At six in the morning, Rong Hui was awakened by a burst of alarm sirens. She had just tried to sit up when the cold air made her shiver violently.
The arm that had been outside the blanket was frozen numb and itching from the cold. Rong Hui hurriedly pulled her arm back under the blanket and buried her entire body inside to warm up.
The cold penetrated straight into the bones. Rong Hui’s nasal cavity ached from the freezing temperature, and she was already unable to think clearly.
After staying under the blanket for quite a while, she gradually began to hear clearly what the broadcast alarm was saying.
“Attention all citizens. An extreme temperature drop of unknown cause is sweeping across the country. Please wake the people around you and take measures to keep warm in order to cope with the extreme weather. Please note…”
The alarm repeated over and over again. Rong Hui felt that everyone in the entire residential complex must have been awakened. If the alarm had not sounded in time, a large number of people might have frozen to death or suffered frostbite in their sleep.
Rong Hui’s home had thermal insulation cotton and felt attached to the walls. The temperature inside the house was much warmer than outside, but it was still frighteningly cold. Rong Hui felt as if she were sleeping inside a freezer.
Shivering, she got out of bed. She put on fleece thermal underwear and thermal pants, then wore the outdoor down pants and down jacket. She also stuck two heating pads under the soles of her feet. Only then did her body finally stop feeling cold.
When she went into the living room and took a look, the thermometer showed minus 12°C.
Compared with the temperature before she went to sleep last night, it had dropped by more than twenty degrees. Rong Hui’s expression became very serious. Only one day had passed, and the disasters ahead would only become more terrifying.
She summoned the system. Rong Hui saw that the Public Channel, which had always been gray, remained gray. It seemed that as long as one entered an instance, the Public Channel would be closed. However, the Friend List was still lit up, although Rong Hui had not added any friends yet.
She checked her personal stats and discovered that there were strange changes in her values:
[Survivor: Rong Hui
Age: 23
Stamina: 1002/1002
Cleanliness: 96/100
Satiety: 80/100
Health: 88/100 (Frostbite, decreases by 1 point per minute)]
First, after she had performed physical training yesterday, her stamina limit had increased slightly by two points. This indicated that improvements in physical fitness could be reflected in stamina values. People who already had good physical strength to begin with would certainly have initial stamina values far higher than 1000. In any case, Rong Hui planned to exercise every day to enhance her survival ability.
Second, a frostbite status had appeared behind her health value, and her health would decrease by one point every minute. Rong Hui looked at the arm that had been frozen numb earlier and discovered that frost sores had formed on both the arm and her fingers, showing a faint dark purplish color.
She quickly found the frostbite ointment, applied a layer first, then wrapped the area once with medical bandages. When she checked the personal status panel again, the frostbite status now had the words “Recovering” behind it, and her health was no longer continuously decreasing. She finally let out a temporary sigh of relief.
The current temperature was still within an acceptable range, but the speed of the temperature drop was too fast. Rong Hui inspected the facilities in her home and discovered that the water, electricity, and gas were still functioning normally. She opened every faucet in the house slightly, letting a small trickle of water run in order to prevent the pipes from freezing as much as possible.
She took out a large box of free range chicken eggs from the System Backpack. While gas was still available, she planned to boil half a box of eggs. Most of the food she had stored was already cooked food, but boiling the eggs would make them easier to carry and exchange for supplies with others.
For breakfast, she ate two eggs and drank a cup of hot milk. Rong Hui filled her satiety value to the maximum and noticed that her health value had already started to recover. Only then did she feel reassured.
Since she could not go anywhere anyway, she first did a set of exercises at home, then began looking at the national map she had found online.
The phone had become somewhat unresponsive from the cold, and a flood of warning messages only started pouring in now. Rong Hui opened the residents’ group chat and discovered that the group messages were once again 99+.
Resident 802: “Help! My mom fainted from the cold last night. I can’t get through to 120 right now, and the electric car at home won’t start. Does anyone here have a gasoline car? Please, someone help send my mom to the hospital. The elderly person can’t hold on any longer!!”
Resident 102: “My family just replaced our car with an electric one this year, and now we run into this extreme weather. The car is practically frozen useless.”
Resident 503: “The one on the eighth floor, try calling every emergency number you can. 120 must be incredibly busy right now.”
Resident 701: “How about asking the property management if they have a car?”
Rong Hui felt somewhat unwilling to ignore it, but her small car was also electric. She had driven it down into the underground garage yesterday, and by now it was probably already frozen with no power left.
Resident 401: “I have a gasoline car and can take you, but I want 10 grams of gold.”
Resident 303: “What? Are you robbing people?”
Resident 103: “Taking advantage of the disaster like this is really shameless! Saving a life is worth more than building a seven story pagoda!”
Resident 401: “Anyway, I have the fuel and the car. Go or don’t go.”
Rong Hui frowned. This Resident 401 did not want money, only gold. At a time when the disaster had just arrived, this was clearly suspicious. Thinking of the people she had encountered on the fourth floor yesterday, the person living in 401 was probably one of those survivors.
If they were already trying to take advantage of the disaster right after it began, who knew what they might do once social order collapsed later.
Rong Hui did not know exactly what the Doomsday Train System was, nor did she know whether the instance world was truly real. However, when she looked at the bustling crowds on the streets and the smiling faces of people around her, everything felt so real. She could not stop the disaster from arriving, but she would never harm the people of the instance world.
Resident 802: “Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I called the property management. They have a car and can send us.”
Resident 701: “The elderly person will definitely be fine. Just get them to the hospital in time.”
Resident 401: “We accept long term business. A trip costs between 5 and 10 grams of gold.”
Resident 103: “Your attitude is really disgusting. When the weather gets better in a few days, let’s see how you’ll have the face to keep living here.”
Resident 401: “Heh. The weather isn’t going to get better, #@%&*@#@&……”
Resident 103: “What kind of unlucky nonsense are you saying? And what’s with that pile of garbled text!”
Resident 401: “#@%%#*の. Anyway, you people wouldn’t understand.”
Watching the farce unfolding in the group chat, Rong Hui naturally noticed the garbled text sent by the survivors on the fourth floor. She frowned and thought about it for a moment. The system probably did not allow survivors to reveal anything related to the apocalypse.
She opened the app and tried posting something related to the apocalypse. After the post was sent out, she checked it again, and sure enough, it had turned into garbled text.
It seemed that the system’s monitoring was extremely comprehensive and strict. Rong Hui stopped struggling over whether she should warn the people of the instance world about the disaster. Without concrete evidence, she would only be treated as a lunatic.
At lunchtime, she brought out the leftover hot pot ingredients from yesterday and continued eating them.
Now the house had practically become a natural cold storage. The remaining ingredients had completely maintained their original state. The fresh, steaming hot pot temporarily drove away the cold, and Rong Hui felt warmth spread throughout her body.
After finishing the meal, Rong Hui went online again to collect methods for dealing with extreme cold. People who had grown up in a peaceful and stable society ultimately lacked a certain level of vigilance and practical knowledge when facing extreme disasters.
She absorbed a large amount of knowledge about avoiding danger from the internet. For example, when facing extreme cold, ordinary buildings were not warm enough. At such times, snow houses built from ice and snow could actually be warmer. Rong Hui wrote down these key points. There were still at least twenty days of survival time ahead, and she hoped to live longer and live better.
At three in the afternoon, another warning message arrived on her phone. A new wave of hail was about to strike.
Rong Hui checked the windows and insulation cotton in her home. As she watched, the sky suddenly turned dark, as if something were surging and ready to burst forth in the pitch black night.
“Beeeeep!”
The alarm siren in the residential complex sounded.
“Bang!”
A massive hailstone smashed against the glass. Immediately afterward, chunks of hail fell like artillery shells. Rong Hui heard the sound of glass shattering downstairs, along with people screaming.
…