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The torrential rain came suddenly, catching most residents off guard during the after-school and after-work rush. Without rain gear, they were drenched as they stepped off buses or exited subway stations.
However, this was the first rain after many days of intense heat, a long-awaited relief that dispersed the oppressive heat and soothed people’s irritability.
As a result, few complained. Most were delighted. Some sought refuge in nearby restaurants, turning the rain into an excuse for dinner. Others found convenience stores nearby, purchased umbrellas, and braved the rain to head home.
Shu Fu closed the sliding glass door to her small balcony, glanced at the high-rise buildings shrouded in rain, and turned back into the living room.
From morning until now, she had only eaten a piece of bread. Although her bracelet space was stocked with a plethora of groceries, she wasn’t in the mood to cook today. She considered ordering takeout but decided against it when she saw the extended delivery times caused by the dinner rush and the heavy rain.
Ultimately, she decided to make instant noodles.
She washed a few lettuce leaves in the kitchen and added them when the noodles were nearly done cooking. She also fried two sunny-side-up eggs, then sat down at the small dining table with her pot of food. Opening her tablet, she habitually began browsing real-time trending topics on the platform.
It didn’t take long for her to notice that all the local trending topics were dominated by the same news story.
The news was about a young man who had climbed to the roof of a 20-story residential building in the city that afternoon to start a live stream. He claimed that the world was on the verge of an apocalypse—torrential rain, floods, tsunamis—ultimately leading to the sea swallowing most of the planet’s land. Humanity would lose their homes, becoming wanderers, fighting to the death over land and freshwater.
He urged the government to act immediately, relocating people from low-altitude areas, and advised the public to stockpile supplies, especially instant food, fresh water, basic medications, and water-related equipment. He even suggested learning how to swim.
The live-stream footage was shaky—sometimes showing the ground far below, sometimes focusing on the man’s face. His expression was filled with urgency, his eyes carrying a pitying look, as if he alone was sober in a world of dreamers. He repeated the same warnings like a madman.
Yet, compared to a lunatic, his depiction of the disaster was remarkably coherent. He repeatedly emphasized that he wasn’t seeking attention; he had simply been reborn—just this afternoon.
According to him, he had returned from a future disaster-stricken world. Witnessing the bleak and stormy future had driven him to start the live stream to warn others and the government.
As the live stream gained attention, someone called the police. Others analyzed the shaky footage to determine the man’s location. Soon, police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances arrived. Reporters and ordinary citizens gathered, surrounding the residential building.
But the man seemed prepared. Somehow, he had locked the rooftop door and specifically chosen a building that couldn’t be climbed from the windows below.
Unable to breach the rooftop, police and firefighters requested higher-level assistance. Ultimately, a helicopter and military personnel were deployed. They successfully subdued the man, who was live-streaming from the building’s edge, with an aerial assault.
This happened around dusk. As the military personnel subdued him under the darkening skies, he was still live-streaming.
Then, the rainstorm began. The military interrupted the broadcast, but the subdued man suddenly began struggling violently, shouting at the cameras held by people in nearby buildings.
“Look! It’s raining! I wasn’t lying—the apocalypse has started! If you wait any longer, it’ll be too late! Act now—”
His shouts were cut short by the soldiers restraining him.
The man was taken away by helicopter, but the entire internet was in an uproar over the incident.
Initially, people paid attention because they thought he was live-streaming his suicide. Many viewers recorded the stream as they watched. As the event escalated, more people joined in, and by the time the authorities intervened to remove the stream, it was too late.
Hundreds of cameras from nearby buildings captured the man’s final terrified expression and his desperate screams.
The public wasn’t stirred because they believed the man’s apocalyptic warnings. Instead, they were shocked that someone had taken a plot straight out of a novel and brought it into real life.
“Life’s tough—someone’s bound to snap every day…”
“If the next rain really heralds the apocalypse, we’d have had countless apocalypses by now!”
“Exactly! Remember the rain season back in August? So many places around the globe flooded. By his logic, that would’ve been the end too.”
“But his arguments were pretty structured. He said the average elevation of the Euro continent is 300 meters, so it would disappear first. Then the Oceanic and Antarctic continents, with average elevations around 400 meters after the Antarctic ice melts. The North and South sections of the West continent would only have the western mountain ranges left; the rest would be submerged. As for the East continent, our country would become the largest landmass in the world—no, it would become the largest in all of history. But with so much land submerged, most cities destroyed, and countless homeless people, the remaining land wouldn’t support the population. That really would be the end of the world…”
—The person above, we get it—you’re very knowledgeable. But aren’t you missing some basic common sense? While the planet is indeed warming, and polar glaciers are melting, even if all the ice on the planet melted, sea levels would only rise by 60 to 70 meters at most. That’s the extreme case. Such an event would indeed cause a global disaster, but plenty of land would still remain. In other words, it would be a calamity, not an apocalypse. Besides, that kind of extreme scenario is highly unlikely to happen, right?
—Why argue over this? We’re talking about the end of the world! Why only calculate the ice and freshwater on the planet? Couldn’t it be caused by an external cosmic force bringing about a global flood?
—Hahaha, a global flood? Are you talking about Noah’s Ark? You’re welcome at Green River Literary City!
…
While the internet was abuzz with discussions, Shu Fu was busy scouring for updates about the young man. Since she, an outsider, existed in this world, the presence of a reborn individual didn’t seem strange to her.
Earlier that morning, when she awakened, she had briefly considered warning the world about the impending disasters. When a colleague called to ask why she hadn’t shown up to work, she paused, contemplating mentioning the heavy rain.
However, as soon as she tried to speak, a sharp pain shot through her head. She ended the call as quickly as possible and passed out.
She remained unconscious for about five minutes. When she woke, she noticed that her memory of the catastrophic events in the outline of this world had grown hazy. This realization terrified her, prompting her to grab a notebook and hastily jot down a few key points.
—Prolonged heavy rain, floods, tsunamis, typhoons, thunderstorms with hail, aquatic mutations, and rising sea levels.
The future disasters weren’t limited to these events, nor was the sequence entirely accurate. Afraid she might experience another lapse, she prioritized writing down these key points.
Thankfully, the rest of the day passed without further blackouts or memory loss about the outline. Even during strange, labyrinthine experiences in the suburbs, her mind remained clear.
This suggested that the condition only occurred when she tried to warn the world. But why could the young man do what she couldn’t?
Moreover, while he warned about apocalyptic events, he didn’t mention being trapped in Suicheng. This indicated that he hadn’t encountered the same phenomenon she had.
Both she and he were anomalies in this world. What distinguished them?
Could it be because he originally belonged to this world, while she was from another?
Shu Fu pondered these questions while eating her noodles and browsing her tablet. Finally, she took out her notebook and recorded a few unresolved thoughts:
A rise in sea level of 60 to 70 meters would submerge some low-lying coastal areas. Could an external cosmic force really be the cause of the global flood? She had only drafted a very rough outline of this world’s settings; the detailed plot and disaster sequences hadn’t been written yet, let alone the reasons behind the calamities.
Even if she planned to lie low and survive, she wanted to live comfortably. With the space-wristband cheat at her disposal, it shouldn’t go to waste. If survival became impossible, she’d choose a dignified way to die. Death wasn’t terrifying—what was scary was living a fate worse than death.
Or was it all just a dream? Could her real self still be lying in her loft apartment’s bed? If this were a dream, though, how could everything feel so vivid?
Over the past four years, she had lived, studied, and experienced this world fully. Her memories were clear, unlike her increasingly patchy recollections of her original world.
However, certain skills—like quickly furnishing a rental home, decent driving abilities, simple cooking skills, and efficient supermarket shopping—weren’t traits a four-year boarding student would normally have.
“Am I dreaming I’m a butterfly, or is the butterfly dreaming it’s me?” Shu Fu tapped her notebook with her pen. The remaining half of her noodles in the pot had cooled and bloated. Usually, she would have thrown them away.
But thinking about the value of food in the future, she put down her pen and quickly finished the noodles.
After dinner, the local news reported on the afternoon’s live-streaming incident, although the narrative had shifted entirely.
The reporter explained that the live-streamer had a history of mental illness and had recently experienced a breakup, job loss, and debt—triggering his extreme behavior. The man had been admitted to the Sixth People’s Hospital for treatment. Doctors urged modern citizens under high stress to seek psychological help as needed.
Summary: That person’s crazy. Don’t believe rumors or spread them!
“The Sixth People’s Hospital…” Shu Fu shook her head. The Sixth Hospital was a mental institution located in the outskirts. Given the situation, that man would probably never come out once he was admitted—he might be made sick even if he wasn’t before.
Considering this, even if there were more reborn individuals in this world, they likely wouldn’t stand out. As for her, after these two incidents, it was even more unlikely that she would cause herself trouble.
She lowered the volume of the TV news and sat down at the desk near the small balcony, listening to the sound of the rain outside while browsing websites for relevant keywords.
Since September, Suicheng’s weather, which should have been entering autumn, had remained hot, with daily temperatures between 35 to 40 degrees Celsius, even at night staying above 30 degrees. It wasn’t just hot; the air was suffocating, worse than the hottest summer days—it felt like it could melt you.
The Huaguo region was vast, and this unusual high temperature affected a large area, though some places had less noticeable heat due to geographic conditions.
However, since last week, the weather forecast had been reporting that the abnormal heat wave would soon end, with some regions starting to experience rain and temperature drops. Some areas even had a “temperature slide,” with temperatures dropping from 35°C to below 20°C in just two or three days.
But climate changes like this had become the norm in Huaguo and other countries, with people only sighing in response, adding a layer of clothing, without considering the possibility of an apocalypse.
In her outline, the story had already entered the disaster era, with flooding as a central theme, as the main plot involved upgrading a raft infrastructure, with the raft being one of the protagonists.
However, the outline didn’t specify the entire world’s situation in detail. She remembered the original sentence: “This is a dark age. Once prosperous cities now lie submerged in water. Land resources are dwindling, and the planet has become a vast ocean. When XXX wakes up, he finds himself on a small raft, drifting with the current…”
XXX referred to the protagonist who still didn’t have a name.
It was known that this world would turn into a water world, but how much time there was before that phase, she wasn’t sure.
She turned to a new page in her notebook and began to list her survival plan.
Future Survival Methods: Stock up on basic supplies, short-term shelter, and mid-term shelter.
Her current home was the short-term shelter, while for the mid-term, she planned to choose one of the high-rise buildings in the business district that could be accessed, finding a private living space on a higher floor.
She didn’t insist on the highest building with 66 floors because it was too conspicuous, and her combat abilities weren’t enough. A more balanced approach would be safer.
She didn’t list long-term shelter because eventually, the entire world would be submerged. Only a few high mountains and plateau areas would survive, and she likely wouldn’t be around to see that. So there was no need to plan for long-term shelter.
Key Resources for the Future: Water, electricity, gas, survival tools, medicine, self-defense weapons, fresh food, and ready-to-eat food…
Flooding would cause power, water, and gas outages, and modern people could barely function without these resources.
The electricity issue was easy to solve—she could buy a gasoline-powered camping generator. These generators were portable, low-noise, and energy-efficient. A 3000-watt, 220V generator was sufficient for her needs. This generator produced 3 kWh per hour, so running it for 12 hours would generate 36 kWh of electricity.
1 kWh could power an air conditioner for 1 hour, a laptop for 8 hours, a washing machine for 2.5 hours, a TV for 6 hours, an induction cooker for 0.5 hours, a refrigerator for 8 hours, and regular lights for 12 hours…
Since it was just her using the electricity, this generator would be enough.
A 3000-watt generator consumed about 1.12 liters of gasoline per hour. Unlike her original world, this world didn’t require special permits to buy gasoline. When driving to a gas station, she could carry extra gasoline in portable cans. Even though a single station didn’t allow too much gasoline, she could visit multiple stations to get what she needed.
In addition to portable cans, she also needed to get a few large fuel barrels with 200L capacity, which saved space compared to the small cans. Stocking 4 to 5 barrels would last a long time.
With electricity, she could cook using an induction cooker, but she still needed to stock up on gas canisters for special situations.
Likewise, she needed to stock up on camp stoves, alcohol burners, solid alcohol, and matching cookware, which could all be bought at camping stores. She planned to go shopping for them tomorrow.
The outline didn’t mention the temperature during the apocalypse, but in a disaster-style apocalypse, climate chaos was expected. Both high and low temperatures could occur.
Suicheng had no central heating, and variable-frequency air conditioners wouldn’t work properly if the temperature fell below -15°C. Besides cold-weather clothing and electric heaters, she also needed to prepare two heating stoves.
Compared to wood-burning stoves that required wood and chimney installations, kerosene stoves were more convenient and safe for someone with her clumsy hands. As long as the room had ventilation, they could be used indoors.
There was a popular, high-power, lightweight kerosene stove in the Middle East, weighing only 3.5 kg.
This stove had a 4L fuel tank, and a full tank could last 18 to 20 hours. It heated rooms quickly and could also be used to cook or boil water, making it especially convenient for hot pot. The special fuel was inexpensive, and each hour of use cost about 2 yuan…
Shu Fu was researching and writing her survival plan, casually comparing prices online, and picked two highly cost-effective stores to buy two generators. She also bought 50 barrels of special oil from two different stores, totaling 1000L, all with delivery within 48 hours.
In a post-apocalyptic world, resources would be scarce, and fresh ingredients would be especially hard to come by. She really didn’t want to eat canned food. Indoor farming with nutrient soil and hydroponic boxes was out of the question—she was too clumsy to grow anything. Moreover, with time frozen, any living thing put inside would likely perish, and it wasn’t convenient to move them. She figured it would be easier to stock up on vegetables, fruits, fish, meat, and eggs.
…
Shu Fu was seriously making her (stockpiling) survival plan when she suddenly noticed that the sound of rain outside had changed. It now sounded like small stones were tapping against the glass.
She put down her pen, got up, and opened the sliding door to step out onto the balcony. Looking out through the glass, she saw the city illuminated under the night sky. Visibility was very high, and in the rain, she noticed small ice crystals mixed in with the raindrops. The ice wasn’t large, more like tiny beads, and they were hitting the window along with the heavy rain.
Was this… hail?
Was it already hailing this soon?
The bracelet on her left wrist vibrated slightly, like a phone vibrating. She raised her hand, and the icon that was supposed to be invisible earlier was now flashing. It was the “bottle” icon.
She tapped the “bottle” icon but didn’t succeed—perhaps because the bracelet hadn’t been unlocked yet.
She followed the sequence she had used before, held her finger on the bracelet for over three seconds to unlock it, waited until both icons lit up, and then tapped the “bottle” icon.
The familiar small drift bottle appeared in her hand. The text on the glass bottle had changed:
[“The Unsinkable Drift Island House” has been activated, “Raft” level: Level 1
Drift Island House Size: 10 square meters;
Driving Mode: Drifting with the current;
Daily Usage Limit: 5 hours;
First Activation Placement: Rotate the bottle cap.
Below the text was a progress bar, showing: [Raft Level 2 Progress: 0%]
Shu Fu’s eyes lit up. This golden finger… actually activated!?
And it seemed like, just as the outline had suggested, the raft would continue to level up!
In the original game, upgrading the raft required collecting materials like wood, iron ore, and vines… among others. As the level increased, the materials became more complex and also required smelting.
However, in the animated series, she planned to remove this overly game-like system and redesign the upgrade process. But the outline was brief, and she had only envisioned it; she hadn’t detailed it yet.
So right now, she didn’t know what materials were needed to move the progress bar from 0% to 100%, or how to do it.
“Daily usage limit? What’s that?” She didn’t remember writing such a detailed setting. She glanced at the size of the Drift Island House, which was 10 square meters—smaller than her living room—and had a sudden thought: perhaps she could just take the raft out to have a look.
Shu Fu quickly closed all the blinds on the balcony, put away the coffee table in front of the living room sofa, and then stood in a corner of the living room. She rotated the glass bottle cap.
Nothing happened. The drift bottle remained in her hand, and the small raft floating on the blue liquid inside continued to sway gently with her movement. The bottle now displayed a new message: “Area too small for placement.”
Shu Fu checked the living room. It seemed like she would need to leave more space to place the raft. As she was about to start moving more furniture, her phone rang.
It was a call from her colleague, Zheng Feifei. Shu Fu hadn’t finished her internship at this company yet. The company wasn’t big, and the salary was ordinary, but the office atmosphere was good, and the colleague relationships weren’t too complicated.
Zheng Feifei had joined the company a few months before her. They worked in the same team, so they often ate together, and she was the colleague Shu Fu was most familiar with.
Today, she completely forgot about work. It was Zheng Feifei who called. When she mentioned feeling unwell and needing to go to the hospital, Zheng Feifei agreed to help her take a leave of absence.
Later, when Shu Fu tried to bring up the topic of the disaster, she had a headache and nearly passed out. Her voice became strained as she managed to hang up, but Zheng Feifei wasn’t suspicious. She called back to express concern about Shu Fu’s health.
“…Then you should rest early. Sister Wu said the leave form can be filled out when you come back. Are you coming back to the office tomorrow?”
Shu Fu had no intention of going back to work.
She was kidding herself—what’s the point of going to work when the apocalypse is coming?
She still had some savings from selling a house a few years ago. Plus, her credit was good, so she could still get a loan for a few thousand.
However, just as she was about to speak, the bracelet vibrated again. This time, a new icon appeared—different from the “raft” icon she had seen earlier. It was the icon of a book.
She quickly unlocked the bracelet, tapped the “book” icon, and a small black mini notebook, about the size of her palm, appeared in her hand.
She opened the first page, and a line of text appeared at a visible speed:
“Go to the office tomorrow and punch in to work to unlock 5% progress for Raft Level 2. (Current progress for Raft Level 2: 0%)”
Shu Fu: ??