It was now the second year of the cataclysm. Factories had long since shut down, so these were things money couldn’t buy.

Knowing how precious these supplies were, Cameron Summers quickly refused. "No, we can’t accept this. It’s far too valuable! Please, take it back!"

Jade Rowan also demurred, "That’s right... We’re fine with just the rice. You should take these things back!"

She said as much, but her eyes betrayed her reluctance to part with them. She couldn’t even stop herself from swallowing. After all, she hadn’t eaten any of this for about a year and was desperately craving it...

Seeing this, Grace Sutton smiled and said, "We bought all this before the cataclysm. It wasn’t expensive, and we still have more at home. Please, just take it."

As she spoke, Grace Sutton pulled a sausage from the bag and handed it to Clark Summers, who had been standing silently to the side. "Look how thin Clark has gotten, he’s like a matchstick... You must be hungry. This is a sausage, your favorite when you were little. Go on, eat up!"

Clark Summers glanced at his parents first. Seeing no objection, he took the sausage, tore open the plastic wrapper with his teeth, and began to devour it ravenously.

As the saying goes, "A growing boy can eat you out of house and home." At Clark’s age, his appetite was naturally voracious.

Food had been scarce since the cataclysm, and he was hungry almost every day. The only food he got was two government-issued sand vine cakes daily.

For Clark Summers, two sand vine cakes a day were nowhere near enough. He was never full, but not quite starving to death either, just waging a listless, daily battle against hunger.

Now that he finally had a sausage, he didn’t even have time to savor it. He bit it off in a few huge chunks and swallowed it whole.

Seeing Clark so starved made Melody Summers’s heart ache. ’I should have brought more for him,’ she thought, a pang of regret washing over her.

Clark Summers was the youngest child in the Summers family, six years younger than Melody. When he was little, he was very clingy, always trailing after Melody Summers and Ian Summers like a little shadow, constantly calling out, "Sister! Brother!"

Sometimes Melody Summers and Ian Summers would get annoyed with him, and he would just obediently move his little stool and sit quietly to the side.

When her third uncle was kicked out of the family for his online gambling addiction, Clark Summers was just a few years old—a chubby, fair-skinned boy who looked like a little good luck doll. To think that after just a few years, he had become so thin. It was clear he had suffered a great deal during this time.

Seeing Clark like this, Grace Sutton’s heart ached for him too.

She lovingly stroked Clark’s head and said, "Look how hungry poor Clark is... How have you all been getting by?"

Jade Rowan sighed. "Ever since the snows started a while back, the supply distribution point in our area began to run out of food intermittently..."

Cameron Summers and his family of three had been renting in an urban village for the past few years. After the cataclysm hit, Cameron lost his job, so they packed up and moved back to Jade Rowan’s hometown, a township near Anworth.

At the very beginning of the cataclysm, they were self-sufficient, relying on the small amount of grain they had stored in their cellar.

But stored food always runs out eventually. Afterward, their survival depended solely on the government’s disaster-relief sand vine cakes.

However, ever since the snow began to fall, supply trucks would often get stuck in the snowdrifts due to the road conditions, unable to reach the townships at all.

The temperature kept dropping, but many township supply points couldn’t get restocked.

Without food, warm quilts, or coal, many people couldn’t hold on. They froze to death in their sleep.

The government had been organizing rescue operations, sending vehicles to transport people from the townships to shelters in the city.

However, many people didn’t want to leave. They felt they had already been barely surviving the cataclysm for two years and had lost all hope for the future. They simply couldn’t be bothered to struggle anymore.

They chose to stay. As the saying goes, "a falling leaf returns to its roots." If they were going to die anyway, it was better to die at home than somewhere else...

Listening to Jade Rowan’s account, Melody Summers felt a complex mix of emotions.

’I understand their decision,’ she thought. ’They’re facing a hopeless apocalypse, and no one knows when it will end—not even me, and I’ve been reborn.’

’Life is hard. All we can do is hope for a miracle.’

******

「The next morning」

Heavy snow was falling outside the window. Lying in bed, Melody Summers scrolled upon some big news.

Zara Walsh and many members of her department had been dealt with!

’The government sure moves fast,’ Melody Summers thought. ’I just reported Zara Walsh for privately withholding supplies a few days ago, and they’ve already processed the complaint.’

She quickly tapped on it to read the details. The official announcement wasn’t long; it simply gave a brief overview of the situation and the resulting actions.

But... as the saying goes, "the shorter the text, the bigger the news." The incident shot straight to the top of the local trending topics, causing a huge uproar throughout the city!

The trending post had tens of thousands of comments, with everyone discussing the illegal hoarding and black-market resale of government disaster relief supplies.

"User xxx: Holy crap. I’ve only ever seen ancient imperial courts skimming off disaster relief grain in TV shows. I never thought it’d happen in real life. Turns out those shows weren’t about someone else, they were about me. Hahaha, for fuck’s sake, I can’t go on."

"User xxx: This has become a whole supply chain? They just take the illegally withheld supplies directly to the black market for distribution? That’s terrifying!"

"User xxx: It is terrifying. Everyone in that department, from top to bottom, was in on it. Not a single one of them is clean. They even bribed high-ranking officials. It’s hard to imagine how much profit they made." 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"User xxx: I’m guessing several billion yuan, at least. Those indoor farming companies sell a single jin of vegetables for thousands of yuan. Who do you think they’re selling to? It’s all being enjoyed by these scumbags making dirty money."

"User xxx: I’ve been wanting to say this for a while. My neighbor works at a supply distribution point, and his family is living like the cataclysm never happened! I saw them eating stewed chicken yesterday. I was so jealous I could die! I wanted to go dig through his trash for the bones!"

"User xxx: To the person above, your whole residential complex should team up, kill your neighbor, and split the supplies in his house! That stuff is the fat and blood of the people they stole from you!"

"User xxx: The user above has some guts. Aren’t you afraid of getting arrested and dragged away by the cops?"

"User xxx: Heh, let them come and get me. I’m already on the brink of death, you think I’m scared of that? If I’m going down, we’re all going down together! I’m taking one of them with me, no matter what!"

"User xxx: The people who skim supplies for profit all deserve to die! How many people have their selfish actions killed?! My grandparents are back in our rural hometown, and I heard their supplies were cut off over a week ago. I can’t contact them at all now. I don’t even know if they’re still alive."

"User xxx: Sigh, in this world, it’s not the scarcity that’s the problem, but the inequality..."

"User xxx: Did you guys read the official announcement carefully? There were some rich second-generation kids involved too!"

"User xxx: No way. Those kids are already so rich, do they really need to make illegal profits like this?"

"User xxx: I know one of them! That Zara Walsh is the daughter of our hospital director! She’s usually so flashy. I heard she spent a few hundred million yuan on a single ring!"

"User xxx: Hundreds of millions? For one ring? Not even the Magic Ring is worth that much, haha. This world really has gone crazy in ways I don’t even recognize."

"User xxx: Hundreds of millions? How much of the people’s blood and treasure did they have to squeeze for that? Did that Zara Walsh get the death penalty? I can’t stand it if she doesn’t!"

"User xxx: I support the death penalty! Zara Walsh must die!"

"User xxx: She won’t get the death penalty. The announcement said Zara Walsh’s involvement was relatively minor. She only withheld the coal for one residential complex."

"User xxx: Then investigate the Walsh Family! Any family that raises a daughter like that can’t be any good!"

"User xxx: The Walsh Family really is no good. Their hospital has had issues before."

"User xxx: Person above, spill the tea!"

"..."