Chapter 65
[Congratulations to 30,124 players in server 1408 for successfully surviving the fourth natural disaster cycle. The following week will be the settlement and maintenance period, during which surviving players will be teleported to the Land Emperor City.]
Within the City of the Emperor, all players are free to move about until the next cycle of natural disasters arrives.
Friendly reminder: 1. Lu Di City is the only officially certified city in the world of road survival. It has strict city rules and regulations. Violators will be imprisoned or even executed.
Players, please cherish your lives and do not challenge the city's regulations.
Friendly Reminder 2: All players will be issued a Temporary Resident Certificate of Ludi City upon their first entry into Ludi City. This certificate cannot be copied, forged, or reissued, but it can be contested, modified, or replaced.
Friendly Reminder 3: Lu Di City is a city built by the gods. Only players who have successfully survived the first four natural disasters and opened the Trial Gate are qualified to enter Lu Di City.
Friendly Reminder 4: In seven days, players will enter the Trial of Calamity.
Friendly Reminder 5: All players who successfully survive three Trials of Calamity will have one chance to return to their original world.
In 10 seconds, all surviving players in Zone 1408 will be teleported to the City of the Land Emperor. The process may cause slight discomfort, so please be prepared: 10, 9, 8, 7...
In just ten seconds, Qiao Ning could receive all the information.
Like everyone else, her first thought was, "Is she finally going back?"
With natural disaster days and holidays combined, Qiao Ning felt as if centuries had passed in just over a month.
She herself has changed since she first entered the game, and sometimes when she looks at herself in the mirror, she feels like a stranger.
Although her facial features hadn't changed, she no longer had the cold, gloomy, and dejected look she had in the modern world. Her long hair was tied up high, and she wore a clean and neat black windbreaker (red equipment manifested). She looked much more resolute, but still gave off a cold and distant vibe.
Her soft flesh had transformed into more powerful muscles, not exaggeratedly, but thin and with beautiful, graceful lines. She herself looked at them and wanted to touch them.
Li Yangxing often joked that when he first met her, he thought she was a socially awkward person with a cold exterior. Now she's even colder than before, but she's also aloof and cool. If it weren't for the fact that everyone in the survival game is only busy surviving and can't think about anything else, a sister like Qiao Ning would definitely charm a lot of men and women.
Qiao Ning thought of Pei Jing, Qing He, Tao Tao, and Yuan Heng. She desperately hoped that these friends could stay with her until the end and go home together.
The sudden appearance of the Lu Di City and the Trial Calamity by the game system gave her a vague feeling that something was beyond her expectations.
A heavy, lingering shadow seemed to hang over my heart, making it hard to breathe.
This teleportation process took a little longer than before, when it was almost instantaneous to the safe zone.
After about three minutes, Qiao Ning's vision was finally restored.
She found herself on a vast, boundless continent, with only one building within a hundred miles—
Lu Di City.
This was definitely the largest city she had ever seen, whether in online games or in real history.
Judging from the system map, the area it covers is almost twice the size of China.
She couldn't imagine how such a building could have been constructed. Could it really have been built by the gods?
There was only one road leading to the city gate of Ludi City. Beyond the road were walls, and behind the walls was nothingness.
This road is strange; it doesn't look wide, yet it's eerily wide enough for multiple players' cars to drive side by side.
Qiao Ning also saw Pei Jing's car.
The city was right in front of us, but it took us almost ten minutes to finally reach the city gate.
The towering city gate soared into the clouds, and Qiao Ning could not see its top or estimate its height.
The city gate was made of some kind of secret gold, somewhat like an ancient bronze gate, and was engraved with a strange beast that bore a slight resemblance to Ice Scale, though they were quite different.
To be honest, they are like the Buddha statues in ancient temples and the deity statues in Taoist temples, which may bear a slight resemblance to the actual deities.
There were only two guards at the city gate, both clad in jet-black armor, their heads completely obscured, making their features impossible to discern. One was responsible for issuing temporary resident permits, and the other for verifying identities.
Their method of verifying identities was simple and brutal: they only needed to make eye contact with the strange beasts carved on the city gate for a few seconds. If the beasts closed their eyes and did not make any unusual movements, they could enter.
If the beast opens its eyes, a squad of armored guards will appear out of nowhere and take the player and their vehicle away. Whether they live or die is unknown.
As for the temporary resident certificate issued, it was even simpler. It was just a black token about the length of a finger, with the name on the front and a miniature version of a mythical beast pattern on the back.
Qiao Ning took the token, restarted the vehicle, and drove into the city. Pei Jing and the others had already entered. She thought she could meet up with them after entering the city, but after entering the city gate, she found that they were not only three or four thousand kilometers apart, but also could not use the means of transportation that were only available to citizens in the city.
To find someone, you can only rely on your own two legs or a car.
Even at full speed, it would take a long time to travel three or four thousand kilometers, which is quite a distance for a Class 5 car.
Even without Qiao Ning's prompting, Pei Jing and the others immediately sent messages, indicating that video calls were fine if needed, and that an in-person meeting wasn't necessary. The holiday was only seven days long, and wasting three or four days on the road wasn't worthwhile. It would be better to use this time to familiarize themselves with Lu Di City as much as possible and make some preparations for the trial calamities.
The Imperial City of Lu is so vast that it's almost indistinguishable from a normal country. It has its own currency, institutions, economic system, and so on.
Qiao Ning and her group certainly didn't have the local currency, but they could exchange goods for it. Some goods were very valuable, such as energy stones, while ordinary items, especially gasoline and water, were quite cheap here.
Players acquired numerous supply crates during the last natural disaster and are not short of resources. The savvy players will naturally take advantage of the price difference in the Land Emperor City to exchange for more of what they need, such as essential commodities like gasoline.
To Qiao Ning's surprise, many items such as strange fire seeds, energy stones that have run out of energy, and cards are quite expensive here.
Qiao Ning had plenty of these things, and after exchanging them for a large sum of money, she began to enjoy her holiday in Lu Di City with Bing Lin.
In Lu Di City, players are not restricted from bringing their pets out, but players must keep their pets under control. If a pet does something against the rules, the owner will be punished more severely.
As for Binglin, Qiao Ning didn't need to explain anything. Binglin cared more about Qiao Ning's safety than anyone else, and it wouldn't do anything that might bring her trouble or danger.
The few days she spent in Ludi City seemed no different from those in a regular safe zone. In fact, it gave her the illusion of returning to modern civilized society—normal, peaceful, and ordinary. Sometimes, she would inexplicably have the feeling that even if she stayed here forever, it wouldn't be a big deal.
After all, she lived the same way in the modern world, and she could even live better here, because she had money and power here and didn't have to fear anyone or anything.
However, these thoughts only flashed through her mind for a moment. This place was not truly peaceful and modern, nor did it belong to her; she should return to her own world.
Qiao Ning has no relatives or friends in the modern world, mostly just colleagues from her studio. In reality, she has no real ties to the modern world. But perhaps due to the deeply ingrained Chinese belief in returning to one's roots, she always felt that even if she died one day, it would be good if her ashes could be taken back to the modern world by her living friends.
No matter how nice this place is, she feels out of place, with an inexplicable sense of unease, unable to feel a sense of belonging. She feels more like a temporary visitor.
Seven days later, the trial of natural disasters will begin.
Qiao Ning returned to the car early to prepare. Bing Lin sat next to her, its tail wagging rapidly, its fluffy dog face full of excitement.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" Anyone who didn't know better would think she was taking it on a picnic.
Ice Scales managed to restrain themselves somewhat, but their eyes shone even brighter.
It was exactly midnight.
Welcome all players in Region 1408 to the fifth Cataclysmic Cycle, "The First Stage of the Emperor's Trial". Rewards from the previous Cataclysmic Cycle have been settled and sent to players' mailboxes. Please check and claim them in time.
Friendly reminder: At the end of each natural disaster cycle, the top 100 players on the seven leaderboards will receive extra rewards.
The natural disaster for this trial is: Carbon Evolution.
Duration of natural disaster: seven days
Online users: 1,067,842
All players, please continue your efforts to survive this catastrophe cycle.
When Qiao Ning saw this number, she almost thought she had misread it and added an extra digit. She looked at it carefully again before confirming that it was not a six-digit number, but a seven-digit number.
Despite the large number of players entering this time, Qiao Ning felt no joy whatsoever.
Because the game wouldn't release so many players into the same server without a reason.
There is only one possibility—the natural disaster in the trial is too severe, and a small number of players are simply not enough to sustain the losses. Only a million players could possibly achieve a survival rate of 20%. If the number of players is too small, the entire region will likely be wiped out before the natural disaster ends.
Qiao Ning's car is currently parked on an asphalt gravel road. On both sides of the road and above, there are transparent barriers that can be vaguely seen with the naked eye, with occasional flashes of light. At first glance, it looks quite beautiful.
Beyond the highway, lush greenery filled her eyes. She had never seen such a dense and abundant forest before. The plants were more vigorous than most people could imagine, which made her feel incredibly shocked and in awe of nature just by looking at them.
This natural disaster is the "Carboniferous Evolution." Qiao Ning had long been familiar with the Carboniferous period, but she didn't know much about it.
All she knew was that the Carboniferous period was a time of great flourishing for plants on Earth, and that more than 50 percent of the world's modern coal reserves were formed during this period.
There's a saying online that describes the Carboniferous period as "a paradise for plants and a grand feast for giant insects."
It would be a lie to say that Qiao Ning wasn't curious about this ancient era. An ordinary person would probably have gotten off the bus long ago to take a good look at the magnificent jungle scenery of the Carboniferous period. However, Qiao Ning didn't make any rash moves. She first turned on the monitoring screen of the smart home system.
The above shows that the oxygen concentration in the jungle exceeds 35%, which is considered an oxygen-rich environment. This has certain benefits and won't cause immediate death, but the human body still needs time to adapt. The plants and insects in this environment could be quite abundant…
This highway barrier is less of a spatial barrier and more like a pane of glass, serving only as a temporary isolation—because a giant insect has already crashed into the barrier, causing its surface to ripple with light.
That was a horseshoe crab.
It is the oldest and largest known spider on Earth.
In many online games that Qiao Ning had played, the prototype of spider monsters was the horseshoe crab. She had seen reconstruction images of horseshoe crabs online, but the horseshoe crab in front of her was larger and stranger than any she knew.
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