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The boat’s speed actually depended on the current wind level.
With only a level 2 wind, the small fishing boat moved like a slow, shuffling old man. In two minutes, it barely covered a hundred meters. The digital map vanished, and the boat came to a stop.
The wind had died down.
Su Xiao: …
A deep sense of helplessness washed over her. She should’ve come to the riverbank earlier.
If she had made it during a level 20 hurricane, maybe she could’ve experienced the thrill of real speedboating.
Casually glancing up, Su Xiao noticed information pop up beside a willow tree.
[This willow tree seems odd. Cutting it down might reveal something.]
Could this be another purple treasure chest?
Su Xiao was tempted.
But it would still take a while before the fishing boat could be fully bound. Should she disembark or not?
Just then, a red Ferrari suddenly appeared, weaving effortlessly through obstructing branches and piles of rubble from collapsed buildings. It came to a halt a short distance away—clearly no ordinary sports car.
What kind of sports car could drive through a city devastated by a hurricane?
As the wind picked up, Su Xiao seized the opportunity to maneuver the small fishing boat away from the shore, putting some distance between herself and the scene.
“Binzi, there’s a red treasure chest here!”
Two men got out of the car, and the vehicle immediately vanished.
A young man with ash-gray dyed hair surveyed the surroundings, looking rather pleased. “Binzi, you were right. Everyone’s heading for the city center, but no one came to the outskirts. This red treasure chest is just sitting here in plain sight and no one’s touched it.”
The man behind him, wearing glasses, looked dazed and confused.
Su Xiao furrowed her brow, observing the two.
“Binzi, look at that fishing boat. Doesn’t it seem… strange? There’s something on it, I think…”
The gray-haired man raised a hand and pointed in Su Xiao’s direction. Instinctively, she tensed.
But after a moment, she realized—he could see the fishing boat, but not her.
So the safehouse disguised itself as an ordinary structure, blending into the surroundings. The ground-level exit of the underground chamber was always unremarkable.
When she looked again, the next moment stunned Su Xiao.
The man in glasses suddenly grabbed a rock and smashed it down hard on the head of the gray-haired man.
Once. Twice.
In no time, the gray-haired man’s face was a bloody mess. Even as he died, his eyes stared wide in disbelief at the man who betrayed him.
“Brother Yong… I… I’m sorry… The world’s changed now.” Binzi dropped the brick, his voice trembling. “Very few can survive. With the safehouse in your hands, I… I just couldn’t trust it.”
His cowardly, frightened demeanor was a stark contrast to the ruthless way he had just murdered someone in cold blood.
Liu Yong’s gaze dimmed. Before closing his eyes for the last time, he cast a final glance at the fishing boat in the middle of the lake, yet never revealed that it was a safehouse.
After Liu Yong’s death, a voice echoed in Binzi’s mind, making his face light up.
When he looked up again, a red treasure chest had indeed appeared before him.
He opened it, retrieved a level 1 hammer from inside, then looked up again—just in time to see the small fishing boat on the river. His puzzled gaze drifted through the air and seemed to lock with Su Xiao’s, making her breath catch.
Especially after witnessing him kill his own friend moments ago.
But Binzi had only just bound a safehouse by killing another survivor. He had no idea that the red dot he saw on the digital map belonged to an unbound safehouse. In fact, he couldn’t even see the map from his current safehouse.
Other than finding the fishing boat’s sudden appearance a bit odd, he noticed nothing else.
After all, he couldn’t see Su Xiao inside it.
So he quickly looked away.
Su Xiao exhaled, then began to analyze.
That red Ferrari was a safehouse, and its owner had been the now-deceased gray-haired man. The man in glasses was likely someone the gray-haired man had known before the apocalypse.
Just like that survivor who had been using the toilet when the stall suddenly turned into a safehouse—they were probably just traveling when their car transformed.
The more she thought about it, the more terrifying it became.
In this kind of post-apocalyptic world, unless absolutely necessary, you should never trust others.
Su Xiao had always been rather cold by nature.
She was an orphan. Her reclusive personality in childhood led to several failed adoptions, leaving her with lingering emotional scars.
It wasn’t until she was thirteen that the Jiang family officially adopted her.
Although not long after that, the Jiang family found their biological daughter, Jiang Qiqi.
Due to Jiang Qiqi’s mental health issues, they didn’t raise Su Xiao in their main residence. Instead, they housed her elsewhere and hired an auntie to care for her.
Su Xiao wasn’t upset about it. Her unwillingness to trouble others had shaped her into someone who quietly studied and worked part-time as she grew older, eventually pursuing both her master’s and doctoral degrees—hoping to repay the Jiang family’s kindness.
On the surface, it seemed like she had integrated into normal life, but deep down, she remained distant toward those unrelated to her.
So she quickly accepted this cruel reality.
She kept watching the man with glasses.
After obtaining the weapon, he immediately scanned the area, and unsurprisingly spotted the unusual-looking willow tree.
Taking advantage of the light breeze, Su Xiao silently steered the fishing boat closer to the shore, curious to see what kind of chest the man would open.
But to her shock, the moment he struck the tree with the hammer, it transformed into a towering black monster, twice the height of a person, looming over him like some ancient beast of dusk and dawn.
Su Xiao froze.
It wasn’t a treasure chest?
What the hell had he just unleashed?!
“Damn!”
The man recoiled in fright, instinctively swinging the hammer at the black monster. But not only did it fail to injure the creature, it seemed to enrage it.
A shadowy black blade slashed with ease, tearing into flesh and spilling blood.
Only then did Su Xiao notice the text above the creature’s head:
[Doomsday Monster (Level 1)]
The monster was so tall that up close, its identifier was hard to see—only from a distance could it be read.
The man yelped in pain, panic overtaking him. Realizing he couldn’t kill the monster, he tried to run. But the black claw, as slender and supple as a willow branch, stretched out and caught him—pulling him into its belly.
The level indicator above the monster changed from 1 to 2.
The man vanished, and the hammer he had picked up fell to the ground.
Three seconds later, the hammer disappeared, and the red treasure chest reappeared at the riverside. This time, when Su Xiao looked at it, she no longer saw treasure—but a deadly trap.
She began piecing together what she had witnessed.
The doomsday monster had leveled up by devouring survivors. Its level seemed closely tied to weapon levels.
More importantly, the monster had been summoned by a “special prompt.”
In other words, special prompts weren’t necessarily safe. Monsters could be hidden within them.
But hadn’t the game clearly said the first four hours would be a disaster-free safe period?
No—that was wrong.
A disaster-free time didn’t mean there wouldn’t be monsters.
Besides, this particular monster had been hidden within a plant. As long as survivors didn’t blindly act on every special prompt or attack any structure marked as “unusual,” they’d likely be fine.
Su Xiao kept her eyes fixed on the prompt above the willow tree.
Maybe the key to distinguishing between treasure chests and monsters lay in the wording of the hints.
Of course, she had no way to verify any pattern right now.
Because this doomsday monster was already level 2. It didn’t look like something she could take down with her level 1 axe.
Maybe… she’d need to upgrade her weapon before even trying.