Chapter 25: Acid Rain
At the same time, players in the chat lobby began crying out for help.
[Dragon Emerging from the Sea]: It’s acid rain out there. Everyone be careful. It’s best to stay inside your vehicles and avoid stepping outside.
[Flash Delivery Yellow Knight]: Oh God, the rain just burned straight through my canvas roof!
[Hungry Spirit Blue Knight]: Thank goodness I upgraded to Level 2! My ride finally has a hard roof! But this rain is terrifying—how am I supposed to step out and grab supply boxes?
[Fastest Hand at SF Express]: My truck is holding up for now, but the paint is already peeling and bubbling from the acid…
[Cute and Sparkling]: I wonder if the rain will stop once the sun comes up. If this lasts for a whole month, staying in our cars won’t save us; the metal will dissolve eventually.
[Jiangzhehu Inheritor]: I don’t dare close my eyes. We’d better take turns keeping watch tonight.
[Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar]: Sob… it’s so scary! The monsters along the road have become way more aggressive. The beginner shield is gone, and they’re pounding on my windows so hard I feel like the glass is about to shatter!
[Old Wang from Building Materials]: Holy crap, intermediate monsters are attacking now! Stay sharp, everyone!
Lin Huai read through the descriptions of vehicle damage in the chat, then inspected her own ride.
Most players were already dealing with blistered paint and severe corrosion. Her car, however, had only lost a bit of its brilliant shine.
Looking up at the green jade coffin resting on the roof and the soft emerald shield wrapping around the frame, she understood why. Even though the shift in disaster was unexpected, she had survived acid rain in her previous life, so she remained completely composed.
The coffin’s passive shield could only keep out low-tier Safety Ambassadors; it could not stop mid-tier monsters like hanged ghosts or savage chang ghosts. Fortunately, her vehicle had reached Level 4. Mid-tier monsters had no way of breaking through the reinforced hull; they could only slam their fists helplessly against the windows.
Ignoring the grotesque faces pressed against the glass, Lin Huai walked straight into the rear cabin.
With the coffin floating above the roof, the back had opened up completely. After upgrading to Level 4, the interior had expanded to twenty square meters. While the vehicle looked compact from the outside, the cabin felt remarkably spacious once inside.
Lin Huai pulled out a bed frame, warm bedding, and other furnishings from her inventory, turning the rear compartment into a cozy bedroom.
Across from the bed, she set up a sturdy dining table and chairs where she could eat her meals. Beside the table stood a low storage cupboard, which she filled with the pots, pans, bowls, and cutlery she had collected.
Realizing loose furniture might slide around and shatter if the car hit rough bumps, she reconsidered, returning the unanchored pieces to her backpack so she could summon them whenever needed.
Near the cabin door, Lin Huai set down the beginner workbench. Now that the novice shield was gone, there were no longer safe daytime hours set aside for crafting. Having the bench inside meant she could produce talismans while on the move.
The most mysterious feature in the cabin was a glowing red magic circle drawn onto the floor. By stepping into its center, she could instantly teleport up into the green jade coffin on the roof.
Lin Huai lay inside the coffin for a short rest. The moment the Yin energy conversion was complete, she climbed back down and slipped into the driver’s seat.
She had earned two full hours of complete invisibility from monsters, and she had no intention of letting a single minute go to waste.
Whenever a new disaster hit, supply boxes would spawn specialized gear and tools meant to counter it. Seizing her window of safety, Lin Huai decided to take the initiative and hunt for crates in the dark.
Sure enough, now that the disaster had begun, the number of roadside boxes had noticeably increased. Nighttime, when the parade of monsters was out in full force, was far more dangerous—meaning the crates that spawned after dark were larger in number and better in quality.
Lin Huai hit the gas and drove straight ahead, easily plowing aside the monsters blocking her path.
Before long, she spotted a yellow talisman box resting beside the road.
She pulled out a raincoat she had gathered earlier, threw it over her shoulders, and stepped out into the rain.
Monsters crowded the shoulder, but Lin Huai walked past them with absolute confidence, picked up the box, and slipped back into the car.
Over the next two hours, she covered eighty kilometers, securing two yellow talisman boxes and one broken wooden crate.
The storage space inside the coffin was even larger than the cabin below, so Lin Huai climbed in to open her loot where she had room to work.
With the overall game difficulty raised, the odds of encountering trapped chests had increased as well. All three boxes held monsters. Lin Huai could only laugh dryly at her luck.
Yet to her surprise, the moment the three Safety Ambassadors popped out in their gruesome death poses, they dissolved into thick black smoke and were vacuumed straight into the coffin walls.
Once the Yin energy and bitter malice fueling their heavy forms were drained away, only their pure, harmless souls remained.
Within seconds, the three terrifying monsters shrank into tiny glowing white figures. They hovered above the bottom of the casket, looking around at one another in total confusion and terror.
With a warm, motherly smile, Lin Huai pushed the lid open to let them out. “Off you go, little ones. Hurry along, and don’t come back~”
The three tiny spirits scrambled to float out into the open air. The instant they cleared the coffin’s aura and absorbed the ambient Yin energy outside, they ballooned back into their massive, horrifying forms.
Watching them flee, Lin Huai smiled. She felt as though she had already left the rest of the competition in the dust; the end of the road felt closer than ever.
After stowing away the supplies from the three boxes, Lin Huai curled up inside the coffin and went to sleep.
It was destined to be an agonizing, sleepless night for every other player on the highway, but Lin Huai rested without a care.
At six o’clock the next morning, her alarm went off.
Going to sleep at two and waking up at six brought back memories of following Old Lin to late-night funerals and wakes. If she kept living on such a miserable schedule, she might drop dead of exhaustion before ever reaching the end of the highway.
Rubbing her tired eyes, Lin Huai slid back behind the wheel. The road ahead looked bleak under the steady downpour, and she set off in a foul mood.
The moment she turned the key, the Road Guide’s cool female voice came through the speakers:
[Yellow Springs Road Guide activated. Today’s travel quota: 300 kilometers. Active natural disaster: Acid Rain. Terrain: Hilly. Approaching a continuous winding road section with complex conditions. No forks detected for now. Pavement is slick. Drivers, please exercise caution and watch for sharp turns.]
During daylight hours, fewer supply crates spawned along the shoulder. Lin Huai focused on driving to meet her daily distance requirement while keeping an eye on the messages scrolling across her screen.
Glancing at the top corner of the chat lobby, she checked the player count: (5,103 / 10,000).
Nearly a thousand players had died in a single night!
Just 103 more deaths, and the population would drop below five thousand—triggering the arrival of towns.
Lin Huai found herself constantly checking the counter.
From the yellow talisman boxes she had opened during the night, she had pulled rust-resistant car paint and invisible protective wraps. Thanks to those items, she was easily the most relaxed driver on the road.
Even so, the protective wrap and special paint were made of basic materials, unable to withstand the corrosive rain for very long. A fresh layer had to be applied every few hours.
She hadn’t found many sets; after sending one over to Milk Tea Seven Parts Sugar, she had none left to spare for anyone else.
