The tourists who had been sheltering in the store no longer cared about the storm outside. They scrambled to escape, a frantic tide of people surging toward the exit.
But there were too many of them. The double glass doors were a bottleneck, and the crowd devolved into a chaotic mass of shoving and screaming, like sardines fighting to escape a can.
“Move it, you idiot! What are you doing blocking the door?”
“Get out of the way, you bitch!”
“If you want to die, don’t drag us down with you! Move!”
In the face of death, morality vanished in an instant. Anyone who obstructed the path to safety became an immediate target of the crowd’s fury.
Song Yue didn’t join the crush at the door. Instead, she climbed onto a half-meter-high box in the hardware store, watching the woman across the room who was being berated by the mob.
The woman was fighting against the current, ignoring the insults and fists as she struggled to push back into the store.
“My daughter! Where are you? Mommy’s coming for you! Just hold on!”
Tears streamed down the woman’s face. She scanned the crowd, her eyes lighting up when she spotted a few women her own age. She seized them, her face a mess of snot and tears.
“Please, please help me! Have you seen a girl about this high in a red dress? She’s my daughter—we got separated! Please… please, just tell me if you’ve seen her!”
The women she grabbed showed no sympathy, despite being her peers. Instead, they coldly shook off her arms and pushed forward, desperate to protect their own children and escape the store before the floodwaters engulfed it.
The woman collapsed into helpless sobs, her clothes torn and tattered from the crush.
A faint cry of “Mommy” reached Song Yue’s ears.
Song Yue’s eyes darted toward the sound. She leaped from the box and, with her small, agile frame, slipped through the crowd like a sleek fish.
In an instant, she was at the site of a collapsed metal shelf.
“Don’t be afraid,” Song Yue whispered, crouching down to gently touch the little girl in the red dress trapped beneath the wreckage. “I’m here to save you.”
The shelf was five tiers high. She couldn’t lift it alone; she needed a tool to pry it open.
The furniture lifter!
Song Yue remembered spotting one in the toolkit earlier. She spun around and ran to the adjacent shelf, snatching a compact home-use furniture lifter. It was the perfect size. A full-sized car jack would have been too heavy for her to crank, but this was manageable.
Dropping to her knees, Song Yue slid the lifter into the gap between the shelf and the floor. She gripped the handle and pumped the metal rod upward with all her strength.
As the shelf rose, Song Yue whispered a few soothing words to the little girl. She slipped her arms under the child’s armpits and hauled her out from the wreckage in one swift motion.
A chime echoed in her mind.
【Successfully rescued 1 civilian (1/10)】
Song Yue felt a surge of satisfaction. She hadn’t expected this to count—a lucky break.
Hoisting the little girl onto her back, Song Yue waved to the woman still fighting the current nearby. The woman, whose face had been etched with despair, saw the flash of red on Song Yue’s back and instantly flooded with joy.
“Tingting!” The woman rushed forward, clutching her daughter. Tears streamed down her face as she looked at Song Yue. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”
“Don’t worry about that right now. Get upstairs—the store’s about to flood!” Song Yue cut her off, glancing outside. The lake water was surging backward, combining with the torrential rain to form an unstoppable torrent sweeping toward them.
Song Yue had already noticed that the hardware store and the surrounding shopping center sat in a low-lying area when she was stocking up. The only way to avoid being swallowed by the water was to get to the store’s rooftop terrace.
Aside from the nearby hotel, most buildings in this area were only one or two stories high—shops on the first floor, with the owners’ living quarters above.
Through the chaotic crowd, Song Yue spotted the hardware store owner. He had already reached the stairs to the second floor and was fumbling with his keys to unlock the iron gate.
But perhaps out of sheer terror, the owner’s hands shook so violently that he dropped the keys the moment he pulled them out. They clattered to the floor, only to be instantly kicked away by the surging crowd, vanishing into the chaos.
Trapped between the advancing flood and the locked iron gate, the plump store owner broke. He collapsed into a crouch, clutching his head and muttering in despair.
Song Yue’s frustration mounted. She had expected a hardware store owner to be more resourceful, yet his psychological defenses had shattered over a lost set of keys.
“Where’s the fire axe?” she demanded, rushing to his side.
The owner lifted his head, his face still etched with panic. He gestured toward a corner of the shop.
Without a word, Song Yue handed the little girl back to the woman and ran to retrieve the axe. She raised the heavy tool high, aimed at the lock, and brought it down with a fierce strike.
The iron lock shuddered and deformed under the blow.
Song Yue swung again and again. On the fifth strike, the lock finally snapped.
The owner leaped to his feet, weeping with relief. He tore open the iron gate and bolted up the stairs without looking back.
The woman and the little girl scrambled up the stairs, with Song Yue bringing up the rear.
Just as she reached the top step, the flood roared behind them. The double glass doors shattered into a million shards that littered the floor. Racks collapsed row after row, burying those who hadn’t escaped in a watery grave.
Song Yue caught a final glimpse of the horror before they cleared the first floor. She felt a pang of regret, but knew she was powerless to help.
I have to survive first, she told herself. Only then can I save anyone else.
“It’s over… we’re trapped…” The hardware store owner, who had reached the second floor first, stared down from a window. Seeing the water already halfway up the first floor, his face crumpled in despair. “I should have never renewed the lease on this godforsaken place! Damn it! Why didn’t I listen to them…?”
He knows something, Song Yue thought, her mind racing. She was about to press him for more when a line of white, three-dimensional text materialized in her vision.
[Hidden Quest Triggered. Do you accept?]
A Hidden Quest?
Song Yue froze, surprised to find a Hidden Quest in a Beginner Instance .
099, what’s the reward? And what happens if I fail?
In her experience with other games, Hidden Quests always offered better rewards than regular ones. She was tempted by the white text, but she needed to know the penalties first to avoid getting trapped.
099 replied in her mind: [The reward is unknown; the host must discover it. There is no penalty for failure, as this quest is optional.]
No penalty. Good. Song Yue hit accept.
The white text dissolved, replaced by a new message: [Hidden Quest: Find and report the cause of the Thousand Crane Lake backflow. Reward: A Miraculous Cocktail.]
[Miraculous Cocktail: Drink when needed for an unexpected effect.]
What?
Song Yue stared at the description, bewildered. What kind of vague explanation is that? How am I supposed to drink something when I don’t even know what it does?
Then, it clicked.
If the effect wasn’t specified, didn’t that mean it could do anything she needed?
An all-purpose item!
Song Yue’s eyes lit up. She was determined to complete this quest.
Pulling herself back to the present, she reasoned that since the Hidden Quest had been triggered by the hardware store owner’s words, the solution must be linked to what he’d just said.
But the situation was critical. Finding an escape route came first.
“Where’s the access to the roof?” Song Yue asked, her gaze sweeping the room. She’d seen no stairs leading upward from the second floor.
The water level continued to rise. They couldn’t huddle here forever—eventually, this floor would be submerged just like the first. Her plan was to reach the roof, then conjure up an excuse to retrieve the inflatable kayak from her space and paddle them to safety.
The hardware store owner recognized that Song Yue was the calmest among them, but he still saw no point in her question.
“What good is the roof?” he muttered despondently. “It’s pouring outside, the flood has already swallowed the other buildings, and no one is coming to save us. We’ll just be waiting to die up there.”
The woman, who had been silent until then, snapped. “Then what are we supposed to do? Just wait for the water to drown us? My daughter is here—she’s my everything! I can’t let anything happen to her!”
The woman turned to Song Yue. Despite her own youth and the naive, student-like air she projected, the girl had been the calmest of the three adults.
She had saved the woman’s daughter from the crowd’s crush. She had found an ax to smash the locked door. Now, she was thinking clearly, trying to find a way to save them all. Her mental fortitude was undeniable. The woman was willing to follow her.
“Little sister, I’ll go to the roof with you,” she said. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
Song Yue nodded and fixed her gaze on the hardware store owner.
The man gritted his teeth, finally relenting to her unyielding stare. “The access to the roof isn’t in my store.”
“Then where is it?” Song Yue pressed.
“In the hypermarket next door.”
A heavy silence fell over the room.
Tingting, the only one who didn’t grasp the situation, tugged at her mother’s hand. “Mommy, let’s go to the hypermarket then!”
The woman’s face twitched. She hugged her daughter tightly as the spark of hope Song Yue had ignited vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Of course we want to go there. That was the only way to the roof. The only way to survive.
But they were trapped on the second floor, completely cut off from the rest of the building.