Chapter 21: Sleepless Night

Jiang Ran instinctively reached out to catch it.

[Prop Card: Rebound (Grade B): After use, there is an 80% probability of reflecting any prop or skill effect targeted at you for three minutes.]

Jiang Ran: ???

What was going on?

She blinked, looking at the box freshly dropped by the Little Spinning Top on the ground, and a thought suddenly crossed her mind: Could it be that because the Little Spinning Top’s previous use of the prop card failed to achieve its effect, the prop had refreshed itself?

No... She felt that the current description of the card wasn't enough to make the Little Spinning Top confident enough to provoke the Black-Stockinged Miss so brazenly.

Jiang Ran couldn't help but recall that the Little Spinning Top’s attitude had shifted around the five-minute mark. Perhaps the previous version of the card had a five-minute duration and a 100% success rate!

Only that would explain why the Little Spinning Top had gone to such lengths to lure the Black-Stockinged Miss into parasitizing it!

Furthermore, it made sense that the prop’s effects would be diminished after having been used once.

Regardless, she had eliminated an enemy and gained a free prop card; it was certainly a cause for satisfaction.

Jiang Ran returned to her safe house, content.

Back inside, the teleportation prop card she had been holding vanished.

She looked at her empty palm with a twinge of regret. If only she had the Little Spinning Top’s luck with loot boxes—if she could open a few more teleportation cards, she could hunt down the enemies from her past life one by one.

Xu Yunxuan was indeed the mastermind behind everything, but the person she loathed most was that wretch who had deliberately approached her, feigned trust, and used it as a stepping stone to curry favor with him!

She had once thought she had found the only shred of sincerity in a cruel apocalypse.

Yet, that "sincerity" had been after her life all along.

But Jiang Ran knew that none of this could be rushed.

In the apocalypse, there were countless trains like these, traveling through an endless darkness, with no one knowing where they were taking everyone.

In her previous life, after the first two instances, less than a tenth of the people on the train remained.

Because of this, after the second instance concluded, the train underwent a brutal merger.

And that person had only appeared after the trains had merged.

Jiang Ran herself didn't know why she had felt such an instant connection the first time she saw him.

She hadn't even doubted the motives behind any of his actions.

Looking back now, those things that seemed reasonable at the time were actually riddled with oddities.

Back then, Jiang Ran had already survived two instances and understood better than anyone that the human heart was far more terrifying than the apocalypse itself.

Yet, she had accepted this "friend" who had fallen from the sky without hesitation and felt lucky for their encounter.

To the current Jiang Ran, that sounded like a fairy tale.

It wasn't until the moment of her death in that past life that she suddenly woke from the fog, seeing clearly that the hands she thought were supporting her were actually trying to push her into the abyss.

In this life, having possessed so many types of props and skills, Jiang Ran realized that she had likely been under some form of influence.

Otherwise, no matter how naive she had been, she wouldn't have trusted a man of unknown origins so unconditionally.

It was just that the Jiang Ran of her past life hadn't been able to realize this.

After all, apart from dodging crowds and pursuers and struggling to scavenge for supplies, she had truly never seen many skill or prop cards.

Thanks to Xu Yunxuan, every dirty deed he committed—hoarding goods, monopolizing markets, and price-gouging—was blamed on her by other players.

All the hatred had been directed at Jiang Ran.

This left her like a rat crossing the street; not only could she not trade with anyone, but as soon as she appeared, people wanted to kill her on sight. Thus, her knowledge of skills and prop cards had to be pieced together from the chat lobby.

However, most of what was publicly displayed were basic skills and props. Special, high-aggro items like Parasitism or Teleportation were never exposed to the public.

...Reviewing it this way, her past life had indeed been miserable.

Jiang Ran shook her head.

Since she had already suffered enough in her past life, thriving in this one was what she deserved!

She put away the "Rebound" prop card, which might come in handy at any moment, took a shower, and curled up in her quilt to sleep soundly.

But for many, this night was destined to be sleepless.

They nervously guarded against the fire ants, fearing they would be reduced to skeletons in their sleep.

Yet, many more perished that night.

The fire ants marched in droves over the white bones, searching for new prey.

The eggs on their backs, nourished by flesh and blood, constantly hatched into new larvae, which just as quickly joined the feast.

And this was only the beginning.

Jiang Ran knew that in three days, there would be an even larger volcanic eruption.

After that, the area outside the mountains would be swarming with fire ants, making even digging for boxes a death-defying task.

Even if one knew how to deal with a lone fire ant, when the entire ground was occupied by them, it no longer mattered whether they were alone or not.

The sunlight was firmly blocked by the smoke from the volcanic eruption; the sun was no longer visible anywhere in the instance. Yet the temperature remained high; fresh magma frequently splashed from cracks in the ground, from which swarms of fire ants crawled out.

Players were forced by the fire ants into lightless caves, praying daily that their routes to the supply boxes wouldn't collide with the ant army.

But Jiang Ran had no intention of moving. Her only danger would be on the final day when the train arrived, requiring her to win a race against the fire ants.

In her previous life, she had paid the price of a crippled leg to climb into the last-class carriage—that leg had been pulled back just two seconds too late, leaving nothing but a bloodied skeleton.

That was the first time in her life she had felt the sensation of being eaten alive.

Because fire ant saliva contained a paralytic agent, for Jiang Ran, the fear of being unable to stop it, of having to watch herself being devoured, was far more profound than the pain.

The survival points she had struggled to earn in the instance had all been spent on treating her wounds, and she had never been able to leave the last-class carriage again.

When Jiang Ran woke up, her expression was grim.

Her dreams that night had been filled with the metallic glint of fire ant mandibles, her own ghastly white leg bones, and the rustling sound of gnawing that lingered in her ears.

She had no appetite after washing up, so she only had a bowl of rice porridge and a dish of refreshing pickles, checking the chat lobby as she ate.

The group chat, which used to be perpetually at 99+, was now much quieter, and the IDs of several frequent posters had disappeared.

In the sparse chat logs, many were congratulating themselves on having survived another day.

Everyone was exhausted by the fire ants and the high heat, so the coffee sold by the Black-Stockinged Miss had completely sold out. She had even received quite a few private messages asking if she could restock.

One of the IDs caught Jiang Ran's attention.