Chapter 2

I finally confirmed one thing.

Since Ethan knew in advance that the extreme cold was coming, he must also have prepared in advance how to guard against me.

I couldn’t waste time with him in this house.

This upscale community looked respectable, but in reality it was too densely populated. Once the rules collapsed, heat sources and food would become targets. This place would become the first place everyone rushed to loot.

In the two days I survived in my last life, I had already seen many bloody cases caused by fighting over supplies.

I also understood that a truly safe shelter had to meet three conditions.

Far from the city, easy to lock down, and able to stockpile supplies.

A place immediately jumped into my mind.

A farm!

I had bought that farm a few years earlier. It was far from the city, surrounded by pine forest and pastureland, with few intersections and sparse people.

Back then, I bought it only because I wanted my son to have a place to go and play during holidays.

But now, it might save our lives!

I didn’t think much and drove there immediately.

The snow hadn’t come yet. The weather was bright, but the hands holding the steering wheel kept trembling.

I wasn’t afraid of the extreme cold.

What I was afraid of was people.

When I got to the farm, I realized things weren’t as simple as I thought.

The farmhouse had been unoccupied for too long. Wind leaked through the window gaps, the door lock was old, the basement was damp, and the fence was just for show.

A house like this wouldn’t survive a real blizzard, let alone someone like Ethan coming to smash the door.

I stood in the yard. The wind seemed to up from the ground, blowing until my back felt cold.

I clearly realized that this wasn’t a project I could complete alone.

And it wasn’t a battle I could win alone.

I immediately thought of Kelly.

She was my best friend and lived next door to me.

She was a senior architectural designer, but because of her gambling-addict husband’s harassment, her divorce had failed, and she could only be kept here.

I often helped cover for where she went, so her husband wouldn’t affect her work.

Even though she still couldn’t avoid being entangled again in the end, she was still grateful to me.

So even if the food in that apartment wasn’t enough for two people to split, she still took me in without hesitation.

In this life, I must take Kelly and escape from these two demons!

I drove back to the community and parked directly next door.

I knocked. No small talk.

The moment the door opened, Kelly saw me—her pupils suddenly tightened, and the next second she lunged forward and hugged me.

She held me very tightly, like she was going to snatch me back from death.

“You’re back too, aren’t you?” Her voice was trembling, but unusually clear. “You still remember everything!”

I hugged her back. The breath stuck in my chest finally settled.

Thinking back to my last life, before I died, I saw with my own eyes the torture Kelly suffered under Rick.

Facing a scene like that, Ethan even grinned and told me to watch, saying he had already treated me very well.

I spoke with certainty. “This time, none of us will die.”

Kelly let go of me. Her eyes were red, but she didn’t cry.

She nodded. “Mm!”

“And Rick can’t know what we’re doing, or he’ll kill us in advance!”

I nodded solemnly.

We found an entertainment venue with extremely high privacy and laid out the temporary plan I had made for discussion.

The farm, the resources we needed to prepare, how to avoid being controlled by Kelly’s alcoholic husband, and how to avoid Ethan continuing to pester us later.

This was a meeting with no way back.

“Start with at least six months of independent survival as the baseline.”

“Insulation materials, sealing strips, thick curtains, cold-barrier layers.”

“Kerosene stove, wood stove, fuel barrels, fire extinguishers, carbon monoxide alarms.”

“But the most important thing is that the house on the farm is still very fragile right now.” I showed the photos to Kelly, and she immediately took out her phone.

“No problem. I know people.”

As a senior architect, contacting a top security construction company was simply not hard for her.

“...I have a farmhouse that needs emergency renovation. Do you remember the ‘Survival—Green—Circulation’ project you proposed last week?

It’s very similar to what I need this time. Can you send someone to the site this afternoon to take a look?”

“Money isn’t an issue. This is my personal project. There’s no middle party, and the funds can be put in place directly.”

“OK. After you refine that project plan again, give me a version. Get it to me before you get off work in the morning.”

Kelly, talking about work so confidently at this moment, was practically glowing.

Thinking of what we went through in my last life, my heart tightened again in an instant.

In this life, not only do we have to survive this extreme cold, we also have to make the people who hurt us disappear forever.