No, that couldn’t be.
Although Zheng Yuexi’s life was tied to the mission, she wasn’t so traumatized by it that she’d lose her mind.
After a moment’s thought, Song Yue dismissed the idea that Zheng Yuexi was dead. It was like playing an online game: if a prerequisite failed, the system would notify the player that the quest was over and needed to be restarted.
The Natural Disaster Instance worked the same way. Song Yue knew the system would have alerted her the moment the mission failed, rather than letting her languish in a Instance destined for failure.
The only logical conclusion was that Zheng Yuexi was still alive.
Feeling a flicker of hope, Song Yue rowed the boat and glanced back at Sister Mei. “Have you seen Zheng Yuexi?”
They were all from the same academy—perhaps the four of them had encountered her.
But Sister Mei’s reply dashed Song Yue’s last bit of hope.
“No,” Sister Mei said, shaking her head. “The last time I saw her was when I saw you two and Jing Xiao talking on the shore.”
At the mention of Jing Xiao, Sister Mei quickly lowered her gaze. The academy had given Song Yue the nickname “The Sea Queen” for her romantic history. Even now, the other girls still mocked her behind her back.
But what had Song Yue ever done wrong? She hadn’t broken any laws. She’d just moved on from one boyfriend to the next a little too quickly.
Beautiful, fit, and capable—Song Yue was the kind of woman who commanded attention in any room.
The others, however, were textbook examples of sour grapes. Unable to match her, they resorted to tearing her down with gossip and malice.
Sister Mei glanced up, her eyes flickering guiltily toward Song Yue, who was rowing hard at the front of the kayak. She felt a wave of relief that she’d managed to distance herself from the toxic cycle of jealousy before it could consume her.
She looked at her three roommates. Two were staring down, picking at their cuticles. Nannan was simply gazing at Song Yue’s back, lost in thought.
After two years together, Sister Mei knew their tells. It seemed they’d all undergone the same radical change of heart about Song Yue.
With no news of Zheng Yuexi, Song Yue had to give up for now.
The Lakeside Hotel sat on a slight elevation, a bit removed from the main tourist area but offering a peaceful retreat. A group of Academy of Fine Arts students, including Song Yue, were staying there.
The hotel was an eight-story building and, if nothing else had changed, should have been the safest spot in the area.
But the first floor was already flooded. After circling the building, Song Yue finally docked the kayak on a second-floor balcony.
One by one, they climbed out of the kayak and into the room. A quick sweep of the space revealed it was already occupied—suitcases and clothes were scattered about—but the owner was nowhere to be found, leaving the room practically empty.
They didn’t have time to dwell on the intrusion. Concerned the kayak might be sliced by sharp debris if left outside, they followed Sister Mei’s suggestion and hauled it onto the balcony. Only then did the tension that had gripped them all day finally begin to ease.
Song Yue watched her companions collapse into heaps—some lying down, some slumping in chairs, all wearing masks of exhaustion.
She didn’t want to disturb them, so she approached the shopkeeper and whispered, “Can you help me find a hotel employee later?”
The shopkeeper blinked, then nodded. “Sure, no problem.”
The Qianhe Lake District had its own local dialect, utterly unintelligible to outsiders. Because the area was a hidden gem, not well-known online, even the hotel staff’s Mandarin was heavily accented and difficult to follow.
Understanding why Song Yue had asked only him, the shopkeeper realized she needed his help as a translator—a man who had run a business here for years.
After a brief rest, Song Yue gave the others a few instructions.
“Stay in this room for now,” she told them. “I’ll find out what we can from the shopkeeper first, then we’ll decide our next move.”
“I’m Huang An,” the shopkeeper said, finally taking a moment to introduce himself. “You can just call me Brother An.”
Song Yue nodded and started to introduce herself, but he chuckled and cut her off. “I know your name. Song Yue, right? I heard your friend calling you that on the boat.”
Song Yue smiled. “Yes. You can call me Xiao Yue.”
“Well, Xiao Yue, may I ask why you’re looking for the hotel staff?”
Song Yue walked to the corner of the hallway and studied the hotel’s floor plan on the wall. “I want to see if there are any other vacant rooms on the upper floors. We can’t all cram into one room forever. And if possible, we’d like to trade some supplies.”
But for her, trading was secondary. Her real goal was information.
The first floor was flooded, so the staff would have fled upstairs immediately.
She glanced at the floor plan again, confirming the memory of the original owner of her body: There’s a large buffet restaurant on the second floor.
The restaurant had food and water. The staff were likely gathered there.
Huang An followed behind her, initially puzzled as to what she was searching for on this floor.
It wasn’t until they turned a corner and came to a stop before a glass door that he finally realized she was looking for the second-floor restaurant.
The restaurant has food!
They wouldn’t have to go hungry anymore.
Huang An licked his dry lips as a sudden, intense craving for food and water surged through him.
The restaurant wasn’t crowded. Song Yue scanned the room and saw only a few dozen people, most of whom were hotel staff.
The timing of the flood had played a crucial role. When the rainstorm broke at 1:00 p.m., most guests had been out enjoying Thousand Crane Lake, leaving few people inside the hotel.
After the flood hit, most tourists never made it back. The lucky ones had managed to find refuge on the second floor, much like the customers in the hypermarket. The unlucky ones—like the shoppers on the first floor of the hardware store—had vanished from her sight the moment the waters swept through.
Death had been instantaneous.
Anyone who had survived the journey to reach the hotel was a true favorite of fortune.
Because of this, the staff—who had seen almost no one escape from the outside since the disaster began—stared at Song Yue and Huang An with wide eyes. The next second, they brandished the pots, pans, and bowls they held, their glares filled with suspicion.
“What do you want?!”
“I’m warning you two—take another step and we’ll make you regret it!”
The staff spoke in a thick dialect Song Yue couldn’t understand, but she didn’t need a translation to sense the hostility.
Huang An quickly explained what they’d said. After a moment’s thought, Song Yue took a small step back, pulling Huang An with her. “I’m sorry for startling you. We mean no harm. We’re tourists who escaped from the hardware store and the hypermarket. We’re exhausted—could we buy some food from you?”
Though the locals struggled to speak standard Mandarin, they understood it perfectly. They didn’t need Huang An to translate.
The group sized them up for a long moment. Finally, a chef in his forties spoke coldly. “You can have food. We’ll even give it to you for free. But you don’t set foot inside this restaurant. You wait at the door, or else we won’t be so polite.”
Getting food at all was a win. Song Yue hadn’t actually come for the meal—she was here for information. She offered a polite smile. “Thank you.”
But her response didn’t ease their tension. Instead, it only seemed to fuel their resentment.
“Chef Chen, don’t give anything to these ingrates! We don’t even have enough for ourselves!”
“Exactly! Haven’t we learned our lesson? We took in those students, and they repaid us by stealing from our own kitchen! We can’t trust these outsiders!”
The staff erupted into a fierce argument. But Song Yue wasn’t focused on their hostility. Her attention was fixed on three words: took in those students.
Ignoring the chaos inside the restaurant, she looked at the chef. “Were there other people here before?”
The chef glared at her and snorted.
“Yeah. About your age.” He paused, then added,
“You’re with them, aren’t you?”
Song Yue didn’t answer. Instead, she asked politely, “Can you describe what they looked like?”
The chef thought for a moment. “Five of them. One tall guy and four girls dressed… fashionably.”
He struggled to find the right word for the strange clothes he’d never seen before, so he settled on “fashionably” as a general description.
Song Yue understood. “Was the guy wearing a white shirt and jeans? And one of the girls in a tight camisole and a bodycon skirt?”
“Yes, yes! That’s them!” two middle-aged women shouted, stepping forward.
“Chef Chen, we’re right, aren’t we? She’s with those ingrates! Don’t give her any food—let her fend for herself!”
“That girl in the camisole even hit me with a rolling pin! Chef Chen, look! My arm’s all bruised!”
The staff’s anger flared again, reignited by Song Yue’s words.
Song Yue had already gotten the information she needed. Knowing she’d be dragged into the conflict if she stayed any longer, she gestured to Huang An to leave.
“Wait!” the chef called out.
He stepped into the kitchen, grabbed something from the refrigerator, shoved it into a plastic bag, and strode over to press it into Song Yue’s hand. “Take it. We don’t have much left in the kitchen, but this is all we can give you.”
“Chef Chen!” the women and the other staff shouted in disbelief.
The chef spun around, scowling. “Enough! They’re them, and she’s not. Don’t drag innocent people into this.”
Though he detested the unreasonable students, he couldn’t hold an entire group responsible for the actions of a few.
It reminded him of the travel bloggers who had visited Thousand Crane Lake. After a few bad experiences, they’d written scathing reviews that dismissed the entire town. The once-obscure destination saw its reputation plummet and tourist numbers crash, leaving the locals who relied on the industry to struggle.
Things only turned around when a random traveler’s post went viral, unexpectedly reviving the local tourism scene and bringing visitors back to Thousand Crane Lake.
The Lakeside Hotel had finally reopened its doors, and the locals were smiling again.
This experience had taught the chef a hard lesson: an individual is not the sum of their group. Every group has its bad apples, but it also has people who deserve respect and kindness.
He didn’t know if Song Yue was one of those people, but her behavior so far convinced him she was nothing like the students who had come before.
Song Yue looked down at the bag. Inside were crushed eggs, cream-filled buns, a few cartons of breakfast milk, and some clearly wilted fruit.
It was obvious they had almost nothing left.
She had no intention of adding insult to injury. Refusing the chef’s kind offer, she pushed the bag back toward him. “Thank you, but please keep it. We’ll find our own way.”
“And one more thing,” she added. “The floodwaters are still rising. The second floor isn’t completely safe. My companion and I are moving up. You should gather your things and head upstairs right away.”
“What?” the middle-aged woman asked, her eyes wide. “Hasn’t the government sent help yet?”
“Yeah, it’s been so long!” someone else chimed in, nodding. “I thought we’d heard something by now.”
“I’m sure they’re almost here,” another voice added. “We just need to wait a little longer.”
As a Task-taker from another world, Song Yue didn’t know the rules of this Instance. In her own world, officials would spare no effort to rescue people during a catastrophe, no matter how difficult the mission. Putting people first was the guiding principle of her nation.
But here, she wasn’t sure if the authorities operated the same way.
The system’s information was limited to character backgrounds and said nothing about the world’s laws.
If the government isn’t coming, she thought grimly, the next month will be even harder than we imagined.