“Phew, that’s better.”
After relieving himself, Xu Wanli walked to the hot water dispenser, feeling refreshed.
He opened his handbag, pulled out his only bucket of Baixiang Spicy Beef Noodles, and skillfully tore open the film to prepare the seasonings.
On such a freezing cold day, without luosifen, a hot bowl of instant noodles was also good.
“Too bad there’s no braised egg or ham sausage.”
He carried the bucket of noodles, now filled with hot water, to the entrance and found a table and chair sheltered from the wind to sit down.
Looking at the sky, dark as a curtain, and the raindrops falling under the streetlights, his thoughts scattered little by little.
Xu Wanli didn’t know what he was thinking, nor did he need to know; he just let time pass, his body and mind completely relaxed.
“Hmm?”
A figure appeared in the open space a few meters from the Gas Station.
Xu Wanli’s gaze refocused, staring at the Gas Station, frowning slightly.
He felt that the figure looked familiar, as if it was that Woman he had shared a ride with.
Affected by the thick fog, he couldn’t tell if the figure was facing the Service Area or had its back to it, only barely able to see that the person was exposed to the rain without an umbrella, letting the rainwater soak them, standing motionless, which seemed very eerie.
“Hello, should I give you these keys to keep?”
At this moment, two girls came before him.
Yu Sihan had added a purple sweater under her outfit and wore an off-white woolen coat outside, with a style leaning towards a mature yet youthful look.
She placed the keys on the table and pushed them over.
“Are you going to Qinglai?”
“Yes.”
Xu Wanli retracted his gaze and nodded in response.
Looking towards the Gas Station again, the figure was already gone, as if it had never appeared, silently.
Was he seeing things?
Xu Wanli suddenly felt a little uneasy.
He took the plastic fork from the noodle bucket, stirred a few times, and began to enjoy his food.
He wanted to finish eating quickly and then return to the bus to stay put.
“Hanhan, it’s so cold outside, let’s go quickly.”
Lin Xiaoling pulled her best friend’s arm, giving her constant hints with her eyes.
While she said the weather was cold, in reality, she just didn’t want to interact with Xu Wanli.
Xu Wanli’s act of rescuing the truck driver in the rain, in her opinion, was nothing special; instead, she thought it was something he should have done.
“……”
Yu Sihan’s emotional intelligence was not low.
She quickly understood that her best friend didn’t want to interact with Xu Wanli, and she also knew that Xu Wanli’s action of tearing open the instant noodles and eating directly was intentionally keeping his distance from them.
As if they were not people from the same world…
“Are you staying overnight on the bus?”
Xu Wanli asked.
Saying that, he didn’t wait for an answer.
He picked up his phone from the table to check the time: 11:11 PM.
“If you’re staying overnight, come back before midnight. The door won’t open after midnight.”
“Why does he care about us? So annoying.”
Lin Xiaoling muttered softly.
She dragged her best friend towards where their classmates were gathered, joining the small group to complain and discuss how to spend the night, looking very cheerful and lively.
“Not full.”
Xu Wanli looked up, peering through the thick fog at the faint light of the Gas Station ahead, where there was an affordable Convenience Store where he could buy another bucket of instant noodles to fill his stomach.
But as soon as the thought arose, he gave up.
Two packs of instant noodles were too much to finish, but one pack wasn’t enough to fill him up; it was a bit awkward.
Most importantly, the figure he saw earlier gave him a very bad feeling…
“Let’s go back to sleep.”
Xu Wanli cleared the trash from the table, took the keys, and returned to the Hall.
His gaze swept around, landing on a few slightly familiar faces, and he announced loudly, “Attention passengers on the Yangcheng to Qinglai route, attention passengers on the Yangcheng to Qinglai route! Those who wish to return to the bus for the night can do so now. The lights will be turned off and the doors locked after midnight.”
After repeating it several times, he turned and walked towards where the bus was parked.
The bus door was not automatic.
People outside wanting to enter could only do so by using the button in the driver’s seat or by using the key.
Xu Wanli didn’t like being woken up constantly while sleeping, so he gave a heads-up.
He didn’t care if those passengers listened or not.
Whether they returned or at what time was their freedom, and whether he opened the door was also his personal will.
As for sleeping with the door open?
Who would be responsible if passengers’ belongings were stolen?
Wasn’t it cold in sub-zero temperatures?
Just lock the door and be done with it.
“Phew~”
11:59 PM.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, Xu Wanli felt his hands and feet turn ice cold.
The biting wind outside seemed to have eyes, constantly drilling into gaps like cuffs and collars, being incredibly mischievous.
He stood up and scanned the interior of the bus; the students in the back row were quietly curled up, a few scattered passengers in the middle were also resting with their eyes closed, but the Woman whose forehead was bruised and her family had not returned.
“Let’s wait two more minutes.”
Xu Wanli sat back down in a comfortable position, took out his phone, and selected a few bedtime videos.
He was in the habit of watching a hypnotic video before bed to effectively speed up the process of falling asleep.
“Ding! The Tuntun Mouse Space for the Winter Apocalypse has been activated. Do you wish to bind it?”
“What was that?”
Xu Wanli heard a strange sound, and he stood up again to look around.
There was only faint snoring inside the bus; no one was speaking.
“Ding! The Tuntun Mouse for the Winter Apocalypse has been activated. Do you wish to bind it?”
The voice sounded again.
This time, Xu Wanli noticed that the sound wasn’t coming from beside his ear but was resounding in his mind.
“Bind,” Xu Wanli said tentatively.
“The Winter Apocalypse Tuntun Mouse has been successfully bound. Welcome to use it.”
“Tuntun Mouse?”
Xu Wanli looked bewildered.
His education level wasn’t high, but he knew the meaning of the words “apocalypse.”
The two movies, 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow, were his two favorite sci-fi blockbusters.
Especially The Day After Tomorrow; he watched it once every year or two.
But what was this Tuntun Mouse…
“Tuntun Mouse Space: Obtain returns by storing items. The longer the storage time, the higher the return multiplier.”
“Storage return?”
Xu Wanli’s heart stirred.
He quietly pulled out the five hundred yuan in emergency cash from his pocket.
“Can this be stored?”
“Five hundred-yuan banknotes detected. The return multiplier is one-time per minute. Do you wish to store them?”
“Store.”
“Storage successful.”
“It disappeared!”
Xu Wanli’s eyes widened as he watched the few banknotes in his hand vanish into thin air.
The next second, he opened the calculator function on his phone.
One-time per minute, ten times in ten minutes, one hour… one hour would be sixty times, that’s thirty thousand yuan, thirty thousand yuan! Working hard and saving frugally for a year only accumulated about thirty thousand yuan; it was equivalent to a year’s savings.
“How do I withdraw the banknotes?”
He couldn’t wait even an hour.
In less than two minutes, Xu Wanli was eager to withdraw the banknotes to verify their authenticity.
If it was real, then if he withdrew his balance and stored it for a day or two, wouldn’t he achieve financial freedom?
“One minute of storage completed. Returning five hundred-yuan banknotes.”
As the voice fell, a stack of banknotes appeared in Xu Wanli’s hand, making a total of ten banknotes, including the five he had stored.
All were hundred-yuan denominations!
He randomly pulled out one banknote, confirmed it was real, then pulled out two more at random, and they were also real!
“……”
But after a moment of excitement, Xu Wanli felt a bit lost again.
He didn’t know how to spend the money; three meals of luosifen a day, plus fried eggs, deep-fried eggs, and pig trotters, still seemed insufficient to spend the balance. Then there was buying a better car, buying a commercial apartment…
Huh, wait.
It seemed the Winter Apocalypse was coming.
In the apocalypse, banknotes would lose their value; no matter how much he had, it would be useless.
Thinking this, Xu Wanli felt a sudden enlightenment, making it difficult for someone accustomed to poverty to think about how to spend money.
“Tuntun Mouse, what do you mean by the Winter Apocalypse?”
“The host’s planet will enter an extreme ice age, with existing species alternating and civilizations iterating.”
“Ice age?”
Xu Wanli’s expression was one of shock.
No wonder the outside temperature had suddenly dropped; it turned out a new ice age had arrived.
He didn’t know much about ice ages, only that the shortest ice age could last several million years, and the longest could last hundreds of millions of years. During this period, the entire planet would be completely frozen, and existing organisms would either be extinct or evolve into new species adapted to low temperatures.
“Are those people who lost their sense of pain related to the ice age…?”
“Bang!”
A loud noise interrupted Xu Wanli’s thoughts, startling him.
He turned his head to look outside; a swaying figure was continuously hitting the driver’s seat window with its head….
