The Ice Age arrived like a verdict.Tianhai — supposed to be warm, a southern city — disappeared under feather snow. Streets vanished, cars looked like tombs. On the phone, group chats oscillated between giddy selfies and panicked texts. No one understood this wasn't a freak storm. This was the end stretching its fingers.
Zhang Yi stretched on the sofa. Twenty degrees Celsius. An iced Budweiser sweating beads in his palm. The heater hummed. Outside, the world froze; inside, he kept his throne.
He scrolled the messages: classmates, the building chat, the hobby forum. "Woke up in the middle of the night—freezing. AC died." "The forecast lied! Who knew?" "Isn't it supposed to be spring? Why is everything white?" Most sounded thrilled — novelty, drama — not fear. That was the tragedy.
He yawned, bored. Tossed the phone. Slid into a bed so plush it felt obscene — top-tier mattress, he'd paid more for comfort than most people made in a year. Then he slept like a man who had no further bills to fear.
Morning came with a ring: Fang Yuqing. White-lotus tone. Fragile, practiced. "Zhang Yi—please tell me you stockpiled. It's freezing. I can't go out."
He let the name sit. Memory flared — the mob, the boots, the one who smiled as they pushed him down. Her voice was the same silk: careful, insistent, hungry.
"Heard it from someone," he said casually. He opened the curtains. Outside, the city had become a low-contrast photograph: traffic signals buried, trees bowed low, balcony railings stitched in white. Snow fell without end. The news on TV ran interviews with shaking anchors in down jackets — even the station's own generators were straining.
"You should've told me earlier," Fang whined. "I'm freezing. Lend me some food? I'll pay back later."
He smiled — the kind that never reached his eyes. "My supplies are almost gone," he typed. "Actually… I just cooked steak."
Then he did something deliberate: he took a photo — pajama-clad, eyes half-closed, a slice of A5 Wagyu blazing on the plate, a glass of wine catching the light. He sent it.
The reply came in three dots, then trembling: "Zhang… please—"
He put the phone face down, sound off. He could feel the small, animal panic on the other end of the line. Perfect. The Ice Age would be slow. Hunger slow-bred desperation. He had the luxury of a timeline. He would let them starve politely before he did anything.
On TV, the number blinked: -65°C. An eighty-degree drop in a single night. Experts kept saying "stay indoors," "avoid frostbite," "authorities are responding." The reporters' lips were blue on the screen; their calm felt like a lie wrapped in a government suit. Survival, Zhang thought, is private. Not public service.
He poured another glass of wine. Outside, a dog's faint bark cut through the wind, then silence. He tasted fat, iron, heat. He listened to his own quiet breathing and mapped the next moves — food rotation, fuel ration, the exact night he would start pulling from the pocket-dimension. He ran numbers: how long his supplies would last if one neighbor arrived begging, if three arrived, if half the block came at once. Calculations were comfort now; revenge would be an exercise later.
He slept again, for a while. When he woke hours later, a dozen unread messages waited — pleas, offers, scheming texts. He opened one: a voice note from Fang, short and raw. "Zhang… please."
He replied with a single sentence: "You should've planned better."
He didn't blacklist her. Not yet. Let her live with the image. Let hunger do its work. Outside, the world iced itself into silence. Inside, in the warm heart of his fortress, Zhang Yi smiled and set the timer on the oven.