Chapter 50: Chapter 49: Different Problems "Come on, stop lying around on your phones! Let’s clear the snow from the entrance!"
At the entrance of the Li Mei Hotel, someone with a shovel was loudly rallying the others.
Night was about to fall, and the lights inside the hotel were already on.
The first-floor lobby was densely packed with makeshift beds on the floor. Including the people staying in the rooms upstairs, the entire hotel housed at least five or six hundred people.
Hearing the call, someone said with dissatisfaction, "Why are we clearing snow again? Didn’t we just do it yesterday?"
"It’s been snowing so hard every day, it’s all piled up again."
"It’s almost over a meter high. It really does need clearing."
"Get those people in the guest rooms to come out! It can’t always be us folks in the lobby doing all the work!"
COUGH, COUGH COUGH!
Amid the noisy chatter, some people looked outside. A thick layer of snow had already piled up on the steps of the hotel’s main entrance.
Although government agencies cleared the main roads, their snowplows couldn’t get to places like the hotel’s front steps, which were inconvenient to access. The people staying there had to do it themselves.
"Stop complaining, this is for our own good!"
"Yeah, if we don’t clear it, and the snow blocks the main entrance, it’ll be hard for the relief bureau to deliver supplies!"
"Get out here and be quick about it!"
The moment the doors opened, a gust of frigid wind mixed with snowflakes blasted into the lobby.
People instinctively tightened their clothes and shivered.
Others turned a deaf ear to the call, simply burrowing completely into their blankets without even peeking out.
There wasn’t much the others could do about those who shirked their duties. A few hot-tempered individuals looked livid; if not for the armed squad stationed at the hotel, they probably would have gone over and beaten them up already.
In the end, it all came down to who was willing to volunteer.
Twenty to thirty people voluntarily took tools outside and began clearing the snow from the area around the hotel’s front steps.
Xu Xiaotian was among them. When the hotel became overcrowded, he had voluntarily given his room to a pregnant woman seeking refuge and had been sleeping on the floor in the lobby himself.
In this era of the Apocalypse Rules, especially after the cruelty of the first rule, very few people were still willing to have children.
But while no one wanted to give birth, everyone also felt that children were the hope for the future.
Therefore, upon seeing the pregnant woman arrive, most people were very accommodating.
They were all accepting of her staying in a warm guest room and even using up a few more food resources.
"Damn it, look at both sides of the street! They’ve all turned into walls of ice!"
Someone in the snow-shoveling crew at the entrance couldn’t help but curse.
"If we don’t shovel, in a few days, the hotel entrance will have an ice wall just like that! We’ll all be sealed inside, with no way to get out!"
Others chimed in, "Yeah, some people are too selfish, not willing to lift a finger. This isn’t for someone else; at the end of the day, it’s for everyone taking shelter here, including themselves."
"If you ask me, those guys with the guns should be doing something about it!"
"Didn’t you hear them? Their only job is to maintain order. They don’t handle anything else."
"Alright, alright, we still have food to eat and warm air-conditioning. That’s pretty good. We’ve made it through a few days already, we just have to hang in there for the rest... cough, hang in... COUGH COUGH, COUGH COUGH COUGH!"
The speaker was suddenly seized by a violent coughing fit mid-sentence. The others looked over and saw that the refined-looking middle-aged man’s cheeks were flushed red. Something was clearly wrong.
"Feng, what’s wrong?"
This refined man was a local middle school teacher and had been one of the earlier arrivals at the hotel.
He had been the one to first propose the mutual aid meetings at the Li Mei Hotel, so everyone was fairly familiar with him.
"Feng, why is your face so red?"
"Let me feel your forehead... Whoa! You’re burning up! Feng, you have a fever!"
"You’re sick and you still came out to work? Get inside and rest, quick!"
"Xiaotian, help Feng inside, quickly!"
"Okay!"
Xu Xiaotian acknowledged and quickly helped the constantly coughing Feng inside to his spot on the floor.
"You rest here, Feng. I’ll get you some water. Should you take some medicine?"
"Xiaotian, I’m fine," the man said, lying down and holding his head. "I’ll be fine after a little rest. Don’t go to the trouble."
"That won’t do... I’ll go get you some hot water!"
Xu Xiaotian hurried to the dining area, only to find a long line of people in front of the hot water dispenser.
Most of them looked ill, covering their mouths and coughing incessantly. Some held cups with dissolved cold medicine powder, while others clutched a blister pack of cold capsules in one hand and a cup in the other.
It was only then that Xu Xiaotian belatedly realized, ’The flu is probably spreading!’
Many people in the modern era were already in a state of sub-health, and after entering the age of the Apocalypse Rules, the sudden increase in psychological stress made their bodies more susceptible to illness.
With the sudden drop in temperature, it wasn’t surprising that people were catching the flu.