Basking in the warm heat, lying in a bed made toasty by the hot-water bottles, Ye Yi sprawled her limbs and relaxed completely, nuzzling contentedly into the bedding.
Thinking back on the events of this afternoon, it was still a bit thrilling. It was the first time she’d learned she was actually something of an actress.
Lying in bed, she opened the wristband as usual:
Time: Day 4, 9:00 p.m. Location: Yudu Town, Jincheng Complex Weather: Unknown Temperature: Unknown Humidity: Unknown
Name: Ye Yi
Sex: Female
Age: 26
Survival Points: 150 (100 points frozen)
Current Map: Extreme Cold Blizzard
Random Teammate: Xie Yi (Teammate successfully rescued, double points to be settled after the map ends.)
Ability: Gathering-and-Crafting System (Lv1: 16.8/50)
Seeing that the double points she’d been pining for were successfully in hand, Ye Yi happily rolled around on the bed.
She’d survived in the map for four days now, with twenty-six more to go, no telling what situations lay ahead. Her nerves had been taut all afternoon, and only now did they relax. She couldn’t help covering her mouth for a yawn, rested her head on the warm pillow, and before long drifted into dreamland.
Half-asleep, Ye Yi felt a bit cold and was too drowsy to think, her body instinctively wrapped the quilt tighter and curled into a tight ball. After that series of movements, the bed warmed up again, and she dozed back off.
The next morning, Ye Yi was frozen awake by the icy air.
How could it be this cold, hadn’t she turned on the air conditioner last night? She forced open the eyes that kept wanting to shut, lifted her head to glance toward the AC, and immediately shrank back.
The AC’s light was off. It seemed the power had gone out.
Her face, exposed outside the quilt, was frozen like a block of ice. She pulled her whole head under the covers and wrapped herself up tight.
Only when the last trace of warmth in the bed was gone did Ye Yi slowly crawl out.
Before leaving the room, she happened to notice a thin layer of ice had formed on the windowsill glass. She unlocked the door and headed for the kitchen to pour herself a cup of hot water to warm up.
Before she even reached the kitchen, she saw a tall figure bent over doing something.
Walking in for a look, she saw Xie Yi bent over, turning the gas knob without stop, yet not a single flame caught.
She watched for a while as he kept repeating the motion, and couldn’t help speaking up: “The power’s out. The natural gas probably won’t work. Doing that won’t help.”
Hearing her voice, Xie Yi turned to look and only then realized Ye Yi was up. He stopped and said sheepishly, “You’re awake.”
So it was because of the power outage that the fire wouldn’t light. He’d been wondering how Ye Yi had gotten the gas going yesterday when he couldn’t today, and had thought he’d broken it.
“Mm. What are you trying to light it for?”
“I was going to cook some plain congee.” Xie Yi answered sheepishly. In reality he was used to getting up at 5:30 every day. Rising this morning, he’d found the temperature outside had dropped again and the snow was still falling nonstop.
Thinking that on such a cold day it’d be good to have something hot, he’d planned to cook some congee to warm her up, only to fail before even starting.
Having long anticipated a day like this, Ye Yi turned and went to the living room. She sat beside the fire basin she’d set up yesterday and re-arranged the boards she hadn’t finished burning.
She reached into her pocket and pretended to pull out the alcohol.
Repeating yesterday’s motions, she gently sprinkled a little alcohol on the boards, tore a few sheets of paper from the coffee table, lit them with a lighter, carefully brought the burning paper near the boards, and the alcohol caught fire, blazing up quickly.
Having successfully lit the fire basin, Ye Yi got up off the floor, jogged back to her room, took 20 boards from the system Backpack, and carried them over to sit beside the fire basin.
Xie Yi followed her and sat by the fire basin, watching the burning boards, then turned to stare at Ye Yi’s movements.
Ye Yi picked up the topmost board and, straining with both hands, snapped it in two. She held it up over the burning boards to catch fire, then gently laid it on the flames.
Xie Yi picked up a board from the pile beside him and, with a light snap of both hands, broke it in two. Before long, every board Ye Yi had taken out had been snapped.
Looking at the pile of snapped boards, Ye Yi sighed: free labor really was a fine thing.
She picked up several broken boards, put them into the fire basin, and, watching them blaze, finally felt her body warm up.
Only then did she notice Xie Yi was wearing nothing but the thin shirt she’d given him yesterday. Wasn’t he cold?
After watching for a while, she finally couldn’t help running to the room, taking out a down jacket, coming back to the fire basin, and handing it to him. “Here.”
Xie Yi looked at the black down jacket before him and froze for a moment. He didn’t expect Ye Yi to bring him a jacket too. He gazed at her steadily and said, “Thank you!”
He took the jacket, stood up, and put it on, much warmer indeed.
Ye Yi said nothing more and kept sitting by the fire basin. As the red flames blazed up, she reached for the grilling grate on the floor, set it into the slot above the fire basin, and made to get up again.
Halfway up, Xie Yi volunteered, “What do you need? I’ll get it.”
With someone willing to do the work, Ye Yi didn’t fight to go. She sat back on the floor, couldn’t resist holding her hands over the fire basin, and said as she warmed them, “The frying pan and water in the kitchen, please bring them.”
Xie Yi got up and went to the kitchen, carrying the frying pan in one hand and a bowl of water in the other.
Ye Yi quickly rose, took the water and set it on the coffee table, and put the frying pan straight onto the grate. Thank goodness Sister Ma’s place had a frying pan, if it had all been round-bottomed woks, they’d have just spun in circles on the grate.
She lifted the lid, poured the bowl of water into the pan, put the lid back on, and waited for the water to boil.
Only then did she remember she still hadn’t washed up. She quickly asked Xie Yi to watch the pan for her, telling him, “Call me when the water boils.”
With that, she scurried off to the bathroom to freshen up.
Combat wash-up done, she came back to the living room to find the water had just boiled. Xie Yi took his turn to freshen up, and she ran to her room to fetch the last three packs of instant noodles.
She lifted the lid, tore open the noodle packaging, put the noodles into the water, then tore open the seasoning packet and poured it in. Reluctant to waste the leftover seasoning, she tossed that into the boiling water too, and once it had fully dissolved, fished the packets out, then put the lid back on to keep cooking.
The flames in the fire basin seemed to have shrunk a bit from before.
Ye Yi bent down and tossed a few boards in through the opening beside the fire basin, and the fire flared up again.
Coming out from freshening up, Xie Yi caught the aroma of instant noodles in the air, glanced at the fire basin, walked straight to the kitchen, fetched two sets of bowls and chopsticks, and sat by the fire basin waiting to eat.
Through the glass on the lid, Ye Yi watched the noodles tumble ceaselessly inside. After a while they were about done. She lifted the lid, took the bowl and chopsticks Xie Yi handed her, and forked the noodles into the bowl.
Three packs of noodles, she filled one bowl and handed it to Xie Yi, picked up the other bowl and chopsticks, filled one for herself, and dug straight in.
The warm firelight lit the big living room. Eating her noodles, Ye Yi mused: the living room’s doors and windows were all sealed, burning wood indoors would cause poisoning, wouldn’t it?
At that thought, the noodles lost their flavor. She immediately set the bowl on the coffee table, walked to the alloy door, and the moment her hand touched the handle, a wave of cold air rushed up her arm.
Enduring the cold, she pushed the alloy door open, left a gap for ventilation, went back to sit by the fire basin, picked up her bowl, and kept eating.
The alloy door had been open only a short while when she felt the living room’s temperature drop considerably. Over time, no matter how fiercely the fire burned, the heating wouldn’t work as well as with the door closed, and it wasted a great deal of wood.
“If only I could build one of those heated kang beds like they have in D City, it’d definitely be a lot warmer.” Thinking of a kang, Ye Yi said it aloud, but on reflection it was only a pipe dream.
She had no money, was she going to steal, to rob? She couldn’t do such things. Even with money, no one in this town would likely know how to build such a kang, and she couldn’t afford to spend the time. Better to just tough it out.
“A kang?” Xie Yi, who’d long since finished his own noodles, asked, curious about what Ye Yi had said.
He’d always lived in the south and had only heard the north had these, but had never seen one, nor looked into it.
“Attention, residents. A cold wave, the likes of which comes once in a hundred years, has arrived. The outdoor temperature has reached minus 30°C. Residents who must go out, please take protective measures.” Hearing the voice, Ye Yi and Xie Yi immediately set down their bowls and chopsticks and ran to the balcony to look up at the sky where the voice came from.
A drone was circling above their complex, broadcasting the cold-wave warning.
It broadcast several times before flying off toward other areas.
Was this really just a survival map? Why did everything happening here feel like it was happening in reality?
Ye Yi felt a little stifled inside. Thinking of the wristband on her arm that she couldn’t remove no matter what, and the 150 points on it, she had a sense of being manipulated.
Dumping them in this unknown place, then preparing starter packs for them, all just to make them survive here for thirty days, what was its purpose?
What good did doing this do it?
Ye Yi felt she was like a puppet, walking along a path already laid out for her.
Xie Yi looked at Ye Yi, who seemed to have deflated, and broke into her brooding. “What’s wrong?”
Although he didn’t know what she’d been thinking, he didn’t like seeing such an expression on her face. Her face should be as lively as it was yesterday.
Ye Yi came back to herself, looked at the man before her, and suddenly reached out and pinched him. Was the person in front of her really real?
She couldn’t help asking, “Are you real?”
“Xie Yi, age 28, single. Just discharged and transferred out of the military this year. Doesn’t smoke or drink, no bad habits. Home address: A City, Hailan District, Beijing Road, Shengyu Complex.” Xie Yi rattled off his basic information to prove he was just as real a person as she was.
Watching Xie Yi about to recite which building, which unit, which apartment number, Ye Yi quickly stopped him and said, “That’s enough.”
She’d only asked a single question, did he need to give his full home address?
After that stunt of his, all her wild imaginings were gone. She went back to the fire basin and finished her noodles, only this time she felt much more at ease.
Sitting by the fire basin, leaning against the sofa and warming herself, she turned to Xie Yi and asked, “Do you have a place to stay?”