A Fresh Start

Song Weishi had a nagging feeling that those two showing up was fishy. She thought back to the man she'd killed by the water earlier.

How did they know it was her?

She didn't think she'd left any traces, and even if someone was investigating, they couldn't have solved it that fast.

There was only one possibility: the riverbank had surveillance. She'd triggered some device, or been caught on camera.

The two seemed to know exactly what she looked like—her build, her features. Song Weishi guessed it was the latter.

How extravagant. With electricity costing dozens of credits per kilowatt-hour, they'd even bolted cameras to the riverbank checkpoints. That kind of expense burned through money day and night.

But if these people could come up with a scheme to bleed water users dry, they clearly weren't short on cash when the lights went out.

Song Weishi turned and slipped back to the third-floor corridor, hiding there until the pair climbed into the second floor. Only then did she hurry down the stairs and slip away under the cover of dusk.

She wasn't about to kill them and scare the others off. If these two died too quickly, she'd never be able to return to the riverbank safely again.

And just like they'd said, the city was nearly devoid of surveillance. If they really wanted to catch her, it'd be like hunting for a needle in a haystack.

Song Weishi traveled light. The ride back was smooth, and it wasn't long before she'd made it from the outskirts back to the riverbank.

The mountain roads were rough at night. If she weren't bundled up, the grasses would've sliced her skin. Every now and then she'd step on an unseen insect—a sticky squelch, followed by a brittle crunch that turned her stomach.

It was far more unpleasant than trekking through snow. Fortunately, Song Weishi had formidable endurance. She gritted her teeth, gave herself a moment to adjust, and eventually got used to it.

Back at the river, Song Weishi kept her distance from the shack where she'd killed the man. She pulled out her phone and crept closer, watching the signal bars as she went. She had a scarf over her face, so even if the cameras caught her, it'd be fine.

Still, she was cautious. A killer returning to the scene of the crime to admire their handiwork—it was a classic mistake.

And whoever ran this outfit was the real scum. Anyone with a shred of decency wouldn't exploit water to grind people down. Who the hell came up with a scheme like this? Back when the original owner was alive, this world had still been civilized. Someone with that kind of weak, spineless personality wouldn't have survived otherwise.

In just a single month, this world had started devouring people alive.

Song Weishi's phone finally picked up a signal at the edge of the woods near the shack. She leaned against a big tree and started scrolling.

The internet hadn't stagnated as much as she'd expected. The latest posts were mostly regional disaster reports. From the bits and pieces people shared, she could piece together the general shape of what was happening.

The western region was buried under heavy snow—the direction she'd come from.

The eastern coast was suffering from extreme heat, with snakes, bugs, rats, and ants each doing their own kind of damage.

As for her little corner of the world, there were no creature attacks, because the heat was just too brutal. The only people who stayed behind either had access to water or had bodies tough enough to handle it.

Her own physique had been tempered across two extreme zones, so she had nothing to worry about. Even in the scorching daytime heat, she could hold out for a while.

A little further south, it wasn't so blazing. Song Weishi scrolled through older posts and found the kind of creatures that looked like they'd been generated by an AI: ants the size of fists, bats as tall as a man.

Cockroaches the size of washbasins—so grotesque she nearly dropped her phone.

So it seemed the two extreme climates she'd survived were nothing special. Push through heat and cold, and you'd be past the worst of it.

That saying was right: the real trials were still ahead. If a person could endure hardship, there would always be more hardship to endure.

From what she read online, it seemed like there was a port city with relatively milder conditions. The temperature there was still hot, but closer to something normal.

Elsewhere, disasters varied wildly, but life in that city continued almost as usual.

That news was two weeks old, though. Many places had stopped updating—even keeping servers running was a struggle.

Still, Song Weishi could roughly confirm her gut instinct was right, because in the plot synopsis, the female lead had also gone through many regions before finally settling somewhere stable.

Time for her to hit the road again, and this time, her destination was much farther. Huihai City was bigger than this one, more prosperous, and safer.

But it had a downside: there was a chance she'd run into the female lead. Right now, all Song Weishi could do was pray that Xie Yi was slow on her feet, so she could establish herself first.

By the time she met her, she probably wouldn't be so unlucky.

Her route was already faster than the female lead's would be. Once she'd locked in her plan, Song Weishi was ready to move.

Her phone was fully charged, and she still had three power banks left. She wasn't sure how long it'd take to reach Binhai City, but she had plenty of batteries for the bike and the flashlight, so she wouldn't have to worry about running out of light.

Song Weishi didn't linger. She set out that very night, leaving the riverbank behind.

With all the road-tripping she'd done, reading the signs came naturally to her now.

It wasn't like the snowfields, where signs were buried under snow and she had to dig them out. Here, on the highway, she could just look up.

To be cautious, she stuck to the national road below. If something went wrong on the elevated highway, escaping would be a nightmare.

The national road, on the other hand, let her leave whenever she needed.

The humid, hot air hit her in waves. Song Weishi had more or less grown used to the heat. Staying hydrated was easy enough, and food was just as convenient—far better than the snowfields.

There was almost no one on the road. Stalled cars held rotting corpses, black clusters of flies buzzing around them. The sticky fluids left behind had long since dried into crusty brown stains.

Aside from the chirping insects and the drone of flies, she heard nothing else.

It was actually a good sign—people were the real danger, after all.

The jammed cars didn't slow her down much. The road was wide enough that she could easily ride through.

Song Weishi spent the whole trip pushing forward. Once she left the city limits, she found that the national road was dotted with people. Cars were useless now, so they dragged or carried their food and water, trudging along like refugees.

Disheveled and filthy, these people looked utterly broken. Compared to them, Song Weishi was in much better shape.

She immediately realized she couldn't be so clean, but it was dark out and the others probably couldn't tell her exact state. She just ruffled her hair to keep up appearances.

As for smell—everything around them already stank. As long as she didn't smell like flowers, she'd blend right in.

Song Weishi stashed her bike in her space and kept her distance from the shifting crowd ahead.

One of them spotted her from far away, but with the cars blocking the view, they couldn't see the bike. There was only one road forward, and if she rode right into the middle of them, there'd be trouble. Worst case, they'd swarm her, rob her, kill her and take her supplies. That would be a loss she couldn't stomach.

Maybe they were parched, but these people barely spoke as they marched on in silence.

Song Weishi quickly noticed that this group wasn't a close-knit bunch—they kept their distance from one another too. That set her at ease. If they'd all been friends, approaching them would've been dangerous.

The further she got from the city, the cooler it got. Still muggy and suffocating, but at least the breeze didn't feel like a furnace blast.

The group was maybe thirty or forty strong. Song Weishi trailed behind them, hoping to find a gap to slip ahead and hop back on the bike.

But even once they left the national road to look for a rest stop, she never managed to pass them.

They didn't seem too bothered by her arrival—just a few wary glances, no hostile glares telling her to keep away.

As dawn broke, the group staggered out of the national road, and Song Weishi followed, keeping her distance the whole way. Her backpack was empty, so walking was no trouble at all.

The service area was packed with cars, the air hot and heavy with barely any room to move.

The stench was nearly unbearable. The only decent spot was a patch of woods off to the side—shadier and cleaner. A few people in the group scouted around, found nothing better, and headed over.

Song Weishi stood at the entrance, watching from afar, weighing whether to grit her teeth and push through—when she noticed a few middle-aged women in the group staring at her.

The instant their eyes met, the aunties waved her over.

Song Weishi shuffled a couple of steps closer, held her breath, and walked toward them anyway.

She had to face it eventually. And worst case scenario, she'd just run if anything went sideways.