Zhang Ming drew a picture of Earth on the ground.
His knowledge of geography was mediocre. After struggling for ages, he barely managed to sketch the outlines of the seven continents and four oceans.
The old me would never have understood the beauty of the evening news. Now I follow world affairs all day long, wishing the news could run around the clock.
With earthquakes occurring so frequently, high-rise buildings were no longer safe, and megacities were dying out at an astonishing rate.
The real estate industry had collapsed completely within a month, leaving hordes of hapless homeowners owing the banks huge sums.
Under these circumstances, people could neither repay their mortgages nor be expected to: My fucking house collapsed! Who gives a shit about your bank demanding repayment? Get lost! I have no money! Call me a deadbeat all you like-I still have no money!
Defaults on this scale left banks with vast amounts of bad debt. Naturally, depositors' money vanished too, triggering further bank runs.
Finance was an abstract concept, yet it affected every aspect of how human society functioned.
When finance ground to a halt, the economy followed.
"To stabilize confidence in the currency, banking institutions have established an internal trading system with gold as its basic unit."
"To address the wave of bank runs, citizens of Great Xia are limited to cash withdrawals of ten thousand yuan per month."
Were they bringing back the gold standard?
It also seemed like an inevitable turn of history.
With earthquakes and tsunamis erupting sporadically, productivity across the country had plummeted. Inflation continued to soar. Food, clothing, cars, and even cutting-edge electronics such as iPhone 999 and Huawei 888 phones, 4090 graphics cards, and all kinds of chips had skyrocketed in price. Some commodities had risen even more sharply: gold, for instance, had gone up thirtyfold in a month, while silver had risen twentyfold.
Prices for all kinds of electronics had also risen by two to five times or more. Many ordinary people believed these high-tech products were the pinnacle of what humanity could manufacture, and that no more advanced electronics would appear for another twenty years-or even a hundred.
Zhang Ming: "..."
The radio: "Our country currently has ample grain reserves, sufficient to feed the entire population for one year even without any further grain production."
"Experts believe earthquakes do not affect grain production. Indeed, climatic factors may even bring unprecedented bumper harvests to certain regions."
"The government has established a special enforcement department to crack down on criminal activities such as hoarding food, clothing, and other daily necessities for sale at inflated prices."
Zhang Ming sat in his chair, listening to the broadcast.
He could hardly imagine how chaotic the world had become. The poor were going hungry while the rich were still scrambling to buy phones and cars; cities were gone, while rural areas were in demand; half the world's nations had been paralyzed, while the major powers struggled to grow.
Great Xia already had some of the best organizational capabilities on Blue Star. Keeping its people from starving to death was about the limit of what it could do.
And that was without accounting for the possibility that the broadcast had glossed things over a little. After all, the announcer, Li Xianfeng, was part of the establishment. He could hardly speak ill of it.
"Nature's power really is terrifying."
"I wonder how badly Mom and Dad have been affected. They're in that little county town back home, so getting enough to eat shouldn't be a problem, right? Oh, Mom's gold necklace and rings should be worth a fortune now..."
Something else suddenly occurred to him, and he took out a briefcase containing a full 270,000 US dollars.
Enough for a down payment in a third-tier city. So light, yet so heavy.
"My money turned into a pile of wastepaper before I even got to spend it?"
The thick stacks of colorful American banknotes in his hands seemed to say: Go on, burn us if you've got the guts! Come on, do it!
After thinking it over for ages, he still could not bring himself to burn them.
They had lost value, but they were still worth something.
As long as the United States across the Pacific Ocean had not completely collapsed, dollars could still be used. That 270,000 dollars might buy him several meals at KFC. Put that way, it sounded pretty tempting. Zhang Ming could feel his mouth watering.
Li Xianfeng continued in his familiar voice. "That concludes today's domestic news. Next, international news."
"Fusang has announced a nationwide emigration plan. Over the next ten years, it expects to relocate its entire population to regions including South America, North America, Asia, Australia, and Africa."
"Through mediation by the International United Organization, the first group of one million emigrants has boarded ocean liners and officially departed for Australia. Australian Prime Minister Barryson has extended a warm and sincere welcome to these million emigrants."
"Is Australia really that nice? They aren't being shipped over as slaves, are they? Are they all young women?" Zhang Ming let his imagination run wild.
"The Dongfei Dam has burst following a powerful earthquake, leaving fifty million people affected by flooding. The International United Organization has issued an appeal for donations to prevent the humanitarian disaster that may follow."
"A serious leak has occurred at the Erhaie Group, North America's largest chemical plant. Approximately 340 tons of vinyl chloride have escaped into the atmosphere..."
The international news was even grimmer than the domestic news.
Happiness came from comparison. As long as things were worse abroad, things at home seemed less terrible.
Even Zhang Ming felt a strange sense of reassurance, as though his current life was somehow acceptable.
But would humanity go extinct?
Clearly not. Modern nations could withstand disasters far better than the agrarian states of the feudal era. Of the world's eight billion people... only five hundred million had disappeared so far.
On the radio, five hundred million sounded like nothing more than a number. It was like five hundred million civilians dying in a game. Without witnessing it firsthand, he had no real sense of what it meant.
In fact, hearing these things every day gradually numbed a person. At first, reports of disasters still brought images to mind: "the boy lying on the beach," "seabirds coated in oil," "the little girl running through an explosion."
But now, every thought dissolved into lead-gray emptiness and scattered on the sea breeze...
It was like the descriptions of disasters in history books: "Great famine; people ate one another." Just one weightless sentence.
Zhang Ming could not help recalling the line, "The spring swallows returned and nested in the trees." It said nothing about what had happened to the people. There was only cruelty.
The massive eruption of Mount Fuji had reduced the surrounding area to scorched earth, yet the death toll in Fusang was actually only in the low eight figures. After all, it was a major industrial nation. As long as it was willing to pay a steep price, there were still places willing to accept its highly skilled citizens.
More deaths occurred in poor countries and small nations.
They did not even get the chance to appear in the news.
No one knew what had happened to the ordinary people in those small nations. No one cared. The world's mainstream media did not have the energy to focus on them either.
In an age like this, the claim "I don't care about the rise of great powers, only the dignity of ordinary people" was utter bullshit.
Earth let out a fart, and people were gone.
Without a powerful nation behind you, who would give a damn whether you lived or died? You could be robbed, have a kidney cut out, be murdered and have it passed off as suicide, or starve to death. You could call for help, but who would listen, you idiot?
Before you continue