nycdaug Chapter 26 Omens of Winter
Chapter 26 Omens of Winter
In the evening, Xu Mo, having finished a day of training, was leaning back on the sofa, looking at a "Handbook for Emergency External Injury Treatment" that he had brought back from somewhere, under the lamplight.
Just as he was engrossed in watching, Xu Mo suddenly stopped, looked up, and frowned slightly.
He suddenly felt a strange, indescribable feeling lingering in his heart.
He turned and looked around the room. The environment seemed unchanged, and the room itself remained the same. But Xu Mo felt that something was missing. He couldn't tell if something was added or missing, but something was definitely not right. This feeling was subtle, not from sight or hearing, but more like an overall difference in atmosphere.
Putting down the manual, Xu Mo held his breath and listened intently, his gaze sweeping across every corner of the room like a hawk's.
There were no unusual sounds, no unfamiliar figures.
"Am I overthinking it?" he murmured to himself, but the tension deep within him, heightened by the apocalypse, remained. Vigilance was ingrained in Xu Mo's very being.
This inexplicable unease made it impossible for Xu Mo to concentrate on his reading. He stood up, picked up the cleaver beside him, and tiptoed down the stairs to the entrance on the first floor that was blocked by various pieces of furniture.
Xu Mo carefully inspected every obstruction in the doorway, even pushing them firmly to confirm they were still secure and showed no signs of being moved or damaged. Still feeling uneasy, he moved over some heavy items to reinforce several key support points. Only after completing this did Xu Mo feel a little more at ease.
Wiping non-existent sweat from his forehead, Xu Mo turned around and prepared to go upstairs.
Just as Xu Mo turned and stepped onto the stairs, he suddenly stopped, his pupils contracting almost imperceptibly.
He finally realized where the problem lay.
Standing on the stairs, Xu Mo looked out through the air vent at the corner of the staircase. It was the same time of day, but tonight seemed unusually dark.
It wasn't the kind of black that comes from clouds obscuring starlight, but a deeper, purer black, as if the light had been swallowed up by something invisible.
Xu Mo remembered that at this time of day before, he could barely see things up close by with the help of starlight and the waning moon. But now, it was pitch black outside the window. Only the translucent glass reflected the faint light from inside the room. This light did not make the room brighter; instead, it highlighted the darkness outside.
"What's going on?" Alarm bells rang in Xu Mo's mind.
Could it be because after a certain solar term, such as the autumnal equinox, the days in the Northern Hemisphere naturally become shorter and the nights longer? This is the first scientific explanation that Xu Mo, as a modern person, can think of.
But...could it be something else? In this bizarre post-apocalyptic world, even zombies exist. Could it be that some other reason has caused the change in light? For example, a change in atmospheric composition? Or some incomprehensible energy field affecting the light?
Xu Mo couldn't be sure, but whatever the reason, for a lonely individual surviving in the ruins, longer nights meant more danger and less time to move around.
A faint sense of danger, like a cold snake, quietly coiled around Xu Mo's back.
Xu Mo did not sleep well that night. The unusual darkness outside the window felt heavy, pressing down on his heart.
The next day, Xu Mo deliberately woke up before dawn and stood by the window, observing carefully.
really!
At this time of day, the eastern sky should already be tinged with the first light of dawn, and the sunlight would gradually dispel the darkness. But tonight, the night outside the window remains deep, and the sunrise arrives late, much longer than usual, and even then, it seems less bright than before.
I arrived too late during the day!
Combined with the earlier and deeper darkness that descended last night, a clear conclusion emerged in Xu Mo's mind.
Winter is coming.
This is not a concept on a calendar, but a grim signal concerning survival brought about by real environmental changes.
Xu Mo took a deep breath, feeling a surge of energy penetrate his very being. The weather had been relatively mild before, making him almost oblivious to the changing seasons. But now, nature was reminding Xu Mo in its most direct way—the difficulty of survival was about to escalate.
Longer nights mean a significantly shorter window of opportunity to go out, explore, and find suitable "doors."
The ensuing low temperatures mean that energy consumption will accelerate, requiring more food, especially high-calorie foods, to maintain body temperature and energy.
Moreover, the need for warm clothing has become urgent. Although Xu Mogang has just obtained a batch of clothing, it is still unknown whether it can withstand the harsh winter.
"It seems we need to prepare in advance." Xu Mo felt an unprecedented sense of urgency.
In subsequent searches for supplies, warm clothing, high-calorie foods, and, if possible, heating equipment will become new search priorities.
Post-apocalyptic survival is never a single challenge, but a brutal game that requires constantly dealing with new variables. Winter is quietly approaching.
Realizing that winter was approaching, Xu Mo, after finishing his daytime training, devoted himself to more urgent survival preparations—fortifying the shelter to withstand the coming cold.
He first focused on the windows of the room, most of which had broken glass, which he had previously only partially covered with miscellaneous items. With winter approaching, these holes needed to be addressed.
Instead of simply nailing the wooden planks directly to the outside of the window frame to cover the hole as initially envisioned, Xu Mo adopted a more time-consuming but more discreet method of internal reinforcement. This was because doing so would make the brand-new planks as conspicuous as lice on a bald man's head from the outside, directly indicating that someone lived there.
The selected wooden planks were then tightly nailed to the inside of the window frame. Thus, from the outside, the windows still appeared dilapidated, with cracked and hollow glass still present, but the thick wooden planks had formed a solid barrier.
Xu Mo used cotton wadding and fabric scraps from old clothes and bedding to fill the gaps between the wooden planks, in order to prevent the cold air from coming in as much as possible.
Finally, Xu Mo hung curtains made of old bed sheets and curtain fabric on the inside of all the blocked windows. These curtains not only provided further insulation but also prevented candlelight from accidentally leaking through the observation holes at night.
While doing all this, Xu Mo also made sure to leave observation holes. He chose several tricky locations, cleverly leaving narrow viewing channels when nailing wooden boards inside, and ensuring that the curtains inside could completely cover them.
From the outside, the building looks no different from other abandoned buildings, with broken windows telling the story of its abandonment. But inside, a relatively enclosed living space that can effectively resist the cold wind has taken shape.
As for his daily training, Xu Mo planned to move to the room on the third floor that remained unchanged. There was no need for disguise there; it was already in a perfectly abandoned state.
After doing all this, Xu Mo breathed a slight sigh of relief. There was a poem he learned when he was a child that said, "The ducks are the first to know when the spring river warms up," and now he knew what it meant.