Equipment and Power System
Lin Mo glanced at the WeChat messages from her manager, and her anger flared up instantly.
Who was the irresponsible one here? She had worked herself to the bone, putting in crazy overtime to perfectly wrap up the project, and now she was the one being blamed?
What was even more infuriating was that this project should have been split half and half with the manager, but he had completely washed his hands of it and dumped all the work on her.
She laughed in anger: "The project is finished. If you really care about the client, don't you have even one minute to check the email and materials? I'm taking five days of annual leave, and after the leave, I'll go to the company to complete the resignation procedures."
Lin Mo's fingers flew across the screen, her tone sarcastic:
"Oh, by the way, there are still three days of unused annual leave from last year. I'll take those as well. Plus, at least 20 days of compensatory time off from overtime. The company won't violate the labor law, will it? Or do you want to pay me triple my salary instead?"
According to labor law, if a company truly can't arrange for employees to take annual leave due to work needs, they must pay three times the employee's daily wage as compensation.
It was truly outrageous. Employees who had been with the company less than three years had their annual leave from last year withheld by the department manager under the pretext of "tight project deadlines," and he refused to compensate them according to labor law.
This guy was nothing but a vampire capitalist's accomplice, squeezing employees dry. Her phone was still vibrating wildly; the manager must be typing another long rant.
She had already shown mercy by not suing the company for ignoring labor laws. In seven days, the world would end, and wasting time with the company was pointless. However, she wasn't the type to let someone accuse her without fighting back.
Lin Mo threatened: "Say one more word, and I'll see you in arbitration court. You should know, I have access to lawyer resources."
After all, her friend Jian Qing had a lawyer's license and had provided free legal consultation for several previous projects. If the manager wanted to court death, she wouldn't mind sending the company a lawyer's letter.
Then the one being scolded by the big boss would be the slick-tongued manager. Apparently, the manager had figured that out too.
After Lin Mo dropped that line, the world fell silent.
She grabbed her ID, driver's license, and backpack, bundled herself up warmly, and took a taxi straight to the building materials market to pick up the oil extraction tool. From the building materials market, she took another taxi to the car rental company. She had already reserved a car on the app last night; she just needed to bring her documents to pick it up.
Just as she settled into the taxi, her phone vibrated. It was a WeChat message from Zhao Mengmeng, her work lunch buddy.
Zhao Mengmeng: "Oh my god, Lin Mo, you resigned?!"
Lin Mo chuckled softly at the screen, her typing carrying a lightness: "Yeah, I'm done serving those leeches who only suck blood and don't work."
Zhao Mengmeng: "Congratulations! That's awesome! The manager's having a meltdown in his office hahaha. You used to carry so much of his workload. From now on, when General Zhao assigns him work, he'll never find someone as reliable as you!"
Lin Mo shrugged: "He can't boss around the other old-timers. Let him throw his tantrum."
"Resigning is pretty good too. This crappy job has way too much work. If it weren't for the high monthly salary and year-end bonus, I would've packed up and gone back to my hometown long ago."
Zhao Mengmeng's words didn't reveal whether she envied Lin Mo's freedom or was comforting herself with money. At the end, she pressed further: "But this is so sudden. Did something happen?"
Lin Mo replied frankly: "Nothing's wrong. I just feel that since the end of the world is coming, working overtime every day and killing myself is meaningless. No matter how much money I make, I need to be alive to spend it."
She also forwarded a popular end-of-the-world analysis and survival guide collection from Xiaohongshu to Zhao Mengmeng: "I'm getting off. Remember to stock up on food and thick clothes. Better yet, buy a plane ticket and go back to your hometown in Yunnan to lay low."
The car Lin Mo had reserved at the rental company was a small black van with adjustable seats. She had the staff adjust the mechanism, folding down all the rear seats flat, merging them with the trunk to create a large, perfectly flat space for hauling cargo.
She felt a bit rusty when she first sat in the driver's seat; it had been a long time since she last drove. The morning rush hour was over, and there were few cars on the inner and outer ring roads. Lin Mo pressed the accelerator and drove slowly, gradually getting a feel for the car again.
Her first stop was a nearby auto repair shop, where she bought ten 25-liter spare fuel tanks and stacked them in the car.
Next, she drove to a secluded side road and stopped. After confirming there were no surveillance cameras around, she pulled out the oil extraction tool, crouched by the car, and inserted the tube into the van's fuel tank, deliberately using her body to block any possible view from outside.
The weather was cold, and Lin Mo was dressed especially bulky today, with a wide blue shawl draped over her, which conveniently hid her actions.
The oil flowed through the tube into the spare tank, the sound eerily clear on the quiet roadside. When one tank was full, Lin Mo lifted the heavy tank into the car and positioned it properly, then started filling the next.
After filling two tanks, she drove to a nearby gas station to refuel.
The van's fuel tank capacity was 60 liters, and each full refill yielded plenty of oil. She repeated this process five times, visiting five different gas stations, until all ten spare tanks were brimming. By the time she finished, it was already past three in the afternoon.
At this hour on a weekday, most cars in the neighborhood were out at work, and the building entrance was empty. Lin Mo parked the van in front of the building entrance—a few minutes of temporary parking should be fine.
The metal fuel tanks holding 25 liters of gasoline were very heavy. Lin Mo bent down and grabbed the first tank, dragging it into the stairwell, then the second, then the third.
After closing the stairwell door, she checked that no one was around. Familiar star-like silver particles immediately wrapped around her fingertips. She skillfully guided the particles to slowly cover the ten heavy fuel tanks.
[Detected that energy materials meet the standard. Do you wish to collect?]
Lin Mo thought silently: "Yes."
[Energy materials +125kg, stored in system storage]
250 liters of gasoline disappeared into the air, leaving only ten empty tanks. The conversion rate was slightly more optimistic than Lin Mo had expected.
[Mission completed! Reward function module: Train power system loaded. Click the power strip icon for details.]
Lin Mo's eyes lit up. Great! With electricity comes warmth! Something essential for surviving the extreme cold disaster was now available.
[Drag the power strip icon to generate a real power strip inside the carriage, supporting multiple electrical appliances. For every 100kg of energy materials consumed, you can exchange for a 24-hour power supply card for the train safe house.]
Lin Mo stared at the system panel's prompt, quickly entered the train carriage, and focused on the newly added green power strip icon. She tapped the icon and dragged it. With a crisp "click," a pure white power strip landed steadily in the center of the carriage floor. Its texture was solid, nothing like an object generated out of thin air.
No matter how many times, she was always amazed by the train's black technology.
"This energy consumption is really stressful. The gas stations near the neighborhood definitely won't be enough." Within 10 kilometers of the neighborhood, the gas stations were limited—no more than 30 in total. She couldn't go to the same gas station again in a short time.
Lin Mo held her forehead. Now she understood why foreign train conductors had to collect gasoline.
"Let's check the effect first."
She decisively used 125kg of energy materials to exchange for a 24-hour electricity card.
She turned and quickly walked out of the carriage, fetched her phone charger from the living room, returned, and deftly plugged it into the white power strip.