*Chapter 6: Chat Channel
She could stay up late and keep working, but Lin Duoduo needed to sleep.
She was still just a child, at an age where she was growing.
“Duoduo, it’s getting very late. You should go to sleep.”
“Huh? Sister, I don’t mind sleeping, but how do we sleep? Do I really have to sleep sitting in the passenger seat?”
Hearing her sister’s question, Lin Wanwan gently pinched her small nose. This little girl was just looking for an excuse to stay up.
Lin Wanwan thought to herself, *Oh, my foolish little sister, you’re still too young! Did you really think your sister wouldn’t have thought of this?*
She got up and briefly tidied the back of the van, placing the box containing ninety-two light orbs behind the driver’s seat and moving the remaining items toward the rear wall of the compartment.
Once the car interior was organized, she pulled the hammock out from a corner. She tied one end to the backrest of the passenger seat and the other end to the hook on the left rear wall of the car.
After hanging the hammock, she noticed that it was different from a typical soft-bottomed hammock; it had a firm, flat base. Lying on it wouldn’t cause it to sag, making it no different from a regular bed.
Once it was secured, Lin Wanwan pressed down on it with her hands and found its load-bearing capacity to be fairly sturdy.
She looked at her sister with a slight smile.
“Come on, my dear sister. Time to go to bed.”
Seeing that Lin Wanwan had actually set up a place for her to sleep, Lin Duoduo was dumbfounded.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to sleep, but having just transmigrated to this world on the first day, everything felt so novel that she wanted to stay awake a little longer.
Now that her sister had prepared the bed, she had completely run out of excuses.
Gazing at Lin Wanwan’s half-smiling face, Lin Duoduo gave up resisting.
Having depended on her sister for so many years, she naturally understood what that expression meant.
If she didn’t behave, her little rear end would surely suffer.
With that thought, she obediently crawled into the hammock.
Seeing her sister cooperate so well, Lin Wanwan smiled tenderly.
*Now that’s a good girl.*
She reached out, pulled out the Swiss Peach blanket, and gently draped it over Lin Duoduo.
Then she kissed her on the forehead.
“Duoduo, go to sleep now. You still have work to do tomorrow. While I’m sleeping during the day, I need you to help watch the vehicle for me. When you spot a treasure chest, you’ll have to wake me up, okay?”
Hearing her sister say she had such an important job to do tomorrow, Lin Duoduo nodded obediently.
“Got it, Sister! I’m going to sleep now. Love you!”
As she spoke, Lin Duoduo flashed a hand-heart gesture at Lin Wanwan.
Lin Wanwan smiled, tucked her in properly, and pulled the side curtain of the hammock shut.
With that finished, Lin Wanwan bent down and crawled into the driver’s seat.
Without her noticing, the car had already come to a stop.
This meant that right outside the vehicle, a treasure chest was waiting for her to collect it.
Lin Wanwan looked out the car window. It could no longer be described merely as pitch-black—it was as though darkness itself had swallowed everything in the surroundings.
The faint light inside her car couldn’t illuminate anything outside at all.
She hesitated briefly before abandoning the thought of stepping out to pick up the box right now.
If she were alone, Lin Wanwan might have taken the risk, but now she had Lin Duoduo to care for. She needed to nip every potential danger in the bud.
It wouldn’t be too late to fetch the chest once dawn broke and the surroundings became visible.
With this in mind, she paid no more attention to the world outside the car window and instead tapped on the light screen on the central console.
At the very top of the light screen, that row of blood-red countdown numbers kept ticking away, though the remaining time had changed.
“Beast Arrival Time: 11:29:08.”
Seeing that the remaining time had increased significantly, Lin Wanwan’s tension eased.
She temporarily set the timer aside, bypassed the survival rules, and directly opened the regional chat channel.
Perhaps because of the overwhelming volume of messages, the light screen froze for a full five seconds the moment Lin Wanwan opened it before the chat messages finally loaded.
At the top of the chat panel, a set of figures was displayed:
Number of people: 78,412 / 100,000.
If she recalled correctly, the first number represented the current number of survivors, while the one hundred thousand behind it was the total regional population.
In other words, in less than a single day, over twenty thousand people in this region had already died.
Seeing this, Lin Wanwan felt completely indifferent.
When she and her sister first entered this survival world in their previous life, they had probably been part of that initial denominator of one hundred thousand as well.
Since the two of them had already died once before, whether others lived or died was no concern of hers.
Lin Wanwan first changed her screen name to *Spring Blooms*, and then began reading the chat log.
“Is everyone asleep?”
“Does anyone have spare gas? My car broke down!”
“Did anyone go outside after dark to take a look? What’s the situation like out there right now?”
“Is there any big sister with food to spare? I can trade mineral water for it.”
Lin Wanwan browsed through these messages rapidly, most of which were useless information.
Just then, one message caught her eye:
“Say, that unknown entity mentioned that the first disaster is happening tomorrow. What kind of disaster will it be? Does anyone have insider info?”
At this question, the chat channel fell silent instantly. Everyone was hoping someone might know a bit of inside information.
However, after waiting for a full three minutes without a single response, the chat messages began flooding the screen once more.
“How could anyone have news? It’s everyone’s first time here.”
“Yeah, but based on my years of reading apocalyptic web novels, aren’t there only a few types of apocalypses anyway?”
“Big boss, tell us quickly! What kind of disasters? Those of us who don’t read novels are completely in the dark!”
“Since you’re asking so humbly, I’ll tell you a bit.”
The user named *I Am The Protagonist* continued speaking:
“The first is extreme cold, the second is extreme heat, and besides those, there are modes like zombies, player battles, and so on.”
Hearing *I Am The Protagonist* list the extreme cold disaster at the top, Lin Wanwan nodded silently.
No matter the time or world, there were always clever people around.
According to her past experience, the first disaster was indeed extreme cold, though it wasn’t as cold as one might imagine—hovering at just under minus thirty degrees Celsius.
In a normal world, one could buy down jackets, turn on electric blankets, seal the doors and windows tightly, and easily pull through using various simple methods.
However, this was the Highway Survival world. Many things that seemed readily available in the past simply did not exist here.
Everyone started on equal footing: one vehicle, with everything else depending on personal effort to obtain.
Lin Wanwan sensed the current temperature, which was around twenty-something degrees above zero. By the time tomorrow’s extreme cold disaster struck, there would be a temperature drop of nearly fifty degrees. It was no surprise that so many people would die during that wave of disaster.
She originally considered warning these people, but then realized she would soon be selling wood stoves. She didn’t want to be accused of having ulterior motives by certain individuals.
Ever since her parents passed away and she experienced the betrayal during her previous life in Highway Survival, she held a cautious and skeptical attitude toward everyone.
So she held back and said nothing.
In this life, she would absolutely never play the holy mother.
Just then, someone else in the group spoke up:
“When you open boxes, do you open them inside the car or outside? Has anyone ever pulled out a monster?”