Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

Chapter 519 Argumentation

The man in the black jacket whose sleeve was being pulled looked like a staff member at the trading center, and he had a helpless expression on his face.

While trying to pry the woman's hands off her sleeve, he turned his head and spoke to a young woman wearing glasses next to him.

The young woman was holding a notebook and writing something with her head down, her pen moving very quickly.

Several people, both men and women, stood behind the woman, all chiming in with their own opinions.

An old man stood at the very edge, wearing a faded military overcoat, his hands tucked into his sleeves, his expression not one of sadness, but of indignation.

"You need to give me an explanation!" The old man's voice was loud enough to be heard clearly even dozens of meters away. "The person is gone, you can't just pretend it never happened!"

A buzz of discussion arose from the crowd.

A man next to Xu Xiaoyan turned to the person next to him and said, "I know this old man. He used to be from Lijiawan. His son went downstream to fish today and hasn't come back yet."

"The person is gone?"

"I don't know, anyway, they haven't come back, and we haven't been able to contact them. The water's so high, what do you think?"

"Tsk," the person next to him shook his head, a complex expression on his face between sympathy and relief.

"I heard the firefighters rescued three people, but two are still missing."

"No, no, two were rescued, but three are still missing. My cousin works for the government, and he told me that."

"Who cares how many there are? Anyway, someone's gone, so here they are, causing trouble."

"What's the use of making a scene? It's not like the government sent them. They went to catch fish themselves, and when the water came, they didn't run away. Whose fault is that?"

"You can't say that. They didn't give any advance notice before releasing water from the dam. Who knew they'd release such a large amount today?"

"Yes, it was announced yesterday afternoon on the forum! It was also mentioned in the broadcast this morning."

But can they hear you? These people are probably already standing on the riverbank downstream waiting for fish. Who's going to take a loudspeaker to the riverbank to notify you?

"Then the government also bears responsibility, right? For such a big event as flood discharge, they should at least have sent out a mass text message in advance."

"Send mass text messages? Do you think Qing City is a company? One-click mass messaging?"

The voices from both sides grew louder and louder, neither willing to concede to the other.

As the argument escalated, the topic shifted from "whether the government bears any responsibility" to "whether the people who caught the fish deserved it," and then from "whether they deserved it" to "whether the fish tasted good or not."

In the end, the two middle-aged men almost got into a fight over whether to use firm or soft tofu when stewing crucian carp with tofu.

Xu Xiaoyan couldn't stand it anymore, so she jumped off the flower bed and continued to squeeze deeper into the crowd.

She wanted to hear what that troublemaking woman had to say.

After squeezing through for another five or six minutes, she finally reached a position close to the core area.

From here, you can hear the conversations of the people on the steps quite clearly.

Although there were several layers of human walls and two security guards maintaining order in between, at least we could no longer guess what was being said just by reading their lip movements.

The woman in the dark red cotton-padded jacket was standing on the steps, facing the entrance of the trading center. Her voice was already hoarse, but she was still shouting.

"My husband left home at five in the morning! He said he was going fishing and would be back by noon! Where is he now?"

She forcefully shook off the man in the black jacket's hand, yelling, "Tell me, where is he?!"

The crowd fell silent for a moment, then began to buzz again.

"Five in the morning? That means they left before dawn?"

"That's right. I heard that many people set off before dawn just to secure a good spot."

"Sigh, I get up earlier than the rooster, but it's harder to come back than to a ghost."

The man in the black jacket tried to calm her down. His voice wasn't loud, but his tone was polite: "Ma'am, please don't get agitated. We're already looking into this matter."

We immediately arranged for personnel to evacuate downstream after receiving the notification about the flood discharge.

But as you know, the downstream area is so long and the river is so wide that the water had already started flowing before our people even arrived.

"Your people? What use are your people?!" The woman's voice suddenly rose eight octaves. "By the time your people arrived, the water had already overflowed the shore! Where was my man supposed to run?!"

As she spoke, she couldn't help but burst into tears. A younger woman behind her stepped forward to support her and whispered words of comfort.

Another man stood to the side, his face ashen, but he didn't say a word.

The noise in the square suddenly subsided at that moment.

The middle-aged man next to Xu Xiaoyan, who had just been talking at length about "stewed crucian carp with tofu," was now speechless, his mouth agape.

On the steps, the man in the black jacket was still trying to explain something, but his voice was drowned out by the woman's crying and the murmurs of the crowd.

The young woman wearing glasses closed her notebook, walked over to the woman in the dark red cotton-padded jacket, handed her the notebook, and gestured for her to look at something.

The woman didn't even glance at it before pushing the notebook away.

"I don't want to see this! I want my man back!" she cried.

A commotion arose on the outskirts of the crowd.

Xu Xiaoyan looked back and saw several people in uniforms squeezing in from the edge of the square. The one at the front was a man in his fifties with gray hair and a calm expression.

The crowd automatically made way for him.

He walked up the steps, said a few words to the man in the black jacket, and then turned to the woman in the dark red cotton-padded coat.

He didn't rush to speak, but stood there for a while, waiting until the woman's crying subsided a little before saying something.

His voice wasn't loud, but Xu Xiaoyan could tell from his lip movements that he was saying, "Big sister, let's talk slowly."

The woman looked up at him, tears still streaming down her face, but her crying had stopped.

The crowd quieted down again.

"Ma'am, we're very sorry about your husband's situation, but I need to make this clear to you." The gray-haired staff member stepped forward:

"The notice about the flood discharge was announced on the official website of Qing City a day in advance, and a notice was also posted at the entrance of the Materials Trading Center."

"Since your husband ran downstream on his own, the main responsibility for this matter does indeed lie with him."

The woman's crying stopped for a moment, then erupted again:

"Announcement? Who reads announcements every day? My husband only went because he heard the dam was going to release water. He can't read, how is he supposed to read announcements!"

"So I say the main responsibility lies with him, but the government isn't ignoring it either."

The staff member softened their tone, saying, "According to relevant regulations, we can provide humanitarian compensation in this situation. It's not a lot, but it's a token of our appreciation."