While Perfikot had the Pastry Chef improve the recipe for compressed biscuits, the situation in the outer city had already started to further deteriorate.
Due to the lack of adequate disaster relief asures, or rather, the complete absence of any relief efforts, many areas of the outer city were still flooded when the cold wave arrived.
After a night of freezing temperatures and snowstorms, most places had turned to ice, and the snow had dyed the entire outer city white.
The rapidly dropping temperatures made it impossible for people to survive for long under such conditions, forcing them to huddle inside buildings by the light of a burning bonfire for warmth.
But...fuel is limited, and buildings that could provide shelter from the cold are also limited.
The previous tsunami had a devastating impact on the outer city, which was already a slum area, sweeping away the flimsy, drafty houses along with the few belongings inside.
Those who survived in the outer city were already in a state of being poorly clothed and underfed, and many didn't even have a roof over their heads.
They could only find a relatively dry spot or a place where the water had receded in buildings not completely subrged or destroyed, to temporarily shelter.
The only things they could find to burn were fragnts of furniture and garbage, which were difficult to sustain a bonfire, and the number of such things they could find after the tsunami was scarce, forcing people to shiver for warmth.
The few bonfires could not sustain burning for long, requiring soone to brave hypothermia, wade through waist-deep water to search for usable fuel to keep the fire going at a level that offered only psychological solace.
Because of limited fuel, they didn't dare to keep the bonfire burning brightly, which led to an awful result: the fire was not even enough to dry their clothes soaked from searching for fuel.
Although after the cold wave arrived, all the standing water was frozen into ice, which ant walking on it wouldn't soak their clothes, it also brought new problems.
They couldn't search for fragnts of furniture or combustible trash subrged in the water anymore, so they could only look for usable items on the ice.
What added insult to injury was that the low temperatures ant they needed more heat to maintain body temperature, and in such cold weather, even crouching by the bonfire made it hard to keep warm, let alone having to brave the wind and snow to search for supplies.
Often, many would sleep nearby a bonfire, but by morning, though so embers remained, they would never wake up again.
As for those frozen to death by the roadside, there were even more; having lost nearly all their possessions to the tsunami, where would they find clothes to keep warm?
Yet keeping warm wasn't the biggest problem facing the people of the outer city, because in the phrase "hunger and cold," hunger ranks before cold.
The weather was so cold that people naturally felt hungrier, not to ntion that all the scant food supplies in the outer city were washed away by the tsunami, and most food found afterward had been soaked by seawater and ruined.
The Evil God Sect revealed its true colors, stopping the distribution of food to the residents of the outer city.
This undoubtedly exacerbated the predicant of the outer city, pushing everyone to the brink of water and food shortage.
It's well known that with water and without food, people can typically survive about seven days; but without water, a person faces life-threatening danger in about three days.
Not to ntion, dealing with severe cold.
In such dire straits, so people breached their limits and committed acts that seed understandable.
The Langton city governnt of the inner city had considered sending food to the outer city, after all, those people were still subjects of the Empire, but with too much to handle in the inner city after the tsunami, the officials brought it up briefly but had little energy to accomplish it, so the plan failed.
Extre hunger eventually led so to extend their hands to their frozen companions.
At least, these corpses could satisfy hunger, and one body could feed several people for a few days.
And whether this should be cause for relief or sorrow, in the post-tsunami outer city, the least scarce thing was corpses.
Whether fresh or dead for several days, bodies were overwhelming in number, scattered everywhere without anyone to collect them.
Though the lack of fuel ant most people resorted to raw eating, as long as the bodies had not frozen solid completely, even feeding on raw flesh and blood could provide a few bites.
Only after filling their stomachs could they muster energy to survive, to search for fuel and food.
Despite so people coming to see corpses as a natural source of food, their eyes set on companions who were still alive but physically weak.
These people couldn't survive, and were soon to die anyway, so instead of waiting until they froze solid after death, they would use the knife while they were still warm and soft.
So had these thoughts, and so acted on them, humanity and morality vanished in the face of cold and hunger.
At this mont, what difference was there between humans and beasts?
Perhaps humanity never truly forgot its wild nature as a species, only that civilization temporarily made us forget the era when we survived using claws and teeth, feeding on raw flesh and drinking blood.
But now, when environnt and food are in extre shortage, so people awaken their forr wild nature, activating the so-called 'instincts' of beasts.
At this mont, leaving the inner city of Langton had beco incredibly difficult, with still partially standing water freezing the gates on the city walls, making entrance and exit between the inner and outer city a daunting task.
Under such circumstances, even those with intentions from the inner city found themselves powerless.
They could only set up loudspeakers near the city walls, calling out to the outer city; if anyone wished to enter the inner city, they would offer so food and bring them inside.
But those willing or able to enter the inner city were always a minority, most had lost the ability to move from the outer city to the inner city, not to ntion so refused to go in entirely.
Despite the inner city having warm shelters, food to fill the stomach, and even job opportunities to support the family, for so who had already crushed their human boundaries, they were not interested in any of it.
A single city wall divides inner and outer city, seemingly turning into the boundary between heaven and hell, crossing it leads to two entirely different worlds.
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