2: The sky cracked open.

He turned off the engine and rolled down the window.

The summer breeze drifted in, carrying the noisy sounds of students playing basketball on the playground.

The sound of the bell signaling the end of class drifted from the distant teaching building; girls in short skirts walked past laughing, while boys discussed where to go for dinner that night.

Everything was as usual.

No one knew that this would be the last peaceful noon of their lives.

Qin Lin leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes.

Memories surged in like a tide—

At this time in his previous life, he was with Su Yuran in a budget hotel.

When the mutation occurred, they had just stepped out of the bathroom; the sunlight outside the window suddenly vanished, and the temperature plummeted twenty degrees within ten minutes.

The hotel lost power, cell signals were cut off, and screams echoed from the hallway.

They huddled in the room wrapped in blankets for two days until their food ran out.

Su Yuran cried, wanting to go home, so Qin Lin had no choice but to take her and venture outside.

The streets were already in complete chaos; supermarkets had been looted empty, traffic lights were all out, and people lay dead by the roadside, their bodies quickly freezing solid.

On the seventh day, the temperature suddenly soared to fifty degrees.

The ice and snow melted instantly, triggering floods, followed by pestilence.

A month later, Su Yuran was successfully picked up by her family.

And then, order completely collapsed.

Qin Lin struggled through the ruins for an entire year.

He had seen the darkest faces of human nature and the tiniest glimmers of light.

In the end, he died at the hands of a madman who wanted to steal half a biscuit from him.

The sensation of death was cold, like falling into the deep sea.

Then came a white light.

Rebirth.

"In this life, it won't happen again."

Qin Lin opened his eyes and looked at his phone screen.

11:59:30 AM.

He pushed open the car door, stepped outside, and looked up at the sky.

The noon sun was somewhat dazzling, and the sky was cloudless for ten thousand miles.

On the playground, a three-pointer swished through the net, drawing a burst of cheers.

In the teaching building, a professor was still running over time.

The aroma of food drifted from the cafeteria.

12:00 PM sharp.

Nothing happened.

Qin Lin frowned.

Did I remember the time wrong?

Just as he was about to check his phone—

The sky cracked open.

It wasn't a metaphor.

The azure canopy of the sky was like glass, with countless black cracks spreading from the very center.

The cracks spread rapidly, filling his entire field of vision in the blink of an eye.

The sunlight was swallowed, and the world fell into an eerie gloom.

Immediately after, from the center of the cracks, a beam of pure black light shot straight down.

It wasn't light; it was more like the 'opposite of light'.

Wherever it passed, colors were erased, sounds were absorbed, and even the flow of air stood still.

The black light's target was very clear.

The corner of the West Campus parking lot, that black sedan with the plate Su A·100.

Qin Lin stood where he was, watching the black light hit his car.

There was no explosion, no sound.

Like a drop of ink falling into water, it merged silently.

The entire process lasted about three seconds.

Then the black light vanished, the cracks in the sky slowly healed, and sunlight spilled down once more.

The cheers on the playground came to a screeching halt.

Because the temperature was dropping at a terrifying speed.

Qin Lin's exhaled breath turned into white mist.

He pulled open the car door and sat inside, immediately looking at the center console.

The car was still the same car—shabby, dirty, and full of the marks of time.

But Qin Lin knew it had changed.

Because before his eyes, a line of translucent blue text emerged:

[Host detected in contact with 'Doomsday RV']

[Binding process initiated...]

[Binding successful]

[Current Level: Lv0 (Unactivated)]

[Activation Condition: Survive for 24 hours during the first 'Extreme Cold Period']

[Countdown: 23:59:58]

Below the text was a simple interface:

[Energy: 0/100]

[survival points: 0]

[Driver: Qin Lin]

[Others: Unlocked]

Qin Lin took a deep breath.

The icy air stung his lungs, but it made him incredibly lucid.

He had succeeded.

This car was now his.

The first scream came from outside the window.

Then a second, and a third.

The temperature was still dropping.

The dashboard displayed the outside temperature:

-5°C, and it was dropping by one degree every ten seconds.

Qin Lin started the engine and turned on the heater.

The old blower made a noise, but hot air did indeed blow out from the vents.

He looked toward the parking lot exit.

People were already sprinting out, their faces written with panic.

A boy in short sleeves hugged his arms, shivering violently.

Another girl fell on the road, her knees scraping and bleeding, but she didn't care about the pain, scrambling up to continue running.

Chaos began in an instant.

Qin Lin shifted gears and lightly stepped on the accelerator.

The old car slowly drove out of the parking lot, heading toward this familiar yet strange apocalypse.

He didn't go looking for Su Yuran; her family background was good, and someone would go for her.

Although her family conditions were excellent and she didn't lack the money for a hotel room,

her family was very strict and monitored her spending.

So Qin Lin had to be the one to pay for the room.

Qin Lin drove away.

Deep within the car's body, where he couldn't see, some structure beyond human understanding was rearranging itself.

The molecular bonds of the metal were reinforced, the circuit boards grew brand new pathways, and a faint blue light flashed inside the engine.

The car was waking up... Minus fifteen degrees.

This was thirty minutes after the black light descended.

When Qin Lin drove out of the campus, the streets had turned into a tableau of chaos.

Vehicles were parked haphazardly in the middle of the road, their drivers having abandoned them to flee.

Because the sudden drop in temperature caused old batteries to fail instantly, the engines wouldn't start.

A man in a suit slammed his hands on the steering wheel, shouting curses.

Frost had already begun to form on his car windows.

A woman in a skirt ran barefoot by the roadside, her high heels lost somewhere, her soles cut by ice shards, leaving behind bright red footprints.

The entrance to a convenience store was crowded with people.

Glass doors were smashed, shelves were toppled, and people were looting everything on the shelves like zombies.

Mineral water, bread, instant noodles... A middle-aged woman holding a dozen packs of sanitary pads in her arms was pushed to the ground, her things scattering everywhere; she wailed while trying to pick them up, but her fingers were stepped on.

Qin Lin drove very slowly.

That his car could still move was already a miracle.

Through the frosted windows, he saw a waiter in a corner cafe breaking apart tables and chairs to throw into the fireplace.

It was a decorative fireplace, yet it could actually burn.

The flames reflected the terrified faces of the crowd gathered around.

His phone suddenly vibrated.

Qin Lin glanced at it; it was an emergency notification from the carrier:

[The National Meteorological Bureau has issued the highest-level alert: A nationwide extreme cold wave has occurred. Citizens are requested to return indoors immediately and prepare for the cold. The government is organizing rescue efforts; please remain calm and wait for further notice.]

The notification had been sent five minutes ago.

But the signal bars were flickering, dropping from full to two bars, then jumping back to three.

A sign of instability.

Qin Lin turned off his phone and focused on driving.

The place he was going was not far from campus, an old auto repair shop.

In his previous life, that place was relatively peaceful in the early stages of the apocalypse; moreover, it had walls and tools.

Most importantly—few people would think of going there for refuge.

The streets were becoming harder to navigate.

A layer of ice covered the road surface, and the tires were slipping.

Qin Lin had to crawl along at a speed of twenty kilometers per hour.

In the rearview mirror, someone saw his car moving and waved desperately, wanting a ride, but Qin Lin did not stop.

It wasn't that he was cold-blooded.

It was that his car could not be exposed yet.