Chapter2

I pressed the switch of the portable welder. Blue-white arcs exploded in the dim mine shaft, and the pungent smell of scorched metal instantly overpowered the underground stench of dirt.

This was the ninth branch tunnel I had sealed shut. A ten-centimeter-thick reinforced alloy steel plate was embedded into the surrounding hard rock, the seams welded flawlessly. Following the 3D modification blueprints provided by the system, the complex underground network of this deep mine had been streamlined to the extreme—leaving only a single, straight core access shaft extending to the very bottom.

In a doomsday defense, the simpler the terrain, the deadlier it is.

Passing through this sole main corridor all the way down to the massive main control room at the bottom, the air turned scorching hot. I tossed aside my protective mask and looked at the three neatly arranged heavy-duty diesel generators and two industrial-grade thermostatic boilers in the corner. They were connected in parallel through specially made pressure-resistant pipelines, with dense floor-heating water pipes laid upward along the bare rock walls and the ground, resembling the metal blood vessels of this underground fortress.

Deep in my mind, a faint blue interface flashed right on cue.

[Energy System Loaded: Independent Heating Efficiency 98%.]

[Storage Supplies Calibrated: Depletion Rate Normal, Current Reserves Sufficient to Meet Survival Goals.]

[Novice Stage Basic Defense Line Established - Survival Index: Standard Met.]

On the eighth day, the heavens collapsed.

Through the external periscope lens installed at the top of the mine shaft, I witnessed the first wave of the cataclysm's impact. An unheralded cold wave, like an invisible wall of ice, flattened Oak City from north to south. The number on the outdoor thermometer took a direct dive from five degrees Celsius, plummeting to minus twenty degrees in a short amount of time.

The blizzard didn't drift down; it was violently smashed into the ground by a force-ten gale. A few hours later, transmission towers crushed by the heavy pressure erupted in harsh white flashes in the distance. The city's main roads were completely gridlocked by hundreds of skidding, pile-up vehicles, paralyzing the entire city's traffic arteries.

I walked back to the main control room and reached out to pull down the main switch of the industrial boiler.

A low roar made the alloy floor beneath my feet tremble slightly. As high-heat fuel was injected into the combustion chamber, the pump began circulating boiling medium into the pipelines. The mercury thermometer on the wall started to climb steadily: zero degrees, ten degrees, twenty degrees... finally anchoring firmly at twenty-five degrees Celsius.

I stripped off my sweat-soaked work jacket and walked bare-chested toward the custom heavy punching bag in the center of the main control area.

I threw a punch, and the leather sandbag flew up with a resounding crash of heavy chains. Sweat rolled down my chest, hitting the warm floor and evaporating instantly.

Right in front of me was a monitoring wall spliced together from sixteen screens. These were connected to the high-altitude solar-powered cameras I had planted in advance along the routes and at the city's edges.

Outside my greenhouse, the world was crumbling.

On the top screens, a supermarket stripped of its power supply had turned into a colosseum. In the footage, a man in a suit swung a heavy wrench at a stranger's back of the head just for a bag of bread that was already hard as a rock. A hardware store on the street was overrun by dozens of shivering people wrapped in sleeping bags, grabbing any tool that could hack and slash. No one bothered calling the police. With emergency systems entirely paralyzed, the homeless freezing to death at bus stops were already being buried under piles of more corpses.

There was no sympathy here. If I hadn't exploited the system's network backdoor to amass funds ten days ago, I would be just another rat on those streets right now, kneeling for half a loaf of bread or catching a blade in the gut.

After a flurry of three hundred heavy strikes, I stopped and grabbed a dry towel to wipe the sweat from my face.

The interface before my eyes suddenly shifted from a deep blue to a blinding, crimson red. A line of text popped up.

[Countdown complete. Day 10: Global power grid entirely zeroed out.]

On the main monitor wall, the last commercial district in distant Oak City still lit by neon signs was instantly snuffed out, like someone had flipped a master switch. With zero transition, the city plunged into a silent, absolute, and lethal pitch-black.

A bone-chilling blizzard ravaged the surface, and the minus-thirty-degree extreme cold swallowed the ruins of the entire city.

[Environmental mutation critical point breached.]

[Combat mission officially activated: Deep Cold Trial (Phase I).]

[Objective: Hunt the mutated "Frost Corpses" about to spawn in the freezing wasteland, absorb their biological core energy, and unlock the "Berserker" combat progression module.]

I tossed the towel aside, walked over to the weapon rack, and reached out to take down the solid titanium warhammer that weighed nearly sixty pounds.

Gripping the freezing insulated rubber handle, I could feel a surge of heat rush from my palm through my entire body.

When dawn breaks, the prey outside will be waiting.