Chapter 157: Swimming Pool and Park

Chapter 157: Swimming Pool and Park

This is a semi-open T-shaped swimming pool with a changing room. Probably to account for the occasional closure of the wooden raft's protective shield, a glass wall and roof for protection have been built on one side of the T-shaped pool, resembling a room missing one wall.

The glass enclosure connects to two log cabin-style changing rooms. Visitors to the swimming pool raft can change into their swimsuits in the changing rooms and enter the glass indoor area of the pool through the back door.

The sunken blue-green pool, which is level with the deck, extends from this semi-open glass enclosure. Swimmers can swim from one end of the pool all the way to the back of the deck. The top half of the T-shaped pool is horizontally integrated into the back of the raft, forming an infinity pool.

Although the facilities of this pool are not as comprehensive as those on the second-floor balcony of Shu Fu's villa, it is already very luxurious for the companions.

After looking around, Shu Fu noticed that there were no management rooms on the raft except for the changing rooms. So, if the rooms on this wooden raft and the pool water got dirty, how would they be cleaned?

After trying a few things, she discovered that she could manage these unmanned rafts directly through the function screen of the Drift Island House. When she selected "instant dust removal," all the unmanned rafts would be cleaned spotlessly.

The park raft connected to the swimming pool raft was similar to the green activity area in a neighborhood. There were lush lawns, short shrubs, blooming wildflowers, and green trees scattered across the landscape. The stone slab paths winding through the lawn had benches for sitting and resting, and there were small open spaces with fitness equipment.

Even more interestingly, upon stepping onto this park raft, they heard crisp and pleasant bird songs, as if they were truly in a city park.

However, they soon discovered that the bird songs were simulated and came from hidden speakers along the paths. The shrubs, lawns, wildflowers, and trees were all realistically simulated to closely resemble real plants, but those who knew—like Yao Guofan—could tell upon touching them that they weren't real plants.

"But the level of simulation is so high that whether it's real or fake doesn't matter much. After all, this is on a raft," Yao Guofan said after his examination, adding, "Fortunately, everything in the Planting House is real..."

"Dad, what you're saying... We planted those with our own hands, so of course, they're real," Hua Qiong replied.

What kind of nonsense are these two—old and young—going on about?

After touring the two public facility rafts, everyone became a bit distracted from work. The younger ones wanted to swim in the pool, and the older ones wanted to take a stroll in the park, or sit on the stone benches to listen to the bird songs, or stretch their bodies in the fitness area.

But despite their desires, everyone now felt a strong sense of responsibility. Especially the owners and workers in the Planting House and Pet House felt a great sense of responsibility and didn't want to slack off during their working hours.

After upgrading to the Planting House, an additional employee could be hired to work more days per week—five days instead of the previous part-time schedule.

This time, Xu Tingfeng finally secured the job, and his dark brown wristband was upgraded to orange.

Currently, apart from him, there was almost no spare labor on the raft. Even Chen Yuezheng had set up a combat training class, stowing away tables and chairs and laying out thin cushions when the Lighthouse Milk Tea Shop was closed, symbolically charging a few raft points to teach those who wanted to learn.

So, other than Xu Tingfeng, no one else could handle this job.

However, Xu Tingfeng himself refused to acknowledge this fact. After all, apart from him, there was his unfortunate younger brother who was still idle.

But... it couldn't be said that he was completely idle. Nowadays, he spent three days a week at the milk tea shop learning combat with Chen Yuezheng. Initially, Xu Tingfeng thought that his younger brother's desire to marry into the Chen family was still alive and that his main purpose for going to the milk tea shop was to get close to Chen Fa.

So, he followed him twice, mainly to supervise and ensure he didn't do anything too embarrassing. But to his surprise, Xu Jiechu was actually diligently learning from Chen Yuezheng, even enduring repeated throws without asking to stop. Was he turning over a new leaf? However, now that they were all on the raft, there was no place for him to showcase his combat skills even if he learned them.

But in any case, being eager to learn was a good thing. At least he was willing to stick to one thing seriously and grow through effort. Whether or not he could apply what he learned in the future, he would support him.

However, Xu Tingfeng didn't know that Xu Jiechu's determination to seriously learn combat was related to the previous Zhashui County operation.

That time, everyone else who stayed behind had their reasons, but he was the only one who felt he couldn't help, which was why he wasn't allowed to go along. Especially since he couldn't even beat Lu Ce, a fact that his older brother pointed out, leaving him unable to find a word of rebuttal.

It was true. He feared falls, pain, and getting beaten up. His perseverance was low, so when they were in Chamu County, despite being given the same opportunity, he was the only one whose skills were still the worst after half a year.

So this time, he decided to pick himself up from where he fell. First, he would master combat to increase his combat effectiveness, and then—he would find a way to make an appearance on other rafts!

After all, there are more and more towed rafts now, and most of them are girls. It's said that after they return home this time, two more companions will be added!

As long as he becomes excellent, he will definitely find a girl who is willing to accept him as a husband!

If Xu Tingfeng had heard his brother's thoughts at this moment, he would probably be utterly shocked...

**

In the evening, the folks who'd been working their butts off all day didn't hurry home to make dinner. Instead, they went back to fetch their swimwear and quickly headed to the pool raft at the rear.

In the era of floods, almost everyone had swimwear ready. Of course, it wasn't the pretty swimwear worn during peaceful times for vacations, but more practical full-coverage swimwear that could protect their bodies when encountering floods.

On the pool raft, a few of the companions who were on leave had been swimming for a while. Even though they were exhausted, they didn't want to leave. They lay on the pool's edge, watching the sea outside the protective shield as light rain fell.

Almost the entire planet had become water, but those waters were dangerous to them. There were all kinds of construction waste, human corpses, and mutated dangerous creatures underwater, making it impossible to swim like in peaceful times.

On land, clean water was too precious, and daily water usage was rationed, so it was impossible to use it for something as frivolous as swimming.

However, after drifting at sea for so long, they longed to swim freely in the vast sea. Now, this raft's pool had fulfilled their dreams of swimming.

Especially as they rested on the edge of the pool and looked at the ocean outside, they felt as if they had merged with the sea.

The raft had returned to the area of Original Land and was heading north along the eastern sea of Xizhou Province, planning to meet Liu Shuang and Han Lan near Dari County.

On the western horizon of the raft, the shadow of land could be faintly seen. It was Fengshang Plateau, and the shadow of the land was very long, much larger than the small pieces of land they had passed before.

Shu Fu was also one of those resting on the edge of the pool, looking sideways at the sea outside and the distant land on the horizon.

Wu Shaoshan and Zhang Tian from the morning shift joined the others in the water after finishing their work. They had encountered disasters fewer times, so their swimming skills were average, especially Zhang Tian, who could only splash around a bit.

Soon, they were lying on the edge of the pool with Shu Fu, Chen Fa, and Jiang Dai.

"There has always been a theory that we humans actually live on high mountains, and what we call plains are actually plateaus," Wu Shaoshan began slowly. "Many, many years ago, when this planet was just born, the surface temperature was very high, and there were no oceans. The entire planet was enveloped in a thick layer of primitive atmosphere.

It wasn't until many years later that the planet's temperature began to drop, and the water vapor in the atmosphere condensed into droplets, falling to the ground to form the first oceans. But this process was very long, and at first, there were only scattered lakes and rivers on the ground. So, in our memory, the land back then was like the deep sea abyss that is now hard to reach, while the land where we build cities was, relatively speaking, unclimbable high mountains and plateaus..."

Wu Shaoshan turned her head to look at the Fengshang Plateau to the west of the raft, her voice soft and distant: "Do you think that thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years from now, if there are still humans or some other new intelligent beings on this planet, will the plain cities where we once lived become mysterious underwater ruins they want to study? They might not know that the land they live on was once our high mountains, the plateaus where we would pant after running for a bit... Thinking about it this way, doesn't it make us feel particularly insignificant right now?"

Zhang Tian sighed and continued: "Humans are indeed very small. A life spans only a hundred years, human writing has only existed for about 6,000 years, and even tracing back to the origin of humans, it's only about 7 million years. Yet this planet has existed for 4.5 billion years, and dinosaurs alone have been around for 145 million years!

Who knows if dinosaurs had developed intelligence and civilization before their extinction? Perhaps some dinosaur species had evolved intelligence, with their own language, writing, and cities, but everything was wiped out in the catastrophe 66 million years ago...

Such a terrible disaster, after such a long time, any traces that could prove dinosaurs had developed intelligence and civilization might have been obliterated. All the theories scientists have about that period are based on archaeology and inference.

But what if the huge dinosaur fossils they discovered were just the remains of low-intelligence creatures from that era? Like how we have gorillas and monkeys in our zoos, if in the future, another new intelligent civilization discovers the fossilized skeleton of a gorilla by chance and considers them the dominant species of our era?

Wouldn't they similarly conclude that they are the only intelligent life forms on this planet, and that no civilization ever existed in the era we live in now? Once you think about it this way, what's happening to us right now doesn't seem so significant..."

After Zhang Tian finished speaking, she noticed the silence around her. Turning back, she saw that not only were the girls looking at them, but the boys who had been splashing in the water had also swum over and were standing behind them, listening intently, especially Lu Ce, who looked completely absorbed, as if he had entered the world described by Wu Shaoshan and Zhang Tian, seeing the distant past and the distant future.

Wu Shaoshan didn't mind, but Zhang Tian, who had been living on the raft for a long time, felt a bit uncomfortable being the center of attention for the first time. It wasn't that she disliked the feeling; it was just that she hadn't been the focus of everyone's attention in a long time, and it made her a bit uneasy, though not unpleasantly so.

"Wow! No wonder you're from the Book House! That was amazing!" Yao Ruoyun, who had been praising and clapping, said. Since the Book House opened, she had been reading romance novels and reincarnation stories, so what Wu Shaoshan and Zhang Tian had said left her in awe.

Yao Ruoyun's words made Zhang Tian and the others laugh.

Everyone laughed, and they started splashing in the pool again. Lu Ce swam to the glass room area, climbed up to the deck using the nearby ladder, and told the others he wasn't going to swim anymore; he wanted to go to the Book House to read.

Study hard and make progress every day.

**

These past few days, Yao Ruoyun and Lu Zheng have been counting the days. There are only a few days left until their raft completes 100 days of towing, and soon they will add a new sharing function to their raft. Over the past two days, they have been looking into the functions that Shu Fu gave them, trying to decide which one to choose next.

Now that the water resource raft has solved one of Yao Ruoyun's big problems, she is more inclined to choose "instant dust removal" as her next choice. Planting vegetables and grains means it's inevitable that the ground will get dirty due to the soil.

Although the Planting House has now been upgraded to the larger Planting House, the automated parts have increased, but there are still many tasks that require manual labor. Humans are not as precise as machines and can still easily soil the ground. Cleaning it up is really exhausting, so having "instant dust removal" would be incredibly satisfying.

However, she really wants "waste disposal" too. The daily process of concentrating solid waste, tying it up tightly, and putting it into a large cardboard box is tedious. Then, storing it in the backpack compartment and unloading it on some uninhabited small island during the raft's drift is even more so. Finally, digging and burying it there makes the whole process incredibly tedious...

Lu Zheng is also torn between "waste disposal" and "manual renovation." Now that the inn has unlocked its second vending machine, like other functional rooms, it's in a fixed position. He really wants to redesign and rearrange the internal structure and room types of the inn.

Jiang Dai is an architecture major. Although she is a city architect, she knows a bit about interior design, so she can help make the entire inn layout more reasonable.

However, what Lu Zheng didn't expect was that before he could make a decision, his inn was also upgraded.

The raft inn has become a raft hotel!

Author's Note:

In reality, scientists have already made accurate inferences about why dinosaurs did not evolve into a wise civilization: dinosaurs did not need a wise civilization to thrive and reproduce well, so there was no need for brain capacity evolution. This is why their evolution was reflected in teeth, claws, muscles, etc.

It's not necessarily true that a wise civilization is a superior evolutionary path; this is determined by complex biological and environmental factors.

In this story, since the global flood is a disaster that could never happen in reality, many things are beyond scientific understanding, which is why Zhang Tian made such a speculation.

This speculation is also my little idea and does not align with mainstream real science.

For example, many science fiction movies also conceive of high wise civilizations existing on Earth, such as "Transformers" and "Atlantis." A wise civilization existed but collapsed so completely due to massive disasters that it vanished without a trace, leaving only a few remnants—what later generations call unsolved mysteries.