Chapter 84

Qiao Ning never takes chances. Since she had a premonition, she would definitely take precautions and make preparations, regardless of whether it would actually happen.

She called back the swarm of poisonous locusts that had wandered off, leaving only the man-eating flower and the dragon turtle. These two had been feasting nearby for so long, and they seemed reluctant to leave when called back. This made Qiao Ning wonder if she hadn't given them enough time to roam, causing them to be reluctant to come back once they were out playing.

After calling all the pets back and temporarily putting them in their pet pen, Qiao Ning returned to the garbage highway and did not continue driving forward.

Because she discovered that the density of garbage mountains was increasing. Previously, a particularly tall garbage mountain would appear only every few dozen kilometers, while a small garbage mountain could be seen every two or three minutes.

Now, the number of garbage mountains has increased, one after another, and small garbage mountains are almost nowhere to be seen.

After stopping the car, Qiao Ning instructed the smart home assistant to monitor and record images and videos of the nearby garbage mountains. Ten minutes later, she opened the image and video files and carefully reviewed them from beginning to end. As expected, she discovered that these garbage mountains were indeed "active."

To be precise, they are merging.

Small garbage mountains are swallowed and merged by large garbage mountains, and large garbage mountains also merge with each other, eventually forming a new giant garbage mountain.

Qiao Ning stared at the video with a furrowed brow when she suddenly heard Binglin, who was nestled beside her, let out a low growl full of alertness. She quickly looked out the window.

What... is that?

Qiao Ning stared in shock at an enormous thing that was "walking" toward the road.

Its body is made up of trash of all sizes, with even liquid or semi-solid trash flowing over it. With each step it takes, some black substance falls off, and then it absorbs more trash into its body.

Almost every step it takes is getting bigger.

It looks like a giant garbage mountain that suddenly sprouted a head, arms, and two legs.

Perhaps Qiao Ning's gaze lingered for too long, or perhaps for some other reason, the garbage monster who was squatting down, rummaging through the mountain of trash and stuffing it into its mouth, suddenly turned its head.

Two black hole-like eye sockets stared straight at the location of Qiao Ning's vehicle.

Qiao Ning's heart skipped a beat. She had to admit that the scene was quite frightening. Fortunately, her heart had long been tempered by the various shocking scenes and events in the world of natural disasters, otherwise, an ordinary person would have been scared to death by this sight.

The garbage monster seemed to have really noticed Qiao Ning's car. It stopped eating and devouring the garbage mountain and instead moved its heavy legs toward the road.

It moves very slowly, and every time it lifts its foot, sticky threads appear on the ground, which looks disgusting and terrifying.

Ice Scale, standing next to her, was about to roar at the monster, but she stopped him in time with a gesture.

Reason told Qiao Ning that what she should do now was to start the car and drive away, but for some reason, the more dangerous the situation, the more crazy thoughts seemed to be lurking in her heart.

She suddenly wanted to stay there and not move.

Let's see if that monster has really found her and if it can really break through the highway barrier to attack her.

One minute, two minutes... Time slowly passed, and even though the garbage monster was moving very slowly, it gradually approached the road.

Qiao Ning remained motionless.

The garbage monster had reached the roadside barrier. It even bent its massive body, and countless black substances and a viscous liquid full of corrosive and foul-smelling poison fell from its body.

It can really see itself.

No, to be precise, it must have sensed itself in some way.

The monster's two eyes are just for show.

Because she saw that after the monster reached the highway barrier, it didn't reach out to grab her directly, but instead seemed to be groping around, searching for something.

The next second, Qiao Ning did something even more crazy: she got out of the car!

She even deliberately approached the highway wall, with the monster's feet less than two meters away from her.

The garbage monster had two large plastic bucket-like things on its head, and it suddenly moved after Qiao Ning got out of the car.

Then the monster grinned, seemingly revealing a "smile," as if it were saying to Qiao Ning:

I've found you.

Then it reached out its palm to grab Qiao Ning behind the highway barrier, but Qiao Ning remained standing still.

Ice Scale could no longer control its instinctive reaction and grew much larger, using its body to block Qiao Ning, baring its teeth and growling threateningly at the monster, just like a big dog with its fur standing on end.

Qiao Ning gently stroked its tail to comfort it.

When the garbage monster's hand touched the highway barrier, it was as if it had hit an incredibly hard wall; no matter how hard it pounded, it couldn't break through the barrier.

The black substance and slime on its palms failed to contaminate the highway barrier in the slightest.

As if in a provocation, Qiao Ning raised her hand and gathered an ice arrow, shooting it into the eye socket of the trash monster before disappearing.

However, the monster seemed to feel pain and was provoked into a frenzied rage, slapping and hammering everywhere. The surrounding garbage was constantly being absorbed into its mouth and limbs, and in the blink of an eye, it became even larger.

However, it failed again when it tried to break through the highway barrier.

Qiao Ning waved at it, then drove away.

The monster tried to follow the sound of the car starting and driving to catch up with Qiao Ning, but it was too slow. Before it could take two steps, Qiao Ning's car had already disappeared from sight.

Qiao Ning looked back at the garbage monster and saw it frantically eating and growing bigger as if venting its anger, before finally exploding with a bang and turning back into scattered garbage and pollutants.

Qiao Ning was originally going to leave. She had already driven dozens of kilometers away when, for some reason, she suddenly had a strong urge to go back and take a look.

Just like you can't turn back on a highway, this garbage highway is the same.

However, if you leave the highway, you can return along the highway once you are outside the highway.

Qiao Ning thought for a moment, then activated the car's hover mode, replaced the nearly expired air membrane, and left the road, speeding towards the place where the monster had appeared.

She soon returned to the same spot, where black matter and foul-smelling corrosive liquid covered almost all the surrounding garbage.

The gas mask blocked out all the toxic gases, but a foul stench still lingered around my nose.

Even with her strong mental fortitude, Qiao Ning couldn't help but feel nauseous at the sight and smell of the scene.

She forced herself to suppress her discomfort, sprayed some air freshener around her, and smelled the refreshing mint scent, which finally made her feel a little better.

Qiao Ning searched through the pollutants on the ground with her eyes, but when she couldn't find anything, she couldn't help but frown.

Logically, after such a large creature disappears, some special items should drop, which is a common feature in games.

Should we really start searching by hand? Or should we ask the giant tortoise and the giant locust to help us find it by eating it?

Qiao Ning spent half a day mentally preparing herself, but she still couldn't do it.

She was a bit of a germaphobe, and this wasn't a life-or-death situation, nor was it certain that some kind of treasure was in a specific location. She simply couldn't convince herself to overcome her psychological barriers and search for something amidst such disgusting contaminants.

Just thinking about that scene is unbearable.

Or should we just forget about it?

Qiao Ning suddenly realized that if ordinary things couldn't resist pollution, what about her own special ability?

She conjured a long ice blade in her hand and then tried to use it to turn over the pollutants on the ground, looking for any "props" that might appear.

The moment the ice skate came into contact with the contaminant, the black substance clung to the skate like countless ants crawling on it, then froze in the ice skate's cold air and disappeared.

So, if the main supernatural power is strong enough, it can purify pollutants?

Qiao Ning carried some energy stones and, protected by the air membrane, used her ice blades to search through the pollutants.

An hour passed, and Qiao Ning had gained nothing.

The garbage mountain in the distance is stirring again, as if it's about to merge into a new garbage monster.

Just as Qiao Ning was about to give up and leave, the tip of her ice blade suddenly touched something that didn't seem like ordinary trash. Because the ice blade's chill briefly purified the object, a stone-like shape flashed by. It was then immediately covered and contaminated again by the pollutants.

Qiao Ning transformed her ice skates into a slotted spoon for easy retrieval... Well, to put it another way, she scooped up the stone, soup and slime along with it, a sight that truly tested her ability to manage her facial expressions.

Fortunately, the pollutants could be purified, and Qiao Ning didn't hesitate to use the energy as quickly as possible.

She swiftly cleaned the contaminants from the stones and ice spoon, then returned to her car within three seconds, accelerating away from the scene. Simultaneously, she erased the entire sequence of events from her mind with a single click, as if nothing had happened that night and she hadn't done anything.

An hour later, Qiao Ning sat in the car with a dark stone on the table above her.

This dark stone wasn't large, but its texture was much finer than any other fragments she had obtained before. It even looked quite beautiful.

It's utterly unimaginable that such a beautiful, black agate-like stone came from the body of such a disgusting, garbage monster...

Qiao Ning realized she was thinking about that thing again, so she immediately stopped thinking about it.

So that I won't be unable to eat my midnight snack with Binglin later.

This stone had been repeatedly boiled and sterilized by the special water stream summoned by Ice Scale using its water-based power for a long time, and now it looked fluorescent and bright.

Qiao Ning tried to fuse it with the dark stone in her hand, but failed. When placed together, it wasn't that there was no attraction whatsoever, but rather that neither of them moved at all, much like a man and woman forced into a blind date who felt absolutely no attraction to each other.

The fragments of dark stone in Qiao Ning's hand have all fused into one large dark stone block. Since the large stone block cannot fuse with this black agate dark stone block, there's nothing that can be done.

She could only put it aside for now. Because of the previous incident where storage items were blocked, she was now afraid to put important items in storage items and mostly kept them with Ice Scale.

The function of the black agate dark stone is unknown, and it is unclear whether it has any side effects. She didn't want to put it in the Ice Scale Space, so she simply left it in the car and ignored it.

Before they knew it, the night had passed. After Qiao Ning and Bing Lin finished their late-night snack, she moved around for a while to help digest her food before washing up and going to bed.

Since she started playing this game, her sleep schedule has become increasingly irregular.

I got my period shortly after starting the game, and it hasn't come back since. I have a bunch of feminine hygiene products in my inventory, but I've never used them.

Qiao Ning strongly suspected that this was related to her body's multiple advancements and even evolutions.

It's also possible that her body sensed the harshness of the surrounding environment and subconsciously stopped some physiological functions to avoid the danger brought by the smell of blood.

In short, Qiao Ning is quite happy with her current state; it feels great to have a strong body.

Qiao Ning slept for about seven hours and woke up at noon.

She glanced at the chat channel and found that the number of online users had dropped from 3,000 to just over 2,000. Several hundred people had died on the very first day.

I wonder how many days it will take for three thousand people to die.

Host #1 came once at 8 a.m., but Qiao Ning was asleep and missed it.

However, the system announcements contain updated information about the natural disaster, as well as a replay of Host #1's video. She can view them at any time.

Qiao Ning clicked on the replay video of host number 1.

The beautiful girl changed into a cool and gorgeous martial arts online game outfit today. She looks beautiful, and the online game style is definitely online game style.

She had previously felt that the early game equipment looked like something out of a typical MMO, and in her opinion, it didn't have the aesthetic style one would expect from a survival game. Fortunately, some of the higher-level equipment that dropped later had the ability to reveal their appearance.

Otherwise, a group of survivors dressed in revealing and exquisite outfits from online games battling alien trash monsters would create a scene that's hard to describe.

Seeing the host, number 1, change her online game outfit every day, Qiao Ning couldn't help but speculate—

Perhaps this survival game is indeed a fusion of many modern online game elements. It might be designed to help survivors quickly adapt to and become familiar with the game's mechanics, or perhaps the creators of the survival game simply didn't bother with the details and directly incorporated elements from modern online games.

This resulted in some details of the road survival game feeling strongly out of place to her, making it appear both exquisite and rough.

Host #1 revealed a lot of information this time, mainly consisting of a lot of irrelevant details:

[Congratulations everyone on surviving the first day of the disaster! You all did a pretty good job. Several newcomers were especially outstanding.]

[Perhaps it's your good fortune, or perhaps it's your misfortune, but the three lords, the Lu Emperor, the Sea Emperor, and the Cloud Lord, are all watching your livestream performance. If you are fortunate enough to catch their eye, after passing this trial of natural disaster, you may soar to great heights and become beings beyond your wildest imagination.]

[You must have already been to Lu Di City. What was it like? Wasn't it a beautiful and peaceful place? Is it the world you've always dreamed of? If you pass this trial of natural disaster, you might even become the masters of Lu Di City.]

Alright, now let's announce yesterday's most popular winner.

Seeing this, Qiao Ning felt something was wrong.

Sure enough, the next moment, host number 1 announced the name of the winner of the highest popularity award:

Qiao Ning.

[The person with the highest daily popularity will receive a clue to the location of a Law Stone. If others are really stuck, why not find this Miss Qiao Ning and ask her? Hehe.] At this point, Host Number 1 chuckled. Her delicate features and lively expression made her look incredibly charming and adorable, provided one ignored what she said.

Yesterday, host #1 went for a glamorous and charming look, but today she's become cute, cunning, and quirky.

However, the daily most popular player will have their location protected for ten hours. During this period, you will not be able to find her location using coordinates or the map. It is possible that some lucky players may encounter her on the road.

Did you encounter anything cute last night? If so, try your best to get their special items. Each adorable creature carries different treasures, and you might find something you're looking for.

What? You're too afraid of them? Don't worry, they can't hurt you for now, but if your pollution level is too high, they might suck you out of the highway barrier and eat you.

Even very low pollution levels can attract their attention. Imagine a small white flower appearing in a patch of black, foul-smelling mud—wouldn't it be incredibly eye-catching?

[If you are not strong enough, do not touch the pollutants left behind by the adorable creatures, or you may end up like them.]

Even in a world full of trash, there are treasures everywhere; it just depends on whether you can turn waste into treasure.

That concludes Host 1's video. Qiao Ning then proceeds to view the natural disaster information released by the system.

On the second day of the natural disaster, the pollution assimilation process is at 30%. Players need to obtain the Law Stone to clear the level before the process reaches 100%.

There are also two system notifications:

[Congratulations to player Qiao Ning for winning the "Most Popular Player on Day One of the Natural Disaster" title! This title is available daily, 365 days a year, with exclusive updates. The title is valid for 10 hours and is protected by coordinates during the duration. However, player movement may shorten the title's duration.]

[Congratulations to player Qiao Ning for obtaining the location clue for the "Law Stone": the Garbage Sea.]

A sea of ​​garbage?

Does this mean the Law Stone is hidden in a sea of ​​garbage?

Qiao Ning activated the car's flight mode, and the flying knife looked down from the sky at the surrounding garbage world.

She only saw a corner of the sea of ​​garbage, but it already felt boundless.

If a stone is hidden in a sea of ​​garbage and players are asked to find it, what's the difference between that and looking for a needle in a haystack?

The crucial point is that this single clue will attract other players to hunt her down.

The game is still as terrible as ever.

With the sea of ​​garbage so vast, she's no longer worried about other players finding the Law Stone before her.

Moving will shorten the duration of the title. The title was given to her at 8:00 AM, and since she didn't let the smart assistant drive while she was sleeping, there are now less than six hours left.

Qiao Ning wanted to have some more peace and quiet, so she didn't drive around. Instead, she practiced her physical exercises and rested in the car to conserve her energy.

Prepare for the battle that will begin at dusk.

As dusk gradually fell, it got closer and closer to six o'clock in the evening.

In a chat channel with over two thousand users, messages scrolled frequently, creating the illusion that tens of thousands of people were online.

Most of these people are waiting for Qiao Ning's coordinates to be revealed so they can find her and get clues about the location of the Law Stone.

As for how to obtain it?

Which of these people wasn't the strongest player in their server? Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to survive and clear the Acid Rain calamity.

Qiao Ning hadn't spoken in the chat channel, so they didn't know her strength rating was S-level.

In their eyes, Qiao Ning was just a young girl who had gotten incredibly lucky, like a child carrying a treasure on the street. How could she not attract the covetous eyes of others?

The chat channel was filled with censored words, too painful to look at. Qiao Ning immediately closed it and stopped reading, closing her eyes to rest and wait for six o'clock to arrive.

With a notification from the smart home assistant, it was six o'clock.

Qiao Ning's coordinates were displayed on the map, visible to all players.

Even players who had no intention of seizing the clues rushed towards her location. Even if they had to hide in the shadows, they might be able to snatch something up after the battle.

There are more than a few people who want to reap the benefits without lifting a finger.

Some people are far from Qiao Ning's coordinates, and the system does not allow direct teleportation, so they even waste precious teleportation items to teleport to Qiao Ning's vicinity.

Around 6:05, the section of road where Qiao Ning's car was located was already completely blocked by countless players' vehicles.

Strangely, no one made any rash moves, as if they were waiting for something.

At 6:10, all the players except Qiao Ning gathered on this road.

Qiao Ning sighed with some emotion; driven by self-interest, people's motivation was truly remarkable. It was hard to imagine that a single clue could bring all the online players together.

These people didn't even consider whether Qiao Ning would hand over the clues. In their minds, Qiao Ning was already a dead person, and her clues were theirs for the taking.

Now, the question for them is who gets the clue first.

Because there is more than one strong person present; there are at least seventy or eighty A-level experts present.

They are all A-level experts, who would willingly fall behind and become someone else's stepping stone?

Qiao Ning moved her joints and neck, then got out of her car. Beside her was Ice Scale, a dog-sized creature.

"Is that Qiao Ning? She's pretty, but that's all she's pretty. There's nothing particularly special about her. I don't know why she's so popular. And what's with that dog next to her?"

"Once those A-level big shots get the clues, I wonder if they'll spare this girl's life, otherwise I..."

"Stop dreaming. If we really wanted to spare her life, it wouldn't be your turn."

Qiao Ning glanced at the people who were talking, but didn't say anything.

"What are the clues to the location of the Law Stone?" There was more than one person who wanted to ask, but before the A-rank player spoke up, the other players dared not speak.

Qiao Ning looked at the burly man who had asked the question. He was at least two meters tall, bald, and covered in tattoos from head to neck.

"You want to know?"

The bald, burly man, impatient with her arguing, summoned a flying tiger beast that charged towards Qiao Ning. Before the beast could even reach Qiao Ning, it was stopped halfway by the pets of other A-level players.

While the two giant beasts were fighting, the players were still talking and discussing among themselves, treating Qiao Ning as an object and debating who she belonged to.

Qiao Ning watched this scene and patted Binglin's head, signaling it to step back.

Binglin obediently retreated behind her.

"Did you see that? This woman is trying to protect her dog! What use is this useless animal? She'd be better off..."

Before the man could finish speaking, an ice arrow pierced his throat, leaving a bloody hole.

Immediately afterward, the other advanced players who were still discussing the ownership of the clues stopped.

Behind Qiao Ning, a tornado of ice and snow gradually rose up, and ice spread rapidly from her feet.

The overwhelming scale seemed to freeze the entire world.

"Ice ability? That's a rare ability. But it's not unheard of. The last ice ability player I encountered drained my energy after helping me cross the glacier." The speaker was a long-haired man with effeminate features, whose gaze was like that of a venomous snake.

Upon hearing his words, Qiao Ning summoned a giant ice dragon that rushed towards him as he had wished. At first, the man did not show any panic, but simply used a dark energy ball to defend himself. However, as the ice dragon rapidly approached, his expression changed drastically.

Before he could use any items to escape, the ice dragon swallowed him whole and chewed him up, turning him into a pile of broken ice.

Qiao Ning conjured an ice blade identical to the Black Flame Bone Blade in her hand, stepped on the shattered ice, and pointed the tip of the blade at the player in front of her.

"Didn't you want to know clues about the Law Stone?"

"Whoever dares to come up to me, I will tell them."