NOVEL NEXT
Chapter 81
Before going online at the square, Wen Qian was aware of the prediction of a cold winter, but she didn't know exactly how cold it would be. After all, where she currently resided, winters might be slightly better than in the northern and southern regions.
However, in the countryside at the Chen family home, getting through winter shouldn't be too difficult, right?
Wen Qian could imagine how they would prepare for winter back home. As she pondered this, Wen Qian realized that she still had a lot of unused charcoal from before.
Previously, she had been burning firewood in the stove, and up until now, that was still the case. The charcoal had just been left untouched, along with the coal she had purchased but never used.
Thinking about this, she took advantage of her leisure time to start taking inventory of her spatial storage.
Taking inventory was a tedious task, so she only did a little bit each day, mentally recounting how much she still had.
This activity would make her brain slightly excited.
At the same time, she gave herself some distracting toys and games, like sudoku competitions.
She also tried to learn some local languages, but later found it extremely frustrating, so she gave up. In the future, if she really needed to communicate, she would just use Mandarin.
Learning minority languages would be too much of a challenge and an overestimation of her abilities.
However, Wen Qian was doing well with her sewing lessons. She made sun-protective clothing for herself, preparing for when winter was over and they would come in handy.
Sometimes she would also use wool to learn how to crochet dolls and flowers, hanging them around the house, which looked quite interesting.
As for food, she still did the same as before, cooking a large portion at once, then portioning it out to reheat and eat each day, saving time.
If she had to prepare meals every day just for herself, after a while she wouldn't want to eat seriously anymore.
But looking at her petite, skinny figure and the small dumbbell she occasionally used to remind herself to exercise, she still insisted on eating three meals a day.
Living alone made one prone to laziness, and there had been times in the past when she only ate one or two meals a day.
After eating, Wen Qian couldn't immediately lie down and sleep. She would either read for a while or get up and walk around.
Although the house was small, she couldn't skip any of her exercises.
It could be said that all of Wen Qian's activities had nothing to do with electricity or the internet.
But on a certain day in December, the internet was attacked.
Various regions around the world were affected to different degrees by a solar storm, temporarily causing varying levels of impact to many countries' satellites, wireless radio signals, and positioning systems.
The high-latitude countries in Europe and the Maple Leaf Country experienced a one- to two-day power outage. During the bitter cold winter, the lives of ordinary residents were thrown into chaos. The GPS positioning system in the northeastern part of M Country was damaged, causing incalculable losses, especially with the current application of autonomous driving technology. The roads in that area on that day were a parking lot of crashed cars.
People who were used to autonomous driving now cursed it vehemently.
Two satellites in China were decommissioned, and some areas also experienced power outages.
This solar storm, classified as of moderate intensity, caused severe damage. But this was only moderate intensity - who knew what a high-intensity storm would bring?
Would all mobile phones and computers be rendered useless?
Some experts pointed out that if a massive solar storm were to occur, the damage to regional internet facilities would not be severe. The real danger would be to the undersea cables connecting the continents.
Fortunately, this storm passed quickly, and people resumed their normal way of life. However, at this time, information disseminating knowledge about solar storms began circulating on the internet.
Many people only now realized that solar storms posed a disaster for humanity. Just the thought of the internet being destroyed was like the end of the world.
People felt both relieved and worried.
For those accustomed to using mobile phones and computers, this solar storm made many people ponder their lifestyles and whether their dependence on phones and the internet was too strong.
Some couldn't even kick their phone addiction, yet believed they had the self-control to quit other addictive things, clearly overestimating themselves.
Some began cultivating new hobbies, while others thought they should cherish what they had, because if the day came when they couldn't use these things, there would be no other choice. While they had the opportunity and means, they had to make the most of it.
So some people used them even more enthusiastically.
Others started withdrawing cash to make physical payments, in case their phones or the internet went down and they couldn't make payments.
Wen Qian was oblivious to all this. She had spent all the money she could spend, and what she didn't spend, she had converted into physical form and stored in her spatial storage.