Downstairs, cries of anguish echoed through the building, a chorus of wailing filling the air.

Ye Shu caught sight of a familiar figure—the crafty old lady who once tried to freeload her air conditioner. Now, lying atop a stretcher draped in a white sheet, all traces of her former venom had vanished, replaced by sorrow and defeat.

Five hours of blackout pushed the residents of Xingfu Community into even deeper misery.

It was an old, run-down neighborhood with incomplete facilities. Without water and power, the elderly and children were the first to fall. Ambulances came again and again; people moved from early sorrow to cold numbness as tragedy became routine.

Ye Shu was wide awake, unable to sleep. She opened her light screen, unsurprised to see the player count drop sharply.

In a single day, nearly fifty thousand of the game's million players had died.

[Little Gray Wolf Loves Good Times]: It's so hot—I'm boiling, guys. No water, no power, and I only have a few bottles left. If it gets any hotter, I might not make it through the night.

[Scolding Means Love]: Damn this game! Doesn’t matter if you hide indoors, you'll get dragged in anyway. Even two thousand isn’t enough for water—100ml costs 200 here and it's just untreated tap water. Why aren’t people looting for it instead?

[Doggo Two]: Holy hell, this is wild! My floor caught fire—I almost roasted into a suckling pig. All my supplies went up in flames. Now I’ve got nothing left but my bitter tea seeds... Supplies, how am I supposed to live without you?

[Mountain Granny]: I'm way up in the mountains; it's only 33 degrees at noon and I need a blanket to sleep. Caught a chill last night... Anyway, my shaved ice is ready—cheers!

Mountain Granny posted a photo: a heap of shaved ice drizzled with osmanthus syrup, sprinkled with fruit and studded with ice chunks. More than a few players felt envy burn in their hearts.

Thanks to the game’s advanced tech, players could almost sense the fresh chill of the shaved ice, even through a screen.

[Starlit Herdsman]: Damn, happiness really doesn’t translate. I can barely get a sip of water, and here you are eating dessert and complaining about your cave making you catch cold.

[Yamamoto Sakura]: Baka! You Huaxia players must be cheating! The game must have given you tons of resources. It's not fair! I want to complain—complain!

[Mountain Village Junko]: The game’s unfair! We Sakura Country players have a right to question the mechanics.

[The Survival Game recognizes no borders. Each round is fair and just. Openly questioning or insulting the game: Yamamoto Sakura and Mountain Village Junko, both receive three-day mute and lose one bound item or all points.]

Yamamoto Sakura was stupefied, stunned silent behind her screen.

She hated seeing players from Huaxia thrive. She thought at worst she’d get a two-day mute; she never expected such a harsh punishment—the loss of both items and points was more than she could bear. Her prized 100-square-meter water card had been her lifeline in the heat. Without it, all she saw was looming death.

[Bunny]: Haha! I used to envy the bigshots, but seeing Sakura have a tough time makes me feel much better.

Pang Tong lay sprawled on the floor, panting like a dog, sweat streaming from every pore. Dozens of empty water bottles lay at his side; in his hand, his last. If the power didn’t return tomorrow, he would probably die in this building. Even the ambulance lines were down now—evidence of how grave the situation was.

With the last of his strength, he opened the light screen. His private chat with Ye Shu had never moved since they first entered this game.

Elsewhere, Ye Shu smacked her forehead. Why hadn’t she thought to find a mountain cave? Quiet, isolated—and a natural freezer.

But it was too late now. With the heat pushing towards fifty degrees, ordinary car tires wouldn’t survive the melting asphalt, to say nothing of the buckling roads between city and suburbs.

By seven in the morning, the sun blazed overhead.

But the repairmen had succeeded: power flickered back to life in her neighborhood.

As the cool air from her AC washed over her, Ye Shu calculated her next steps—she’d spend the last of her money on a generator and gasoline. The temperatures were still rising; more blackouts would surely follow. With a generator, at least, she wouldn’t suffer so much.

She geared up with sunhat and sun-protective clothing, layers forming a barrier against the burning world, cooling patches stuck to her skin before she stepped out.

The city’s generators had long since sold out. After a grueling search, Ye Shu managed to buy a high-powered machine for twenty thousand Longguo coins. Gasoline, scrounged up in small batches from several stations, filled a few jerrycans—almost all her money gone.

The streets were deserted. Here and there, a hurrying figure darted into the shadows of a nearby building.

It was only the sixth day of the game, yet survival had already become torture.

Ye Shu dared not imagine what twenty more days would bring. She could rewind time if she died, but in the face of natural disasters... even her abilities might not be enough.

She passed a supermarket. The stock was stripped within moments after each delivery; the shelves held not a single bottle of water. Anyone could guess how high demand had soared.

The small shopkeeper eyed Ye Shu with a mixture of regret and resentment. Once, he’d laughed at her for buying up bottled water. Not now. If he could turn back time, he wouldn’t have sold his water stockpile cheap.

His household stash was not small, but who could tell when this hellish weather would end? Even the great Jade Lake had dried up.

Ye Shu grabbed a few bags of preserved plums, paid, and left.

Under the harsh sunlight, she felt—perhaps it was only her imagination—that the temperature might have eased, just a bit.

She pulled out her scalding phone; it struggled to function in the heat.

She opened MoMo Weather: 49 degrees Celsius. Compared with last night, it was down by two or three.

Two hours later, the app reported 40 degrees.

An hour after that: 38.

Watching the steadily dropping temperature, Ye Shu couldn’t shake a nagging sense of dread.

If the game's theme was extreme heat, then it wouldn’t let players relax—not for long. This cooldown felt temporary. The true trial might yet lie ahead.

Every half-hour, the temperature fell further.

By dusk, rain began to fall—at first sparse, then gathering strength. People burst from their homes, laughing, weeping, letting the water run over their grimy faces. Some raised their fists to the sky in anger, others lifted their faces and sobbed.

"It's raining! It's really raining!"

"At last, rain! It feels so cool... I thought the world was ending."

"Why did it wait so long? My old man died of heatstroke—if the rain had just come sooner, he'd still be here... and I wouldn't be alone."

"Tonight, I’ll finally sleep well. That last half month, the AC cost me thousands!"

Relief lit every face, jubilation barely masking the terror they'd survived. But while they celebrated, they willfully ignored the darker question: why did two weeks of lethal heat vanish in half a day?

Ye Shu reopened MoMo Weather. Jade Lake City: a steady 30°C.

Every region of Longguo was cooling down. Ujiang, in the distant north, had already plunged to a bone-chilling 20 degrees—residents there now seeking warmth instead.

In a matter of hours, the soaring, 52-degree inferno had plummeted by more than twenty degrees.

Jade Lake City seemed to hit a plateau. Ye Shu refreshed her phone again and again; the screen stubbornly held steady at 25 degrees.