Su Bai had promised to check in every hour. She wasn’t the type to go back on her word.
Ye Shu’s unease grew. Could something have happened to Su Bai, causing her to miss their agreed-upon message? Su Bai had taken a plane… Ye Shu remembered how the cold snap was affecting the air currents. Her face darkened; she almost dashed out the door without thinking. But hurrying to the airport would do no good now—she couldn’t save Su Bai from here.
Ye Shu had been through more than a dozen rounds of the survival game, but this was the first time she felt utterly powerless, as if caught in a nightmare where her own limbs were torn asunder. It was that same helplessness as the first time she’d been ripped apart by something unnatural.
"Boss Ye, Su Miss should be here soon, right? Without her at my table, this feast just doesn’t feel right… There’s no way the two of us can finish all this, anyway."
Pang Pangzi, oblivious to the tension in the air, continued to mumble to himself, "If only Master Fu and Eleven were here, too! They vanished right from the start of this round—nothing but ghosts since the first day. If everyone could just get together, wouldn’t that be great!"
A sudden, frantic knocking at the door snapped Ye Shu out of her thoughts. Pang Pangzi opened it wide with an eager smile.
"Heroine, it’s Su Miss!" he announced joyfully. "Now we can have a proper reunion feast. But Su Miss, look at you—go clean up first, the food’s all ready and waiting."
Ye Shu watched, slightly dazed, as Pang Pangzi pulled Su Bai inside.
Su Bai smeared away her fake tears and threw herself, wailing, at Ye Shu’s arms. Ye Shu sidestepped her mercilessly, causing Su Bai to nearly stumble face-first. "You’ve got snot on your face," Ye Shu remarked dryly.
"Ye Shu, you are heartless!" Su Bai howled. "What kind of sister are you? You actually despise me! I’m hurt. Don’t think you can win me over without some points!"
Su Bai pouted, her eyes glinting with mischief, as she snatched the towel Pang Pangzi offered and scrubbed her face vigorously.
"Ye Xiao Shu, I thought this was really the end for me!" she called out, her voice still trembling. "But here I am, alive and back, not dead in the opening days of the game."
Seeing Ye Shu standing there, all of Su Bai’s tension dissolved in an instant. To her, dying was just losing a single resurrection card. But survival games only allowed each player to carry a couple of resurrection cards at most. She had every intention of sticking with Ye Shu and seeing this version of the game all the way to the end.
"Wash up. Then we’ll get down to business," Ye Shu said, cutting off any sentimentality. Anyone watching closely might have seen a flash of relief dart across her face. Su Bai had been her closest friend since childhood—closer than family, really. She couldn’t bear for her to be hurt.
Wait… When had Su Bai become this important to her?
She was Ye Shu, the outsider, not the original host. When she first arrived in this world, she remembered being a meek employee in some nondescript workplace, but almost everything else—family, friends, even the details of her job—had vanished from memory.
Ye Shu’s eyes widened. When had this started…? Most of her memories about transmigrating into the novel were fading, leaving only the name: Ye Shu, just like the fake daughter in the story. But she couldn’t remembered what she’d done before crossing over. How could that be? She was not Ye Shu. The harder she tried to recall, the less she grasped—until her head throbbed dully with the effort.
Her own memories had been almost entirely erased, yet the experiences of the fake Ye Shu had grown ever clearer in her mind, as if rooted there.
In a haze, she glimpsed a familiar figure—fighting side by side with her through ruins, slaying zombies. The person looked male, someone oddly familiar… someone she swore she’d seen somewhere before.
And in those memories, the original Ye Shu wasn’t gifted with ice powers, just ordinary strength and agility—nor did she possess any kind of save point ability. Still, this unremarkable player had escaped zombie hordes and killed dozens of elite zombies.
For an instant, she recalled being shoved into the mass of zombies. The face of the young man who pushed her was the same one who’d fought beside her just moments before. Ye Shu tried to peer closer, but the figure dissolved into gray mist before she could focus.
……
"Miss Ye, are you alright? Not feeling well?" Pang Pangzi’s worried face appeared, a steaming mug of fruit wine in hand.
"It’s nothing," she replied swiftly. Could that person in the memory have been her? The original host had ended her own life before the survival game ever began—she couldn’t possibly have played through a dungeon. Unless… it was all a hallucination.
Ye Shu sipped her mulled fruit wine; warmth blossomed through her.
Su Bai, cleaned up at last, recounted the tale of the plane disaster from start to finish. The hail had smashed through the cabin, and few passengers had survived. Su Bai herself had almost given up, but spotting the Lucky Star among her tools had sparked a sliver of hope. She wished out loud for a safe landing. That Lucky Star had been a gift from Ye Shu—a prop that simply increased the odds of wishes coming true.
By some miracle, the plane didn’t crash. Though the passengers had been battered by hail and ended up in the hospital, no lives were lost.
"You kept your wits about you," Ye Shu said, once again grateful she’d given Su Bai the Lucky Star. If she hadn’t, Su Bai would have been booted from the game for good.
The trio sat down to enjoy a roast lamb feast together. The modest apartment had only a single bedroom, living room, and bathroom. Pang Pangzi took the couch, while Su Bai, full of relief, clung to Ye Shu’s side.
Day four of the game dawned. The rain still hadn’t stopped; under the relentless cold front, it had turned to freezing rain.
Tiny shards of ice sparkled against the pavement, only to be ground into slush by passing cars. In no time, the roads froze over completely. The city’s cars had no snow chains; they skidded as soon as they left the curb, causing a dozen pileups in just a few hours.
A cold wind swept through, rattling leaves across the ground.
Su An, bundled in a cotton jacket beneath his umbrella, huddled in its meager shelter and cursed his boss’s entire family. "Damn it, this hellish weather—and I still have to go to work, no telecommuting allowed!"
"Weather like this—don’t you think something big’s about to happen?"
Even as he grumbled, a bolt of lightning struck a tree just a few meters away.
With a crash, the centuries-old tree toppled.
Su Bai snapped awake from the cold. The temperature had dropped to minus five Celsius. She threw an extra blanket over herself—she’d always hated the cold. Even in summer, she slept swaddled up tight. She could barely endure the bitter chill now and envied Ye Shu’s ice abilities. At least Ye Shu was immune to the cold.
If she’d known she’d be frozen solid, she might not have wasted her gaming props. Still, if Ye Shu was her teammate, she figured she could stick it out.
Ye Shu sat at the bed’s edge, idly stroking the cat, perfectly content in her thin shirt. She’d crunched the numbers; the average temperature had fallen five degrees Celsius each day. By the final day of the game, it would hit minus seventy-five.
Minus seventy-five… Could humanity really survive that?
This world was almost identical to Blue Planet; even the coldest record in the far north had only hit minus fifty-six.
Compared to the northern regions of Longguo, Dongguang wasn’t bad—they’d just dipped below zero today. Elsewhere, it was chaos. Yesterday, most places had hit minus ten, and frostbite cases were piling up.