After arriving in the capital, Qiao Mei went to an outdoor phone booth to call Qiao Qiang. There was a problem with the phone line at home, so Qiao Mei called the brigade directly.
“Hello, who is this?” Wang Qin said.
Wang Qin was usually the one handling these small matters in the village while Zhao Liang was in charge of the important things. Zhao Liang would only answer the phone if Wang Qin was not around.
Qiao Mei lowered the pitch of her voice and said, “Hello, I’m looking for Zhao Liang.”
Wang Qin looked at the phone receiver in confusion and said to Zhao Liang, “Zhao Liang, it’s for you.”
Zhao Liang was also a little puzzled. He did not have any relatives out of town, so he had no idea who could be calling him.
“Who is it?” Zhao Liang said.
“I don’t know. The person didn’t say but was just looking for you.” Wang Qin put the phone receiver aside and returned to her desk.
Zhao Liang picked up the receiver and said, “Hello, who are you? I’m Zhao Liang.”
When Qiao Mei heard that it was indeed Uncle Zhao, her voice returned to normal and she said sweetly into the phone, “Uncle, it’s me, Qiao Mei. Don’t make a fuss about it, I’m just calling to ask you to tell my grandfather that I’m in the capital and to give him some reassurance.”
Zhao Liang naturally knew about the feud between Qiao Mei and Wang Qin, so he simply said, “Yes, yes, I understand. I will go, don’t worry.”
“Alright, uncle, I’m leaving.” Qiao Mei hung up after saying that.
Zhao Liang also hung up the phone. Wang Qin, who was at the side, stared at Zhao Liang a few times. She was curious about the person who called, but she did not dare to ask, afraid that her question would cause trouble. After all, the recent matter regarding Qiao Yu had already made her lose face in the village.
Zhao Liang hurriedly went out to look for Qiao Qiang and informed him about what Qiao Mei had said on the phone. Qiao Qiang finally felt relieved after hearing that. After bidding farewell to Zhao Liang, he went to Li Gui’s place to bring the children for a walk at the village entrance.
Two days later, Qiao Mei successfully arrived at Gushan. There were many people coming and going at the train station. She looked at the color of the sky and then at the expressions of the people around her. She could not bear to think about the tragedy that would happen in two days.
Qiao Mei quietly got the plants around the train tracks to break the tracks so that no one would be able to enter Gushan henceforth and the number of casualties would be reduced. It would be best if Xia Zhe had not arrived at Gushan yet.
She recalled that the news had reported that the area near the train station was hit most seriously. At that time, the sky was dark as if there was going to be a storm. Everyone ran into the houses in the area to get shelter from the rain, but it took only a few minutes for all the houses to collapse and no one survived.
Now that the train tracks were broken, there would be fewer people gathered here and more people would remain alive. Qiao Mei headed straight for a village after leaving the train station. Based on the memories of the original owner of the body, Qiao Mei remembered that there was a village name on the money transfer receipt. Based on the name in her memory, Qiao Mei asked around and finally arrived at the village.
Strange things had been happening over the past few days. There were always big rocks rolling down the mountain and the animals in the forest had also started to become restless. Some of the forest animals had even entered the village. The birds in the forest had also been chirping a lot recently and even the domestic fowls were also all very restless.
She had initially wanted to go and check out the other villages to see if they were in the same situation, but she did not even have time to do much in this village, so there was no way for her to get involved somewhere else.
After walking around for a day, Qiao Mei felt that going on foot was not a viable solution. Qiao Mei bought a bicycle at a low price in the village and rode it around. She realized that it was not just this village, but many other villages were witnessing the same phenomena.
Many villagers who lived at the foot of the mountain had suffered losses both big and small. Some people had seen their houses collapse, while others had had their courtyards destroyed. The desks of the county leaders were filled with documents about these disastrous matters and the phones in their offices had not stopped ringing.
These things did not just happen in the villages. Many roads in the city suddenly had huge holes appearing in them and there were cyclists who even fell into the holes with their bikes and got injured. It was as if the ground had collapsed due to the loss of groundwater. Some of these holes even put buildings in danger, as some old low-rise apartment buildings which had been in disrepair for a long time began to tilt to one side. The government immediately evacuated the people from these buildings which eventually saved them from the disasters that followed.