The snow finally stopped the next morning, but the air turned colder and gloomier.
It was cold before a frost and bitter after a snowfall. That was how it had always been.
Today was especially bad. If the sky cleared after a snowfall, the weather usually improved quickly, and the ice and snow soon melted. But if it stayed overcast, with dark clouds hanging so low they seemed ready to drop another round of snow, days of unbroken rain were likely to follow. There would be no warming up for at least three to five days, perhaps even ten days or half a month.
"Ah! What awful weather!" As Pan Long came downstairs, he heard a traveler sigh. "If this cursed gloom keeps up and we get another couple of snowfalls, this year's wheat is done for!"
"Forget the wheat. Keep this up, and even the rice will be in trouble," another traveler sighed. "Planting season is almost here!"
Pan Long shook his head and sighed.
Between natural disasters and man-made calamities, people could often find ways to avert the latter. The former left them helpless. Against a cold wave on this scale, even an Immortal Buddha of Everlasting Life could do nothing.
And not just in this world. Even in his previous life, when humanity had already built cities on Mars, a severe cold wave from Siberia still meant reduced harvests for most places that relied on farming in fields. Only regions whose integrated agricultural towers supplied all their grain and vegetables were spared.
Of course, that world had a globally integrated economy. Big-data networks monitored production and consumption everywhere, while constantly updated mathematical models worked alongside efficient logistics. No matter how bad a disaster was, people's everyday supplies kept coming. Pan Long remembered eating pork shipped from the