Apocalypse Escape: Day One of Survival

Gradually, everyone began to realize how serious the situation was.

After a week of non-stop hail, the entire world had become a ghastly white expanse.

Xie Ning had tried traveling through the hail a couple of days ago, but even her custom oversized helmet proved useless. The hailstones hammered her head until it was ringing, and for a moment, she started to question her life choices.

There was no future in self-torture, so Xie Ning decided to wait for the hail to let up before moving on.

But as it turned out, the hail continued for days on end with no sign of stopping.

Because she couldn’t contact Gu Chen from inside her Space, she had to venture out into the barrage of ice every time just to say a few words.

The small guardhouse was already buried solid under chunks of ice. As Xie Ning and the Healing System youth stumbled through the frozen world, they had the illusion that they were the only two people left.

After three days, the pair formulated a ”one-hour operation” plan.

In a race against time to get back to the base, the pair would walk for about four hours a day, trying to cross the ruins of Canghua Home.

They’d set out at eight in the morning, return to the Space at nine to rest, walk for another hour at ten, and return to the farmhouse restaurant to rest and eat at eleven. The afternoon followed the same pattern, and they could usually wrap up a little after five.

Over the course of a day, they could cover roughly twenty kilometers.

But sometimes, when they encountered particularly large hailstones that banged loudly against their helmets, the two would give up the struggle and practice their superpowers and rest inside the Space.

They spent most of the week this way.

During that time, Xie Ning found a moment to tidy up the living room of her large villa.

She moved all the supplies that had been piled in every corner of the living room into the farmhouse’s storage warehouse.

This included items scavenged from Ai Jia Supermarket, various clothes gathered from the fashion district in Su City, and things collected from the Song Jia Pavilion Fruit and Vegetable Supermarket, the Aquatic Products Market, and the various shops in the exceptionally well-stocked Hengyue Shopping Center.

In addition, the quilts from the cotton workshop, items salvaged from the Lanshan Lake Base Commander’s House, things from Wohua Private Hospital, and so on—she roughly sorted everything into categories like food; clothing, quilts, and daily necessities; and gold, silver, jewelry, and electronics, before moving it all to the third, fourth, and fifth floors of the storage warehouse.

After that flurry of intense work, the huge villa living room was completely transformed. At last, it no longer looked as cramped as a general store.

It was just a pity she couldn’t enter it herself.

That just went to show what a monstrous talent Zhu Zihao was. A Space Ability User who could enter their own Space was likely one in ten thousand, and Zhu Zihao was one of them.

Xie Ning couldn’t help but sigh in relief after she finished organizing the messiest area, the villa’s living room.

Next, she moved all the clothes piled up in the two first-floor guest rooms to the fourth floor of the storage warehouse and slowly started to sort out her chaotic dining room and kitchen.

Items in boxes and baskets were naturally moved to the second floor of the storage warehouse. This included the two hundred-some boxes of corn stock from the Su City Seed Base, the ingredients found at the Hengyue BBQ shop, and large cases of mineral water collected from the Song Jia Pavilion Fruit and Vegetable Supermarket.

As for the meat patties, meat-filled sticky rice dumplings, pork floss rice balls, boxed meals, steamed white mantou, vegetable baozi, meat baozi, mung bean soup, and other foods made at her grandmother’s house, they remained in the villa’s dining room for easier access.

The fruits and vegetables strewn across the kitchen floor, making it almost impossible to find a place to step, finally had a new home, all moved by Xie Ning to the second floor of the storage warehouse.

After a round of tidying up, the entire kitchen was finally much cleaner and brighter. Looking at it, Xie Ning felt incredibly pleased.

Xie Ning decided not to touch the vast amount of supplies in her independent space.

She really couldn’t be bothered. After all, there were still mountains of supplies piled in the courtyard waiting for her to sort through and take inventory of...

Besides, for the past two days, Xie Ning had been opening thousands of blind boxes from the Stupid Bird Post Station, pulling out useful items to toss into the farmhouse storage warehouse. She really didn’t have the extra mental energy for anything else.

Xie Ning really wanted to just slack off. ’I wonder if I could just dump the mountain of supplies scavenged from Canghua Home on Zuo Li and let her deal with it,’ she thought.

The pair stumbled along, walking with difficulty across ruins covered in a dense layer of ice shards.

Beichen had a motorcycle helmet on, which effectively blocked the pattering small hailstones, but it didn’t look to be of the same quality or offer as much protection as the thick helmet on the girl’s head.

Both wore double-layered cotton gloves and wielded long-handled iron axes, occasionally hacking away at icicles and large chunks of ice that blocked their path.

Even though the temperature was over ten degrees below zero, the two of them were so hot that their foreheads were beaded with sweat.

”I can’t go on.” Beichen lifted his bulky snow boot and shook it. ”Water got in again. I have to... clear it out.”

Xie Ning saw that they had been walking for about an hour. She nodded and was just about to pull the young man back when disaster struck.

Suddenly, an arrow shot toward the young man’s shoulder.

Xie Ning’s eyes narrowed. She yanked the young man’s wrist, pulling him aside to swiftly dodge the strike.

Infused with her Gold Ability, the long arrow instantly snapped, its head clattering to the ground.

The pair glanced down. In the reflection of the ice and snow, the head of the Iron Arrow emitted a faint, blue-black glow. It must have been coated with some kind of paralytic substance.

”It’s been modified,” Beichen said at once, his expression turning grim.

The most common arrows on the market in modern society are usually fiberglass-carbon blends, carbon arrows, or aluminum arrows.

An iron arrow like this, seemingly crafted with ancient techniques, was a lethal weapon.

For a moment, the very air around them seemed to grow thin and cold.

The two of them quickly and warily scanned their surroundings, but they couldn’t see a single figure in the vast, white expanse of the ruins.

These icy ruins provided excellent cover on their own.

Xie Ning pulled the young man behind a crumbling section of wall, crouching down. ”What’s your guess? Human or zombie?”

”Have you ever seen a zombie that can nock and fire an arrow?”

Xie Ning shook her head.

Beichen gave her a look that said, *You do the math*. His voice held a hint of malicious glee. ”You’d better be careful. If they find out all your secrets, I’m afraid...”

”Would you tell them?” Xie Ning turned her big, sparkling eyes on the boy.

”I won’t,” Beichen replied, his face devoid of expression. ”Unless you expose yourself in front of someone else.”

”Good kid.” Xie Ning reached out to pat his shoulder, wearing an ’I knew I wasn’t wrong about you’ expression as she nodded in deep satisfaction.

Beichen was momentarily dumbfounded by her.

’This woman, she always takes advantage of me by acting like an elder!’

Xie Ning stealthily poked half her head out from behind the wall, only to see an iron arrow come flying toward her with a WHOOSH.

The iron arrow scraped past the wall, piercing through a layer of solid ice.

Shattered ice fragments flew in front of Xie Ning’s face. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a blast of cold air rush toward her.

”Impressive,” Xie Ning said, brushing the ice fragments off her helmet. She whispered to the boy, ”They must have a Visual Ability User on their side.”

”Can you handle them?”

”I don’t know. I can’t even see how many of them there are right now.”