Chapter 71 - 30: "Ragtag Army

Chapter 71: Chapter 30: "Ragtag Army

The peace in the room didn’t last long.

Yu Zhengze had only been asleep for just over two hours when a piercing ringtone came from the bedroom.

Yu Xian was reading a paper. He looked up, and sure enough, the bedroom door was pushed open.

His cousin still hadn’t changed his clothes. His face was etched with exhaustion, but his eyes were already clear.

"Okay... Understood. Which levee? Right, I’m heading over now."

His cousin rasped out a few short replies, hung up, and began looking for his keys to leave.

"Leaving, cuz?"

"Yeah, for emergency supply delivery. The militia and fire departments are short-staffed, so they’re reassigning personnel to help out."

Yu Zhengze grabbed the raincoat by the door, then, as if remembering something, took the notebook labeled "TDI" from the table.

"You take care of yourself, too. Don’t go worrying about nonsense. With classes canceled, you should use the time to get some good rest."

With that, he slammed the security door shut with a heavy THUD.

Yu Xian walked to the window and looked down, watching his cousin head downstairs to his car.

Although it was broad daylight, the sky was as dark as evening.

The floodwater below had already reached the steps, and broken branches from several old trees were strewn across the ground.

On his phone’s notification bar, small icons for weather warnings were lined up one after another.

Red warning for torrential rain, yellow warning for thunderstorms, orange warning for gales, red warning for geological hazards.

Yu Xian clicked on the trending topics. That "Man-made Downpour" topic from earlier had already shot to number one, with posts scrolling past one after another.

More than half a month of continuous torrential rain had led to severe flooding in various regions, greatly impacting the lives of ordinary people.

The main feed was filled with shocking scenes of devastation posted by netizens from all over.

Someone had posted a video of the underground garage in their apartment complex. Murky, muddy water poured down the ramp, and the B2 level had all but turned into a reservoir. Cars worth hundreds of thousands were submerged, with only their roofs faintly visible.

Another person lived on the ground floor of an old apartment building. In their video, foul water was already pouring in from the balcony. Slippers floated on the surface, the sofa was submerged, and appliances were stacked high on top of cabinets.

Worse still were those in high-rises. When the water and power went out, with no backup generators, the elevators stopped working. They had no choice but to climb all the way down on foot.

In one video, a middle-aged man filming panted as he climbed the stairs. The stairwell was pitch-black, illuminated only by the unsteady bobbing of his phone’s flashlight.

There were also flooded storefronts, collapsed walls, and trash cans and brightly colored share-bikes floating down the streets...

The familiar order of people’s lives had been completely shattered.

Loss of property, life at a standstill, fear and uncertainty about the unknown.

All these negative emotions were piling up and festering behind every screen.

And the trending topic about the "man-made downpour" and a "secret experiment gone wrong" became the sole outlet for this enormous tide of emotion.

The comments section for the topic had spiraled completely out of control.

"Arrest those scientists! Who gives them the right to gamble with the lives of ordinary people?!"

"My shop is completely destroyed! All my appliances are waterlogged! Who’s going to pay for these damages? Are you scientists going to pay for it?"

"’For science,’ my ass! They’re just a bunch of maniacs! Selfish maniacs!"

"Investigate them! They must be investigated! Those scientists should all get the death penalty! Those bastards have no conscience!"

Some people even began doxxing famous physicists and meteorologists, tagging their accounts in the comments and furiously hurling abuse at them, regardless of whether they had anything to do with it.

Even the few rational comments or academic analyses attempting to debunk the rumor were viciously attacked and torn to shreds.

Looking at the vicious comments, he thought back to the scientific points he’d just made to Shi Zuozhou in the group chat—refutations based on basic physics. In the face of this massive vortex of public opinion, reason and logic seemed so pale and powerless.

No one cared about the wattage. No one cared about the distance between the ionosphere and the troposphere. And no one bothered to verify if the "Global Climate Alliance" was just some sham organization.

Yu Xian was reminded of a passage written by Gustave Le Bon in *Ragtag Army*:

"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn a blind eye to evidence that is not to their taste. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."

And right now, that pseudoscientific article was the very "illusion" the public so desperately needed.

Rather than an "unstoppable force of nature," people were more willing to believe it was a "man-made disaster."

If it was a "man-made disaster," it meant there were specific people to hold responsible, specific targets for their hatred, a clear chain of cause and effect where someone could be blamed.

Once a scapegoat was found, their anger would have a target, and their fear would have a face.

Yu Xian thought of the witch hunts in medieval Europe. When the Black Death raged, the Little Ice Age brought famine, crops failed, and livestock died. Unable to explain these disasters scientifically, people blamed them on "witches’ curses."

Perhaps, to many people, these researchers of "all that physics mumbo-jumbo" weren’t so different from medieval witches hiding in the woods, brewing poisons.

’Maybe they didn’t need the truth. Maybe they just needed a target.’

He tried posting the same reasoning he’d used to explain things to Shi Zuozhou anyway. Almost immediately, a netizen replied, "Look, a bootlicker for the scientists," and angrily told everyone to doxx him.

’This is the most terrifying experiment of all...’