Chapter 55: Seventy Degrees Outdoors! Road Surface Melts into a Tongue-Pulling Hell
The internet was cut off.
This meant the final fig leaf of modern civilization had been completely torn away.
There were no laws, no internet police, and even emergency calls wouldn't go through.
Those who had previously harbored reservations completely cast off their mental shackles, turning into beasts driven solely by instinct.
Meanwhile.
On the screen in the Central Control Room, the numbers on the high-precision thermometer connected to the outdoors were going wild.
"Sixty-eight."
"Sixty-nine."
"Seventy!"
When they saw that glaring red number come to a steady halt at "70"...
The entire Central Control Room fell into a deathly silence.
Qian Duoduo stared at the screen, his chubby hands trembling.
"Boss... at this temperature, if someone goes outside for even a minute, they'd dehydrate, right?"
Lin Xingwan crossed her arms, her eyes cold and sharp.
"A minute? You think too highly of them."
She walked over to the console and zoomed in on a surveillance feed of a downtown intersection.
This surveillance system was on an independent line she had specifically had Qian Duoduo install, so it was unaffected by the internet outage.
On the screen, it was practically a living Tongue-Ripping Hell.
The midday sun was no longer golden, but had turned a bizarre, dark purple.
The asphalt road had completely melted.
It looked like a pool of boiling black glue, bubbling and emitting pungent, toxic fumes.
A car was parked by the roadside due to a flat tire.
Its paint was bubbling and peeling at a visible rate, and eventually, even its plastic front bumper melted into a puddle of mush.
Even more terrifying were the people forced to run outside in search of water.
In the footage, a man who had somehow snatched a bottle of water was running for his life down the road.
But the rubber soles of his sneakers had already softened from the extreme heat.
Splat.
He stepped into the melted asphalt, and his sole was instantly stuck fast.
Terrified, the man struggled and yanked with all his might.
His foot came free.
But the sole of his shoe remained in the asphalt!
Barefoot, he stepped onto the seventy-plus degree ground, instantly letting out a shriek so agonizing it didn't even sound human!
Even through the screen, the sound made one's scalp tingle with dread.
The intense pain made him lose his balance instantly. With a heavy thud, he fell flat onto the scalding asphalt road!
Sizzle—
It sounded like a piece of raw meat being thrown onto a searing hot griddle.
The moment the man's face and arms made contact with the ground, his skin rapidly turned white and blistered, before splitting wide open!
He didn't even have the strength to crawl back up.
He just twitched in agony inside that pool of black "glue."
Every struggle tore away large chunks of flesh, exposing the bright red muscle fibers underneath.
In just two short minutes.
The man stopped moving entirely, turning into a charred corpse that actually wafted the smell of cooked meat.
Meanwhile, the bottle of water he had been desperately shielding in his arms...
Had long since evaporated into steam under the intense heat.
"Blegh—"
Qian Duoduo couldn't hold it in. Clutching his mouth, he rushed to a nearby trash can and dry-heaved violently.
The visual impact of the scene was simply too overwhelming.
Even Lu Ting and A-Qiang standing nearby, mercenaries who were well-accustomed to life and death...
Had extremely grim expressions on their faces.
"Dead birds are falling from the sky."
Huo Yuan's voice suddenly rang out, carrying a bone-chilling coldness.
Lin Xingwan looked up.
On the surveillance screen, countless black dots were falling from the sky in dense clusters.
They were birds, roasted alive by the extreme heat.
They pelted the road like hail, quickly baking into lumps of charcoal.
In the distance, the rivers and lakes...
Their water levels were dropping at a visible rate, leaving the riverbeds dry and cracked.
The air was not only thick with suffocating steam...
But also laced with an incredibly pungent stench of decay from countless corpses rotting rapidly in the high heat.
The entire city had completely turned into a giant steamer.
"The surface temperature of the outer armor is already close to ninety degrees."
Lin Xingwan withdrew her gaze, her expression becoming incredibly solemn.
"Even though we have a half-meter-thick radiation-shielding lead plate and insulation layer, prolonged exposure to such high temperatures might still cause metal fatigue."
She turned to look at Huo Yuan.
"Take your men and follow me to the underground warehouse."
"Bring out that batch of aerospace-grade thermal insulation coating stored in my space."
This was a premium item Lin Xingwan had spent a fortune to acquire from a research institute.
She had originally planned to use it to combat the extreme cold natural disaster.
Now, it seemed she had to put it to use ahead of schedule.
"Apply the coating to the inner layer of The Fortress, then lay a layer of asbestos insulation felt."
Lin Xingwan issued rapid instructions as she walked.
"I want this Fortress to be so secure that not even a sliver of heat can seep in!"
The lackeys of the Sky Wolf Squad immediately sprang into action.
Wearing hazmat suits and holding high-pressure spray guns, they evenly sprayed the silver-gray coating onto every inch of The Fortress's inner walls.
The workload was immense and incredibly tedious.
Seeing these men, who usually dominated the battlefield, now sweating like renovation workers...
Even the usually cold Huo Yuan frowned, which was a rare sight.
He knew this was for survival.
Yet, this sense of powerlessness—of being forced to hide underground while watching the world outside perish...
Still left these men, who were wolf-like to their core, feeling extremely stifled.
The atmosphere was as suffocatingly dull as a pool of stagnant water.
Some even stared blankly at the dry rations in their hands during breaks, their eyes turning somewhat numb.
"This weather is so fucking frustrating!"
Irritated, A-Qiang yanked open his collar and slammed his half-eaten compressed biscuit onto the ground.
"It's like purgatory outside, and here we are painting walls!"
"Sister-in-law, when can we go out and have a real fight?!"
It wouldn't be good if this sentiment continued to spread.
Lin Xingwan looked at these mercenaries on the verge of losing their tempers, knowing very well what was happening.
In The Apocalypse.
Aside from resources and weapons, mental conditioning was equally important.
If people remained in a stifling environment for too long, they would go mad.
She had to give them some excitement to relieve this atmosphere of despair.
"Want to fight? You'll have plenty of opportunities."
Lin Xingwan patted the dust off her hands and stood up.
A mysterious smile curled at the corners of her lips.
"But before we fight, we have to eat and drink our fill first, don't we?"
She turned and walked toward the cold storage area on the fifth basement level.
Leaving the group of lackeys looking at each other in confusion.
"What is Sister-in-law up to now?" A-Qiang scratched his head.
"No idea," Lu Ting said, pushing up his glasses.
"But I have a feeling that whenever Sister-in-law smiles like that, someone is bound to have a bad day, or... she's about to bring out some good stuff."
Five minutes later.
Lin Xingwan emerged from the cold storage area, pushing a massive, wheeled silver cooler.
Thud!
The cooler was brought to a heavy halt in the open space of the armed camp.
It was coated in a layer of white frost, condensed from the temperature difference.
Everyone's eyes were instantly drawn to this massive object emitting cold air.
"Come over here."
Lin Xingwan patted the lid of the cooler and gestured to the men.
"Right now, it's a seventy-degree Tongue-Ripping Hell out there."
She looked at the gathering crowd, a trace of playfulness in her eyes.
"So, I'll show you what a true contrast of fire and ice feels like."
With that, she opened the lid of the cooler without hesitation.