So this is what they mean by the saying: out with the old, in with the new? One vehicle lies wrecked, another arrives battered but serviceable.
Heng Jin's arrival also meant the massive Conqueror RV had finally arrived. Jing Shu's mood was still heavy with the aftermath of the attack, but this concrete piece of good news still lifted her spirits a little.
"Home is right at the gate. Grandma, Grandpa, head back on foot and boil some strong ginger tea for everyone so you don't catch a cold. Someone will come help us lift the car in a bit. I will take these salvaged suitcases home with Dad first."
Jing Shu wiped rain mixed with crushed red nematodes from her face. The wriggling bugs had already tangled in her eyebrows and lashes. She had only thrown on knee-high rain boots and a wide-brimmed rain hat today in the cave and had not had time to grab a full sealed raincoat. After all that solemn vow weeks ago to never let red nematodes get close to her skin again, it only took a few days of chaos to break it.
Same old smell, same old flavor. Jing Shu spat vigorously, expelling a small red nematode that had gotten into her mouth during the explosion. The taste was foul.
"What sin did we commit, heavens," Grandma Jing groaned, leaning on Su Lanzhi. Grandma Jing patted Xiao Dou, nestled in her arms, to make sure the chicken was still there and unharmed, but the bag of food that had fallen into the muddy water during the rollover was a lost cause.
The morning air was frigid, the rain leaching all warmth. Jing Shu was already shivering in her damp clothes in the rain, to say nothing of the elderly couple. She hurried her mother into taking them home to get warm and dry.
Jing Shu and Jing An shouldered the heavy, waterlogged suitcases one by one from the overturned car and began the grim task of cleaning up the scene. When Jing An saw the size of the blasted crater in the road and the shattered window of the ground-floor unit, his heart still pounded with a deep, residual fear. "This is outrageous. Who did we offend this badly? To try to kill an entire family?"
"Probably someone who has got their eyes on our supplies, or someone with a grudge from a past life," Jing Shu said, the last part murmured too low for him to hear.
Jing An fell into a brooding, worried silence.
By the time Jing Shu finished tidying up, removing any small personal items and shell casings she could find, the place showed little trace of the precise sequence of events, aside from the obvious crater and some rubble from the building facade. The relentless rain washed the rest of the blood and finer debris away into the gutters.
Even so, when Heng Jin finally rolled up in the truck-like RV, the sight of the overturned car and the explosion damage still stunned him.
Heng Jin was not the only one with a dropped jaw. Jing An stared at the approaching vehicle in disbelief. Jing Shu, upon getting her first clear look, ground her teeth.
In the pre-dawn dark, when Jing Shu had first seen the silhouette of that king-of-the-road, super-sized truck barreling toward her, she couldn't help feeling a spike of delight. The thought of migrating through the coming brutal winter in a warm, well-equipped RV made the future feel bearable again.
Then she got a good look as it drew nearer under the community's few working security lights. The entire front bumper of the RV was gone, ripped off. The nose was caved in on one side. The chassis seemed misaligned, and the vehicle was crab-walking slightly sideways, tracking crookedly.
It looked like a giant, wounded crab scuttling sideways, and it was moving fast despite the damage.
"Forget it. I was planning to redesign and reinforce the front end anyway," Jing Shu said aloud, forcing acceptance.
One headlight was completely dead. The massive windshield was laced with spiderweb cracks from one corner to the other. How had the driver even seen well enough to get it back here?
"Fine. The glass was due to be replaced with bulletproof glass anyway," Jing Shu muttered, another item added to the mental list.
One glance told the story of a hard journey. Yang Yang had clearly not treated this machine like a precious lover. Yang Yang had driven it like a battering ram, a bumper car on an apocalyptic obstacle course.
Up close, the RV's flanks were scraped and gouged all over with deep scratches and dented panels. She could endure that. She could endure a lot, she told herself.
But where had the passenger-side door gone? And why was there a person-sized, jagged hole in the wall where the passenger cab should connect to the living compartment? Did someone hit it with a rocket-propelled grenade?
On the Conqueror RV model, the driver and passenger cab were structured like a standard heavy truck cabin, originally separated from the main living compartment behind it.
Jing Shu had vaguely wanted to cut through and connect the cab to the living area for easier access. Well, now someone had kindly "missiled" it open for her, in the most violent way possible.
Her heart bled looking at the damage. This vehicle was built to be abuse-proof, overland-ready. For it to end up in this state, she had no idea what heaven-defying mess Yang Yang and his squad had been mixed up in to get chased and shot at so hard. She could vividly picture that massive RV ramming through roadblocks, walls, perhaps even smaller vehicles. It must have been a terrifying, thrilling ride.
"Alright. We will just redo the whole build from the frame up. As long as the core engine, transmission, and electrical systems are fine, we can fix and replace the rest," Jing Shu exhaled slowly, mastering her disappointment. Niu Mou had warned her it might be "a bit rough" upon return. Turned out "a bit rough" was an understatement worthy of legend.
The massive Conqueror RV, growling like a wounded beast, finally halted beside Jing Shu. The sheer, imposing size of it truly hit home now that it was stationary. The massive tires came up to her chest. She had to tilt her head back to see into the driver's seat window.
Heng Jin and two other burly men hopped down from the cab, stretching stiff limbs. One look at the huge crater, the overturned car, and the blown-out window told its own story. "You are a walking aggro magnet, Boss Jing," Heng Jin said with a wry shake of his head. "No wonder you draw this much hatred. Alright, brothers, let us flip this car and get it out of the rain."
With Jing Shu and her enhanced strength, Jing An, and the three men, five people together managed to heave the heavy BYD Song upright with a grunting effort and push it, rolling on flat tires, straight into the family's private garage a few meters away.
If you are going to have an accident, have it right in front of your house. Two steps and you are home. So convenient, Jing Shu thought with bitter irony.
The undercarriage had been blasted with shrapnel. Jing An didn't dare even think about driving it again without a thorough, professional inspection they could no longer get.
Heng Jin expertly maneuvered the colossal RV into the newly built oversized garage at the side of the villa, a structure Jing Shu had commissioned for this exact purpose. Envy and a flicker of resentment shone in his eyes despite his professionalism. Look at this life. They even built a dedicated, fortified RV garage before the apocalypse hit. Before the world ended, he had been a rich second-generation type himself. Now he was reduced to a chauffeuring errand boy for survivors who had prepared better.
"This puts your place at a serious premium. The RV too," Heng Jin remarked, jumping down from the cab again. "Half of Wu City is underwater. Housing is a nightmare. Even a single villa like this, if it were empty, would have to be shared by three or four government department higher-ups by now."
In times like these, eating real rice and vegetables, living in a spacious, dry home, and owning a running vehicle, any vehicle, made a family like Jing Shu's true upper class, a target for both envy and predation.
Heng Jin still had other cargo to deliver elsewhere in the city. After they completed the final transfer of the remaining virtual coins owed for the RV's delivery, he and his men rushed off into the rainy dawn, their own truck soon swallowed by the gloom.
From this moment, the battered but magnificent Conqueror RV officially belonged to Jing Shu. She looked at the giant metal beast now parked in her garage. She would rebuild this giant, heal its wounds, and transform it into her ideal mobile fortress. It would be their second home, their ark.
"Daughter, this is not what you said before," Jing An said, walking around the RV, his head craned back. "You said an RV. You brought back a monster truck. How much fuel will this thing guzzle per hundred kilometers?" Jing An could practically see rivers of precious fuel pouring away.
Curiosity won out in the end over shock and practicality. Jing Shu and Jing An used a step ladder to climb up and go inside for a tour. Despite the ocean-crossing scars on the outside, the interior was surprisingly intact and lavish where it mattered. The build quality of the cabinetry, the fittings, the materials, all screamed top tier, military-adjacent grade.
All in all, despite the exterior trauma, Jing Shu was satisfied with the core. Still, she wanted to remodel extensively. The most awkward part was sleeping space. Only the rear master bedroom had a proper big bed and a mounted 32-inch LCD TV. It was comfortable for sure, a luxurious nest.
But besides that master suite, there were no other fixed beds. The dining area with its booth table, the compact kitchen, and the two sets of leather sofas in the lounge felt excessive for their needs. There was also the lift-up second deck above the lounge, accessed by a ladder, which currently held only a circular sofa and a wet bar, an open-air terrace concept.
Her plan was to bring the whole family, parents, grandparents, aunt, cousin, when they eventually migrated. The current layout would make space unbearably tight.
It just so happened she had acquired a batch of high-quality, lightweight steel panels from Zhou Daheng's container house. She planned to install this material on the lift-up terrace, enclosing it to create a sealed, elevating second floor dedicated entirely to sleeping, neatly solving the headcount problem.
As for the exact second-floor layout, how many bunk beds, storage, insulation, that needed more discussion with the family. She even wanted to bring all the poultry, the chickens and the future snakes. Where to house them safely and cleanly within the RV was another issue to solve. The RV's overall safety also needed to be upgraded significantly, bulletproofing, reinforced tires, perhaps even improvised armor.
"It seemed the time had finally come to meet Wu You'ai's mentor," Jing Shu thought quietly, deeply pleased.
The RV's transformation was not just a project; it was the next critical step in their survival, and now she might have the perfect person to help make it a reality.
===
Hi everyone! Just a quick announcement: I've hit the 20-novel limit on my Webnovel account, so I won't be able to upload any new projects here for now. To keep sharing my translations with everyone, I've decided to migrate my new uploads to AO3!
For my completed novels, I'll also be making them available in .epub format on Google Drive or TeraBox, so you can read them offline whenever you want. I'll put the links in the comment section. If you're reading on the app, it can be tricky to copy or open links there. In that case, please use your browser to access the web version at https://www.webnovel.com and, if needed, switch to desktop mode in your browser settings to copy/paste or access the links properly.
I've already started a new project there: "My VR Games Terrify the World"—I hope you'll enjoy it! Don't worry—all ongoing/serializing projects on Webnovel will continue here. I won't be abandoning anything you're currently following!
For extra safety, I'm also putting my translations on Royal Road (username: Reiya_Alberich) so they're accessible in multiple places.
If you'd like to follow my AO3 account, my pseud is Rikhi and you can find my profile here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikhi/pseuds/Rikhi
Or just search 'Rikhi' on it's search bar.
Thanks so much for your support, and I hope you'll continue to enjoy all the translations—both old and new—no matter the platform! (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)و
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Meng Shu never expected to wake up in a parallel world where VR technology is everywhere, but horror games are painfully primitive. His saving grace? A game development system that's incredibly easy to use, with a unique currency: player fear.
Every scream, every jolt, every moment of pure dread his players experience fuels his progress. With this terror tax, he can unlock the blueprints for every classic horror game from his past world. While everyone else ignores the genre, Meng Shu sees a golden opportunity.
He begins to unleash a series of VR horror experiences that leave players traumatized. Outlast has them pleading for mercy. Visage keeps them perpetually on edge, jumping at the slightest sound. SOMA plunges them into deep existential dread, and Alien: Isolation teaches them the true meaning of helpless fear.
From Silent Hill to Resident Evil and Five Nights at Freddy's, Meng Shu's growing library of nightmares has one simple goal: to become the undisputed master of fear and make the entire gaming world scream.