Rebirth: I Will Win Easily in the Apocalypse

71: Chapter 59: Healing Wounds 71: Chapter 59: Healing Wounds Song Zhao was cooking porridge nearby while the two casually chatted.

It was mostly Gu Yanzhi asking and Song Zhao answering, both to check on the current situation and to divert her attention so that she wouldn’t focus on her leg and feel the pain as much.

“Get me a small table.”
In less than two minutes, the porridge was ready.

Gu Yanzhi fetched a bed table from her space and gave it to Song Zhao, who set it up just outside her legs so she could eat directly from it.

“I’ll get a couple of dishes.”
“Okay, find something light, the doctor said you can’t have greasy food right now.”
Song Zhao filled a bowl with porridge and handed it to Gu Yanzhi.

“Your hand?” With no cover obstructing her view, Gu Yanzhi could now clearly see that Song Zhao’s hand was wrapped in gauze, which had turned yellow from its original white due to his hard work.

“It’s nothing, just accidentally scraped it,” said Song Zhao, looking down at his own hand following Gu Yanzhi’s gaze and speaking in a calm manner.

It wasn’t an accidental scrape.

What she could see now, everything they ate, drank, wore, or used, Song Zhao and Gu Yanlin had excavated brick by brick from the ruins of building 10.

Gu Yanzhi had collapsed but not long after, the earthquake stopped and Song Zhao and Gu Yanlin hurried to take her to a doctor.

A stone had gashed a hole in Gu Yanzhi’s leg, which continued to bleed.

The doctor barely managed to stop the bleeding and was really unable to provide further treatment.

There weren’t many medicines in the hospital at the moment, but Gu Yanzhi’s wound urgently needed disinfecting and dressing, and it couldn’t be delayed.

Song Zhao and Gu Yanlin remembered that Gu Yanzhi had prepared some supplies in their backpacks, but the earthquake struck so suddenly that they hadn’t managed to grab them.

They quickly ran back to the ruins and started digging desperately.

With no tools available, they had to use their bare hands, digging for two hours before they finally found the bag.

Their ten fingers were bloody and raw, with flesh mixed with dust and tiny stones.

As the doctor treated them, neither of them uttered a sound, just gritting their teeth in silence.

In their hearts, they were just thankful that they had found the bag.

The backpack was well-stocked with medicines, food, a compressed tent, spare clothes, warming supplies, and lighting equipment.

The government’s rescue efforts arrived promptly, but they could only provide manpower.

“A good wife can’t cook a meal without rice,” and the government’s stocks of professional rescue supplies were limited; there were only a few thousand tents in the warehouse.

Faced with millions or even tens of millions of affected people, the help they could provide was clearly insufficient.

By now, there were not many undamaged dwellings left.

Those that weren’t occupied, or some that still housed people but became government temporary shelters under persuasion.

Yet even so, too many people were taking risks by living on small corners of just-collapsed houses or simply setting up makeshift shelters outside in the open, using the sky as their blanket and the ground as their mattress.

Not freezing to death was considered lucky for them.

“Is it daylight outside now?” After finishing her meal and taking painkillers, no longer feeling the throbbing pain all over, Gu Yanzhi finally took the time to look around the tent they were in.

The inside of the tent seemed unlit and devoid of other sources of light, yet it was as bright as day.

Calculating the time, it was about the second year of severe cold, and the first year of total darkness had just passed.

“Yes, the polar night has ended, and it seems like the temperature outside is slowly rising,” Song Zhao quickly cleared the table and sat beside the bed chatting with Gu Yanzhi.

On the day of the earthquake, around 5 or 6 p.m., which would be evening in C City, it wasn’t dark yet due to normal weather.

The quake was shocking to everyone, and only a few noticed that the day had brightened—the quake happening as the dark of night receded, showing the usual evening of C City.

However, most people were busy trying to save relatives or friends trapped under debris, paying little attention, or rather thinking deeply about it.

The daylight lasted not too long; the normal arrival of night soon followed, until the next day when people were awakened by sunlight, realizing that the polar night had finally ended.

As for the rising temperatures Song Zhao mentioned, it was from his own experience.

Gu Yanzhi had prepared a thermometer in their supply pack, which normally read around minus 60 degrees Celsius.

Today, Song Zhao checked the thermometer multiple times, noting the temperature had risen slowly from its initial minus 60 degrees to about minus 55 degrees now.

However, the actual feel of the temperature didn’t differ much from minus 60 degrees, so few people noticed this change.

“Let me see your hand.”
Gu Yanzhi took Song Zhao’s hand, noticing blood had seeped through the gauze.

She gently unwrapped the gauze, and indeed, all ten of his fingers were badly inflamed and bloody, looking quite frightening.

The doctor who treated him had been very busy, and the treatment hadn’t been meticulous.

Gu Yanzhi also noticed dirt hidden under Song Zhao’s fingernails amidst the blurred blood and flesh.

“Does it hurt?” Gu Yanzhi asked with concern.

“It’s okay, not really,” he replied.

Gu Yanzhi cleaned his wounds carefully with warm water, meticulously cleaned under his fingernails, checked his hands for any other dirt or contaminants, and then disinfected with iodine, coloring all ten fingers yellow, before gently wrapping them in gauze.

Days passed, and a week had gone by since the earthquake.

Under Song Zhao’s diligent care, Gu Yanzhi’s leg had recovered enough for her to stagger out of bed, though she was still advised not to walk too much.

Gu Yanlin had only come back on the first evening of Gu Yanzhi’s recovery to ensure his sister was awake and alright, and then left straight away to dive back into rescue efforts without sparing time to sneak back.

Other residents of building 10 had also visited Gu Yanzhi; as of now every household from building 10 was no longer together, having been assigned to different work positions, all sincerely supporting the rescue operations.

The temperature outside had also been rising over the past few days, already reaching minus 30 degrees.

In her previous life, Gu Yanzhi had not experienced the earthquake in C City, and like the arrival of extreme cold and darkness, the shift from intense cold to intense heat happened overnight.

Waking up one morning to find the sky bright and the ice layers vanished, revealing the parched earth.

Within a couple of days, the temperatures climbed even higher, causing the soil to crack, breaking into chunks.

This time, though, things were slightly different from her previous life.

Initially, Gu Yanzhi hadn’t thought that the extreme cold was ending soon, but about the recent temperature rise, she began to suspect it might be so.