Chapter 81

The raft floated on the surface of the river, rising and falling with the surging waves. With the boat engine fixed at the rear, it slowly fought against the current, heading toward the opposite bank of the river.

This river is at the uppermost stream of the Qinghe River, actually the source of the Qinghe River. Due to continuous rainfall, the river water had risen significantly, and the current was very fast. The river had widened a lot, and it wasn’t easy for an ordinary boat to cross. If not careful, it would be swept downstream by the swift current.

After the river flows out of Youcheng, it passes through an area with a large drop in elevation, creating a large waterfall. Further ahead, it merges with another river and eventually forms the Qinghe River, which flows through the Northern Plateau. The waterfall area is dangerous, and the dam built early on was destroyed in a natural disaster last year and hasn’t been repaired, completely cutting off Youcheng’s waterways from the outside.

This area has now become a deadly gap. If a boat fails to cross the river smoothly and gets swept downstream, it will fall through the damaged dam opening, and there’s no chance of survival.

The raft, after all, was a “golden finger.” Even though it couldn’t resist disasters like Shu Fu’s floating island house, it was still more stable than an ordinary boat when drifting on the water. However, because of the swift current, the raft couldn’t cross the river in a straight line, so it was currently traveling at an angle.

The rain increased again. On the open deck with no shelter, Yue Dong and Xu Tingfeng sat in the wind and rain, occasionally looking at each other, sometimes staring blankly at the small cabin behind them. Yue Dong was fine, but Xu Tingfeng rarely showed such an expression. He seemed a little dazed and unsure how to react.

As they stared blankly at the cabin door, it opened, and Chen Fa stepped out. She handed them a waterproof plastic sheet, two bottles of water, and two pieces of chocolate, saying, “Sorry, make do with this,” before turning and heading back into the cabin.

Chen Fa’s raft and Lu Zheng’s raft were almost identical. The small cabin was at the rear of the raft, while the front had a spacious deck. The cabin only had front and rear doors and a small window on the side. Both Chen Fa and Shu Fu could enter, but Yue Dong and Xu Tingfeng couldn’t.

Chen Fa hadn’t wanted to waste time explaining where they found the raft or the boat engine, but after following Shu Fu’s suggestion, she had first accompanied her to the two cars. She watched as Shu Fu stored the off-road vehicle and then, using the pickup truck for cover, took out the raft from the darkness, placed it on the river, and fixed the boat engine at the rear of the raft before slowly steering it toward Yue Dong and Xu Tingfeng.

But neither of them expected that Yue Dong and Xu Tingfeng couldn’t enter the cabin.

It was as if they had encountered an invisible barrier. They could clearly see the two of them inside the cabin, but no matter what, they couldn’t step inside.

Shu Fu then understood. It wasn’t that the other rafts had no protective function, but rather that this protection didn’t work for her.

At this point, some peculiarities couldn’t be hidden anymore, but Chen Fa didn’t elaborate on them. The four of them had just walked through the line between life and death. She trusted and understood them well enough.

Yue Dong and Xu Tingfeng were not the type of people to abandon their companions in a crisis or become ruthless when things went wrong. Chen Fa thought it didn’t matter if they discovered these peculiarities, but she wouldn’t explain or reveal her cards.

In the end, she simply closed the front door, shutting out the two on the outside.

Inside the cabin, Shu Fu had already taken out a small camping table and two chairs, offering one to Chen Fa to sit on. She had enough furniture in her space to help arrange the cabin a little, but the river crossing was too short a journey, so it wasn’t the right time for such things. Instead, she brought out two cups of hot milk tea, one for Chen Fa and one for herself, to replenish their strength.

But even just a cup of milk tea left Chen Fa both surprised and delighted.

“Did you store these things in your backpack before?” Chen Fa glanced into her backpack and quickly realized that aside from the raft and weapons, it only contained a water purifier and a fishing rod. Not only did she have this cup of bubble tea, which clearly came from a pre-apocalypse milk tea shop, but even the table legs seemed impossible to materialize.

“Mm, my golden finger appeared a bit earlier,” Shu Fu said modestly.

Since they still had some time before crossing the river, Shu Fu quickly explained some details about their golden fingers, saving Chen Fa the time of experimenting herself.

Chen Fa’s golden finger was almost identical to Lu Zheng’s, with the only difference being the weapon. Shu Fu had originally thought the axe was a standard weapon, but seeing Chen Fa’s gun, she realized each person’s weapon must be different.

Chen Fa’s gun could ignore obstacles and darkness, allowing for long-range shooting. It also had automatic silencing and aiming functions when fired. Compared to a handgun, it was more like a delicate, miniature automatic sniper rifle.

However, this gun couldn’t use regular bullets. According to the instructions, three bullets would automatically refresh inside the gun each day. Once used up, they were gone, but unused bullets could be stored.

As for the raft, she had only seen Lu Zheng’s raft before, without actually floating on it, so she didn’t have a true sense of its stability.

Though this raft couldn’t compare to her constant temperature, highly protective floating island house, its stability was still pretty good. It was even more stable than ordinary large boats during navigation. Even though the wind and rain were heavy outside, and the water was turbulent and the waves were churning, the raft still moved forward steadily.

But apart from that, it didn’t seem to have any other disaster-resistant functions. At the moment, they kept the back door of the cabin open to maintain control over the boat engine, allowing the wind and rain to pour into the cabin and wet the floor at the door.

If the waves were any bigger, or if there were a thunderstorm, hail, water tornado, or giant waves… the raft and small cabin would likely be damaged, or even capsized.

However, there are both losses and gains. Chen Fa’s raft has no specific usage time, meaning it’s like an ordinary mode of transportation stored in her backpack compartment. She can take it out and use it whenever needed, whether it’s for a few days or months, as long as it’s not damaged—she can use it for as long as she wants.

If Chen Fa’s raft had the ability to withstand extreme natural disasters, Shu Fu might even consider keeping Chen Fa and her grandmother here after completing their task, staying with her for months in an uninhabited water area.

Of course, this would be on the condition that Chen Fa’s grandmother could enter this small cabin and wouldn’t be blocked.

Additionally, there’s another issue: her drifting island house has an “exclusive” function. At present, she isn’t sure whether this “exclusive” function applies to all people or just to regular people who aren’t awakeners.

If the “exclusive” function applies to everyone, without activating the drifting bottle’s protective shield, Chen Fa could board the raft but not enter the drifting island house. It’s possible that she wouldn’t even be able to approach the roof’s edge.

If they encounter extreme weather, they wouldn’t be able to take refuge in her drifting island house. Not to mention, when she activates the raft’s protective shield, they might even be ejected from the raft if they are on the deck…

---

While Shu Fu was quietly thinking, Chen Fa examined her panel and found the world’s main quest and side quests, both of which appeared as garbled text. Upon opening them, the message “System TKSE—21S missing error, no tasks available” appeared.

Chen Fa speculated that if the system wasn’t malfunctioning and the tasks could proceed normally, the raft might slowly upgrade over time. After all, the current cabin was quite empty and looked somewhat desolate.

Shu Fu couldn’t furnish the cabin with much furniture at the moment, but there were other things she could provide.

She took out a storage box from her wristband space, which was smaller than one cubic meter, and began placing things inside.

A large bag of dehydrated vegetables, 10 gas canisters for portable stoves, several unopened boxes of marinated duck, couple’s lungs, and spicy chicken, a few boxes of fried crispy meat, several boxes of chicken mushroom fried rice she made, some dumplings, steamed buns, stir-fried noodles, and congee, several servings of spicy beef rice noodles and braised beef noodles, two boxes of unopened disposable underwear, a pack of tissue, one bottle of mosquito repellent and insecticide, one bar of sulfur soap, shower gel, and shampoo, two sets of spare clothes, several packs of sanitary pads for day and night use, bags of apples, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and oranges, a few cups of packaged coffee and milk tea, basic condiments like salt, sugar, oil, and soy sauce, a bundle of Coca-Cola, boxed milk, and coconut water.

Chen Fa watched in astonishment as the storage box quickly filled up.

Shu Fu added some more items, including the pack of gold she had given to Chen Fa earlier, plus a few gold bars and rings, and then stuffed in a few cup noodles and self-heating rice packs. Finally, she sighed, “Aside from the instant noodles, everything else is ready-to-eat food. Your cabin is still bare, and there’s no place to cook, so just make do with this. I’ll leave the camping table and chairs here for now. They should be able to be stored in the backpack compartment along with the raft, so you won’t have to sit on the floor next time you come in. Also, this box is full of cooked food, so it needs to be kept fresh in the backpack compartment, and it’s more convenient to grab things. If you find it inconvenient and want to separate them later, you can organize it yourself.”

“…” Chen Fa opened her mouth but couldn’t speak at first.

Shu Fu urged her to store the box and then took out a case of bottled mineral water for her to store in the backpack compartment. The case contained 24 bottles of 550 ml each. There was still a lot of 5L purified water in her space, but that was too large to carry around regularly, so bottled water was more discreet.

“That’s enough!” Chen Fa quickly stopped her when she saw Shu Fu about to grab more things. “We’ll reach the southern part of Youcheng soon, and I can resupply there. You’ve worked hard to store all this, so don’t give it all to us.”

As she said this, she suddenly became more perceptive, “Once we get to the south of the city, will you still be with us?”

If it were before, Chen Fa would never have thought of such a question.

But after tonight, everything was clearly different.

With the appearance of the panel and the gold finger, she suddenly realized there were fragments of memories in her mind she had never paid attention to before—memories that didn’t belong to this world.

Before the appearance of the gold finger today—before the “awakening,” she had never considered these memory fragments unusual. Only after the panel appeared did it all become clear, as if an epiphany had struck.

The memory scenes were unclear—she couldn’t see her own face, but there were ordinary life fragments: sitting on the apartment sofa, enjoying quiet reading time alone; dining with friends, eating barbecue, and everyone toasting to her, seemingly happy; driving and waiting at a traffic light, watching the promo for a popular TV show on a large billboard across the street—it was a disaster-themed animated series, with incredibly realistic and grand special effects, sparking heated discussions when it aired… But she never watched the show, and now couldn’t remember exactly what kind of disaster it was…

Awakening seemed to have made her more perceptive. She could clearly distinguish which memories belonged to another world. She didn’t know exactly what happened or which world she came from, but she felt that, as time passed, she would gradually recover all her memories.

This is a kind of intuition, like the things she senses from Shu Fu at this moment.

Shu Fu doesn’t want to deceive Chen Fa, but right now, she hasn’t finished checking in and isn’t sure if the progress bar will fully fill. If it does, it’s uncertain how far she can continue with them; she could be left behind at any time.

In the end, she tells the truth: “I can only be sure once we reach the southern part of the city.”

When they were fixing the boat’s engine earlier, she used her phone to check the downloaded map. Lixiang Wharf is across the river at an oblique angle, so she slightly adjusted the engine’s direction, planning to land directly there after crossing the river. That would indirectly complete the check-in.

“So, this is a game world?” Chen Fa asked, because during college, the four girls in their dorm played a similar survival game: starting with a backpack and some tools, trying to survive in a disaster world. It was too similar to the golden finger she now had.

“I’m not sure, but it’s very likely. However… you should also have memories from another world, right?”

“Yeah,” Chen Fa nodded. “Some very ordinary memory fragments. There’s no useful information, and I had them before today, only now realizing they’re memories from another world.”

“I have memories from that world too. Judging by these memories, their gaming technology is far behind this level.” She said, stretching out to pinch Chen Fa’s face hard. “That hurts, right? That world doesn’t even have holographic games. How could they have this kind of technology?”

Chen Fa: …

**

Fifteen minutes later, the four of them quietly arrived on the land in the southern part of the city.

The water level in the south is higher than in the north, and the riverbank is gone. The map showed that Lixiang Wharf had already been partially submerged. Shu Fu adjusted the boat’s engine for a while to bring the raft as close as possible to the land.

She didn’t put away the boat engine, planning to directly give it to Chen Fa. Her raft had no power and couldn’t move on its own, so when it drifted in the water, it was truly drifting aimlessly, much worse than her situation.

After Shu Fu and Chen Fa got ashore, neither of them paid attention to the raft floating on the water. Yue Dong and Xu Tingfeng glanced back at the raft a few times, but the two who could enter the small house didn’t react. The two of them, who couldn’t even enter the house, naturally had to give up.

So much had happened tonight, and their symptoms of concussion seemed to be worsening. They were feeling dizzy and even began to doubt whether their inability to enter the small house on the raft was just an illusion.

Looking around, the riverbank was very dark, similar to the northern part of the city, and there were no signs of any defense.

Along the way, they had believed that once they reached the southern part of the city, they would enter a safe zone because there were troops here, even if it was just a small team.

But shortly before, as the raft drew closer to the opposite bank, that hope began to fade bit by bit.

The opposite bank was too dark. If there were troops or survivors managing to function normally, why was there not even a single light?

The four of them felt heavy-hearted, but the most urgent thing was to find their companions.

They walked along the shallow water by the riverbank for a while. Xu Tingfeng couldn’t help but turn back and ask Chen Fa, “Are you sure they crossed the river?”

Before Chen Fa could answer, they heard rustling noises from the greenery nearby. All four of them immediately raised their weapons. The dense grass not far away swayed, reminding them of the days when they were chased by strange fish.

Shu Fu quickly took out her flashlight and shone it. Through the rain and the shaking grass, a wet cat head popped out. When it saw them, it meowed twice. The four of them sighed in relief. It wasn’t a strange fish, it was Xu Jiechu’s black-and-white American Shorthair cat.

Sure enough, a moment later, a lowered voice came from the grass: “Zhao Cai, where did you go… Bro, is it really you? It’s them! They made it through!”

From the greenery, someone quickly ran over, passing by others and accurately hugging Shu Fu, who was walking at the back.

“You made it safely!” Lu Zheng’s voice came from above her head, trembling with joy and lingering fear. “I was so worried about you…” He had been worried but had to lead the others across the river first, as she had asked.

Each second waiting here felt painfully long. In the newly emerged memory fragments, it seemed he had waited for her like this before, anxiously and more than once.

The memory fragments were still disjointed, but certain emotions overlapped, and because of this overlap, the pain of each second waiting grew stronger.

Fortunately, she was fine.

“I’m fine! How about Chen Fa’s grandmother?” Shu Fu patted Lu Zheng’s back.

“She’s fine, not injured. She’s with Xiao Ce and the others on the second floor of a nearby restaurant, resting. The three of us came out to wait for you.” He released her at the right moment and turned to check on Xu Tingfeng and Yue Dong.

Xu Jiechu and Jiang Dai were also anxiously waiting. At this moment, they grabbed their families to check, then hurriedly thanked Shu Fu and Chen Fa.

Especially Xu Jiechu, from the time they met until now, this was the first time Shu Fu had seen him stand before Chen Fa so respectfully, bowing to her while saying thanks.

“Changed your tune, huh?” Chen Fa chuckled.

It seemed Xu Jiechu really had changed. In the past, a smile from Chen Fa would have made him explode in anger, but now he remained polite: “You saved my brother’s life. From now on, you’re my sister!”

Chen Fa: …

“That’s not necessary, she’s not that old.”

Jiang Dai, standing beside him, could understand. The bus had exploded, her teammates had died in front of her, others in her team were injured, and most importantly, her family had disappeared. In that moment, the anxious yet powerless feeling was something she never wanted to experience again.

“It’s fine, I’m okay, I was just blown out by the shockwave,” Yue Dong reassured as he hugged his wife. In fact, he had many scratches and bruises on his body. At this moment, besides the dizziness and nausea from the concussion, his arms, legs, joints, and back hurt terribly, but he certainly wouldn’t show it so as not to make her worry.

While they were catching up, Lu Zheng quickly updated Shu Fu and Chen Fa on the situation on their side.

They were already driving fast, and as they were about to reach the riverbank, they were attacked by snipers from a position similar to theirs on another street.