Cave Refuge

In the 10th Year of the Daxia calendar.

In a dimly lit room, the figure that was peacefully sleeping on the bed suddenly sat up, his hands frantically waving around, his mouth continuously yelling, "No! I don't want to die!"

Unsure if it was a physical stress reaction, or if he was truly scared by a nightmare, his wild gesticulations gradually slowed as he wore himself out.

As his body finally calmed down, his tightly shut eyes slowly opened.

Looking at the familiar surroundings, Dong Tianyu murmured, "Where is this? It's such a familiar place, I just...".

With this self-talk, his previously muddled mind gradually cleared.

"Did I travel through time again?"

"No, more accurately, I've been reborn. This is still Blue Star."

A parallel universe with 99% similarity to our imperfect world.

Having lived for 33 years in the real world, Dong Tianyu finds his soul transposed onto the body of his ten-year-old self in this parallel universe.

With virtually similar family relationships and a very similar societal environment, Dong Tianyu quickly adapted to his life after the transition.

After discovering information about digital currency online, he realized that the price of digital currency was only 0.0025 Eagle Coins at the time. According to the exchange rate between the Huayuan and the Eagle Coin, the price of one digital currency was less than two cents.

However, purchasing digital currency directly within the country was quite complicated. Eventually, Dong Tianyu spent over a thousand dollars to have a foreign purchasing agent buy him two thousand digital currencies, which were stored on a physical hard drive and shipped to the country. The cost of purchasing the digital currencies was even lower than the cost of the hard drive itself.

After purchasing the digital currencies, Dong Tianyu's life returned to normal. Upon graduation, unlike his experience on Earth, he didn't aspire to make it big in the city.

Instead, he relied on his family connections to land a decent job at a subsidiary unit of the local Vision Corporation.

Although he was merely a contract worker, his remuneration was comparable to regular staff, even though there were only a handful of actual staff in the whole unit.

By the 22nd year, fearing unforeseen considerations, Dong Tianyu didn't wait to sell his digital currencies at their historical peak. Instead, when the price increased to 50,000 Eagle Coins, he sold all of his digital commodities.

This strategy made Dong Tianyu's assets exceed a hundred million, all in Eagle Coins.

At this point, digital currency transactions were still legal in the country. After paying his taxes, Dong Tianyu ended up with slightly more than his five initial targets.

Unskilled in managing finances, Dong Tianyu made a special trip to Kyoto, splitting up his five targets and depositing them into five different banks to earn interest.

As for why he didn't deposit the money in his hometown bank, everyone understands the reasons. Big city banks have stronger supervision and are less likely to experience any mysterious account transfers.

Afterwards, he returned to Pengcheng with the leftovers. Even though the remainder he deposited in Pengcheng's bank amounted to eight digits, it still reached the standard for large deposits.

Even the interest alone could rival the annual income of an average middle-class household.

Besides a moderate upgrade on his family's standard of living, Dong Tianyu's life did not change much. His colleagues and family just assumed he had made some money from stock investments.

Having money, he thought he should get married, have a child, and continue his mundane life.

But who could have expected that one day, while Dong Tianyu was slacking off at work, he would find his phone screen suddenly went black. Assuming his phone was broken and preparing to restart, Dong Tianyu was stunned to find that his office computer had also blacked out.

Leaving his office, he saw the normally empty corridors filled with people. Everyone had emerged from their workspaces to ask others if their computers and phones were experiencing the same issues.

Slowly, people began to realize that it wasn't only computers and phones that were affected. All electronic devices in the unit had malfunctioned.

Devices in parked cars in the parking lot also encountered the same issue.

Unlike other cities with various styles of shared bicycles, Pengcheng only had Green Travel. While it was also a shared bicycle service, registration required only a Pengcheng ID card and a 20 yuan deposit, making it not difficult for most to find a parked bicycle near most bus station stops.

Therefore, at this juncture, Pengcheng was not lacking in non-electronic controlled transportation, such as bicycles.

Fortunately, having just gone through the era of the 'epidemic', even though the absence of communication devices was inconvenient, the Officials still had measures to handle such sudden incidents.

The Officials' quick response reassured the urban residents, and due to their strong trust in the Officials, the city did not descend into chaos.

However, since they were used to paying through their phones, many people didn't carry much cash.

Luckily, banks still held a substantial amount of cash, and one could borrow a certain amount of cash using their ID card, to be returned once electronic devices were functional again.

Due to the malfunction of electronic devices, life seemed to have regressed to the ancient times, and regular people were practically isolated from the outside world.

Everyone initially thought that after enduring for some time, they would return to their normal lives.

But a week after the problem with the electronic devices, the Officials instructed the community to arrange for the young and middle-aged men to start transforming the underground RF projects.

Using human labor, these young and middle-aged men cleared out all the vehicles from the underground parking lots and transformed these underground air-defense facilities into temporary refuge centers.

It was voluntary recruitment, so initially, not many people participated. However, gradually, families with young and middle-aged men participated fully in the transformation.

Only the young and middle-aged men who participated in the transformation of the air-defense facilities were able to have full meals in the work canteen.

One meal was rationed per person per day on the streets. By partaking in labor, the young and middle-aged men could save a meal's worth of food each day.

About a month since the electronic gadgets had become obsolete, paper money gradually faded from everyday life, as if they had returned to the 60s.

At an unknown time, the outside temperature started to drop, and everyone was arranged by the community to move into the newly transformed temporary refuge centers underground.

It was only in the refuge center that Dong Tianyu understood why the older generation like his grandparents was insistent on having many children.

His father's generation had five brothers, his mother's side had four siblings, and since they initially lived close to each other, they were all assigned to the same temporary refuge center.

After they entered the refuge center, they gathered over a dozen Dong families together. With over twenty young and middle-aged male relatives alone, their prominent presence alone warned others not to mess with them.

Due to air exchange issues, areas near the ventilation ducts weren't warm. But for some reason, after the community staff saw Dong Tianyu's large family chatting together, they were assigned to a relatively warm corner.

As the temperature outside dropped, the frequency of material deliveries gradually decreased.

The last time materials were delivered, they received a blueprint of the subway system and some digging tools.

According to the person delivering the supplies, they were now left with only three options.