Time had entered November.
This year had been one of continuous calamities, marking the beginning of the apocalypse, with the death toll soaring relentlessly.
Only one year remained until the true apocalypse. The countdown had begun, making every single day precious.
Of course, even without the various Natural Disasters, countless people died daily on Blue Star.
Every year across Blue Star, the global death toll exceeded sixty million.
There was no helping it—Blue Star's massive population base meant numerous natural and unnatural causes of death: natural causes, suicide, illness, jumping from buildings, drowning, car accidents, murder, and more.
Those who could pass away naturally, free from illness or pain, were far too few.
Take the Great Xia Nation, for example. Even without natural disasters like floods, extreme heat, earthquakes, or super typhoons, the annual death toll still exceeded ten million. Meanwhile, the neighboring Boro Ancient Country fared even worse, with several million more deaths than Great Xia, nearing twenty million annually.
Of course, birth rates across Blue Star's nations were also high—otherwise, how could they compensate for such staggering death tolls?
In early November, another super typhoon was set to make landfall in the southeastern coastal provinces of Great Xia.
This time, the affected regions and population would be even larger.
Some areas were likely to experience severe flooding.
Naturally, other nations, such as the Far Star Union, would also suffer multiple super hurricanes this month.
This was unavoidable.
With Blue Star's climate undergoing drastic changes, disasters had become increasingly frequent. Vast nations could only scramble to respond, constantly mobilizing manpower for disaster relief.
Currently, the extreme heat in the Northern Hemisphere was gradually subsiding—a relatively positive development.
However, some countries and regions still remained in the grip of scorching temperatures.
Media platforms worldwide continued to report on heat-related deaths in various areas or nations.
This year had also seen the highest number of heat-related deaths in Blue Star's recorded history.
Such a phenomenon had never occurred before.
Emergency departments in hospitals across Great Xia were overwhelmed, with an influx of patients—especially those suffering from heatstroke.
Even rural clinics had long queues.
In countries with poor medical infrastructure, heatstroke patients were often given strong medications indiscriminately. Overwhelmed facilities sometimes outright refused patients.
Those who pulled through survived; those who didn't were sent straight to cremation or burial. In some nations, cremation wasn't common—earth or water burials were the norm instead.
In countries with advanced but prohibitively expensive healthcare systems, such as the Far Star Union and the Europa Federation, a single hospital visit could bankrupt a person, leaving many unable to afford medical care.
Some were even afraid of suffering heatstroke, fearing the cost of an ambulance ride.
Hospitals in several nations were already at breaking point.
Some doctors had gone days without rest.
After all, aside from heatstroke cases, there were countless other patients seeking treatment for injuries or illnesses.
Among Li Dong's employees, some had also succumbed to heatstroke during this period—high-temperature subsidies weren't earned easily.
They had to risk their lives for it.
As for the workers at the Shelter construction site, Li Dong had arranged various heatstroke prevention measures, including beverages, medicine, fruits, and sour plum soup.
Li Dong even recruited some paramedics and doctors from the hospital, ensuring 24/7 readiness to treat workers at any time.
A large number of heatstrokes among workers would mean delays in construction progress.
The Shelter couldn't afford to halt operations just because of the scorching weather—every second counted now.
Workers might collapse from heatstroke, but the machines couldn't stop, and the Shelter's construction had to keep going.
Last month, Li Dong sold off all the properties in Pengcheng, recouping a total of 8.4 billion yuan—far more than expected.
This might have been due to recent price fluctuations in the market.
Some investors and business owners believed that the stock market was about to surge, and the property market would follow suit. So they were eager to snap up properties, especially since real estate in big cities was scarce—there was no fear of being stuck with unsold assets.
Li Dong handed over the entire sum to Li Tiang to invest in the stock market, then had the elite trading team seize the right moment to multiply the capital several times over.
But it wasn't time to cash out yet—the investments would continue.
The stock market was poised for even greater volatility, with an upward trend that would persist.
As a result, Li Dong was now flush with cash, even offering higher heatstroke subsidies than anyone else.
In his view, money spent now was money well spent. Once the apocalypse arrived, cash would be worthless—just scraps of paper.
As long as the funds were sufficient, the construction team worked tirelessly, even accelerating progress.
Truly worthy of the title "Infrastructure Juggernaut"—the Shelter Base transformed day by day.
Currently, parts of the underground Shelter Base had already been excavated to depths exceeding 100 meters. The excavated soil alone could pile up into a hundred-meter-high mountain.
...
That evening, during dinner,
Mother Xu Yajun questioned Li Dong about his relationship with Lin Yu of the Lin family.
"Mom, why are you asking about this?" Li Dong's heart skipped a beat at her words. His first thought was: Oh no, this is bad.
For days, he had been avoiding Lin Yu, partly due to his busy schedule.
After returning, Lin Yu had repeatedly invited him out to meet or hang out, but Li Dong had always found excuses to decline.
In his eyes, if this girl latched onto him, there'd be no shaking her off.
But Lin Yu wasn't one to give up easily. Having finally found a man who stirred her heart, she was determined to hold on.
So she leveraged her family's connections and personally visited Li Dong's mother, Xu Yajun.
She asked all sorts of questions about Li Dong—what he had been up to lately, what his hobbies were, why he was ignoring her, and so on.
She also chatted with Xu Yajun about many other things.
Of course, Li Dong had no idea what exactly they discussed.
"She came to me herself, so why are you asking me? I should be asking you—did you do something to wrong her?" Xu Yajun chuckled at his reaction, her eyes alight with gossipy curiosity.
It felt as though the family's troublemaker had finally met his match.
Li Tiang and Song Weiwei also watched with keen interest, eager for the juicy details.
"Did I do something wrong to her? Bullshit! That girl is just too annoying. I only met her once, and after adding her on Star Chat, she kept asking me out. I just rejected her a few times, but I never expected she'd come looking for you."
Li Dong vented his frustrations.
Who knew that girl would be so bold?
If he'd known, he wouldn't have given her his contact info in the first place.
"Are you sure you didn't do anything to hurt her feelings?"
"I swear I didn't! I guarantee it!"
"I'm warning you—Lin Yu's family, the Lins, aren't some small-time household. If you dare mess with her, you'd better be ready to take responsibility."
"Got it, Mom."
Li Dong nodded and went back to eating while watching the news report.
"...Due to the recent outbreak of rabies... For the safety of the public, it is recommended that everyone get vaccinated against the rabies virus..."
This news report shocked Li Dong.
He couldn't understand—had the mutated strain of the rabies virus in the Western Continent already gotten this bad?
Or had another variant emerged?
For the national evening news to report on this...
It was clearly a major incident.
This meant the Zombie virus in the Western Continent had begun spreading on a large scale and was already beyond containment. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been reported on such an important news broadcast, urging the entire population to get vaccinated against the rabies virus.