[001] Binding the System
Across a bustling street, Gu Weiwei stood in front of a newly renovated building, her face filled with joy.
She was finally officially going to become a landlady!
After graduating from college, why bother looking for a job? How great would it be to just coast through life as a landlady!
Anyway, since she had received her grandfather’s inheritance early on, she had already achieved financial freedom.
The next moment, Gu Weiwei pulled out her phone, intending to ask the tenants who had reserved rooms to come over and inspect the property. But suddenly, a static sizzling sound buzzed in her mind.
Is her phone broken?
Before she could check it, a virtual screen abruptly appeared in front of her eyes.
Several lines of text popped up on the screen:
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[Unknown low-level planet detected.]
[Signs of life detected. Intelligent species present. Suitable for game deployment.]
[Apocalypse Game loading. Multiple disaster zones generating.]
[Loading complete. Planet digitization generating…]
The moment the virtual screen appeared, before anyone had time to react, the surrounding scenery shifted.
Gu Weiwei felt as though she had been pulled into an entirely new world. Everything around her was a white void, yet various scenes of all sizes flashed past at lightning speed, as if everything was being restructured.
A moment later, a mechanical voice sounded in her mind.
[Congratulations, Player. You have been assigned to “Apocalypse Natural Disaster — Extreme Heat — Arid Zone (Beginner Realm) — Zone 003.” This game zone contains 100,000 players and 5,000,000 NPCs. Scene generating. Waiting for remaining players…]
Apocalypse natural disaster???
It’s the end of the world?
What about her whole building in the city center?
While Gu Weiwei was dazed, another mechanical voice suddenly rang out in her mind.
[Would you like to bind the Doomsday Landlady System?]
Landlady?
Gu Weiwei paused for a moment and answered without hesitation, “Yes.”
Following her response, the mechanical voice continued:
[Binding Doomsday Landlady System. Detected that Player is currently being forcefully bound to the Apocalypse Game System. Intercepting… Tampering with data… Fusing… Please wait…]
Listening to the intermittent mechanical voice, Gu Weiwei couldn’t help but ponder.
Tampering? Fusing?
Could it be that this Doomsday Landlady System was higher in tier than this Apocalypse Game?
If that were the case, could the Doomsday Landlady System protect her?
Just as she was thinking this, Gu Weiwei saw the screen information before her change.
[Scene generated. The game officially begins! Friendly reminder: The world has changed. Please strive to survive!]
As the information updated, the shifting scenery around her froze in place, and Gu Weiwei immediately felt a scorching heatwave hit her.
Looking up, she saw a clear blue sky, vast and boundless without a single cloud. The sun beat down directly, making her face sting and flush red.
When she brought her gaze back down, the passing vehicles and pedestrians around her looked completely normal, without the slightest sense of out-of-place dissonance.
Yet Gu Weiwei knew her world had changed.
Looking in front of her again, the screen hadn’t disappeared, but the text had changed.
The entire screen had transformed into something resembling a game interface.
Her personal information was displayed prominently on the main screen:
[Player: Gu Weiwei]
[Mission: Clear the Apocalypse Game. Each game lasts for 1 month. Safely survive to proceed to the next stage. Failure means death! If any single player clears all games, Blue Star can be restored to normal!]
[Points: 100 (Additional points can be earned in-game. A negative point balance is deemed a failure to clear the stage)]
[Mall: Open, items available for purchase]
[Inventory: 10 slots (Max capacity of 99 per slot)]
[Game: (1) Apocalypse Natural Disaster — Extreme Heat — Arid Zone (In Progress)]
[Countdown: 29 days, 23 hours, 55 minutes, 23 seconds]
After reading through it, Gu Weiwei couldn’t help but frown.
After gamifying their world, the Apocalypse Game gave them a way out—players clear the game and everything returns to normal. But it didn’t specify how many games needed to be cleared, and it stated that any player completing it would suffice. There were over seven billion people on this world! All of this proved that clearing this game would be extremely difficult.
At this moment, she could already feel the deep malice of the Apocalypse Game.
Don’t ask why she felt that way—after all, if there were no malice, it wouldn’t have directly gamified a whole planet without asking. Those lines of text treating their Blue Star like “bugs” and unilaterally deciding their planet’s fate were still fresh in her memory!
Meanwhile, the later Doomsday Landlady System had at least asked for her consent!
Letting out a soft breath, Gu Weiwei adjusted her mindset and began walking toward the direction where people were gathering.
Since the Doomsday Landlady System was still nowhere to be seen, she would gather some information first!
A moment later, Gu Weiwei found a coffee shop to sit in. Feeling the shop’s air conditioning, her whole body felt relieved.
Right then, the voices of other people discussing reached her ears:
“It’s way too hot today!”
“Yeah! Back in March, they said our F City had already reached summer standards, and now it’s getting hotter by the day.”
“It hasn’t rained for two whole months since March. The rivers are almost completely dried up.”
“Power and water outages have been happening constantly these past couple of days. This weather is really unbearable.”
“That’s why I came here to leech off the AC! I can’t stay at home anyway.”
“Better go buy some water to stock up at home!”
“Of course.”
“Fortunately, our country is big enough. Even though we have a drought and water shortage here, other places have water to supply us. Otherwise…”
“…”
Listening to this information, Gu Weiwei froze for a second.
This world hadn’t seen rain for two whole months!
Combined with the “Extreme Heat — Arid Zone” displayed on the game panel, one thing was certain: the disaster in this world had already begun!
To survive a month in such a world, water and food were absolute necessities.
Gu Weiwei instinctively reached out to grab her phone to shop online!
However, after feeling all over herself, she couldn’t find it and realized:
The world had changed, and her phone was gone.
Gu Weiwei did, however, pull an ID card out from her pocket.
Name: Gu Weiwei
Gender: Female
DOB: XXX
Address: XXX
ID Number: XXXXX
Clearly, except for the first two lines, all other information was fabricated.
With no money on her, Gu Weiwei turned her attention to the Mall. She had 100 points!
Clicking directly into the Mall, the moment the item catalog loaded, Gu Weiwei closed it without a second thought.
A single bottle of water cost 5 points! One piece of bread cost 5 points!
If she relied on points to exchange for supplies, she wouldn’t even last a few days.
“We’re stopping orders now. We’re completely out of ice and water for today,” a coffee shop employee said with a hint of panic just then.
“How is it out so fast?”
“Yeah! There were so many people yesterday, didn’t you stay open until night?”
“It’s so hot—if we can’t even get a cold drink, how are we supposed to live through this?”
“Sigh, let’s go buy drinks at another shop!”
“…”
Seeing the employee’s apologetic expression, the other customers waiting in line immediately headed toward other stores.
Gu Weiwei looked on, lost in thought.
Once Xingfu Coffee finished the remaining active orders, Gu Weiwei stepped forward.
The staff were tidying up the counter. Seeing Gu Weiwei approach, one quickly spoke up, “Sorry, we’re closed for the day.”
“I’m not buying anything. I just wanted to ask—even if our local water supply is insufficient, isn’t Xingfu Coffee a chain? Can’t you transfer supplies from other locations? Are they not delivering water anymore?” Gu Weiwei had heard from others that other regions were supplying bottled water here, which meant there was communication and transport. So a sudden water shortage at this coffee shop was suspicious.
Hearing this, the employee’s expression shifted slightly before they finally spoke: “We contacted headquarters yesterday, and they were supposed to deliver water today. Unexpectedly, when we called today, the line wouldn’t go through at all… This isn’t just happening to our store.”
Gu Weiwei paused upon hearing this.
Their fellow players had arrived in this game zone today, and this game zone lost connection with the outside world on the exact same day. Was there a connection between the two?
If communication was truly cut off, then starting today, this place was an isolated city.
100,000 players, 5,000,000 NPCs, drought and water shortages, no outside aid, left to defend a single city alone—one could easily imagine what would happen over the coming month.
Just then, a customer nearby blurted out, “Holy crap!”
Gu Weiwei’s attention was instantly drawn over.
“Our F City has actually been cut off from the outside world!”
“What do you mean cut off?”
“It means we can’t reach the outside at all—can’t see news from outside, can’t contact anyone outside, whether through telecommunications or in reality!”
“How is that possible?”
“The internet is going crazy over this!”
“…”
“It’s actually true! What on earth is going on?”
“An alien invasion?”
“Is it caused by some kind of magnetic field?”
“…”
People on the scene pulled out their phones one after another to check.
Gu Weiwei was surprised. The news had spread this fast!
This meant that next, whether they were players or NPCs, anyone who found out would likely go into a panic-buying frenzy.
Without replenishment, this city’s supplies definitely couldn’t sustain this many people.
Especially… water resources!
Because human nature would drive everyone to scramble and hoard as much as possible!
She could already foresee that the environment would grow increasingly harsh as time passed.
Could she really survive a month in this game zone safely?
No way—after all, she was just an ordinary person.
Unless she had a cheat.
Gu Weiwei thought back to the Landlady System she had bound earlier.
Has the fusion finished?
As Gu Weiwei called out desperately in her heart, the mechanical voice finally sounded:
[Fusion complete! Doomsday Landlady System officially activated!]