Chapter 45: Natural Disaster vs. Man-Made Catastrophe!

As Jiang Yan reached out to push open the hidden door, a wave of stifling heat, thick with the scent of coffee, rushed out to greet her.

Even through her heat-insulating helmet, she could feel the hot air inside.

If the temperature outside was already sixty-six or sixty-seven degrees, then in here, it had to be at least seventy.

She didn’t go in right away. Instead, she stood at the doorway, waiting for the hot air inside to mix with the outside air. At the same time, she took the opportunity to survey the storage situation inside.

The room was pitch black, since there were no lights.

She took an emergency lamp from her space and shone it around. All she saw were stacks of neatly arranged cardboard boxes.

After a while, the oppressive heat faded. Once she confirmed there was no danger, Jiang Yan finally stepped inside.

Sure enough, it was a treasure trove.

She found not only plenty of well-packaged coffee beans, ground coffee, coffee capsules, sugar, cinnamon powder, hazelnuts, and almonds, but also a pile of limited-edition blind boxes meant as promotional gifts.

On another shelf, there were several large sealed boxes of paper cups in various sizes.

There were also several brand-new, unopened imported coffee machines.

Each of these coffee machines would cost tens of thousands.

There were also new grinders, tampers, ice makers, pour-over kettles, and filter cups.

Jiang Yan put them all into her space.

As for the boxed hazelnut spread, chocolate, milk, cream, and so on, after two days of extreme heat, they had long since spoiled.

She simply ignored them.

Just as Jiang Yan was about to leave, she noticed five somewhat familiar cardboard boxes stacked in the corner between two shelves.

She went over for a look—wow, they were all 52-degree Feitian Moutai!

Six bottles per box, a total of thirty bottles!

High temperatures can cause liquor to spoil because the heat reduces the seal of the bottle, leading to evaporation and reflux.

Although the temperature was unusually high, the Feitian bottles’ seals were still reliable.

Without thinking much, Jiang Yan put them all into her space.

Judging by the valuable supplies left behind, it seemed that when the shop staff evacuated, they hadn’t expected the heatwave to last this long or get even worse.

Otherwise, these supplies would have been moved out long ago.

After clearing out the storeroom, Jiang Yan returned to the dining area.

It was almost six o’clock outside.

She glanced at the weather on her phone—it showed sixty degrees.

But Jiang Yan guessed the real temperature was closer to sixty-six or sixty-seven.

The swarm of blood mosquitoes that had been stuck to the glass wall, after waiting fruitlessly for so long, finally gave up and flew away.

Since it was still a while until dark, Jiang Yan decided to head back into her space.

She took off her heat-insulating helmet, suit, shoes, sunglasses, and so on, then habitually opened the surveillance feed to check.

The temperature was so high that all the original surveillance lines in the apartment corridors had triggered their circuit breakers and shut down automatically.

But the ones Jiang Yan had installed were still working fine.

The community’s surveillance used regular wires, but hers used silicone-insulated cables, which could operate from -60°C to 180°C—perfect for both extreme cold and heat.

Unless she switched modes, the surveillance feed showed a six-way split screen.

Everything appeared normal.

A few people, bare-armed and bare-legged, were moving supplies down to the basement.

The temperature was so high that no one dared to move too quickly.

Seeing nothing unusual, Jiang Yan drank a bottle of iced soda water, then headed straight to the gym on the second floor of her Apple Pod.

She put on her boxing gloves and started working the punching bag.

On a previous trip abroad, she’d happened to catch a new UFC season and, on a whim, had taken up some MMA training.

At the time, she’d found it a bit too bloody, but now, it seemed just right for self-defense.

Before she knew it, it was already past nine in the evening.

Ever since the heatwave began, night had been falling much later.

In Anming City, it usually got dark by eight, but now it wasn’t fully dark until around eight-thirty.

Jiang Yan figured it was about time, so she changed back into her heat-insulating suit.

Before leaving her space, she habitually checked the surveillance feed again.

As soon as the feed connected, she saw that the corridors on the first and seventh floors of Building A were swarming with blood mosquitoes, and the hallways were littered with bodies.

Scarlet splatters stained the floors and walls everywhere.

Judging by the bodies, there were adults, elderly, children—even infants.

Other high floors had some as well, but not as many.

If it were just a few mosquitoes, they’d be easy enough to handle.

The problem was, when a swarm of mutated giant mosquitoes attacked all at once, there were always blind spots in a person’s defenses.

If even one mosquito’s sharp proboscis pierced your skin, the consequences were unimaginable.

“Help!!”

“Mom, don’t worry about me, run!!”

“Retreat! There are mosquitoes over there too!!”

“Damn it, who went out and didn’t close the door?! If I find out, I’ll offer her up to the gods myself!!”

“...Mom, wake up! Please don’t leave me alone! Wuwuwu...”

...

Heart-wrenching cries, desperate pleas, frantic slapping sounds, and terrified screams for help echoed intermittently from the surveillance feed.

“!!!!”

Jiang Yan’s pupils shrank. For a moment, she thought she’d switched to the wrong camera.

After watching for a few more seconds, she couldn’t help but suck in a cold breath.

The once-impenetrable Shallow Water Bay apartment building had turned into a slaughterhouse for blood mosquitoes in just a few hours!

Jiang Yan was completely baffled.

Did someone forget to close the door?

Or had the property management staff just given up?!

But that didn’t make sense!

She took off her helmet, sat down on the sofa with her pad, and set the playback speed to 32x.

The building’s main door had been opened by someone around 8:30 p.m.

When the footage reached that point, Jiang Yan slowed it back down to normal speed.

According to previous community management rules, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 a.m., the building’s main doors were absolutely not to be opened.

That was the blood mosquitoes’ prime feeding time.

Everyone—residents and staff alike—knew this rule by heart.

But strangely, a young man, fully covered with a helmet and mask, opened the door.

He looked around to make sure no one was watching, then propped the door open even wider.

Not only that, he pulled something like a pin from his pocket and jammed it in place to keep the door open.

After doing all this, he quietly slipped out.

Soon after, a swarm of giant blood mosquitoes rushed into the corridor.

Jiang Yan frowned and rewound the footage to the moment the young man entered, then paused and zoomed in.

She quickly recognized him.

A day earlier, she’d seen him among the property management staff at the underground parking entrance—he wasn’t the manager, probably just a supervisor.

Jiang Yan remembered him so clearly because of his sneakers—they had a pale yellow flame pattern with red edges.

In the blazing heat, those red flames looked especially agitating.

She’d even glanced at them specifically at the time.

Also, the young man’s left hand was unusual—he had six fingers, and it was the only part of him not covered by gloves.

This matched the hand of a security supervisor she’d met at the property office before.

Jiang Yan’s heart sank:

Why would he do this?!

Was he so traumatized that he wanted to take everyone down with him?!

As far as she knew, the heatwave would last at least another ten days.

Shallow Water Bay had an underground garage, so residents could hide out there to escape the worst of the heat.

Nearby, there were several older communities without underground parking—they could only grit their teeth and endure.

And when the torrential rains came, Shallow Water Bay’s higher elevation meant it would suffer less than other neighborhoods.

In other words, whether it was heat or flood, they had every advantage.

But before they could survive the natural disaster, they’d already been struck by a man-made catastrophe!

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