49 Apocalypse Rules

SHHFF—

Guan Tong unzipped his sleeping bag, sat up, and gave a huge stretch.

He hadn’t slept very soundly through the night, but the sleeping bag was warm enough, and he’d definitely gotten the rest he needed.

He squinted, checking the snow outside. Overnight, the accumulation in the area beyond his "little campsite" had risen by more than ten centimeters.

’If it’s like this on Mingdao Mountain, the snow in the city must have piled up to fifty or sixty centimeters overnight...’

Guan Tong didn’t delay. He immediately got up, put on his winter clothes, and rummaged through the food in his backpack.

Besides a few large bags of compressed biscuits, he had some canned goods, several packets of instant noodles, and some bags of freeze-dried food.

If he ate sparingly, he could just barely scrape by for a month, half-hungry all the while. Besides, the previous rule, [Fasting Therapy], had trained many people’s ability to endure hunger. Going two or three days without food if he really ran out wasn’t a huge deal.

He tore open a bag of freeze-dried food and ate it with some biscuits for breakfast. Afterward, he took out the [Wordless Book] and began writing "Sublimation Coin" on the second page.

He currently had 70 coins and was 30 short of what he needed to purchase the [Multi-Terrain Marching Boots]. His only option was to use the Wordless Book and expend Psychic Power to make up the difference.

The first time he’d done this, his Psychic Power limit had been lower, and it had taken him the better part of half a month to create just 10 Binding Coins. But now, his Psychic Power limit had increased significantly, so his efficiency should be much higher.

He roughly estimated that it would now take him about twenty days to create 30 Binding Coins. Considering he could raise his Psychic Power limit by one point every seven or eight days if he pushed himself, the total Coinage time might even be shortened by a day or two.

It wasn’t a short amount of time, but Guan Tong could afford to wait. The current rule would last for a whole month. Even if he could only afford the boots with ten days to spare, he would still get ten days of use out of them, which was good enough for him.

After quickly finishing today’s writing, Guan Tong put away the book, grabbed his shovel, and went to clear the snow outside his camp. Although a giant rock high up the mountain shielded his campsite from the snowfall, he still had to clear a path outside for himself to get through.

Otherwise, if he just huddled in his small camp and let the snow pile up outside, after ten days or half a month, the half-man-high snowdrift would freeze solid. By then, he wouldn’t be able to leave the camp even if he wanted to.

Guan Tong didn’t try to clear a large area; with only a folding shovel, he wouldn’t have been able to manage it anyway. What he did was clear a channel about forty to fifty centimeters wide, extending outward from his camp.

He piled the shoveled snow on either side of the path. Sooner or later, the sides would be piled high with snow anyway. As for where the path led, it was naturally in the direction of the highway.

After the rule ended, thirty straight days of frozen snow wouldn’t melt immediately. The authorities would certainly prioritize clearing the roads, so Guan Tong could just wait for the highway to be cleared, and then he’d be able to leave his camp via the small path he had dug.

For the next three days, Guan Tong followed a routine: after using up his Psychic Power on writing, he would use his physical energy to clear the snow from the small path he was creating.

During this time, he also scouted the surrounding area to see if there was anything useful. The results were disappointing. Besides a patch of wild forest, the area around Mingdao Mountain was all wasteland, with nothing of value.

The wild forest did have some use, though. Guan Tong chopped down a lot of branches and brought them back. They could be used for propping things up, for firewood, or for sticking into the snow on either side of his cleared "snowy path" to make a wooden fence.

And after three days, the snow piled on both sides of the path had grown thicker. It was now over forty centimeters high, taller than the case of Guan Tong’s desktop computer back home.

Moreover, due to the low temperatures from the continuous snowfall, layers of ice had formed within the snowbanks. When Guan Tong tried hitting them with his shovel, it only produced a muffled THUMP THUMP sound, and he could barely make a dent.

This made him feel relieved that he had been clearing the path diligently every day from the very beginning. If he had delayed for a few days, it would have become impossible to clear at all!

"Hooo..."

He worked until evening again today. Guan Tong took a deep breath and shouldered his shovel to head back. He lit a bonfire and sat on a wooden stool he’d made by wrapping branches with tape, holding his hands near the fire to warm them and relieve the numbness from working in the cold.

’The temperature is dropping every day. I have to be extremely careful not to get frostbite,’ Guan Tong thought, watching the dancing flames. ’Once it gets even colder in a few days, I’ll try to do my work during the six hours when the [Thermoregulating Technology Underwear] is active. Outside of those six hours, I’ll stay by the campfire as much as possible.’

He turned his head and gazed into the distance. Through the curtain of snow, he could faintly make out the hazy glow of city lights.

’It’s been four days since the rule started. I wonder how things are in downtown Yunhua City...’

Even here on Mingdao Mountain, where the snowfall was much lighter, the snow was already deep. After four straight days of blizzards in the city, the situation could only be far worse.

Even if the city had all sorts of professional equipment, countless snowplows, de-icing agents, and the like, could they truly contend with the power of nature? Guan Tong wasn’t very optimistic.

Of course, if he had been optimistic in the first place, he wouldn’t have made the resolute decision to leave the city and come to this deserted place to survive on his own...

"BEEP— BEEP—"

Suddenly, as Guan Tong was warming himself by the fire lost in thought, a jolt went through him. He thought he heard a sound from the distance—one that wasn’t from nature.

’What’s that sound? A car horn?’

Guan Tong immediately stood up and looked toward the highway, the direction the sound had come from.

His gaze pierced the dim snow-filled air, and he could vaguely see two thick, round beams of light shining in the distance, like the headlights of a vehicle.

’How did it get through?’ Guan Tong clearly remembered that the highway was blocked by a multi-car pile-up about ten kilometers away.

’Did the driver just ram the wrecked cars out of the way? Powerful, and it can still drive on such thick snow... It must be a large vehicle...’

Guan Tong watched the approaching headlights, a sense of vigilance rising within him.

...

More than three hundred kilometers away from Guan Tong, in Yunhua City.

The metropolis had already become a city of snow.

Except for a few main roads where snowplows worked 24/7 to keep them clear, all the secondary roads, side streets, and even the sidewalks were buried under thick layers of snow.

The snow was generally close to two meters deep, taller than most people. It looked like a series of snow walls standing throughout the city, creating a cold, suffocating feeling.

A driver in heavy winter clothes, operating a snowplow on one of the main roads, looked at the high walls of snow on either side and felt an inexplicable tightness in his chest, a difficulty breathing.

"This damn snow is going to be the death of me..."

He grumbled, worried. Only four days had passed, and there were at least six more "four days" to go. If these snow walls kept getting higher, wouldn’t they eventually block and bury the shops along the street?

No, they probably already had...

CRASH! 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

The sound of something collapsing under a heavy load came from behind the snow wall. The driver was startled for a moment but quickly calmed down.

He knew it must be another poorly constructed shop collapsing under the weight of the snow.

He had heard similar sounds two or three times since yesterday. It wasn’t just him; other snowplow drivers had also mentioned hearing the sound of snow crushing shops and other buildings while they were working on the roads.

Some collapsed instantly, while others made that unsettling, teeth-grinding "CREAAAK" sound until they passed a critical point and came crashing down.

"If these little shops collapse, they collapse. They’re empty anyway. As long as the residential buildings don’t go down," the driver muttered. "If the residential buildings collapse, the people inside... Hiss... What a tragedy."