don't have steel plates or iron plates here, so I can only use straw."

Xia Qing put the steel plates and steel bars on the ground, praised the sheep leader who transported the wood, and began to carry the iron plates out.

By the time Xia Qing moved all the building materials out and loaded them into the car bucket, the topic discussed by the territory owners had turned to how everyone survived the first Qi rain of the fifth year of the natural disaster.

The strong winds and hail during the first Qi rain of the fifth year of the natural disaster not only left a deep impression on the former wolf king of the Southern Wolf Pack, the fourth wolf, but also left a deep impression on the human survivors.

During the 48th hour of the first Qi rain of the fifth year of the natural disaster, just when humans thought the Qi rain period was about to end, hail the size of fists fell densely from the sky like scattered beans, smashing into the Hui 3 safe zone. After nearly two minutes of hail, there were strong winds that lasted for more than an hour.

The simple houses, tin houses, tents, trees, and humans outside the safe zone were all swept into the air by the strong winds, torn to pieces, and smashed.

In less than an hour and a half, the death toll in the Hui 3 safe zone exceeded 50,000.

Qi Fu sighed: "At that time, Yanzi and I were responsible for guarding the construction site. We held an iron plate and hid in the gap between bundles of steel bars."

Shi Du went online: "We were lucky. The house at home was quite sturdy, so we hid in the house."

Shi Du's family were indigenous people of the city where the Hui 3 safe zone was located, and they were indeed a batch of survivors who were very lucky.

Wen Lord Wen Nengjie went online: "My brothers and I hid in the underground garage. Although we weren't smashed by the hail and weren't blown away by the strong winds, six of my brothers were drowned by the Qi rain."

Tang Huai asked: "Sister Qing, what about you?"

Xia Qing pressed the intercom: "We lived in a one-story civilian house at that time and hid in the basement."

The "we" Xia Qing said referred to her and her father.

Xia Qing's father was an architect and had long confirmed that the house they were renting at the time had insufficient defense levels, so the father and daughter dug a small cellar under the house to store survival supplies and save their lives at critical moments.

During that Qi rain period, they had been hiding in the cellar.

After the hail and strong winds passed, when the father and daughter struggled to open the cellar door and crawl out, the scene they saw was as if they had returned to the second year of the natural disaster: there were architectural ruins, furniture fragments, and human limbs everywhere outside.

After the father and daughter recovered, they immediately joined the disaster relief ranks. After the disaster relief ended, they took on the task of rebuilding the outer city, because they were strength evolvers and Xia's father had architectural experience, so they could earn several times more points than ordinary people.

So after that natural disaster, the father and daughter's life got better day by day. They saved some points and planned to rent a sturdy and safe house near the inner city of the safe zone to live in at the end of the year, and then Xia Qing would learn some skills and find a better job.

But before their plan could be implemented, Xia's father died in the beast tide during the Qi snow period that year. Xia Qing returned the house they were renting at the time, moved into the evolver dormitory, and joined the construction team.

She had been doing it for more than four years.

"Moo!"

Finding that the little brother was standing still and blocking its way, the sheep leader, who rushed over pulling two pieces of wood, was angry.

Xia Qing came back to her senses, walked a few steps forward, put the iron plate on the ground, made way for the sheep leader, then turned off the intercom, and assigned work: "Leader, go and drag the two bundles of steel bars over there. Does Daigua, take out the welding torch in the room north of the kitchen. Blue-faced one, take out the welding rods next to the welding torch. I'll go move the ladder."

The first thing Xia Qing wanted to reinforce was the sheep shed. She had to complete the reinforcement of the sheep shed before the yellow weasel that went out hunting returned, otherwise, if the yellow weasel got excited, her shed would be ruined.

The sheep shed, chicken coop, and the small house by the farmland were all built by Xia Qing herself. They wouldn't be blown down by an 18-level wind, but the roof couldn't withstand the hail attack of the level of the fifth year of the natural disaster, so it had to be reinforced.

The small building where Xia Qing lived and the rack building next to the small building were reinforced concrete structure houses built before the natural disaster, which were not afraid of strong winds and hail, but the doors and windows of the houses—except for the operating room-style entrance door, all needed to be reinforced.

After reinforcing the roof, Xia Qing carried out the door and window baffles she made of hardness-evolved bamboo and wood and installed them on the doors and windows one by one.

Busy from morning until three in the afternoon, after Xia Qing completed all the house reinforcement tasks, she decided to go to Territory No. 7 and let the idol check her body.

Because she felt that her state today was wrong, she had done so little work, but she actually had back pain.

This situation, combined with the medicine she had just finished taking the day before to regulate her body, gave Xia Qing a very bad premonition.