The sky was a sheet of gray. White lightning slashed down from the heavens, peal after peal of thunder, the crackle of pelting rain, the screams of the crowd, and the thud of heavy objects hitting the ground all blurred together. Indistinct white objects fell from the sky, shattering glass, felling trees, smashing vehicles, and the people still walking outside.
What was happening? And what were those white things?
Soon a man’s voice came from up front. Shouting himself hoarse, he yelled, “It’s hailing, fist-sized hail, coming down nonstop! People at the back, please squeeze in a bit, there are still a lot of people outside who haven’t gotten in.”
The white objects turned out to be fist-sized hailstones. If one struck a person’s head, they’d surely drop on the spot.
A wave of afterfright washed over Ye Yi, her hands and feet went a little weak. Just now she’d been only a hundred-odd meters from the market entrance. If the hail had started two minutes later, it would have come down on her head.
The crowd was in an uproar. Those at the back couldn’t hear the voices at the front at all, and the scene descended into chaos. The people at the back clamored to get out, the people at the front pushed back hard, and those caught in the middle could go neither forward nor back, wailing as the crowd crushed them. Everyone panicked into a tangled mass.
Ye Yi carefully shrank into a corner, her back pressed flat against the wall, both hands gripping a pipe of unknown purpose beside her, not daring to relax in the slightest, terrified that if she let go she’d be swept away by the crowd.
Not far off she saw a girl knocked to the ground by the crush, not a single person stopped to help her up. Some, seeing her, went around, some simply stepped right over her legs. Terrified, Ye Yi shut her eyes, not daring to look, and only gripped the pipe harder.
Just then a man’s voice came over a loudspeaker. “Everyone, don’t panic. Right now the market here is a safe zone, but the people outside have nowhere to shelter, and many have been hit. People at the back, please shift over if you can make room, if there’s no room, stay where you are and don’t move around.”
The man’s voice echoed through the whole market. Hearing that it was safe inside, the people at the back stopped rushing to squeeze out, and things quieted down considerably. Some voluntarily stood up on the steps, some climbed onto the stalls, and the girl who had fallen was helped up by a kind soul and set to rest in a corner.
Everyone worked to shrink the space they took up, so that the people outside could all shelter inside and escape this sudden disaster.
Of the people outside the market, those close by rushed in, soaked to the skin by the time they made it. Those farther away were mostly struck by hail, and when they ran in they trembled all over, with unexplained blood streaming down their bodies, no one could tell where they’d been hurt.
The thunder overhead struck at people’s hearts, wave after wave. Watching the scene, the timid had begun to shake, and some even crouched down and started to cry.
Leaning against the wall, Ye Yi could feel the impact of the hail striking it. As the space quieted, she thought she faintly heard a child crying. She turned and pressed her ear to the wall, slowed her breathing, and did her best to steady herself. After listening carefully for a while, there really was a child crying.
She quickly turned back, cupped her hands to her mouth, and shouted toward the entrance, “There’s a child outside, on the other side of this wall, she’s crying!”
Hearing this, several men at the entrance gritted their teeth, found a big board, and held it over their heads. Rounding the corner of the wall to the spot Ye Yi had described, one man saw a little girl beneath a cold-dishes stall. “Little one, it’s too dangerous out here right now. I’ll take you into the market to find your family. Just don’t move around for a bit, okay?”
The little girl sat on the ground, hugging her knees, her head buried between her legs, having cried for a good long while. Hearing the man speak, she lifted her head, holding back tears that wanted to keep falling, wiped her eyes, and nodded. It was too frightening here, she wanted to find her mommy.
Seeing someone had come for her, she obediently stayed still. But watching the hail still coming down outside, she didn’t dare go out, and sobbed, “Uncle, I’m scared to go out.”
“It’s all right, Uncle’s come to get you.” The man and the others held up the board and carefully approached the cold-dishes stall. The man standing in the middle carefully leaned in and lifted the little girl out. The other two men kept holding the board, and the group carefully hugged the wall back to the market.
Once safely back inside, the man, holding the little girl, asked loudly, “Whose child is this? Will anyone who knows her come claim her?”
Someone in the crowd immediately recognized the little girl and quickly patted the woman crouched crying on the ground beside her, calling out, “Xiao Lin, isn’t that your kid?”
“Where?” The woman didn’t know what was happening, hearing only that someone had mentioned her child, she scrambled up from the ground at once. Gripping tightly the person who’d just patted her shoulder, she asked in a tearful voice, “Sister, you saw my child? Where is she? I’m begging you, tell me.”
The sister being gripped understood her feelings and, ignoring the pain in her clutched hands, forcefully pulled one hand free and pointed at the entrance. “Look, isn’t that your child?”
Following her gaze, the woman looked, it really was her child. Too overcome even to give thanks, she dashed straight over.
The onlookers immediately opened a path for her. The woman sprinted over, swept the child into her arms, patted her bottom hard, and wailed, “You child, where did you run off to? Do you have any idea how you scared your mommy to death?”
Back in her mother’s embrace, the girl hugged her tightly in return. The tears she’d forced back before spilled out again. She said nothing, only clung to her mother’s neck, crying out loudly, “Mommy, Mommy.” The little girl had clearly been badly frightened.
Ye Yi watched the girl’s mother hold her and bow over and over in thanks to the several men who had risked going out to save people.
She couldn’t help letting out a breath of relief. The little girl was so small, thank goodness someone had been willing to go out and bring her back.
The hail outside the door kept falling without pause. The wait was hard to bear. Some people took the initiative to cooperate, holding up boards that could shield against the hail, and one after another rescued quite a few more people from outside.
After about an hour, the hail and rain slowly stopped.
Ye Yi followed the crowd and slowly made her way out of the market. By now the sky had darkened, leaving only a faint glow. The wind blew in gusts of cool air carrying the smell of grass after rain, and it seemed to blow cold into people’s hearts too.
Through that sliver of light, she could see the ground in ruins. All the snack and vegetable stalls had been smashed to bits by the hail. Tall trees had snapped in the middle, and the people who’d hidden under vehicles carefully dodged the glass shards littering the ground as they crawled out.
Some hadn’t managed to find shelter in time and had been beaten to the ground by countless hailstones, blood pooling and flowing with the water, no telling whether they were alive or dead.
Some were checking on the fallen, some hurried away.
Ye Yi stood where she was. After watching for a while, there was nothing she could do to help. Making use of the light, she slowly got her bearings and headed for her lodging.
On the way back, everywhere she looked was in ruins, nothing like the town’s original appearance. Under cover of the dark, Ye Yi gathered some of the trees that had snapped and fallen to the ground.
All she heard, over and over in her ear, was, “Gathering experience +0.1, +0.1…” In the end she got a total of 25 boards and 12 wooden blocks.
Along the way she also saw the glass of many houses shattered by the hail. Back at her lodging, Ye Yi opened the door and stepped in, unsurprised to see the balcony glass shattered all over the floor, fortunately the alloy door between the living room and the balcony hadn’t broken.
Ye Yi turned to the bathroom and hung up her somewhat damp shoes to drain. She dug out a broom and dustpan, swept the balcony glass shards clean, and dumped them into the trash.
Looking at the empty window frame on the balcony, she couldn’t shake a sense of insecurity. But a look around the apartment turned up nothing she could use to cover it, so she could only shut the balcony door, and in an instant the place grew much darker.
Ye Yi went to the wall and tried the light switch, sure enough, it wouldn’t turn on.
She took out the heating supplies stored in the system Backpack, opened the plastic bag, reached in and felt for the batteries, found the flashlight, installed them, flipped the switch, and a beam of light appeared in the room.
She patted her stomach, wondering about the bread she’d stuffed in her pocket earlier, how had it fared?
She reached into her pocket and took out the bread. It had been crushed into a lump, utterly unappetizing to look at, but tossing it seemed wasteful, so she could only close her eyes and eat it while pretending it was delicious.
After eating, she sat on the sofa and opened the wristband:
Time: Day 3, 8:00 p.m. Location: Yudu Town, Jincheng Complex Weather: Unknown Temperature: 0°C Humidity: 90%
Name: Ye Yi
Sex: Female
Age: 26
Survival Points: 150 (100 points frozen)
Current Map: Extreme Cold Blizzard
Random Teammate: Hidden (When your teammate is in danger, their location is automatically sent to you. Rescuing your teammate earns double points.)
Ability: Gathering-and-Crafting System (Lv1: 4.2/50)
Seeing that the Gathering-and-Crafting System’s experience was only 4.2, she got an instant headache. Why was this Gathering System so hard to level up? Wasn’t leveling supposed to be pretty easy at the start?
The weather now read “Unknown.” Did that mean it wouldn’t report the weather anymore?
Ye Yi got up and stood on the balcony, gazing out at the black air, spacing out for a while without thinking of anything to do. Right now the ground outside was all water, and with the sky dark she couldn’t see the situation at all, going out rashly might be dangerous.
After thinking it over, she decided to sleep first and see how things looked tomorrow.
She put her damp, clingy tracksuit pants in the bathroom to air-dry. Back in the room, Ye Yi covered herself with two quilts and still felt a bit cold, so she could only wrap up tightly and curl into a ball.
She spent the whole night dreaming of being chased by monsters. Waking in the morning, Ye Yi felt drained all over. She touched her head, she seemed to have caught a chill.