Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 578: Separation between Inside and Outside
While Perfecto was having his pastry chef improve the recipe for compressed biscuits, the situation in the outer city areas had begun to deteriorate further.

Due to the lack of sufficient disaster relief measures, or the fact that there was no one to provide disaster relief, there was still waterlogging in many places in the outer city when the cold wave hit.

After a night of low temperatures and snow, most places were frozen into ice, and the accumulated snow dyed the entire outer city area white.

The rapidly dropping temperature made it impossible for people to survive for a long time in this environment, and they had to huddle in the building and rely on the lit bonfire for warmth.

But... fuel is limited, and the number of buildings that can shelter from the cold is also limited.

The previous tsunami had a huge impact on the outer city area, which was already a slum. All the simple houses that were already leaking and the few belongings inside were swept away.

The people in the outer city who survived were in a state of lack of food and clothing, and they didn't even have a roof over their heads.

They could only find a dry spot or a place where the water had receded in some buildings that had not been completely flooded or destroyed to temporarily hide.

The only things that could be burned were some furniture fragments and garbage, which were difficult to keep burning. In addition, the amount of these things that could be found after the tsunami was very small, so people still had to rely on shivering to keep warm.

The few campfires that existed could not keep burning for long. Some people had to risk hypothermia and wade through waist-deep water to search for fuel that could still be burned, and then keep the campfire burning at a level that could only provide psychological comfort.

Because of limited fuel, they did not dare to burn the campfire very brightly, which led to a very bad result, that is, the fire could not even dry their clothes that were soaked from searching for fuel.

Although all the accumulated water froze into ice after the cold wave hit, so people no longer had to worry about their clothes getting wet when walking on it, it also brought new problems.

They couldn't look for broken furniture or combustible garbage that was submerged in the water, so they could only look for something usable on the ice.

To make matters worse, the low temperature also means that they need more calories to maintain their body temperature. In such cold weather, it is difficult to keep warm even if they squat by the campfire, not to mention searching for supplies in the wind and snow.

Often, many people sleep with a bonfire next to them, but when they arrive the next morning, there are still some embers on the bonfire, but the people can no longer get up.

As for the people who froze to death on the roadside, there were even more of them. They had lost almost all their property due to the tsunami, so how could they have clothes to keep warm?
But heating is not the biggest problem faced by people in the outer city, because in the phrase "hunger and cold", hunger ranks before cold.

The weather was too cold and people were prone to hunger, not to mention that the little food in the outer city had been washed away in the previous tsunami, and most of the food that could be found after the tsunami had been soaked by sea water.

The evil cult also revealed their true colors at this time and stopped distributing food to the people in the outer city.

This undoubtedly greatly aggravated the plight of the outer city areas, putting everyone on the verge of running out of water and food.

As we all know, if there is water but no food, people can usually survive for about seven days; but if there is no water, people will be in danger of death in about three days.

Not to mention, they also have to face the torture of severe cold.

In such a desperate situation, it is not incomprehensible that some people would do something beyond their bottom line. The Langton City Government in the inner city did consider sending food to the outer city, after all, those people were still citizens of the Empire, but the inner city had too many things to do after the tsunami, and these officials could not spare much energy to do this after mentioning it, so this matter did not succeed.

The extreme hunger eventually caused some people to reach out to their companions who had frozen to death.

At least, these corpses can fill people's stomachs, and one corpse is enough to feed several people for at least a few days.

I don’t know whether I should be thankful or sad, but the thing that was most abundant in the outer city area after the tsunami was corpses.

There were indeed a lot of corpses, whether they were fresh or had been dead for a few days. So many that they could be seen everywhere and no one had cleaned them up.

Although the lack of fuel meant that most people had to eat the meat raw, as long as the corpse was not completely frozen, they could still eat a few bites even if they had to eat raw meat and drink blood.

Only by filling your stomach can you have the strength to survive and find fuel and food.

Although for some people, they have already taken corpses for granted as a source of food, and have also set their sights on those companions who are still alive but already very weak.

These people can't survive and they will die soon. Instead of waiting for them to die and be frozen solid, it is better to kill them with a knife while they are still warm and soft.

Some people think so, some people do it directly. Humanity and morality are completely destroyed in the face of cold and hunger.

What is the difference between humans and beasts at this time?

Perhaps humans have never forgotten their wildness as living creatures, but the civilization established by humans has made us temporarily forget the wildness that was cultivated in the era when we once hunted with claws and fangs and survived by eating raw meat and drinking blood.

But now, when the environment and food are extremely scarce, there will always be some people whose former wildness will be awakened, awakening the so-called animal 'instincts'.

At this moment, it has become very difficult for people in the inner city of Langton to leave the city. The accumulated water that has not completely receded has frozen all the gates on the city wall, and it is undoubtedly difficult to enter and exit the inner and outer city areas through the city wall.

Under such circumstances, even if people in the inner city wanted to, they were powerless to do anything.

They could only place some loudspeakers near the city wall and shout to the outer city area, asking people to provide some food if they were willing to enter the inner city area, and then take them into the inner city area.

But there are always only a few people who are willing or able to enter the inner city. Most people have lost the ability to enter the inner city from the outer city, not to mention that some people are unwilling to go in at all.

Although there are warm shelters, food to fill their stomachs, and even job opportunities to support their families in the inner city, for some people who have broken the bottom line of being human, they do not care about all of this.

A city wall and two inner and outer districts seem to have become the boundary between heaven and hell. Once you cross it, you will enter two completely different worlds.

(End of this chapter)