Noon of Day 1
Lin Mo nodded, her tone unwavering: "Yes, please pack them all."
The clerk: "So that's 3 original cheese, 3 chocolate cheese, and 4 soft-baked Basque cheesecakes?"
"Right, I'm in a hurry. Thanks," Lin Mo replied, lowering her eyes. Her long, thick lashes cast a faint shadow beneath them, making her look somewhat aloof.
The clerk felt an inexplicable tension and quickly responded, "One moment, please. I'll pack them up right away."
While waiting, Lin Mo swiped open her phone. The cold light of the screen reflected off her straight nose, accentuating her expressionless face. She opened social media to search for clues about the train safe house.
On the trending page, several eye-catching tags suddenly jumped out:
#ExtremeColdDisasterWarning #DoomsdayCountdown
A red "trending" symbol was followed by a sharp upward arrow.
Lin Mo paused and clicked on the most popular video.
A foreign white man stood on a high rooftop, his eyes bloodshot, shouting hoarsely, "Seven days! The doomsday judgment is coming in seven days! The demon Snow Erosion is coming!"
Hearing the keywords "Snow Erosion" and "seven days," Lin Mo's vigilance immediately heightened.
She quickly searched for "Snow Erosion" and found two more highly popular videos.
A blonde girl with blue eyes held up a sign that read "Follow Me" and emphasized, "The world is going to be destroyed. Only the perpetual motion constant-temperature train can keep people alive. I'm a Train Conductor. Believe me, get on the train to survive!"
Another Chinese person posted a note written in blood: "Snow Erosion creates a ten-kilometer barrier! Those who can't leave are the chosen ones! It's like a single-player game—every player has their own spawn point!"
Ten kilometers?
Lin Mo pondered. Her current location was about ten kilometers from her rental apartment, and she couldn't go any further toward the airport.
Beneath these desperate videos, the comments section was flooded with sarcastic jokes:
"Send me 50 bucks, and I'll give you eternal life (transfer 50 for the follow-up)"
"This is, like, a live show of 'The Wandering Earth,' right?"
The lighthearted comments and the desperate videos interwove on the screen.
Lin scrolled through the videos and comments one by one. There were already five who had exposed the Train Conductor system. There were certainly more hidden in the shadows.
Her slender fingers tapped lightly on the table.
She hadn't expected her peers to be so bold and fast. That saved her the trouble of thinking about how to discreetly convey the message.
The fact that the videos hadn't been taken down yet meant the government hadn't caught on. But with trending topics exploding, the monitoring departments would soon notice. As long as someone pieced together the anomalous fragments, they'd find something wrong.
If the country could prepare in advance, that was a good thing.
Lin Mo looked out the window. The leaden sky pressed down low—a sign of impending storm.
Her knuckles unconsciously rubbed the edge of her phone case. After reading the trending topics, she trusted the system's forecast of the extreme cold disaster a bit more.
The comments section was still in uproar: some posted expert refutations, others denounced the video creators for attention-seeking, and some shared satellite cloud maps of the Siberian cold wave, debating the possibility of extreme weather.
"The doomsday is real. The global extreme disaster Snow Erosion is coming..." Her finger hovered over the input box, then suddenly stopped. She couldn't expose herself, or she'd likely be targeted by various forces, maybe even locked up in a lab for study.
After a moment of thought, she deleted sensitive words like "doomsday" and "Snow Erosion" and typed instead: "Instead of arguing online, stock up on food, water, and warm supplies, or go directly to Hainan or Southeast Asia to avoid the cold."
Lin Mo let out a long breath and hit send.
"Ma'am, your cakes and butter rice cakes are packed," the clerk's voice emerged from the baking aroma.
Lin Mo looked up. The warm yellow light of the bakery fell on the pile of paper bags, revealing the full shapes inside. Seven days left until the extreme cold hit; time was limited.
The taxi wove through the gloomy streets. Outside, the buildings were shrouded in a leaden gray sky, exuding an oppressive chill. Lin Mo placed the paper bags beside her and opened Taobao again. Her fingers slid quickly, typing in the search bar: -30°C to -50°C extreme weather gear.
Ultra-thick down pants, Bosideng extreme cold series down jackets, mountaineering windproof suits, fleece-lined climbing pants... item after item was added to her cart.
A single extreme-cold long down coat cost two or three thousand, but the down fill was generous.
Her monthly salary couldn't even buy ten down jackets. Lin Mo sighed: But if we're all going to die, what's the use of money?
Fearing that rain or snow would delay logistics, she ordered five of each item and messaged the sellers to ship today, preferably via SF Express, even with cash on delivery.
She had to be bundled up from head to toe. With that thought, she tapped again and added 5 thick Soviet-style fur hats, 50 pairs of thick wool socks, 50 pairs of fleece socks, and 6 pairs of waterproof, slip-proof polar snow boots.
Thousand miles away, at the military command center.
A lieutenant general, grim-faced, strode into the command center, clutching an urgent document.
"Reporting to the chief! One soldier in the army appears to have encountered alien technology and accidentally activated an unbelievable train!" He spoke rapidly: "The train system sent a clear warning: an extreme cold disaster is about to sweep the globe!"
The elderly but vigorous senior general took the report, scanned it quickly, but showed no reaction, saying calmly, "Evidence?"
"Yes, sir!" The lieutenant general immediately handed a USB drive to the secretary general beside him. With the senior general's nod of approval, the projection equipment quickly started.
The projection showed a strange train: its streamlined body was as smooth as solidified moonlight, its surface flowing with mysterious fluorescent patterns, with pale blue light bands wrapping around it.
Its material and design style had no intersection with existing human technology, exuding an unfathomable sense of the unknown.
Several soldiers stood ready beside the train. The next second, one soldier commanded solemnly, "Retract the train."
The moment the words fell, before everyone's eyes, the train vanished into thin air, leaving no trace.
Then the soldiers quickly brought wood, stones, and other obstacles, piling them into a wall as high as a person where the train had been.