Chapter 27

Lou Yuncheng is located to the west of Suicheng, with a straight-line distance of over 900 kilometers between them. The terrain is mainly mountainous and hilly.

The elevation of Lou Yuncheng differs significantly from that of the Suicheng area. The highest mountains are mostly concentrated in the western and southwestern regions of the city, with the highest peak reaching over 1,600 meters. The elevation within the urban area ranges from 120 meters to 350 meters, with the lowest point in the easternmost suburban area at about 70 meters.

The average elevation of the entire Lou Yuncheng urban area is around 220 meters. Therefore, while many cities such as Suicheng, Ningcheng, Shanyang City, and Zhangcheng have all suffered from water-related disasters, Lou Yuncheng has remained largely unaffected, except for occasional rain and humidity.

Currently, due to the internet being down, Shu Fu cannot search for basic information about Lou Yuncheng. However, this information quickly resurfaces in her mind upon reflection.

This is where “Shu Fu” comes from. In her memory, she had once sold her house and left Lou Yuncheng.

Shu Fu didn’t dwell on why she needed to go to Lou Yuncheng to check in; she had been stuck in Suicheng for so long, thinking she would die here. Now that she realized there was an outward passage from this closed city, she felt joy instead of confusion.

The waterway map on the panel, just like the one in the cabin, could be zoomed in and viewed freely. The entire waterway was still a light green color, with deep green dots and blocks scattered along the route, still without any clear pattern.

She opened a map of Huagou on her tablet to compare, and sure enough, like the Suicheng waterway map, the dark green spots represented taller buildings.

From the winding nature of the waterway, it seemed that all the towns between Suicheng and Lou Yuncheng had been flooded. She thought for a moment and wrote down some key points for this journey in her notebook.

First, check the internet along the way. Once she reaches an area with network access, she will immediately search for any missing external information from the past month.

Second, the flooded areas couldn’t be as winding as the waterway shown on the map; they would likely be vast expanses of water. So, she could explore the boundaries of the waterway and check if there are still invisible barriers trapping her.

Third, the straight-line distance from Suicheng to Lou Yuncheng is 900 kilometers, but based on the waterway, it looks like it’s about 1,200 to 1,300 kilometers in total. With a maximum speed of 40 kilometers per hour on the raft, it would take approximately 32 hours to travel the full distance.

This 32 hours couldn’t be done all at once, as the raft’s usage time couldn’t support continuous travel. However, fortunately, there are tall buildings along the way, and she can simulate the previous route from Ping’an Community to the commercial area, setting a few waypoints on the map to make the journey in stages.

Fourth, the closer she gets to Lou Yuncheng, the higher the chances of encountering other speedboats, boats, helicopters, and people. She shouldn’t be stingy with the drift bottle shield; it’s best to use it whenever needed.

Apart from an unused protective shield card, the other one she had used still had 20 hours left. Combined with the 44 hours available, it should be enough to cover the 32-hour journey.

Once she had written down these points, Shu Fu’s thoughts were much clearer.

Compared to the earlier journey from the water drop point back to Ping’an Community in Suicheng, at least now she could set a destination directly on the map panel, without constantly adjusting two maps by hand.

With this thought, even though she was about to face unfamiliar waterways and tasks, her mood lightened.

She planned to leave for Lou Yuncheng after 12 p.m. the next day, just as she had done when relocating to temporary accommodation.

On the first day of the journey, she habitually prepared for possible accidents. She planned to leave after 12 p.m., in case something went wrong with the waypoint building that night. After midnight, she could stay on the raft, ensuring 24 hours of continuous usage.

As for the remaining 4 hours of the day, she decided to release the raft in the living room of the suite, not wanting to return from the outside in the middle of the night.

The rest of the day was spent comparing maps, selecting journey waypoints, packing up her temporary hotel apartment, and organizing her bracelet space.

She had been alone in Suicheng for almost two months, and the automatic waterway fishing rod had provided her with various harvests. She had also collected a lot of useful supplies from the tall buildings, and now, as she was about to set off on a long journey, it was important to pack everything neatly for easy access when needed.

The manual rowing machine was placed directly in the wooden house, next to the small round table and sofa in the living room.

When using the raft in the evening, she activated the electric card to clean the accumulated dishes in the sink, take a bath, wash her hair, and do laundry, while also charging all the devices to full.

Afterward, she packed a backpack to store in the bracelet space.

This time, she specifically used an old backpack that she had used for many years. It wasn’t waterproof, as it had been washed several times and was slightly yellowed and worn. Inside, she simply placed an opaque folding water bottle, half-filled with water.

There were two cup noodles, a small single-person sleeping bag, and items from her previous library supply package, such as a single-person moisture-proof mat, a blanket, and a raincoat.

Other small items she would need were placed on the shelf of the bracelet space for easy access.

Additionally, she placed a set of old, worn, and slightly torn thick cotton clothes that had been hanging under the eaves of the wooden house into the space for easy retrieval upon arrival.

Compared to her previous trip to the library, this time, she was clearly more cautious. After all, that was the early stage of the disaster, and everyone was setting out from their homes with similar equipment.

This time is different; two months have passed since then. Floods have ravaged large cities and lands across Huagou, and the number of affected people is staggering. Everyone is moving to higher elevations, and with the lack of real-time information for the past month, she has no idea about the current situation outside, so she needs to be more cautious.

Moreover, the place she’s heading to is a shelter, which sounds like a downgrade from an evacuation center, and it’s easy to imagine the situation won’t be ideal.

---

That night, she spent the night in her hotel apartment, getting a full eight hours of sleep. By 9 a.m., she took out the portable stove, cooked a pack of snail noodles, adding vegetables, marinated meat, and beef slices, and even cracked an egg into the mix.

Such strong-flavored food was out of the question for the refugees, but after her recent acquisition of 300 packs of snail noodles, she gradually grew fond of this uniquely flavored dish. She decided to indulge a bit while she still had the time.

At 12 p.m., the heavy rain outside turned into moderate rain. She descended from the 25th floor, stepping over the moldy carpet on the 20th floor caused by the dampness. She entered another emergency staircase along the hallway. Every two or three floors, there was a small terrace outside the emergency stairwell, designed as a smoking area.

She had chosen this building as a mid-term shelter partly because of this design.

The water level had already surpassed the ground level of the terrace. The waves outside, driven by strong winds, crashed against the building, and the open deck of the raft was also being battered by the rain, making a snapping sound. Shu Fu stepped through the waterlogged raft and, as she crossed the door’s eaves, the wind, rain, and damp cold were kept outside.

Although she had grown used to it, the warm and safe feeling always made her feel at ease.

Shu Fu took off her raincoat and hung it by the shoe cabinet, switching from rain boots to slippers. She casually tossed the automatic waterway fishing rod and then changed into spring and autumn-style sweatpants and a long-sleeve hoodie. She walked over to the control panel, switched the status from “Docked” to “Drifting,” set the speed to 40 km/h, and directed the raft westward.

The raft slowly started to drift. She stepped out of the wooden house, sat on the camping chair under the eaves, pulled up the map panel, and took out her tablet. She compared the first waypoint building she had selected yesterday with the waterway map again, confirmed everything was correct, and set it as the destination.

After setting the destination, she noticed a black route appeared on the waterway map. The route’s starting point was a red dot where the raft was located, and the red dot flashed, indicating movement.

The other end of the line, starting from the east and moving westward, bypassed the visible buildings above the water, passed through all of Suicheng, and headed towards the city’s only waterway entrance connecting to the outside world. It then extended to the deep green dot she had set as the destination.

At the same time, a set of data appeared in the top right corner of the waterway map.

【341/8:30:53】

As the raft moved forward, the number on the screen continued to decrease. Shu Fu quickly realized that the “341” represented the distance between the raft and the destination, likely in kilometers, while the remaining numbers indicated the countdown of the drifting time.

It seemed to resemble a navigation system.

This automatic route was a bit shorter than her initial estimate. She had expected to arrive at 9 p.m., but now, if everything went smoothly, she could reach the first waypoint half an hour earlier.

The raft, carrying the drifting island house, sailed through the waters of Suicheng. Shu Fu did not immediately activate the drift bottle shield.

She had been in Suicheng long enough to know that the city had already turned into an empty water city. Since the shield’s time was precious, she planned to wait until the raft reached the waterway entrance—the invisible barrier that had originally trapped her—before using it.

She sat under the eaves for a while, quickly appreciating the convenience offered by the map panel. The raft, already able to automatically avoid obstacles both above and below the water, could now also autonomously head toward the set destination. The entire raft had essentially become an autonomous drifting island house!

Shu Fu took out a cup of taro milk tea with pearls, a ham and cheese sandwich, and a box of jackfruit. From the vast resources on the tablet, she picked a short drama about reincarnation and revenge and began her “drifting island house lounging time.”

As the raft approached the river near Suicheng’s main area, the automatic waterway fishing rod made its first catch of the day: a few lively bass.

About 20 days ago, the automatic waterway fishing rod had occasionally caught real “fishing rod” items: live fish, shrimp, crabs—various freshwater species. After a one-button disinfection, these water creatures still looked clean and healthy, but they were different from previous catches. After all, this wasn’t a real river or lake.

Under these vast waters, there was all sorts of debris, including human bodies.

But the fish looked so fresh and lively that it would be wasteful to throw them away. So whenever she caught live creatures like this, she placed them in a specially cleared container in her space, planning to study them later once she reached an area with internet access.

Just like setting a destination on a car’s navigation, the automatic drift after setting a destination was much faster than manually adjusting the raft, as it took the most accurate and shortest route.

It took the raft less than three hours to reach the waterway entrance on the far west side of Suicheng.

She summoned the map panel again, zoomed in, and watched the flashing red dot representing the raft as it slowly left the Suicheng waterway map and entered a new waterway.

This time, the surrounding scene didn’t display any ripple-like distortions or sudden changes. She was still sitting under the eaves in front of the wooden house, surrounded on all sides by endless, vast waters.

Compared to the night two months ago, the suburbs of Suicheng no longer resembled their former self. From a height of twenty stories, with an average water depth of nearly sixty meters, the flood had swallowed everything here. The only remnants visible above the water were parts of the hills that used to be small mountains, now appearing like isolated islands in the sea, desolate and barren.

The raft was automatically navigating in the middle of the waterway on the map. After waiting for another twenty minutes, Shu Fu stood up, entered the house, and put on a life jacket. She then changed the drifting direction on the control panel from “West” to “North.”

Due to her manual intervention, the raft temporarily deviated from the automatic route and headed toward one side of the waterway.

On the clearly visible waterway map on the control panel, the boundaries in reality couldn’t be seen. This time, her intention was twofold: First, she wanted to see if, after leaving the Suicheng, she could go to areas outside the waterway and the destination city, Lou Yuncheng. Second, if there was an invisible barrier in the waterway, would her raft, just like her, be blocked within the boundary, or would it leave the boundary as the sightseeing boat did last time, leaving her behind after being “filtered”?

The raft had a retrieval function, so she wasn’t worried about losing it. She was also prepared in case she fell into the water, though her intuition told her the likelihood of that was low this time.

Soon, the raft reached the side of the waterway, where it stopped, seemingly blocked by an invisible barrier.

She didn’t fall into the water, and the raft couldn’t continue. Just as she had guessed, the boundary of the waterway map was the same as the water boundary map; the map’s boundary was her boundary.

The raft, by default, was considered one with her and couldn’t pass either.

This sensation felt much like when she used to play games, where after exploring a new map, she reached the map’s edge and was blocked by an invisible screen.

Shu Fu took off the life jacket, changed the drifting direction back to “West,” and sat back down under the eaves.

So, according to game logic, the reason she could leave Suicheng this time was because Lou Yuncheng’s map had been “unlocked,” and at the same time, the Level 3 raft progress bar task had been activated.

The Level 3 raft progress bar task hadn’t appeared before, perhaps because the waterway hadn’t been cleared, and Lou Yuncheng hadn’t been “unlocked.”

Now, assuming she completes all the Level 3 raft progress bar tasks in Lou Yuncheng, raises the raft to Level 3, would new maps open up after that?

Would she be able to visit other cities at that point?

While pondering, Shu Fu subconsciously took out her notebook and wrote down her guesses. The more she wrote, the more she felt this hypothesis had a high chance of being true.

So, in the end, it still came down to completing tasks and quickly raising the raft to Level 3.

---

By 5 p.m., the surrounding waterway’s buildings had gradually increased. What started as just one or two scattered buildings now formed small clusters, spaced apart at regular intervals.

She activated the drift bottle shield on the control panel and stepped out from under the eaves to stretch her limbs.

This was the suburban area of Zhangcheng, and the occasional buildings she saw looked like residential buildings, small high-rises typically found in suburban or highway-adjacent areas. But the buildings’ visible portions above the waterline only reached two or three stories.

The southern suburbs of Zhangcheng, adjacent to Zhi Lake, were a small city rich in aquatic products. Her second and third fishing catches, which she made after entering the suburban area, were shrimp and crabs, quite large in size.

The area still showed no signs of human activity, and there was still no signal for the internet.

On the water, besides the remaining small high-rise buildings, she occasionally spotted a few small boats. Most of them were wooden fishing boats, some missing parts of their hulls, others flooded with water. They swayed gently in the rain, leaning against the corners of the buildings.

Some of the buildings had broken glass, and through the dark holes, she could see unrenovated concrete walls, damp and moldy, with the rain pouring in. It was impossible to live in these buildings.

If the transfer building for today’s stop was in the same condition, she would have to spend the night on the raft.

The heavy rain continued, and before long, the sky darkened after 5 p.m. The wind also picked up. Without any lights, the visibility on the water became extremely low. It seemed as if only the deep gray water and her on the raft remained in the world.

Shu Fu turned around, went back into the wooden house, and prepared for dinner.

This damp and cold weather was perfect for something spicy to warm her up. She took out the Sichuan food gift set she had won in a lottery, sifted through the box, and selected a dry pot fish head, hand-torn cabbage, and stir-fried spicy pork.

The finished dish sets, unlike hotpot or barbecue sets, came ready-made with the freshness and heat of a completed dish. After placing it into her space, it stayed fresh and preserved.

However, like the hotpot and barbecue gift sets, these didn’t come with a staple food, so she also took out a portion of stir-fried chicken, mushrooms, and potatoes fried rice, which she had made earlier. She had only eaten a little of it so far, and there was still plenty left.

At the dining table, she set out the three dishes, rice, drinks, and the tablet, and continued playing the short drama she had been watching, starting her dinner leisurely by herself.

On the right side of the small table was a large floor-to-ceiling window, and with a slight turn of her head, she could see the gently undulating vast water surface outside the drifting island house. It felt like she was out at sea.

Beside her ears were the crackling sounds of the heavy rain hitting the protective shield and the howling wind in the air. The raging storm outside contrasted sharply with the warmth and peace inside the wooden house.

At 8:30 p.m., the raft passed through the city area of Zhangcheng and stopped in front of an exceptionally tall building in the western suburbs of Zhangcheng. Against the vast surrounding water, this building stood out like a crane among chickens.

Below this waterway area was an elevator manufacturing plant, and the building in front of her was the test tower for this elevator factory, used for testing finished elevators. The tower had a square shape with a relatively small floor area per level, but the overall height exceeded one hundred meters.

Test towers like this for elevators generally have construction standards that require the building to be sturdy, with one or two safety staircases. The interior space is also small, and the structure is very simple, so she wouldn’t get lost wandering in the dark, powerless, unfamiliar building late at night.

Shu Fu first controlled the raft to circle the tower, ensuring the exterior walls were intact and that the windows weren’t broken. After confirming this, she brought the raft close to a window, took out a windproof flame gun and a hammer, and, using her old method, successfully entered the building.

She entered through the safety stairwell at the corner of the building. The water level had submerged half of the first floor, but this floor had no accumulated water. The interior was very damp and cold. During this transitional period, Shu Fu wore only her home clothes under an old thick cotton jacket and rubber boots. She could only feel the damp, icy air enveloping her.

She turned on her flashlight, opened the door, and stepped out. The space outside wasn’t very large—just a small square area. Divided by the building’s centerline, the left side had five elevator doors arranged in a semi-U shape: three doors in the center, one in the front, and one at the back. On the right side, there were two safety stairwells and a vestibule connecting both stairwells.

For Shu Fu, the most secure space was the vestibule. Although it had three doors, all could be closed. The interior was small, and a kerosene stove could quickly warm it up. Also, there was a window facing the outer wall of the building, similar to those in commercial buildings, and the glass looked quite sturdy.

She returned to the stairwell and went up two more floors. The layout on each floor was the same.

The damp, cold feeling on the upper floors wasn’t as strong. As usual, she used the flashlight to check every corner of the floor, making sure the walls and windows weren’t heavily damaged before returning to the vestibule to start closing the three doors.

The door to the central area was a double door that could be locked. The doors to the side stairwells couldn’t be locked, so she planned to block them with two large appliances before sleeping for added security.

The raft could be used until midnight, and she wasn’t going to waste it. She retreated to the farthest corner, took out the raft, and placed it just right so that the front door of the wooden house faced the window.

She changed her shoes, undressed, and went back inside the warm, dry wooden house. After a routine cleaning, she settled on the soft sofa with a box of five-spice cumin-flavored duck wings and continued watching the drama.

After midnight, she stowed the raft, and an unopened refrigerator and washing machine appeared at the doorways on both sides, physically locked.

Next, Shu Fu took out the kerosene stove, filled it with oil, and lit it. She then retrieved a single-armchair sofa, familiar with the process, and extended it.

In an instant, the originally 0.8-meter wide, 0.9-meter long single-armchair sofa became a 1.9-meter-long single sofa bed. The armrests were positioned at her head and shoulders, ensuring she wouldn’t fall off while sleeping.

This sofa bed had been found in a storage room of a hotel-style apartment. She had used the same model in her apartment and liked how compact and easy to unfold it was, unlike a tent that required multiple layers to prevent moisture and cold. She had wondered whether to bring one into her space.

To her surprise, she found a brand-new, unopened one in the storage room and happily took it.

With the kerosene stove, the room, which was around zero degrees, quickly warmed to about ten degrees Celsius. This temperature didn’t require heavy blankets—she just used a sleeping bag on the sofa, which was enough.

The warmth from the stove and the familiar glow of the kerosene flame gave her a sense of safety and comfort. Shu Fu set an alarm for 8 a.m. the next day and slowly closed her eyes.

However, this sleep wasn’t as peaceful as usual. Being in an unfamiliar place, she was more alert than usual. Half-awake, she seemed to hear some noise.

Clang, clang, clang—was something hitting the door?

Hitting the door!?

Shu Fu opened her eyes and instantly woke up. Amid the usual sounds of the heavy rain, she could indeed hear the metallic clang, but it wasn’t coming from the door—it was coming from the window. She quickly stepped out of the sleeping bag, put on her shoes, and rushed to the window.

Outside, the heavy rain was almost falling at a completely slanted angle, beating wildly against the glass. The sky outside had lightened a little. In the far-off eastern sky, some shimmering silver light merged with the pitch-black night, and as it flashed, she could see thick clouds gathering in mid-air and the turbulent water surface below that sky.

The water, once calm, now seemed like the surface of boiling water. Waves surged, one crest following another. In some places, swirling whirlpools appeared, as if they were being violently swept up by an unusually fierce wind, ready to rise from the water.

The clanging sound was from the window frame being shaken by the fierce wind.

Is this… a tornado?