Forty-nine rules of the end times

Chapter 58 Unboxing Items

July 1, Yunhua City.

The city was a desolate, frozen wasteland. Ice walls, some tens of meters high, stood everywhere, stretching as far as the eye could see, transforming the area into a snow and ice kingdom.

Only a few main roads remain passable thanks to round-the-clock snow removal. However, everyone traveling on these roads feels a strong sense of oppression and suffocation when they see the towering ice walls on both sides.

As a result, several drivers have been unable to withstand the psychological pressure in recent days and have given up their snow-shoveling work, allowing others to take over.

These continuous walls of ice have virtually blocked the entrances and exits of most places where people gather. This includes schools, shopping malls, hospitals, libraries, and more.

The Ministry of Emergency Management and the Emergency Management Bureau had to frequently deploy drilling vehicles to drill holes in the ice walls that blocked the entrances and exits, so as to complete the delivery of emergency supplies.

Even so, in the final stages of the regulations, riots still broke out due to insufficient supplies and prolonged water shortages and low temperatures.

Serious clashes broke out at many gathering points. Even with armed squads stationed there, some mentally unstable individuals could no longer be deterred by force. Faced with indiscriminate attacks launched by these individuals, the armed squads had no choice but to kill them.

Some gathering points collapsed due to snow accumulation. Although the authorities have frequently dispatched helicopters to spray de-icing agents on the roofs of the gathering points, some omissions are inevitable due to the large number of gathering points.

Those people in the collapsed settlements faced moments of indescribable despair.

Because the building exits were blocked by ice walls, there was no way to escape. They could only watch helplessly as the collapsing roofs crushed them or the blizzards that poured into the rooms froze them to death.

When the Emergency Management Bureau received a distress call from a gathering point, it finally dispatched a rescue team and mobilized a large number of specialized vehicles to break through the ice wall at the entrance, only to find a group of human ice sculptures in various poses inside the gathering point.

That terrifying scene, which seemed to appear only in a disaster movie, undoubtedly left an unforgettable psychological shadow on everyone in the rescue team.

At that moment in the Limei Hotel, as the voices of the fire-stealers rang out and sunlight streamed in through the windows of the upper floors, only a few cheers echoed through the hotel; instead, there were mostly cries and screams.

A group of disheveled people hugged each other and cried, laughing and crying at the same time, relieved to have survived and releasing all the numbness and breakdown they had experienced over the past few days.

Xu Xiaotian was also among the weeping crowd. He looked around at the people. The hotel, which had originally housed several hundred people, now had only about three-quarters remaining. The remaining quarter had been reduced to cold corpses in their rooms.

Such a high number of casualties mostly occurred in the final week of the rules. Not because of internal strife, nor because of hunger, but because of low temperatures and disease.

In the final week, the hotel's power cables and outdoor ring main unit, like the water pipes that had already frozen and cracked, finally succumbed to the strain and broke down, causing the power supply system to shut down completely.

Not long after, the indoor temperature dropped to minus forty degrees Celsius. People put on several layers of cotton clothes, covered themselves with thick quilts, and crawled into plastic bags, but even so, many people were still frozen stiff and felt pain as if they were being pricked by needles.

Then came numbness, disease, and death.

Many people with poor physical fitness simply could not endure such low temperatures for long periods of time. Some even experienced a failure of their body's temperature regulation center, complaining of "heat" and voluntarily taking off their clothes.

No matter how hard the bystanders tried to hold them down, they couldn't, and could only watch helplessly as these people froze to death.

After a week, the number of deaths was several times higher than in the previous twenty days, and even with ten guest rooms available to house the corpses, there was barely enough room to accommodate them.

Without a doubt, they fell in the darkness before dawn. Therefore, when they saw the light of day again, the survivors couldn't help but cry, roar, and rejoice at their survival.

In the final stage, Xu Xiaotian, who relied on hot instant noodles to keep warm and survive the low temperatures, finally understood how difficult it was to survive.

After he had a good cry, he took out his phone, which had only 3% battery left, and opened his contacts.

Many of the people in his contacts were people he met after checking into the hotel, but many of them had died under this rule and would never hear their ringtones again.

Xu Xiaotian couldn't bear to delete these names. He browsed through them, stopping when he saw the name "Guan Tong". The struggles and numbness of the past few days had made him forget that Guan Tong had left the hotel to seek a living elsewhere. Only when he saw the latter's name did he suddenly remember.

His fingers trembled as he tapped the screen and sent a message: "Brother Tong, are you still alive?"...

At the foot of the mountain, near the campsite, Guan Tong looked up at the blazing sun high in the sky. The intense sunlight made him feel somewhat dazed.

Imagine a moment ago it was snowing heavily, and the next moment the sun was shining brightly. Such a contrast and change is enough to make people wonder if they are dreaming or if they are in reality.

Guan Tong believes that he is not alone; most people who survived this set of rules would have similar feelings.

And this is the power of the fire-stealer. Before it, which has the power to manipulate nature at will, humans seem to be nothing more than tiny ants, struggling with all their might just to survive.

The dazzling sunlight made Guan Tong lower his head. He knew that the challenge was far from over, and he had to be prepared at all times to survive in the increasingly ruthless rules to come.

Wang Yan and Chen Na had returned to their truck. The mother and daughter, who had just finished crying, needed some time to calm down.

Guan Tong sat on the tree branch stool she had made herself and began to check the rewards following the rules.

"Personal terminal".

Name: Guan Tong

Nickname: Shadow

Title: Lawkeeper

[Mental Power: 123]

[Ascended Coins: 150]

Overall Bioinformatics Evaluation: Excellent

The reward of 150 Ascension Coins is the reward after this rule is passed.

Regarding the upper limit of mental power, Guan Tong remembered that it was 119 points before the fourth rule began. Now, a month later, it has reached 123, an increase of 4 points, which is consistent with his previous judgment that "the upper limit increases by one point every 7-8 days under extreme circumstances".

After looking at the panel, Guan Tong opened the storage box. The items inside gradually increased as the number of times she passed the rules increased.

The Wordless Book

[Thermostatic Technology Underwear] (Already worn)
【Multi-terrain marching boots】(Already worn)
[Basic Food Box - Bronze Level] *1
Invitation to the First Ascended Challenge

[Survival Chest - Bronze Level] *1
"After the first [sleep deprivation] event ended, the survival chest you received was a fixed title reward. However, that title didn't provide any bonuses; it seemed more like a way for the Firebringer to differentiate survivors."

"I wonder what I can get from this box."

Guan Tong thought for a moment and then chose to open it.

[Obtain random item: Guiding Flashlight]

……what?
The prop with the rather strange name piqued Guan Tong's curiosity, prompting her to immediately check its details.

[Guiding Flashlight]: The holder can silently recite the name of the target location. After consuming 10 points of mental energy, the flashlight will emit a beam of light visible only to the holder, guiding them to the target location. This item is a one-time use item and is tradable.

(End of this chapter)