"Wow! Momo, you're an angel, a fairy, the most adorable person in the whole world!" Li Lanlan was ecstatic to see the food Tang Mo was holding. She thought she was going to go hungry all day.
"Tonight, I'll use my meal card to treat you to your favorite braised beef noodles—I'll even add a braised egg!" Hopping off her bed in a few quick steps, Li Lanlan grabbed the breakfast and started eating.
Song Qing's eyes were also smiling. "And I'll buy you your favorite mango milk tea. No dieting allowed today."
Tang Mo smiled and accepted, thinking to herself, 'That's a nice thought, but I wonder if the cafeteria will even be open as usual tonight.'
Tang Mo had over 100 yuan left on her meal card. If she recalled correctly, this card became useless after only two or three days of use. The days of eating whatever she wanted, and as much as she wanted, were over.
Since all three had eaten breakfast, none of them were hungry at noon. They just scrolled through their phones, reading the endless stream of breaking news. Tang Mo, however, watched the news while simultaneously circulating the spiritual power within her body.
Aside from the spatial attribute, a person's other four attributes—Life, Strength, Speed, and spiritual power—could all be increased through continuous training. The process was just incredibly slow.
Besides constant training, one's attribute points could also be increased through combat or by consuming abnormal treasures. Both methods were much faster than training on one's own.
But combat was always fraught with danger, and abnormal treasures were incredibly rare. Neither was an option for Tang Mo right now. Training might be slow, but it only cost time. Trapped on campus, time was the one thing she didn't lack.
"Momo! Qing! You two, look at the group chat, quick!" Li Lanlan shouted.
With everything that had happened today, the student group chat had been pinging nonstop, so Tang Mo had just muted the notifications.
Clicking into the chat now, she saw the latest message was an official school announcement.
School Administration: This morning, the campus was enveloped by fog. For the safety of all students and faculty, please do not approach it until the situation is clarified. In addition, the school cafeteria will be open from 5 to 8 PM tonight. We ask that all students and faculty arrive on time to dine.
"See? I knew the cafeteria couldn't stay closed forever." Li Lanlan let out a long sigh, finally able to relax.
The school was actually in a bind. A call had come from the higher-ups with explicit instructions to keep everyone away from the fog.
But an order from the top sends those at the bottom scrambling. It was a truly difficult situation for them.
The food supply situation was already uncertain, and the cafeteria had already suspended service for one meal. If they also forbade students from leaving campus at a time like this, there was no telling what kind of uproar it would cause.
But now, forget the fact that all the crops outside had rotted—even if there was food, it couldn't be delivered. If they kept feeding the students every single meal, the cafeteria's reserves would be depleted in less than a month. They were truly caught between a rock and a hard place.
That evening, at the designated time, Tang Mo and her roommates entered the cafeteria right on schedule.
"It seems... there aren't that many people? Aren't they hungry?" Li Lanlan looked around. The crowd in the cafeteria was about the same size as usual, not the sea of people she had imagined.
"The cafeteria was closed, but the supermarkets were open. People aren't going to let themselves starve to death, are they?" Song Qing said calmly.
"The supermarkets..." Li Lanlan froze for a second. "I totally forgot that even if the cafeteria's closed, there are still the supermarkets. And we have so much food in our dorm... there's no way we would've starved. I'm such an idiot."
Tang Mo took a walk around the cafeteria and noticed that the selection of dishes was much smaller than usual. A lot of the food was even leftover from breakfast.
Fortunately, her beloved braised beef noodles had not let her down. Tang Mo was happy. It was so easy to satisfy her these days.
When the three of them finished eating and went to buy milk tea, they found the supermarket's main door tightly shut, with a note taped to it.
"Apologies. As all food items have been sold out, this supermarket is temporarily closed."
T University had a total of three large supermarkets. Tang Mo and her friends went to all of them, only to find the exact same situation at each one.
After all, the products on the shelves were limited. The real bulk of the inventory was in the warehouses behind each supermarket.
The campus supermarkets were all university-owned, and the administration hadn't stopped the students from panic buying. Everyone knew that stockpiling goods was what gave the people of Huaxia the greatest sense of security. Prohibiting all purchases right now would only create even more chaos.
Once the items on the shelves were sold out, they simply closed the supermarket doors and didn't restock. This was a way of preserving a large stockpile of mobile resources.
After spending a day in the dorm, they hadn't felt the severity of it all. But now, Song Qing and Li Lanlan finally had a true grasp of the situation.
A supermarket wouldn't sell out just because the cafeteria skipped one lunch service. The real reason was the mass death of agricultural crops.
Moreover, everyone could clearly sense it: the breakfast items that had been put out in the cafeteria smelled a little off.
They didn't seem like they'd been left out for just one day, but more like two or three. The students who went to eat all noticed it, so the breakfast foods were left there, untouched.
"It looks like the school is about to take action," Tang Mo murmured to herself.
Li Lanlan and Song Qing also realized the gravity of the situation, and their expressions grew much more somber.
The three returned to their dorm and immediately started taking stock of their remaining food, feeling incredibly thankful for their shopping spree the night before.
The collective purchasing power of nearly a thousand people hoarding supplies was terrifying. The fastest among them had bolted for the supermarkets the instant they saw the news that morning.
In the end, only a minority of people managed to grab anything. They were incredibly fortunate to have as much food as they did.
Li Lanlan, who was used to having snacks after a meal, didn't dare to eat any now. She just hugged her two bags of snacks tightly.
"I've got to ration these and make them last until things go back to normal."
'Go back to normal? I'm afraid that day will never come.'
While circulating her spiritual body to train it, Tang Mo was also downloading some videos.
She had a method for training her spiritual power, but it wouldn't be of much use in the early stages.
As for her other attributes, she had to train them based on her own condition. Otherwise, if an emergency really struck, it would be useless to have a fine sword but not a single bit of skill to wield it.
Tang Mo downloaded a ton of videos: fitness routines for strengthening the body, tutorials on how to use knives, and countless others of all kinds.
People with high spiritual power had much better memories and learning abilities than ordinary people. As long as she practiced diligently, even if she couldn't become a martial arts master, she could at least learn enough by imitation to defend herself. Tang Mo truly wasn't asking for much.
That morning, everyone in the group chat had been lost and angry, full of complaints. Now, they had already moved on to discussing the future.
Wu Yi (Life Science Institute): The school really phoned it in with dinner tonight. They cancel lunch and then try to pass off morning leftovers for dinner. Just great.
Zhao Jian (Civil Engineering): You should be grateful. Soon, you might not even get the half-assed stuff. If this fog doesn't lift, there's no telling how many days the school's food supplies will last.
An Yang (Social Science Academy): Let's just wait for official news at this point. The situation isn't clear. Anyone who has food should start rationing it.
Tang Mo knew of this An Yang. He was a well-known figure on campus and also her class president—a person with real leadership talent.
In her past life, after the students and faculty organized themselves, An Yang had been one of the leaders. His decision-making and organizational skills were not to be underestimated.
Li Qian (Foreign Language College): Fine by me. I was trying to lose weight anyway. Now's the perfect chance.
With the topic of dieting brought up, the other girls in the chat started chiming in, even cracking jokes. The atmosphere in the group instantly lightened.
At 8 PM, the national news station made a formal announcement:
"Testing has confirmed that all land has been 'contaminated' and is no longer suitable for crop cultivation. The nation has activated its emergency protocols. We will continuously open our granaries and distribute grain reserves. All restaurants, supermarkets, and other stores selling food products are hereby nationalized. Compensation measures will be announced at a later date. According to feedback from our embassies abroad, the situation is the same in every country around the globe. Humanity has officially entered the Great Famine Era!
Furthermore, fog has appeared in multiple locations worldwide. Analysis indicates the gas is extremely harmful to human beings. For your own safety, we implore the public: DO NOT GO NEAR IT. DO NOT GO NEAR IT!"
The news station repeated this announcement a full five times. Every viewer was stunned, frozen in front of their screens.
Even those who had been clinging to a sliver of hope now understood. The Great Famine Era was real. Humanity was truly facing its greatest catastrophe.
The once-boisterous group chat fell completely silent. Everyone was speechless. In that moment, nobody knew what to say.
They were a group of people completely surrounded by fog. If entering a Great Famine Era was tragic enough, then being trapped by the fog with no way out was compounding tragedy with tragedy. It was as if they'd been left with no path to survival at all.