The death of midges should be nothing out of the ordinary.
But for so many of them to die all at once—now that was beyond peculiar.
Ye Shu scoured every inch of her home, inside and out. No matter where she looked, she found the corpses of these tiny insects, as if every one of them had been snuffed out in the same instant.
Suddenly, her neighbor across the way gasped in shock. “Why are there so many dead bugs? I don’t remember spraying any insecticide. Did these things nest up in my house? This is disgusting—God, I want to move out!”
Ye Shu glanced toward the small garden villa across the street.
Just as she suspected—the cement was strewn with midge corpses, their tiny black bodies forming a dense carpet. Even Ye Shu’s mild trypophobia was acting up.
After tidying up the yard and her rooms, Ye Shu didn’t forget to scatter insect repellent throughout the house.
It had been twenty hours since the incident. The G City plane crash was fermenting into a national scandal; a task force had been set up, and people online mourned those lost souls in collective grief.
The impact was so profound, even an obscure little town like G City made the trending news.
Capital City, Jinghua.
A bodyguard produced a photo—suspected to be of Ye Xiaoshu.
Lin Qingyue frowned.
How did the system toss her so far away?
In the photo, amidst tongues of fire, Ye Shu stood before a sea of crimson flames, her posture steely and unbowed.
……
It was the third day inside the game.
Midnight. 12:00, sharp.
A flock of startled birds erupted from the sky, flapping desperately toward the distance.
Ye Shu, already in bed, sensed something. Her eyes snapped open, recovering clarity in just seconds.
“Da Piaoliang, did anything just happen?”
Normally, oddities didn’t sleep—but this contracted creature of hers liked to defy convention.
“Awooo… Nothing, master. All’s well.”
She scanned the room. Da Piaoliang yawned lazily and promptly went back to sleep.
Nothing seemed amiss.
It was as if the unease from her dreams had never existed.
Yet something unsettled her—an ineffable sense of wrongness.
It was too quiet.
Unnaturally so.
It was summer, the season of swarming insects—yet there wasn’t a single chirp… Yes, that’s it. There had been no insect noise, not since she’d first entered the game.
Ye Shu slipped from bed and opened her door.
Yesterday’s midges had become larger mosquitoes.
The floor was strewn with insect corpses; stepping across them, she heard crisp, crunching snaps.
Ye Shu snapped a few photos of the mosquito carnage and sent them to Pang Pangzi and the Fu brothers.
A reply came promptly.
The first was Fu Shiyi.
[Taotie: Sis Yezi, be careful! Tons of little bugs died here too! I thought it was just me. The plane crash—everything about it screams connection to the game. This round’s survival game looks tough… I like it!]
Ye Shu massaged her forehead, speechless.
This kid was a lot wilder than she’d thought.
She'd assumed he was a well-behaved little brother. If not for Fu Jingchuan’s ocean tumble in the last game, even she wouldn’t have noticed Fu Shiyi’s hidden brother-worship issue.
She simply replied, 'Be careful,' and closed their chat.
[Fu Jingchuan: Ye Xiaoshu, bugs are the least of it. I found out more than one plane crashed yesterday—same thing’s happening abroad too… This game is on nightmare difficulty! Be careful, I’m in H City. Contact me if you need backup.]
Fu Jingchuan was always cool and reserved. This was a rare show of concern.
Ye Shu was genuinely surprised.
[Wo Shi Ni Die: Where'd you hear that?]
She’d scoured every domestic site—nothing but 404’s. No useful info to be found.
[Fu Jingchuan: I dabble in some dark web and surveillance tech… all insider info. And there’s more I know… anomalies in aerospace too. I’ll send you what I have.]
Ye Shu responded with a smiley emoji.
Now that—she could use a teammate like Fu Jingchuan, someone with real technical skills.
Pang Pangzi, meanwhile, just complained first and loudly promised unshakable loyalty—swearing to stick with her no matter what. She answered him with a few vague reassurances and left it at that.
On the giant screens, players chattered nonstop.
[StrawberryJam: Rookie here! I’m in S City—anyone want to team up? I’ll bring all the food.]
[HatsuneMirai: It’s day three! Nothing’s happened so far. Got food, water, med kits—just waiting for the disaster to start!]
[CEOInLove: Stocked up on supplies and picked a thirty-story high rise. Ready for anything—bring on the end!]
[KeyboardWarrior: I didn’t prep a thing. Doesn’t feel dangerous here at all.]
[MyBestieIsRich: Newbies this round are nuts? Someone says it’s not dangerous—only one in a million survives! And what exactly is the Human Purge Plan? C’mon, give us a hint!]
Ye Shu closed her screen.
By day, she diligently stockpiled supplies.
Just in case, she ordered hand-cranked solar flashlights, a hundred-thousand-mAh superpower bank, and a generator through local shipping. Gasoline had to be hoarded a tank at a time from each station—fill up, drain, repeat.
Soon she’d amassed quite a bit of fuel.
As half a day swept by, crash reports flooded in from other cities—following G City’s example.
Anonymous users even dumped data online: foreign crashes included.
Five domestically, a dozen or so abroad… always at midnight, never failing to unnerve.
Airline stocks plummeted in a day.
Passengers scrambled for refunds, switching to high-speed rail to dodge disaster.
Abroad, it was worse: whole families confronted airlines in protest.
By now, most players still hadn’t figured out the game’s core.
Ye Shu included.
All indications pointed to midnight. Ye Shu decided: she’d see for herself what made that hour so special.
……
Late night.
11:58.
Cross-legged on her balcony, Ye Shu sat in utter silence. Nothing happened.
In the distance, she caught the faint whisper of wind through fallen leaves.
Was she wrong? Were all these events really just coincidence centered on this hour?
Ye Shu rolled the cinnabar bead bracelet in her hand, never blinking as she watched the ants hauling sugar across the window ledge.
Midnight.
Time itself seemed to freeze—someone pressed pause on the world.
Ye Shu’s lovely, almond-shaped eyes widened as she looked around in disbelief.
So this… ‘Human Purge Plan’—was it really about the very oxygen humans needed to survive?
Go without food, you might last a week.
Without water, a day or two.
But without oxygen… humanity wouldn’t stand a chance.
She’d boosted her Constitution attribute; Ye Shu could hold her breath for almost three minutes. Most folks wouldn’t make it past sixty seconds.
Was this game round about extracting the air?
No, not air—oxygen.
If the air was gone and the body exposed to vacuum, the consequences were far more severe than simple suffocation.
When she regained her senses, everything snapped back to normal.
Ye Shu wasted no time alerting Pang Pangzi and the Fu brothers. Then, remembering something, she rummaged through a pile in the corner and pulled out several oxygen tanks.
These were the underwater supplies the original owner had paid a hefty price for.
With oxygen siphoned away this long, not just the players—every native of Planet E would have to notice something was off.
According to her understanding of these survival games, the deprivation lasted longer with each round.
Those boring, everyday oxygen tanks? Soon they’d fetch absurdly high prices… if anybody could even get their hands on one.