"Close the door and light the stove," Li Yu said.
"Okay," Yu Tong replied.
Sizzle~
Flames burned, consuming the dry branches and leaves collected from outside, raising the indoor temperature.
With the door closed, the room became much warmer; without the wind and snow carrying away the heat, the small house slowly grew even cozier.
Just then.
Creak~
The door opened, and several people entered from outside: Second Uncle, Li Tie, Li Gang, and Aunt.
Snow covered each of them.
"Please close the door," Yu Tong quickly said, seeing the wind and snow brought in from outside, which was carrying away the indoor warmth.
"Oh, oh, alright," Li Tie, who had entered last, quickly closed the door.
Second Uncle saw someone lying on the long bench and looked at Li Yu, puzzled, about to ask.
Aunt suddenly stepped forward and said, "An Ya? Yu Tong, this is An Ya, isn't it?"
Yu Tong nodded and said, "It's her. I just spoke to her two minutes ago. She said Bai Jie and the others are still behind, unable to walk."
Aunt looked intently at Li Yu. Li Yu knew what she meant; he had always been someone who repaid kindness, but in this apocalypse, everything required caution.
"Aunt, don't worry. I called Tie Zi and Gang Zi because I wanted to go out and find them. We'll go now," Li Yu said.
He then looked at Second Uncle, asking him to watch over things here, while Li Yuan also stepped forward to check An Ya's physical condition.
Li Yu, Tie Zi, Gang Zi, and Yu Tong, the four of them, walked out of the small room and then asked Da Pao upstairs to open the main gate again.
Da Pao, who was opening the gate upstairs, said as he did so, "Over by the woods, at the 200 mark, it looks like someone is lying there."
"Did you check with the binoculars?" Li Yu asked, looking up.
"Oh, oh. I forgot to use that. Just a moment," Da Pao said. After opening the door, he took out the binoculars from the guard room and looked in that direction.
"Hey, it should be people. There are four of them," Da Pao shouted.
"Let's go," Li Yu said.
The four walked out of the gate. The snow outside was very deep, already reaching above their knees. They trudged through the snow, leaving several long trails.
Da Pao on the wall also shone the searchlight on their position, ensuring the path ahead was bright for them.
Walking in this icy, snowy world was extremely difficult; every step required immense effort, as if someone were dragging you down.
Each time they lifted a leg, it was like pulling it out of a swamp.
Since the snow began, large groups of zombies had been rare, with only a few sporadic ones sighted.
After a strenuous trek by the four, they finally reached the location of the four people five minutes later.
At this point, three of the four people had already fallen unconscious. Only one woman, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, was trembling, unable to speak when she saw them arrive.
This woman was wearing a white down jacket, completely bundled up. Long icicles hung from her hood, and her scarf tightly covered her mouth and ears, leaving only her eyes visible.
"Yu... Yu Tong," the woman stammered, calling out Yu Tong's name after several attempts.
"Bai Jie," Yu Tong instantly recognized Bai Jie.
"Let's pull them in first," Li Yu said.
The condition of these people was not optimistic. The woman who was still conscious seemed okay, but the other three were in an unknown state.
He immediately helped one person up and placed her on a long wooden board. They had left in a hurry, so they simply brought along a discarded wooden board, which would save energy when pulling people through the snow.
They successively helped the other three people onto the board. The group then began to push the board with effort.
It slid across the snow. Fortunately, the wooden board was large enough to support the weight of four people.
The four exerted all their strength, heading towards the main gate. Da Pao and Li Haoran on the wall watched anxiously, wanting to come down and help, but remembering Li Yu's instructions, they remained on the wall, maintaining vigilance.
It took Li Yu and his group nearly 10 minutes to return the two hundred meters.
Bang! The gate closed. Li Yu and the four transported Bai Jie and the others into the small room in Weng City, letting out a long sigh of relief.
Finally, they had arrived safely.
In the small house, due to the lit stove, the indoor temperature slowly rose, no longer as cold as before.
An Ya, who had entered first, no longer had purple lips, and her breathing had stabilized significantly. However, there was a lot of water on the ground, which had condensed into ice outside and then melted into water as the temperature rose.
With Li Yu and the four bringing Bai Jie and the other four into the room, the small room of a dozen square meters was packed with over a dozen people.
The room was a bit crowded, so Li Tie had to stand in the corner.
Li Yuan saw the four people Li Yu had brought in. Seeing that three of them had purplish-black faces, she looked at the house and said,
"Big Brother, our small house isn't warm enough, and it can't fit this many people. Should we move them into the base?"
Li Yu had been thinking about this on the way. Given their current state, these people posed no threat, and the ten-minute isolation period had just passed.
He looked up and saw Second Uncle nod, so he said, "Alright, transport them to the base."
In the medical room, it was warm as spring.
Four people lay on four beds, while Bai Jie, still conscious, sat on a stool, occasionally trembling.
Aunt served her a cup of ginger tea to warm her body.
Bai Jie took the ginger tea Aunt poured for her, her body trembling slightly as she said, "An...An Ya, how are they? Achoo!"
Li Yuan stopped her busy hands and said, "An Ya and the other two sisters are fine. It was just too cold, and they have some frostbite on their skin. It's this sister though..."
Li Yuan touched the forehead of the woman on the far right bed and continued, "She has a high fever. I just gave her fever reducer, hoping it will bring it down."
Bai Jie asked, somewhat worriedly, "Will it be serious?"
Li Yuan said, "It should be fine. As long as the fever goes down, she'll be okay."
Bai Jie finally relaxed, sipping the hot ginger tea in her cup.
Aunt saw her condition had improved slightly, so she asked, "How did you find this place?"
Bai Jie sighed long and softly: "That's a long story. After Liberation City collapsed, we also escaped and originally played guerrilla warfare, staying in one place for a while and then moving on. Who knew the weather would drop so quickly?"
As if remembering some bad memories, Bai Jie said sadly, "We were originally staying in a town not far from here. We had collected a lot of firewood for warmth, but the weather was just too cold. Once we stopped burning, the temperature in the room would drop drastically."
"And food was a huge problem, but we could barely manage. A few days ago, all the firewood ran out. We had no choice but to remember what the refugees who came to Liberation City said before, that you were in this vicinity, so we came to try our luck."
"We didn't have high hopes, but we were truly desperate. We were going to freeze to death sooner or later, so we might as well try..."
