CHAPTER 68: CHAPTER 68: THE TEMPTATION OF CABBAGE

The drizzle continued to fall, neither increasing in intensity nor showing any signs of stopping.

Although the protective suit was very warm, Chen Xin still felt a bit of chill.

"Huff... huff..." Chen Xin’s breathing was somewhat labored. Although the protective mask could effectively block the harmful components in the air, it also somewhat affected his breathing.

It was fine before, but now, after walking for a while and with his breathing having quickened, he felt a bit breathless.

Chen Xin wanted to find a place to sit down and rest to catch his breath, but seeing the ground covered with rainwater and mud, he decided to keep moving forward.

After all, it was just a bit of gasping. Chen Xin had a similar experience when he traveled to the Shu Region before; just slowing down a bit was enough.

But this made Chen Xin wonder if he was really as out of shape as Qin Lan suggested. Back then, the shortness of breath was due to altitude sickness caused by the high elevation and thin air of the Shu Region.

Could it be that these years of being a professional internet writer, neglecting exercise, had indeed deteriorated his fitness?

With this doubt in mind, Chen Xin couldn’t help but think that maybe he should get a pedal generator for the shelter. Besides generating power, it could also serve as a way to exercise.

However, just as Chen Xin was thinking about this, he suddenly stopped in his tracks, and looked up at the sky.

Raindrops fell on the protective mask’s face shield, leaving unsightly stains, yet Chen Xin remained fixated on the sky, staring at the thick cloud of dust in the gloomy, dark sky.

"Damn it! It’s hypoxia!" Chen Xin wasn’t foolish; he simply subconsciously ignored this issue.

Ask yourself, who pays attention to the oxygen we breathe every moment? Probably only when you truly struggle to breathe do you realize you need oxygen, right?

When preparing a shelter before the disaster, Chen Xin unconsciously overlooked this problem, only preparing oxygen tanks in the shelter.

But now, when he realized he was facing the problem of hypoxia, he finally comprehended that when the surface plants were consumed by fire and the sunlight was lost, what we took most for granted—air—had become the greatest challenge for survival.

To live, people need oxygen. Any activity of the human body also needs oxygen to maintain, and the more intense the activity, the more oxygen is consumed.

In the absence of natural plants conducting photosynthesis, the oxygen in the atmosphere will gradually decrease with the consumption by the surviving humans.

Unless the dust clouds in the sky disperse and the sunlight re-illuminates the earth, allowing new plants to sprout and photosynthesize, this process will be irreversible.

Surviving humans, in order to live, can only find ways to produce new oxygen.

Chen Xin himself wasn’t worried about this issue because his shelter has a greenhouse. Under the simulated lighting of supplementary lights, all the crops continued to photosynthesize, which, for now, adequately sustains his oxygen consumption.

As for the official shelters, Chen Xin believed the country must have considered this issue; the only uncertainty was whether the country could thoroughly resolve it.

After all, the country needs to consider all current survivors nationwide, not just the issues of a single shelter.

The common methods of oxygen production include physical and chemical oxygen generation. Physical oxygen generation, simply put, is collecting the oxygen in the air for use where needed; chemical oxygen generation involves chemical reactions to reduce the oxygen elements from carbon dioxide or other oxygen-containing materials to form new oxygen.

These two methods were widely applied oxygen-generating methods before the disaster, but now in this apocalyptic world, they are not as suitable.

Physical oxygen generation requires a large amount of electricity and only extracts the existing oxygen from the air. In the current environment of decreasing atmospheric oxygen content, this method is not applicable.

While chemical oxygen generation does not have the drawbacks of physical oxygen generation, it also has its shortcomings; it requires chemical agents to be consumed, and it’s too costly for large-scale application.

So, if the government of the Flame Country wants to solve this problem, it must adopt methods other than these two.

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"Finally completed the mission!"

The SWAT team that completed the task of escorting the oxygen generation equipment returned to the shelter beneath the police station, and everyone relaxed.

Although most of the SWAT team members didn’t know what kind of materials they were escorting, seeing the armored train at the train station and the escort’s scale this time, they could more or less guess that it was extremely important.

Therefore, during the escort of these materials, everyone was actually very tense.

Now that the mission was finally completed, everyone naturally breathed a sigh of relief.

The group chatted and laughed as they walked towards the area allocated to the SWAT team. Although the task wasn’t tiring, the high mental tension left everyone feeling a bit hungry.

Although the meals in the shelter weren’t particularly good, after completing a mission, having something to fill the stomach was ultimately something to be happy about.

However, because the food currently consumed in the shelter mainly consisted of pre-disaster emergency supplies, although there was a cafeteria, it was actually just used to distribute rationed food without any cooking involved.

After all, with fuel being precious now, using it for cooking was a bit extravagant.

As for the mushroom-growing greenhouses and the artificially raised mice and mealworms, these foods have gradually started to appear in the shelter’s menu, but as of now, the SWAT team members haven’t reached the point where they can only eat these.

"By the way, what’s on the menu today?" a SWAT member, with an arm around a friend’s shoulder, inquired.

"I think it’s scallion lamb today; yesterday’s was Beijing sauce shredded pork, so today should be a change of taste."

His companion responded, making it sound as though the meals were enjoyable, but in reality, they were only referring to the flavors of self-heating meals.

Ever since the disaster hit two months ago, apart from mushrooms and rodent meat, it had been a long time since anyone saw fresh food.

Another SWAT member chimed in: "I think there should be cabbage soup today. Yesterday, we brought back a whole box of cabbage! Fresh cabbage, an entire box!"

"Indeed! It was Pillar and I who carried it, and it must have been two hundred pounds!" The eyes of a nearby SWAT member who also carried the vegetables yesterday lit up at the mention of the cabbage.

The news about fresh vegetables wasn’t something everyone knew, but upon hearing this, many SWAT members excitedly cheered, "Oh oh oh! I haven’t smelled cabbage in two months!"