Chapter 1 The Beginning of Death
'These kinds of gems can be found everywhere!'
'These greasy middle-aged women are so disgusting.'
'Since when can people like this be considered survivors?'
'That's disgusting! They went into someone's house and immediately started eating and taking things without hesitation, even their bed sheets, blankets, and sanitary napkins.'
'That's why they call them top-notch! Aren't all these top-notch fat aunties this greedy?'
'Is that Earth in 2025? She doesn't even know how to drive such an old-fashioned car back then! What a waste of her life!'
'This greasy, disgusting woman deserved to be killed in less than 10 seconds of the competition!'
"I just watched the replay; she was the first to die in the dungeon competition area across all regions!"
'Haha~ Running herself to death, that's the kind of stupid death only a truly awful fat old lady would have.'
'Luckily she died early; if she had died later, this kind of freak would have ruined countless lives for the survivors.'
"Exactly! I've seen plenty of people like her in previous survival shows. Every time, they manage to screw others over, and then they act like it's not their fault!"
"To be honest, this kind of obese old lady is insatiably greedy. She never has enough, and her greed is beyond words. In 30 minutes, if she wanted to collect fewer supplies and take the opportunity to observe how others were progressing in the dungeon, she wouldn't have died in the competition."
'That's why he's such an utterly stupid person!'
…………
In her hazy state of consciousness, Feng Xingshou felt as if she saw countless bullet comments appearing and disappearing around her, and the content of each comment gave her a sense of enlightenment.
Yes! I often see this when I read novels; almost every novel has a character like the extremely obese middle-aged woman described in the comments—greedy, insatiable, stupid, and brainless…
The various flaws are speechless, and in the end, they leave the stage in a very embarrassing, stupid, and brainless way, or die a miserable death. When I watched it, I just felt that this kind of extreme character deserved this kind of ending.
But I never expected that I would be seen as this kind of person by others. So, in the past two days, there were also onlookers like readers who were watching and commenting on me or other survivors.
As this possibility came to mind, whether she was in her final moments or already dead, the unusual experiences of the past two days involuntarily surfaced in her mind...
Two days ago:
"...According to reports, the Yellowstone volcano's eruption has caused serious environmental impacts on two-thirds of the United States..." Feng Xingshou sighed as he listened to the news broadcast.
Although geological experts had assessed more than 20 years ago that this megavolcano would erupt within the next one or two hundred years and had also speculated on the impact of the eruption, no one expected that it would actually erupt in April 2025.
Now it's the third day of the eruption. The United States has suffered heavy casualties, but unexpectedly, even its own country and neighboring countries have been affected. Japan looks like it has been swept through the air by a giant shotgun.
Volcanic rocks cooled after the Yellowstone eruption rained down from the sky, causing devastation in countries like Japan, South Korea, and North Korea. Many volcanic rocks also fell on the coastal areas of Central China, but these rocks fell more than 10 hours after the Yellowstone eruption.
Given the capabilities of Zhongzhou's BeiDou satellite system and space station, this situation was anticipated, and advance evacuation and disaster area assessments were initiated. While there were no casualties, the economic losses were substantial...
In recent years, with the popularization of AI, people's lives and work have already fallen into a difficult mode. The poor are getting poorer, while the rich can become richer by using advanced technology to significantly reduce investment in labor costs, wages, and benefits.
As jobs are replaced by technology, people are constantly falling into waves of unemployment.
Alas! It's becoming increasingly difficult to find manual labor jobs these days, and now we're facing a natural disaster that experts predict will plunge the world into a mini ice age for over a decade, causing devastating damage to the ecological environment and food production. The days ahead will surely be even harder!
She recalled that she had been unemployed for several months and had not been able to find a job recently. She couldn't even register as a food delivery driver because most food delivery jobs nowadays can be done by AI delivery trucks and AI drones.
In this era of potential disasters caused by a Yellowstone volcanic eruption, my savings, after covering my monthly mortgage and living expenses, are barely enough to last another two months. I feel extremely lost about the future and under immense pressure to survive.
This immense pressure to survive, coupled with her anxieties and uncertainty about the future, caused a constant stream of disheartening thoughts to flood her mind. Just then, she suddenly heard a voice that seemed to come from within her own head:
[Ding! Congratulations! You have been selected as one of the first survivors on Earth in this round of the Highway Survival game. Please carefully read the game announcement after entering the competition area and abide by the game rules. We wish you a pleasant gaming experience!]
"A road survival game? What is that? It seems like a foreign game that was popular a few years ago..." Are foreign games now being advertised directly on national television? Feng Xingshou thought the voice in his head was just his imagination.
She thought the news station had no morals and had accepted an advertisement for a third-rate foreign game, but before she could finish speaking, everything went black, and a dizzying, nauseating feeling made her want to vomit.
After barely managing to suppress the urge to vomit and as the dizziness subsided, she opened her eyes to find herself stunned by what she saw. She found herself inexplicably on a highway, with an old-fashioned four-wheeled car parked beside her without license plates.
The roadside was completely covered by a thick fog, obscuring all other views. The road itself seemed to be under some kind of spell, free of fog, allowing a clear view of the distant scenery... well, it was still the road, as if it stretched endlessly.
Shouldn't I have been in my tiny 35-square-meter apartment where the mortgage isn't even paid off yet? How did I end up here in the blink of an eye? Was it a hallucination? Or... was the voice I heard real?
.
When things are going well at work, Feng Xing Shou likes to read novels to relieve the negative emotions caused by work and reduce the pressure of life. He has read some road survival novels, but he never thought that such games would actually exist in reality, let alone that he would be selected to participate.
Because she's 35 years old in 2025 and still hasn't learned to drive or gotten a driver's license—a complete country bumpkin. And according to the tropes in novels, she hasn't clicked on any suspicious links or registered on any suspicious gaming websites.
Why would someone like this participate in a road survival game? Why would someone who can't drive participate in a road survival game? If you can't drive, are you planning to push your car around?
Feng Xing Shou Qi cursed inwardly, but his actions were still quite honest. Following the instructions he received before being brought to this damn game, he tried shouting, "Open the game announcement!"
As she spoke, a large, roughly 8-inch screen appeared before her, seemingly projected out of thin air. The densely packed Chinese characters on it gave her a headache, but to keep up with the situation, she had no choice but to endure it...
After carefully reading the announcement, she realized that the game was completely unpretentious, without explaining its origins or purpose, but rather directly and bluntly announcing its rules.
As for whether the person brought in agrees? Should we...?
Can I participate? Can I withdraw from the game? What rule did I violate to be flagged? Why can someone who can't drive participate...? These questions and related options weren't included in its announcement.
Furthermore, Feng Xingshou searched around the screen but found no other functions, such as world channels, regional channels, trade channels, processing, manufacturing, and decomposition functions that appear in novels.
It looks like a real-life single-player road survival game where you can't even communicate with others for help or figure out the situation, let alone trade for food and water like in a novel...
The above only contains some game rules of this crappy game. It is roughly said that this crappy game has 12 seasons, with one season per month. Each season has a disaster theme, which the game developers will not announce and the survivors need to discover for themselves.
During the season, survivors are teleported to a highway-filled competition zone to survive on the highway. Once inside the zone, time on Earth stops. Participants can return to reality once they survive until the end of each season, but they cannot disclose any game-related content after returning to reality.
After recovering in reality for the same amount of time as the survival period, you will be forced to participate in the next survival competition. Death in the game is equivalent to death in reality. You can bring back the resources you can carry with you when you return to reality.
Each season will start with a daily survival instance at 12:00 noon on the 3rd of each month, and will be open once a day until the 23rd, for a total of 20 days. Each daily survival instance lasts for 30 minutes. Survivors can collect various resources to survive the disaster and upgrade their vehicles through the daily instance.
In addition, a monthly survival dungeon will be opened at 12:00 on the 27th of each month. It will be opened once a month, and each monthly survival dungeon will last for 300 minutes, about 5 hours.
Survivors can also collect various resources to survive disasters and upgrade their vehicles through monthly dungeons. Monthly dungeons are much more dangerous than daily dungeons, so survivors need to find ways to improve their survival rate.
Because dying in the instance is equivalent to dying in reality, and once you enter the instance or return to reality, time will stop flowing in the highway survival zone and will start again upon returning.
However, the monthly dungeon offers much richer resources than the daily dungeon, and the collection time is increased by 10 times. Naturally, there are far more resources to collect than in the daily dungeon. It also offers some special items that can only be found in the monthly dungeon, which is a once-a-month opportunity.
Additionally, monsters in the dense fog at night will break through the fog's restrictions and enter the highway, requiring survivors to ensure they are in their vehicles at night. Monsters in the current section of the road and in Season 2 cannot break through the initial vehicle to attack survivors.
Survivors can rely on the defensive capabilities of their initial vehicle in the current section and before Season 2, but in Season 3, the initial vehicle will no longer be able to protect survivors. Survivors must upgrade their initial vehicle before then in order to survive.
What follows is a series of seasonal tracks corresponding to each vehicle tier, basically one tier for every two seasons, ending with tier 6 vehicles corresponding to the 11-12 season tracks...
The following is some information about the competition zones. For example, the first four seasons of the road survival game are the early survival phase, which is not divided into different types. There are a total of 1,000 competition zones, with 10,000 people in each zone. If the number of people is insufficient, the game will automatically adjust the number of survivors in other seasons to reduce the number of competition zones.
Starting from the fifth phase, the game is divided into two main zones: the Survival Zone and the War Zone. The Survival Zone focuses on various disasters, while the War Zone focuses on various war disasters and the deadly competition among survivors... Death means defeat, etc.!
The final winner of Season 12 will receive a high-tech grand prize from the game developers, and will also be able to bring back their upgraded vehicles, collected technologies, and resources to Earth as a tempting in-game reward...
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