On the tenth day inside the game, Ye Shu had grown accustomed to the deadly cold outside. Setting aside every other misery, sitting in a warm car, eating boxed meals or instant noodles wasn’t so bad—if only she didn’t have to wear adult diapers. That, she could never quite get used to.
The morning sky loomed gray and heavy, as the snowfall intensified. The windshield wipers swept at the endless snow building on the glass. Even the heater inside the car had climbed to its limit, struggling to keep the cold at bay. Layers upon layers of snow now reached from ankle height to her knee, while freezing rain pelted the roof with a staccato drumming. The car had been modified—at least this much, it could withstand. Noise, rather than damage, was the only trouble.
“Ye Nüxia, barring any surprises, in another two days, we should make it to Xizang,” Pang Pangzi said, comparing Ye Shu’s hastily drawn map with the road ahead. A flush of color returned to his pale face for a brief moment.
“Mhm.”
Ye Shu took a bite of roasted sugarcane, spat out the woody dregs. No surprises? With this kind of blizzard, who could promise that? She kept gnawing away, when suddenly—‘thud’—a jolt from beneath the car. The vehicle jerked, then stilled, stuck fast in place.
The car shuddered. Su Bai, startled awake, said in alarm, “What happened? Did it break down?”
Words can be careless, but listeners take things to heart. As the driver, Pang Pangzi’s face turned positively ashen. This mountain road was far from the city, there wasn’t a single service station around. His wretched luck—why were bad omens so reliable? That clownfish called him a blessing star, but here they were, marooned in the snow.
“Nüxia, if I said I didn’t mean it, would you believe me?”
The car’s heater clicked off; the temperature inside plunged. Pang Pangzi, bundled in a thick coat, still felt a cold shiver along his spine.
“Sure,” Ye Shu replied.
“Space is tight… I didn’t buy repair tools,” he confessed.
In truth, Ye Shu thought her optimizing power rendered such purchases needless—why waste the money? Pang Pangzi’s face fell even further at her answer, and he shivered, silent.
“It’s not a big deal.” She waved off his panic. “Look at you, all spooked.”
Unbothered, Ye Shu placed a hand on the car. Instantly, a white light enveloped the interior. Pang Pangzi, caught off guard, teared up from the brightness.
“Try it now,” she said.
Hesitant, Pang Pangzi restarted the engine. With a satisfying roar, the car sprang back to life. He’d forgotten: Ye Nüxia was a dual-ability player. He’d seen her fix things in earlier rounds. After that small episode, the three continued on, taking shifts behind the wheel.
……
Night fell. Warm yellow headlights cast their glow across the snowy wilderness. Now it was Ye Shu’s turn. All around was endless white. For a moment, she thought she saw the snow shift. Narrowing her eyes, she stared; again, the snow ahead seemed to move. She hadn’t imagined it—something was hiding beneath the snow. In weather this cold, any normal animal would already be a frozen specimen.
She brought the car to a halt, intending to shovel the snow aside, when her spade met resistance—a pair of white pincers clamped it in place. On guard now, Ye Shu stepped back, tugged gently, and pulled the creature into view. It was an entirely snow-white crab, as large as half a football, its black eyes fixed on her with a lifeless gaze. The sight recalled to her the ghosts and horrors of the Infernal Caves; her skin crawled with revulsion as she tossed aside the spade.
“Creak—” The pincers scraped a gouge into the metal. Relinquishing the shovel, the mutant crab advanced on Ye Shu, who wasted no time. She drew her wooden sword from her storage, slicing the crab cleanly in two—a splash of viscous, clear fluid oozed into the snow, releasing a dreadful stench.
Wasn’t this supposed to be a polar apocalypse game? She’d expected a resource-gathering, safe-house slog, not mutant creatures crawling from the snow. Calmly, she wiped off her blade. In the corner of her eye, she caught movement—a row of black eyes peering from beneath a hundred-meter sweep of snow.
“Creak, creak—” The sound of claws scraping echoed all around. One after another, mutant crabs emerged, each the size of a football, their black-banded bellies bleeding into their beady eyes. The worst part? Every single crab’s gaze was fixed on the half-shattered crab shell beneath Ye Shu’s foot.
Ye Shu: “…”
So… had she just killed the runt of the mutant crab brood?
“Shushu, what are you fooling around with? Aren’t you freezing your butt off out there? This level was designed to torment me—polar hell, for real! And what… what are those things?” Su Bai, just now awoken, rolled down the window, bleary-eyed. As she caught sight of the mass of mutant crabs, any hint of sleep left her.
“Did you rile them up?”
Following the vengeful stares, Su Bai spotted the crab shell at Ye Shu’s feet.
“Something like that,” Ye Shu replied. Spinning her sword with practiced ease, she dispatched the nearest crab.
An hour passed. The pile of corpses on the ground rose several meters high, but the mutant crab horde showed no sign of abating, overrunning even Ye Shu’s defensive line. The crabs weren’t dangerous by themselves, but their pincers were strong enough to puncture tires with a single pinch. The snowfall only grew heavier, and Ye Shu felt her fighting spirit wane.
With a flick, she tossed a micro-grenade, clearing dozens of crabs in an instant. She floored the accelerator, but the mutant crabs multiplied beyond reason—within mere minutes, they were back in swarms, chasing after the car.
Ye Shu could only optimize the car as she drove, mowing down crabs left and right, a cacophony like New Year’s firecrackers trailing in her wake.
It was this barrage that finally woke Pang Pangzi, who stared in stunned silence at the mangled heaps of mutant crab carnage. Damn! Had these mutants only gotten bigger, with no other upgrades? He’d never seen such useless monsters before—and a pity, too, that they weren’t edible.
Remembering the Ocean Raft game’s food mods and Fu Shiyi’s culinary prowess, Pang Pangzi jumped from the car and collected a few crab limbs to upload to the trading hub. Players loved a curiosity. Since his price was cheap, someone actually bought them.
[End-of-World Cheater and My Gorgeous Campus Girlfriend: Holy crap, whoever you are, you’d better hide well! What are these dead crabs? The stench nearly knocked me out! My old man sends his regards to your whole family—you scammer, you ripped me off for supplies, you shameless bastard!]
That three-hundred-word tirade was followed by a white-tinted photo.
[Rats are Afraid of Fur? That’s a joke: Aren’t those just mutant white crabs? I have them all over my doorstep—not dangerous, just too damn many, you can’t kill them fast enough.]