The wind and snow intensified behind, and Wen Qian could not see clearly outside from the window.
Afraid of getting lost in the snowstorm, she decided not to go out.
However, she also decided that after spring came, she must install railings along the path outside the walls and the path leading to the shore.
She remembered that outside the house, there should also be positioning objects placed, whether railings or ropes, something that could guide the way.
The northern blizzards could claim lives; hypothermia could rob people of their lives, and getting lost could too.
She had heard of people dying right at their own doorsteps because the snowstorm was too fierce for them to find the entrance.
Fortunately, the snowstorms came in bursts, and during the intervals when it stopped, one could see a vast expanse of white outside.
Although still difficult to walk through, it was not as obstructed and impeded as before.
With everything outside covered in snow, Wen Qian could sit at the desk without needing to light a lamp, as the outdoor light allowed her to see clearly.
She planned to dig a well by the river, so she was researching, feeling that if she could bury pipes leading to the house, life would be so much more convenient in the future.
Moreover, her old home also had a water well, so she had a very good impression of this facility.
She had also bought quite a few accessories, especially many of those pistons.
But digging a well required technical skills, and the only thing that gave her hope was that she didn't need to dig too deep, as it would be easier to find water near the river.
The problem was how to lay bricks after excavating, as there had been an ancient saying that one should use sticky rice to build the walls.
Of course, she had also found this method in books, and it proved that her decision to hoard books during the stockpiling period was the right choice.
If she couldn't do it herself, she could learn; once she knew the method, a few tries should suffice.
However, digging the well would have to wait until after winter passed, as everything was frozen solid now.
Also, if she wanted to hunt in the future, she would need to build her own safe cabin in the forest.
After all, just wandering around near her home wouldn't yield many large preys, so she would have to venture further out.
And going too far meant that setting up a tent would not be enough to spend the night safely; a sturdy little house would be necessary.
After a few more snowstorms, the time came for the Chinese New Year.
Wen Qian cooked a few dishes for herself in the kitchen that evening, ate her dinner early, and then lay down on the heated brick bed.
After this year, she would be 38 years old, and it was unlikely that she would have another long-distance journey like this year's.
Under normal circumstances, she didn't plan to return to her hometown either.
However, all of this was within her expectations, and she didn't feel lonely or desolate living alone, nor did she want to seek out strangers as companions.
The human heart is complex, and even before the calamity, she wasn't sure she could open up to others, let alone those who survived afterwards.
She was just an ordinary person, without foresight or the ability to be competent in every aspect without flaws.
Therefore, she didn't believe in herself being able to just open her eyes and find a "good man."
For someone like her who enjoyed solitude, perhaps before the calamity, others would have criticized her as unsociable, pretentiously aloof, and a dull person.
How things would be after the calamity was hard to say.
The human heart is complex, often more complicated than she had imagined.
When she was young, she thought the world was simply black or white, but as she grew older, she realized there were shades of gray in between.
Behind every incident, it might not be anyone's fault.
However, once she went online, she realized that many netizens thought the same way as her childhood self, and even more extremely.
They could not tolerate the complexity of humans, whether in real life or in fiction, even in novels.
They would not allow the existence of people or things beyond their understanding, and they were unwilling to even have doubts, directly denying the existence of others.
Similarly, they would not allow characters in a novel to be complex, insisting that they must be categorized as good or bad, righteous or villainous.
It was as if in every novel, there would be one or two characters that readers could not determine as good or bad.
Even if an author wrote about a villain doing a good deed, they would consider it absolutely impossible.
In the days when the internet existed, they would appear online, and in the era without the internet, they would manifest as rumors and hearsay.
Ever since her school days, Wen Qian had realized that this world truly had instances of inexplicable trampling and harm.
Of course, she had also prepared for the cost of living alone.
Fortunately, now no one could attack her in any way.
Wen Qian was quite grateful that when making choices alone, she only had herself to blame for the good or bad consequences.
But if she had found someone to live with and things didn't go well, they might have started blaming each other.
It would have been better if they had become parents, as then they could have blamed the children in the future, sparing themselves while having someone to rely on.
It would be like writing a "solution" to the life lesson, allowing them to just get by.
Lying on the warm bed in the darkness, reminiscing about the past, Wen Qian felt pensive but had no regrets.
For her, holidays were truly just days for eating and drinking, and her only longing now was for spring.
Spring signified warmth and vitality.
When spring arrived, she would have so many things to do, feeling that time was never enough.
She needed to farm, hunt, dig wells, and build cabins.
Just farming alone would keep her busy, not to mention all the other tightly packed plans she had arranged.
And so, spring arrived as Wen Qian awaited it eagerly.
At first, the snowstorms diminished, then the distant snowy forests melted, revealing bare black tree branches.
Long icicles formed under the eaves, which Wen Qian had to knock down with a pole, as they could fall and hit someone.
At the same time, some trees also had ice sickles hanging from them, occasionally falling down with a pleasant tinkling sound.
Afterwards, the nearby river started making crackling noises, the sound of ice breaking.
In summary, when spring came, there were signs all around, much more obvious than the springtime she had experienced in Xia Province.
In the far southern Sunshine Base, now no longer called a base but Sunshine City, the people here had been waiting for spring's arrival.
They also announced in the broadcasts of their city that the temperature would gradually rise and the volcanic winter would be over.
Yet it was unknown how long it would take for this news to reach the north.
As this news spread in the south, people there celebrated as if they saw hope.
The survivors had lived a certain life before, but the days they longed for might never return.
However, being able to experience the once normal climate again was enough to make them marvel.
