This World Seems to Have a Problem

Lu Bai followed the siblings across the bridge, taking in the scenery along the riverbank.

The river beneath the steel bridge has clear, slightly bluish water, which is quite unlike what a river should look like in the city.

The walkway along the riverbank is equipped with benches at regular intervals, but there are no visitors. When you do see a pedestrian, they are always in a hurry, and the benches are almost always empty.

There were no elderly people taking walks, nor any fishermen.

In this situation, a figure wearing a long white dress sitting alone on a bench couldn't help but catch Lu Bai's eye a few more times.

But he only glanced at them twice before looking away, since they were unimportant people and probably just waiting for a friend.

Squeak~

The door creaked from years of neglect.

However, both Lu Ziyi and Lu Yan seemed unsurprised.

"Finally back." Lu Yan kicked off his shoes and slumped onto the sofa, which had several tears in it.

Lu Bai was the last to enter. He gently closed the door and then began to examine the various furnishings in the room.

The apartment has a standard one-bedroom, one-living room layout. The living room is at most ten square meters, so the bedroom probably isn't much bigger either.

One area of the living room contains some kitchen utensils and an induction cooker, clearly designated as a separate kitchen. The remaining space is further encroached upon by a worn-out sofa, making the space feel even more cramped.

The clutter is neatly organized, but unfortunately, with such limited space, it doesn't look good no matter how you put things out.

There was a small square table against the wall, probably for eating, with a picture frame on it.

In the photo, a woman with three children is smiling brightly.

Lu Bai scanned the room but found no trace of a fourth person living there, so the woman either ran away or was dead.

Judging from the woman's appearance, Lu Bai preferred the latter.

Surprisingly, after noticing Lu Bai's gaze, Lu Ziyi's eyes turned even colder.

You could sense that her resentment was clearly directed at Lu Bai.

She didn't say much, because in her memory, no matter what she said, Lu Bai's reaction was always the same.

So she packed her bag, left a comment, and pushed open the door to leave.

I'm going to work.

Lu Bai watched her leave.

When he turned around again, he found that Lu Yan, that little brat, had already sat up at some point.

He sighed in a condescending tone, "That's just how my sister is."

Lu Bai's eyelids twitched.

But...

That's enough.

We can talk about these things later. Right now, the most important thing is to understand what kind of world this is.

He took out the phone he had borrowed from Fan Ding and sat down at the small square table.

The advantage of modern society is that the barriers to accessing information have been greatly reduced, but the downside is that these low barriers make it difficult to distinguish between true and false information.

Therefore, Lu Bai chose to go directly to the government website to view the news, as well as past documents and announcements.

The content was incredibly complex, but fortunately, Lu Bai wasn't in a hurry and patiently read through it.

He was originally focused on information about Deathmatch Showdown, but was unexpectedly drawn to something else.

The holographic dome equipment has been further refined to provide a more realistic visual experience.

<My No. 9 Underground City has reached a strategic cooperation agreement with No. 3 Underground City>

<Underground City population surpasses 200 million; experts call for population structure optimization>

Underground City?

Lu Bai recalled that Xiao Xueyin had mentioned the word "shelter" in the Deathmatch Arena, but he hadn't realized what it meant at the time.

Now it seems...

This city is actually underground?!

No wonder the sky looked so oppressive, no wonder the flowing river seemed so abrupt, no wonder the houses along the way were so densely packed like a honeycomb.

It took Lu Bai a full hour to sort out the information in this regard.

Just as he guessed, the people of this world all lived underground.

Of course, it's not because people like it. The government's efforts to restore the Earth's surface ecosystem show that people are doing it out of necessity.

The reason, as it is known, dates back several centuries.

At that time, humanity had just entered the 21st century.

Global warming has led to increasingly abnormal weather patterns. Initially, people didn't pay much attention, except that some experts occasionally predicted that the 2030s would see the arrival of the Little Ice Age, with global warming being the prelude to it.

Ultimately, the mini ice age, which occurs once every four hundred years, is not so terrible for modern humans, since our technology and productivity are far beyond what we could have achieved in feudal times.

With the arrival of the Ice Age, the power grid system was damaged, small-scale power generation systems gradually became widespread in communities, and changes in the Earth's water cycle led to an increase in marine life, which wasn't all bad.

Throughout Earth's history, there have been five major ice ages. The first and second ice ages were separated by about 1.3 billion years, the second and third by about 200 million years, and subsequent ice ages have been tens of millions of years...

Although the overall trend is that the intervals between major ice ages are getting shorter, on a scale of millions of years, the mainstream view does not believe that this sixth ice age will arrive so soon.

However, the temperature drop has not stopped, and it is getting colder year by year.

People gradually began to panic, and many realized that this was not a Little Ice Age, but that humanity had been caught off guard and entered an Ice Age.

Unfortunately, humans, who consider themselves the most intelligent of all beings, are powerless to stop the natural climate change.

The idea of an underground shelter was first proposed, but the ensuing technical difficulties made it a "ticket to the ark" that could only be reserved for a very small number of elites.

In desperation, the Deathmatch System appeared.

This seemingly divine intervention-like premise from street vendor literature has truly entered people's field of vision.

Whether it's an alien conspiracy or a divine gift, it's all part of the story.

Humans didn't have the extra energy to care; they were only focused on grasping at this suddenly appearing lifeline.

Lu Bai consulted many sources of information, but all the records about the period from the emergence of the Deathmatch System to the formal entry of humanity into the Underground City Era were vague and unclear.

In short, in a very short period of time, humankind has mastered heavy element fusion technology, ecological self-circulation technology, and made significant strides in material strength and engineering technology.

Having mastered these cutting-edge technologies, the course of history began to move in the right direction, United Government was established, and the construction of the shelter was put on the agenda.

Hundreds of underground shelters are under construction simultaneously around the world.

To be precise, vaults numbered one hundred or less should actually be called Underground City.

Because each of these cities can accommodate more than ten million people.

The earlier the number, the more extravagant the scale...

Seeing this, Lu Bai looked up at the window.

He couldn't help but rub his slightly sore eyes, muttering to himself, "I feel like something's wrong..."