Chapter 37: Soaring Prices

The sun in June was intense, especially in the afternoon, as if the earth were being roasted.

The truck bed was covered with plastic, but the heat still penetrated through, making it unbearable. No one could sleep after dozing off for a little while. The children kept shouting that it was hot, looking like they couldn’t take it anymore. Rest didn’t mean much to Zhou Liming at the moment. He jumped off the truck bed, looked around, and saw that all the shady spots were already occupied by people, with not a single space left.

The roads on both sides were lined with parked cars. The heavy trucks were surrounded by the cars, leaving no room to retreat.

Zhou Liming said nothing, opened the driver’s cabin door, and climbed in. He quickly came back out and closed the door, then said to An Xiaowei, who was sticking out her tongue and panting, “Keep an eye on the children. I’m going to find a place to cool off.” An Xiaowei nodded and said weakly, “Got it. Come back soon.”

Shuangqiao Town was not small, but it couldn’t withstand the flood of people pouring in from all directions. Everywhere was crowded.

“Make way, make way! You’re blocking the door.”

This scene happened everywhere in the small town. Whenever residents here needed to go out, they always had to shout for those standing at the gate to move aside. All the shady spots were filled with people sitting down. They didn’t care about the owners’ feelings at all, acting like they had nothing left to lose.

In fact, what could the townspeople do? They all kept their doors closed. Except for necessary trips outside, everyone stayed at home. The world was already in turmoil, and no one knew what chaos the growing crowd outside might cause. As for kindly taking people in, it was simply impossible. With hundreds of thousands of people gathering here, how many could you let stay in your house temporarily?

There were indeed quite a few empty houses in the small town, but the military squads patrolling constantly made those who wanted to break in reconsider.

Zhou Liming walked around and saw only depressed people. Some, who had lost relatives, were still softly sobbing. People cursing loudly were visible everywhere; they constantly cursed the world and everyone and everything they felt was unfair. But more people were simply sitting in silence, lost in their thoughts.

According to Zhou Liming’s idea, he could completely use money to knock on the doors of the small town residents and rent a few rooms for himself.

However, after knocking a few times, although there were people inside, they all cautiously asked about Zhou Liming’s identity and then ignored him. It took a lot of effort for one family to open the door, but when Zhou Liming made his request, he was rejected outright. Even when Zhou Liming grabbed a handful of gold jewelry from his pocket, it didn’t move the other party.

“Why don’t people love money these days?”

The gold jewelry in his hand was worth at least tens of thousands of yuan, but Zhou Liming couldn’t understand why the other person’s eyes only flickered slightly before decisively refusing. How could he know that every coastal family had become wealthy over the past ten-plus years? Taking this small town as an example, there were plenty of people worth millions, and even those worth hundreds of thousands were ashamed to say so. In this situation, worried about their own safety, who would look up to Zhou Liming’s mere jewelry worth a small fortune?

After hitting a wall several times, Zhou Liming had to give up this idea.

Many people stopped here by the blockade lines because they had received tips to bring enough food. So, hunger was not the main theme here; fear, anxiety, and impatience were the best descriptions of people’s states of mind. Although many people didn’t lack food and water, the military still provided a lunch in the afternoon: two large steamed buns and a serving of pickled vegetables with congee.

With soldiers maintaining order, the scene in Hemudu Town did not repeat itself here. People lined up orderly and collected their portions at distribution points.

According to the information conveyed by the military, two meals would be provided daily, one at noon and one at night. Water was not lacking; the tap water supply had not collapsed, nor had the electricity, among other utilities.

Zhou Liming had prepared plenty of food; he didn’t need to worry about grain for at least a week. So, there was no need to stand in line for half an hour to get this lunch.

“Damn it, they stop us but let people from City A and City G in Zhejiang Province evacuate. Do our lives not matter?”

Under the shade of a tree, several men sat, using leaves to fan themselves. Their conversation was not unusual, but Zhou Liming’s heart stirred. He walked over to them and sat down on a stone. Lacking information from the outside world and having no friends or relatives in other cities, Zhou Liming’s sources of information were very limited.

The speaker was a clean-cut middle-aged man in his forties. A beer belly made him look affluent. He was playing with his mobile phone and said, “My cousin in City G in Zhejiang Province just told me that they are evacuating to City J in Anhui Province. That means our Zhejiang Province has been abandoned. Damn it, my entire business is based in Zhejiang Province. What will I do in the future?”

Another tall and thin man let out a self-deprecating laugh and said, “Old Chen, you’ve calculated well. You have tens of millions in cash reserves. I only bid on a plot of land at the foot of Longtou Mountain a month ago, and I still owe the bank tens of millions. I don’t even have a son in my care. Do you know what the prices are like in the interior cities now?”

The other several people shook their heads curiously. Although they were well-informed, they hadn’t considered this aspect.

“One kilogram of rice costs more the closer you are to coastal cities. Prices have risen twentyfold and are still rising.” The tall, thin man paused and said, “Gas stations are stopping business one after another. Without coastal areas and the ocean, fuel cannot be imported. In the future, who knows how sky-high fuel prices might go? It’s possible that fuel will only be provided for military use. It’s ridiculous.”

“My car’s fuel can still run for about a hundred kilometers. What should I do?”

“Mine is about the same, around a hundred kilometers. I was in too much of a hurry to escape. It was so careless. Where can I get fuel now?”

“You guys are better off. If I don’t refuel soon, my car will become a pile of scrap metal.”

“My car has a 6.0 engine. Damn it, I’m in big trouble now!”

Everyone began to sigh and complain. Then they mentioned the prices in the interior cities, where housing prices had shot up like a rocket, soaring from thousands to tens of thousands, or even over a hundred thousand yuan per square meter. Furthermore, supply still couldn’t meet demand. There were high prices but no market. This meant that money was constantly shrinking in value. It was hard to buy even one apartment with millions of yuan.

More frighteningly, following this trend, prices would probably continue to rise.

Well-informed people naturally became extremely worried, not knowing what to do in the future. Even if they could escape the coastal areas where the Fierce Beasts were rampant, facing a situation where their businesses were lost and prices had risen dozens of times, how could they continue to live?

Hundreds of millions of people flooding into these cities caused too much impact in all aspects.

The country was busy mobilizing troops and building defense lines. How could it have the energy to control the soaring prices? Opportunistic merchants saw this and raised prices significantly, changing them several times a day, making huge profits from the disaster. They didn’t realize that while they were raising prices, their own assets were shrinking. The impact wasn’t just this; it made the whole society unstable and buried deadly hazards.

Many people realized this problem and thought about this hazard, but under the current situation, no one could stop it.

Zhou Liming certainly didn’t think that far. After listening to the conversation of these few people, he felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave because he realized that his jewelry, worth millions of yuan, couldn’t even buy a small apartment. The idea he had imagined earlier of buying a house so that those around him had a place to stay was so ridiculous.

With the price of one kilogram of rice rising to two or three hundred yuan, it was already good enough to ensure that the people around him had a bite to eat. How could he expect to buy a house?

Zhou Liming suddenly realized that he was actually a poor man with millions. He might barely be able to struggle on the edge of subsistence.

Don’t expect prices to drop. With the fall of the coastal areas, the loss of control over industrial cities, the concentration of population, and the reduction of arable land area, prices would be forced to keep going up. Moreover, the longer the time dragged on, the worse the situation would become. The final result might be that money would no longer be money, and even RMB would become a piece of waste paper.

Paper currency would be reshuffled in the disaster and gradually replaced by a new paper currency mechanism.