[Highway Survival Game loading, current progress 82%, please wait patiently!]
The moment Qi Xu heard that familiar voice in her mind again, she didn’t hesitate for a second. She lunged straight into the kitchen, grabbed a cooking pot, and frantically stuffed dried noodles and eggs inside before tossing in a whole pack of salt.
Scooping up a full case of mineral water from the floor, she bolted toward the bathroom, but just before she could reach the sanitary pads, everything went dark…
When the darkness cleared, Qi Xu was already standing on a highway that stretched endlessly into the distance.
[Welcome to Highway Survival. This is Hua Region 88, Subdivision 666 (9999+). Please read the game rules below carefully.]
[1. Each player may select one starting vehicle as your means of travel at the start of the game. Choose carefully; this decision will have a profound impact on your future transport.]
[2. To obtain the resources needed to survive, keep driving forward along your highway. There will be supply crates along the road.]
[3. Supply crates contain not only survival supplies, but also unknown dangers. So when opening crates, try to use your brain.]
[4. Driving in reverse or turning back on the highway is prohibited, and you must complete the required forward mileage each day. Normally, there is only one player per highway, but from time to time highways will run alongside one another, giving you a chance to encounter other players. Sometimes your own kind seems more dangerous than monsters.]
[5. Obey traffic rules: stop at red lights, go at green lights. If you encounter stops and service areas of various types, you may choose whether to enter.]
[6. Daytime lasts from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fatigued driving is not allowed. If your Health falls below 10 or your Fatigue exceeds 90, you will be prohibited from driving.]
[7. When resting at night, please do not leave an 8-meter radius around your vehicle, or you might run into something nasty.]
[8. Mentally call up the game panel to check more information and select your starting vehicle. The first 7 days of the game are the beginner protection period; monsters will not actively attack.]
[Death in the game is real death, so don’t count on luck. Fortune and disaster go hand in hand. May your misfortunes turn to good luck. Please begin your journey. (^_-)]
Qi Xu listened carefully to the end and let out a deep sigh. She hadn’t expected to get a second chance.
Looking down at the big pot in her arms, she felt a wave of relief. Good, good—she had brought the pot. At least for the first few days, even if her luck was terrible, she wouldn’t starve too badly.
Soon, Qi Xu noticed some crushed jade fragments inside the pot. She quickly crouched down and picked them up for a closer look. Was this the Emerald Heart?
It was the reward she had gotten from an instance game. That game had been brutal, with fewer than one in ten players surviving, and Qi Xu had been lucky enough to take first place.
She had expected a massive haul of supplies, yet… the only reward was a single Emerald Heart.
She had never figured out what it did, and her light screen couldn’t scan it either. Now, suddenly recalling how her body had seemed to be enveloped in green light right before she died, it finally clicked—it had reloaded the game…
Staring at the pot in her arms, Qi Xu quickly shook her head. Regardless, just being alive again was already more than good enough.
The last time she was pulled into the game, Qi Xu had been sitting at her computer typing away, so the only thing she brought with her was an unplugged keyboard.
As a web novelist, hearing that very first prompt and failing to act immediately was something Qi Xu considered the greatest shame of her life—an utter humiliation!
It was a survival setup! Even if she’d never written one herself, she’d read plenty! Yet she had just sat there like an idiot without doing a thing. Right after entering the game last time, Qi Xu had given herself three hard slaps across the face.
What Qi Xu did write best was the darkness and betrayal of human nature, and her novels were all supernatural tales of the eerie and strange…
On top of that, she was a total homebody by nature. She wasn’t socially anxious, just too lazy to make friends; it felt exhausting, and she much preferred being alone.
Because of that, she had chosen the lone-wolf playstyle in the last run. Early on, she really had done quite well, almost always making the top hundred on the leaderboards while avoiding plenty of traps and conflicts.
At the end of the first year, however, guild gameplay suddenly appeared, and Qi Xu’s ranking began to plummet.
Then, at the end of the third year, national warzone team battles were introduced. A lone wolf like Qi Xu clearly couldn’t keep up with the times anymore, yet joining a team that late in the game made mutual trust nearly impossible, and she refused to wrong herself by sucking up to others.
On the verge of elimination, Qi Xu finally had no choice but to gamble on survival by entering a seven-star instance that no one had ever cleared. And… she failed.
Thankfully, she had the Emerald Heart, giving her a chance to start over.
Qi Xu took a deep breath. There was no reason she would do worse than in her previous life, though the hardest part… would probably be changing how she developed.
When Qi Xu opened her personal player panel, three cartoon-style vehicles popped up first.
“Please make your selection first!”
Last time, Qi Xu had chosen the off-road vehicle on the far right, but… being secondhand was one thing; its air conditioning was broken, and it guzzled gas.
Worse yet, the thing broke down constantly. Qi Xu had traded away a huge amount of food—the most precious resource in the early game—for vehicle repair cards and fuel. The weight loss she had talked about for years before the game without ever succeeding was accomplished within a single month of playing.
So this time, Qi Xu wanted to pick something else.
In the middle was an oversized truck. No matter what, that was a hard pass.
Badass as it looked, its fuel consumption was high enough to make players suicidal. The first batch of players who picked the big truck thought they were the chosen ones, only to slowly realize it was a massive trap.
Practically all of them bankrupted themselves buying fuel, and it still wasn’t enough…
That left only the option on the far left.
An agricultural electric tricycle without a canopy—blue, rugged, and reassuringly sturdy at a glance.
Batteries were much easier to get than gasoline, and much cheaper to trade for. Once the vehicle was upgraded into a new-energy electric vehicle, it would be no slower than an ordinary car.
Her mind made up, Qi Xu reached out and tapped the electric tricycle.
To her surprise, an Easter egg suddenly popped up and burst open with a bang.
“Congratulations to player Qi Xu on obtaining the title [Stubborn Mule]!”
“As the first player in the game to trigger a title, of course you get a reward.”
A Silver Supply Crate dropped straight from the sky in front of Qi Xu.
Qi Xu: !!!
As far as Qi Xu knew, Silver Supply Crates were something you wouldn’t normally see until after the beginner protection period ended! She hadn’t expected to get one right at the start.
The title didn’t sound very flattering… but that didn’t matter one bit!
………