Chapter 105

[Within two hours, the new service desk check-in task at the Wei rescue station was completed, achieving 20% progress on the level 5 raft; additional 15% progress bonus; won 2 chances for the prize wheel. (Current progress of level 5 raft: 60%)]

When Shu Fu saw the thick layer of snow outside and the ongoing blizzard, she had a premonition.

The task had indeed been completed. This time, both the base progress bar and the additional progress bonus were very high, directly pushing the level 5 raft progress past the halfway point. It seemed like the task was using this method to tell her how important this seemingly simple encounter was, and that it involved more than just one person.

After a little thought, Shu Fu understood. The freezing rain had trapped the buses and people in Wei. Even if she hadn’t come, Cheng Yu and the others would have encountered survivors, and they couldn’t just ignore them. They would have diverted to send people back to Wei and would definitely have gone up the mountain roads again to rescue another group.

With each back and forth, it would inevitably delay their journey. Perhaps, they would no longer make it to the next rescue station county before nightfall, a place they could have reached otherwise.

They were driving a six-wheel light transport armored vehicle, capable of crossing mountains and rivers. Its main function was to transport people and supplies, but it didn’t have a front shovel like a tracked vehicle. If they were trapped in the wild during the apocalyptic snowstorm that night, they could be buried by the several-meter-high snow or face other disasters caused by the blizzard on the mountain roads.

At that point, it was uncertain who would survive and how many would make it.

The unexpected encounter had kept Liu Shuang, Cheng Yu, and their team in Wei. No matter how bad the conditions in Wei were now, being trapped outdoors was fundamentally different from hiding inside a building.

There weren’t many chances for a prize draw—only two. It wasn’t a good time for it, so as usual, Shu Fu decided to accumulate the chances.

The blizzard lasted a full four days. The temperature measured near the windowsill reached -40°C during the coldest part of the night, and the snow layer outside reached over three meters, completely burying the first floor. Looking out from the second floor, it was as if the first floor no longer existed.

This amount of snow had long surpassed the red alert warning for blizzards. If the internet were still working, everyone’s phones would have displayed a series of red warning icons.

Unfortunately, the internet had already been cut off.

Shu Fu and Cheng Yu’s walkie-talkies, affected by the low temperature, had temporarily stopped working. Later, the batteries failed, and after she replaced them, the walkie-talkie shut itself off shortly after.

Even the satellite signal had deteriorated due to the weather. The message she sent to Chen Fa was delayed, and it took half a day for a reply. The situation in Chamu County was similar to Wei, but arguably even worse.

There, there was first heavy rain, followed by freezing rain with ice pellets, and then another seamless transition into a massive blizzard. In one night, the entire county was icebound. The lower buildings were buried, and many less stable roofs had collapsed. Transportation was completely cut off.

Luckily, the house they had settled in was large and fairly remote. There was a warehouse next to it for storing fodder, and the warehouse was big and solid. They could set up the raft indoors and test the cabin’s cold-resistant functions under extreme temperatures.

The test results showed that in the warehouse, the temperature was -40°C, while inside the small cabin, it was -20°C, which was essentially the difference between a large and small freezer.

However, by lighting a kerosene stove inside the small cabin, they were able to raise the temperature by ten to twenty degrees, so the four of them were not struggling too much. The tough part was for Xu Tingfeng and the others, who couldn’t get into the small cabin. They could only hide inside, wrapped up like bears, staying close to the fireplace and never leaving it, fearing the fire would go out.

It wasn’t clear whether it was the extreme cold storm that triggered it, but on the third morning of the blizzard, Yao Ruoyun’s progress bar suddenly filled up, and the value displayed was: 90.

This value wasn’t as high as Chen Fa’s or Lu Zheng’s, but Shu Fu could feel that it was still a significant threshold.

Yao Ruoyun wasn’t like Lu Zheng, who had memories from another world connected to Shu Fu. When she awakened, Shu Fu had been by her side, so her worldview collapsed, but she had someone to support her, allowing her to quickly adapt.

Nor was she like Chen Fa, who had gone through countless perils, facing attacks from mutated fish and walking through cities full of fish scale syndrome patients, always on the brink of life and death, which had hardened her mental resolve.

Yao Ruoyun seemed like a naïve child who had accidentally wandered into the adult world, suddenly shocked by things beyond her comprehension.

When she awakened, Shu Fu had not yet woken up. The night before, they had taken turns keeping watch. Shu Fu had taken the first half of the night, and Yao Ruoyun the second half. Since she had slept later, she ended up sleeping a little longer.

In a half-dreaming state, Shu Fu heard Yao Ruoyun muttering repeatedly on the mattress beside her, and by the end, there was even a crying tone. When she opened her eyes, she saw Yao Ruoyun squatting halfway, a can disappearing and reappearing in front of her again and again.

Shu Fu: …

But Yao Ruoyun’s face didn’t show joy, only helplessness, unease, and fear. And that fear was still gradually growing. “I’m not dreaming? Am I crazy? That’s impossible, I still know who I am. Crazy people don’t know who they are, right? Then I’m dead, froze to death last night? Is this the world after death? How is the world after death the same as the world before death? And I can still feel cold… Did I time travel? Rebirth? Enter some alternate world? Controlled by aliens? Trapped in a game? Infinite flow!?”

Shu Fu: …

She looked at the top of Yao Ruoyun’s head, where the white light bar had completely stabilized, showing a full progress bar and a number.

Shu Fu sighed. No wonder. So she had awakened.

However, to be honest, that last series of guesses Yao Ruoyun made was pretty much the same as what she and Chen Fa, Lu Zheng, and the others had discussed before about what might happen to them…

Shu Fu had originally planned to give Yao Ruoyun some space to adapt to her current state, but seeing her acting so crazed as if she was about to lose her mind, Shu Fu had no choice but to interrupt her repetitive actions of putting the can back in and taking it out of her backpack.

“You’re not crazy. You’ve just awakened,” Shu Fu said, finally halting Yao Ruoyun’s actions and muttering.

Yao Ruoyun cautiously leaned toward her, “Senior, were you also caught by aliens?”

“…”

Shu Fu rubbed her temples. This early in the morning, it felt like they both had lost their minds. She sighed and decided to play along. She stretched out both hands—one holding a bowl of century egg and lean meat porridge, the other holding a cup of hot milk tea. “Which one would you like for breakfast?”

Yao Ruoyun stared at the food and drink that appeared out of nowhere in Shu Fu’s hands, her whole body trembling, even her pupils shaking. “S-Senior… So you’re the alien!”

Shu Fu: …

Half an hour later, the two of them were sitting cross-legged on a thick, heated blanket mattress on the glass balcony, surrounded by two efficient heaters. They had removed their thick outer coats and were gathered around a low wooden table placed in the middle of the mattress, eating steaming century egg and lean meat porridge, crispy fried dough sticks, and chive and egg dumplings.

The raft was currently placed in the cleared space of the tea house lobby. Since Yao Ruoyun had just awakened, she was very curious about her raft, but because it was too large, when she tried to take it out, the message “Not enough space to place” appeared. So now, they could only stay on Shu Fu’s raft’s terrace.

With the appearance of the glass balcony, the height increased considerably. Fortunately, the architectural style of the building here was similar to that of Xizhou Province, with higher single-floor levels, which meant the raft was just at the right height to fit.

Yao Ruoyun’s special ability, or “golden finger,” was exactly the same as Chen Fa’s and Lu Zheng’s. She had a 20-slot time-freezing backpack, containing four starting items: a raft, a water purifier, a fishing rod, and a shovel.

Like the others, she couldn’t enter Shu Fu’s driftwood island house, but fortunately, the island house now had a glass balcony that others could access.

The glass balcony didn’t have temperature control, disaster resistance, or exclusion features, but it was still far more reliable than most buildings. After the two glass doors were closed, they blocked out some of the external cold. Combined with the heating blanket and the heaters, the internal temperature quickly rose, likely reaching around 13-14°C.

With this temperature, they felt comfortable and could peacefully eat hot food without worrying about it freezing halfway through.

Perhaps because of the warmth and the comforting food, Yao Ruoyun finally regained her composure. She carefully listened to Shu Fu’s detailed explanation and then began to seriously study her own items.

The shovel, according to her, was called the “Treasure-seeking Shovel,” and could only be used once a day. Driven by curiosity, Yao Ruoyun decided to try it out immediately. The two of them bundled up and went down to the balcony, where Shu Fu watched as Yao Ruoyun used the shovel to dig beneath the tiles at the corner of the tea house lobby and unearthed a box of unopened instant noodles.

Shu Fu: …

Yao Ruoyun explained that she had chosen the spot purely based on instinct, not expecting to actually find anything. And when she dug, the edges of the tiles loosened after just a few movements. With the shovel, she pried it open at the seams.

The instant noodles had a brand from Xiangzhou Province, and the production date was from February of this year. They hadn’t expired. The box contained 48 packs, and it seemed that the owner had stored it there during the chaotic times. She probably forgot it while moving.

Yao Ruoyun proudly handed the entire box of noodles to Shu Fu, saying that she knew Shu Fu probably didn’t need them, but she still wanted her to have them as a token of her appreciation.

Shu Fu had no choice but to accept them.

Yao Ruoyun, seeing Shu Fu accept the noodles, smiled widely and looked even more pleased than when she had packed her own items into her backpack.

Although there were still many things they hadn’t figured out, Yao Ruoyun was clear on one thing: she and her beloved senior were the same type of person, not ordinary people who had nothing but were always dragging others down.

In fact, over the past few months, Yao Ruoyun had occasionally stayed in places with internet access. After meeting Xun Huiming, he would also mention news related to “Ability Users” that he had seen online.

Xun Huiming was a typical straight man who didn’t believe in this because he had never seen it with his own eyes. He only told Yao Ruoyun these things to provide her with some entertainment during the difficult journey. It was like telling stories he had heard from others.

Yao Ruoyun had indeed treated these pieces of news as stories, much like the imagined plots created by people who had struggled through natural disasters for a year.

Even if they were just stories, she still envied them. Whenever she listened to them, she would think, If this were true, if there really was a raft house that could keep outsiders out and be controlled at will, I would definitely keep this secret to myself, not telling anyone, not using it to hoard supplies. I would just want my parents to have a safe place to rest when they’re tired.

So, in the early morning, when she realized something was wrong, when she became aware of strange memory fragments appearing in her mind, she was completely confused, thinking it was just the result of something she had been thinking about during the day showing up in her dreams at night.

She told Shu Fu that the memory fragments flashing through her mind were quite terrifying, and they seemed to always be set in a classroom—an extremely oppressive learning environment where she was constantly doing practice papers or taking exams…

These memories had appeared before, but she hadn’t paid much attention to them because she had only been in university for a little over a year. She had always assumed these were memories from her high school days.

But now, looking back, whether it was the classroom or the students around her, everything was quite different from her three years of high school in this world.

“So, in that world, I was a high school student? Did I have family there? What’s my name, why can’t I remember anything about it…?”

Similarly, in the next few days, just like Lu Zheng and Chen Fa, she fell into a confusion caused by the fragmented memories. She called her parents, but she held back and didn’t mention anything about it over the phone.

She knew very well that if she said anything, they wouldn’t believe her. They would just think she was rambling because she had caught a cold. She’d have to wait until the extreme weather passed, go to Zhicheng, and meet them in person so they could see it for themselves.

---

In the following days, Shu Fu spent most of her time with Yao Ruoyun in the glass balcony. There was electricity and heating there, and with nowhere to go and nothing to do, they would lean together and watch shows on a small tablet.

They watched thrilling and horror shows, holding cushions in front of their faces and closing their eyes together at the scary parts.

To lighten the mood, they switched to variety shows, watching entertainers work hard to make people laugh and complete tasks. In the end, Yao Ruoyun broke the mood by sighing and saying that many of these variety shows and movies were probably the entertainers’ posthumous works…

Under the natural disasters, whether ordinary people or entertainers, everyone’s body was equally fragile.

In addition to various ready-made hot meals, they had hotpot once, using a dual-flavored electric pot to cook a spicy beef oil pot and a mushroom pot. Yao Ruoyun didn’t have a large appetite, but she couldn’t resist the craving. When she smelled the hotpot boiling, tears just started sliding down her cheeks.

Aside from hotpot, in the past few days, she had also eaten tofu flower water-boiled fish, brown sugar pearl milk tea, fried chicken wings, egg-filled pancakes, braised pork rice, and spicy skewers.

Except for the large pork skewers, which Shu Fu didn’t have, everything Yao Ruoyun had once longed for while crying in the Suicheng Library, Shu Fu had brought out for her to eat.

“You actually remember all this…” Yao Ruoyun was so touched that she cried as she ate, and this time, the tears genuinely fell from the corners of her eyes. The result of this was that Yao Ruoyun became even more attached to Shu Fu, even following her to the kitchen of the driftwood island house to dispose of the trash and wash the pots.

Inside the house, naturally, it wasn’t cold. With a constant temperature of 25°C, Shu Fu immediately stripped down to her base layer as soon as she entered.

Outside, however, without the protection of the glass balcony, even standing on the raft deck, the temperature felt like minus twenty degrees Celsius. But she still wrapped herself in a thick coat, held a hot water bottle, and shivered as she stood there chatting with Shu Fu.

She had tried countless times to reach the eaves, but every time, she only touched a cold air wall: “How exactly do I get into your little house? If blood relatives can enter, what about a spouse? How about I marry you, Senior?”

Shu Fu: …

However, they didn’t always stay hiding in the warm balcony. After all, now that Yao Ruoyun had space, even though her raft couldn’t be retrieved for the moment, her backpack slots were still empty. Since they were in a residential building with plenty of daily supplies, the two of them started from the small tea house and began collecting resources for Yao Ruoyun.

They collected things from cabinets like cups, teapots, kitchen items like kettles, pots, and cutting boards, rocking chairs, dining tables, benches, nearly new thermoses, clothes racks, folding wardrobes, functional lamps, extension cords, large buckets, basins, and still clean, thick clothes, pants, and shoes…

The two girls scoured floor by floor. Aside from water, medicine, and some light tools, most other things were there.

Larger items that could fit in the backpack slots were directly stored, while smaller items were packed into large cardboard boxes provided by Shu Fu. As for bigger items that didn’t fit, Shu Fu temporarily stored them, waiting for when the raft could be accessed, and then they’d be placed in the raft house.

The two girls, bundled up like bears, looked like two hamsters hoarding supplies, moving from one house to the next, enjoying the process.

Of course, they didn’t miss the daily opportunity to use the treasure-seeking shovel. Once, they dug out a new set of down jackets and pants from a family’s headboard partition, and another time, they unearthed an entire box of salt still within its shelf life from a family’s kitchen.

Each time left Shu Fu stunned.

For the past four days and nights, the snowstorm never stopped, and the entire Wei County fell into silence. Yao Ruoyun’s fears had been minimized thanks to the golden finger and Shu Fu’s company.

The only two inconvenient things were going to the bathroom and maintaining personal hygiene.

These issues were easily solved for Shu Fu once she was back inside the house, though the few seconds of climbing the wooden ladder to get in were a bit cold. She just bundled up in warm clothes and rushed up.

But Yao Ruoyun couldn’t do that. She had to use the restroom in the tea house, and the solution she finally came up with was to set up a stainless steel barrel with an open flame or a burning honeycomb coal stove in the tea house’s restroom.

The stove’s fire could raise the indoor temperature a bit; the closer she was to it, the better the effect. The toilet seat was also covered with a thick cushion, so at least when she sat down, she didn’t have to worry about getting cold when she stood up later…

Taking a shower was impossible, but there was plenty of hot water. She could do some simple cleaning work in the glass balcony, change into clean underwear. For a girl, being able to do this during a disaster was already quite difficult.

What touched Yao Ruoyun the most was that Shu Fu could have gone back to the little house to sleep, but she intentionally stayed in the glass balcony to keep her company.

In the long, cold, and pitch-black night, having someone by her side made her no longer afraid, no matter how heavy the snowstorm was outside or how strong the wind blew.

---

On the morning of the fifth day, the snow finally stopped. But when the two of them looked out from the wooden gap in the window, they still couldn’t see any signs of life.

Especially since the window faced a large square, the view was so clear that the thick snow layer had no traces of human activity at all.

Because the snow had stopped temporarily, the sky, which had been gloomy, brightened slightly, and everywhere outside was blindingly white. If they went out now, they would need to wear ski goggles, or their eyes would be blinded by the glare.

“Do you think… everyone else might be dead?” Yao Ruoyun hesitantly spoke. Although she didn’t particularly like the way some survivors behaved, she still hoped that others could survive this unprecedented snowstorm.

This was not about personal preferences, but a shared sense of empathy as a human being.

“They won’t be. There’s water and electricity, and there are troops and rescue teams. They have experience, and as long as they stay inside the buildings and keep warm, they should be fine.” Of course, this “should be fine” was just for now. If the water supply was cut off, it would be fine because they could melt snow to survive. However, if the electricity was cut off, unless there was a backup generator in the building, it would be impossible to repair in such weather.

The snowstorm and low temperatures continued, with several meters of snow accumulation that didn’t melt. The survivors remained trapped inside their homes. Once the people holed up inside the buildings ran out of food, things could get tricky.

But it was clear that Shu Fu had underestimated some of the troops’ disaster management abilities.

Around noon, when Cheng Yu’s voice came through the intercom, saying they were coming over to their side soon, Shu Fu was extremely surprised.