Fu Jingchuan went downstairs to retrieve the inflatable boat and took all their food supplies with him. By the time the other survivors arrived, not a scrap of resources remained.
“That bastard Fu didn’t leave us a single way out!” someone yelled.
“Let’s take the raft back!” another shouted.
“That’s right! They’re hiding on the 32nd floor, how could they possibly understand the hunger we’re facing? If worst comes to worst, we’ll tear down that metal gate. I refuse to believe that bastard Fu has a second gun!”
A group of men clenched their fists, itching to drag Fu Jingchuan out and flog his corpse in the hallway.
Yet they conveniently forgot that the raft belonged to Fu Jingchuan. Lending it was a kindness, not an obligation. The promise of splitting the supplies sixty-forty was their own proposal. Just this morning, they’d been bowing and scraping, all gratitude—and the moment the supplies were hauled up, their faces turned cold. The human heart, it seems, is a fathomless abyss.
Thirty-second floor.
A few teary-eyed children had been abandoned in the hallway.
“Uncle… Auntie, I’m so hungry, could you give me something to eat?”
“We were wrong… wuwuwu…”
A little boy was crying miserably. Lin Huiying’s nurturing instincts kicked in. She stepped forward and tried to comfort the boy, her voice gentle. “Little one, I have some biscuits here… Take them… eat.”
She offered her thumb-sized crackers, but they were snatched away in an instant. The boy glanced at Lin Huiying again, his eyes pleading. “Pretty auntie, could you give us back the raft? That way, my mom and dad… won’t hit me.”
Lin Huiying hesitated, glancing back at the Fu brothers. Torn between her conscience and loyalty to her group, she forced herself to look away, mumbling, “Sorry, kid. The raft isn’t mine to give.”
The little boy stopped sobbing and looked up at her, eyes shining. “Why not? You gave it last time, didn’t you? Good auntie, we’ll pay you back, I swear.”
Wu Sihan, afraid his wife would be persuaded, was about to intervene when Lin Huiying said firmly, “No. I don’t have the right to give it away. It was your parents who didn’t keep their word—I can’t help you.”
“You’ll regret this!”
The boy shot her a look full of venom. Lin Huiying shuddered involuntarily, goosebumps rising at the foreign malice in a child’s gaze.
Soon, adults lurking under the stairwell appeared, their faces contorted with desperation.
“Why won’t you help?”
“You gave us a chance once before—if you’re doing good, see it through to the end! What gives you the right to hide while we all suffer?”
“Push down this door—their supplies are ours! There are only a few of them, we’ve got dozens of men. What are we afraid of?!”
The little boy, hidden behind the adults, grinned smugly at those behind the gate—as if to say, See, this is what you get for crossing us.
A crowd pressed their hands against the metal door, ready to topple it—only to discover their bodies had gone numb, fingers frozen on the bars and mouths unable to call for help.
In an instant, those leaning against the iron gate turned to charred corpses.
“What the hell! Old Four, Old Five, you’re dead—how do I explain this to our parents?”
“Damn, they electrified the gate.”
“Fu Shiyi, you killed all these people—don’t you fear karma?”
Fu Shiyi let out a cold laugh. “Karma, is it? This is your retribution for trying to steal from us. Serves you right! I’m a grown man, what am I supposed to be afraid of? You come one step closer, and you’ll find my gun isn’t for show.”
The one time he’d hesitated was out of pity for a child’s suffering. But these very people had driven out the last bit of compassion in him. Now they had the gall to question his actions?
Liu Daqiang said nothing, eyeing the gun in Fu Shiyi’s hand warily. He led his group away, beaten and dejected.
The once-crowded hallway fell quiet again.
The Wu couple eyed the returned supplies with complicated feelings. These people had been hiding so much food, but had only given Fu Shiyi a couple of waterlogged packs of crackers, thinking him someone easy to manipulate—or maybe they figured the raft was secured and the mask could drop.
Wu Sihan once more felt a surge of gratitude for his decision. If he’d been alone, he could never have held the 32nd floor.
The children left behind outside the iron gate wailed inconsolably—this time, no one came to comfort them.
Noisy echoes filled the stairs. Just a wall away, Ye Shu watched it all unfold.
She’d always known the bottom-floor survivors were no innocent lambs.
…………
Seventeenth day.
The water had submerged the twentieth floor, and terrifyingly, the level still seemed to be rising.
Ye Shu ate and drank as usual, practiced swordplay, and watched flame wars between Sakura Country and Huaxia Country’s players in the holographic screen. The day passed pleasantly enough.
Game, day eighteen.
The twenty-first floor was now under water. Corpses littered the hallways, and even on the thirty-second floor, rats were scurrying in corners—along with cockroaches, centipedes, and other vermin. Ye Shu sealed all the drains and disinfected her body daily, without fail.
Game, day nineteen.
Twenty-third floor submerged. The survivors’ living space was shrinking fast. The higher you were, the safer it felt. The thirtieth floor was jam-packed, filth and mosquitoes everywhere. Disease spread rapidly; the fevered count grew ever larger.
Ye Shu tinkered with her radio.
“...ZZZ... This is National Shelter Number Ten... ZZZ... Rescue team resources insufficient... Citizens who hear this message, please make your way to Shelter Number Ten... ZZZ... Location: Jin City... ZZZ... Yunwu Mountain... Currently, global torrential rain, self-rescue advised... ZZZ... Located in the latitude... area—flooding highly likely…”
Shelter Number Ten.
Jin City was several hundred li from Jade Lake City— not far by ordinary standards, but with the floods, it was insurmountable. It’d take half a month to reach it by manpower, even in a swift boat.
The good news: she’d finally pinpointed the national shelter. The bad: it was too far; no one could paddle there before it was too late.
Just as Ye Shu considered sharing the news with her teammates, a deafening roar split the air. A muddy-brown wall of water came surging, an unstoppable force tearing across the city as if it were flat ground.
Every building around Jade Lake City had long since been claimed by the flood—only the towers of Yuhai Bay stood.
The colossal wave slammed into them. The building shuddered violently as yellow-brown floodwater, thick with branches, leaves, and trash, smashed through the windows. The ceiling seemed to rip open—a shower of debris rained down. Ye Shu, caught unprepared, choked on the stench of mud, her vision filled with murky yellow-gray, her eyes stung and blurred.
Amidst the roaring of the flood, Ye Shu could just make out the dying screams of those swept away.
The wave passed. In mere seconds, Yuhai Bay’s high-rises suffered irreversible losses.
“Cough—cough!”
After a while, a figure crawled out from the mud, spitting out dirt and gasping for breath. It was Ye Shu.
She had come within a hair’s breadth of death.
The flood came as quickly as it passed, receding in just a few breaths.
Ye Shu looked around. Half her supplies were buried in the mud; even her generator had been smashed to pieces. Things had happened so fast, she’d managed to save only her most valuable goods in her spatial storage.
She touched the wreckage of the generator—and in a flash of white light, it was restored, good as new.
The door to her apartment had been battered open by the mudslide—nothing left but the warped frame.
Ye Shu stowed the generator in her inventory and headed for the hallway.
Across the hall, there was no sign of Fu Jingchuan or Fu Shiyi—they were likely swept outside by the flood.
Room 3205 was buried in silt; as Ye Shu dug through the mud, she glimpsed two hands tightly clasped together…