After finishing the last few chips in the bag and suppressing his ravenous hunger, Zhang Ming turned his attention to the hundred-odd unopened "blind boxes"-the suitcases he had yet to open.
Yesterday, he had been too busy hauling them over to open them one by one.
Now, with the sun blazing and his mood raging out of control, he needed to retreat into the shade and give himself a little mental massage.
[Mental state: 15/30] (You feel that your life is a pile of crap.)
Zhang Ming was stunned.
This thing actually had the nerve to mock him outright.
"Aren't you part of me? If my life is a pile of crap, doesn't that make your life as my cheat ability a maggot living in that crap?"
[Mental state: 14/30] (You feel that your life is a maggot eating crap.)
Zhang Ming conceded defeat. He patted his forehead and spent ten minutes soothing himself until he calmed down.
The joy of opening blind boxes always filled people with anticipation. Faced with a mountain of suitcases, Zhang Ming felt his mouth watering nonstop.
It reminded him of eagerly rolling the gacha after topping up 648 yuan-even though he usually had abysmal luck and regretted his impulsiveness, who knew? Maybe one day his luck would turn golden.
These were blind boxes that would decide his fate!
With trembling fingers, he unzipped a suitcase.
A case full of clothes. Nothing but clothes.
Utterly useless.
Another case of clothes, women's this time, along with an electric toothbrush, Darlie toothpaste, a few towels, and plenty of cosmetics. SK-II Facial Treatment Essence-he had no idea what that was.
Yet another case of clothes, plus a laptop.
And yet another case of clothes!
This one also held quite a bit of money. Twenty thousand US dollars!
[Mental Value -1]
After opening ten cases of clothes in a row, Zhang Ming felt completely numb. Sweat had soaked through his clothes, and he was getting anxious.
Then it suddenly occurred to him that his own suitcase had contained nothing but clothes, too.
Most of the passengers on the plane had been heading to Hawaii on vacation.
No normal person would bring twenty-five kilos of rice onto a plane.
At that thought, he opened the next suitcase dejectedly, only for his eyes to light up.
Half a case of clothes, and half a case of... mathematics textbooks, past graduate entrance exam papers, notebooks, ballpoint pens, and other study supplies!
The books had clearly been read many times. Passages were underlined and notes scribbled in crooked handwriting that looked like chicken scratches.
On the flyleaf of Advanced Mathematics, someone had written, "I'm definitely getting into grad school next year! Keep going!"
That line was unusually neat. Whoever had written it had clearly done so with utmost seriousness.
The next line, in different handwriting, read, "Hurry up and get in, dummy!"
Zhang Ming froze for a moment, staring at the textbooks and the handwriting on their pages.
Gradually, an indescribable despondency crept into his heart. It grew heavier and heavier, turning into a sense of helplessness before whatever fate awaited him.
And so we kept striving forward, rowing against the current, swept ceaselessly backward by the torrent until we returned to bygone years, to that barren primordial age when there was nothing.
We had nothing in our hands. We could rely only on ourselves.
Just being alive is already enough, Zhang Ming murmured inwardly.
I shouldn't ask for too much. I can't let myself get restless and impatient. These are your legacies, your final gifts.
[Mental Value +1]
The next suitcase held clothes for adults and a child. It clearly belonged to a family of three.
The little girl must have been around ten, an age when her future should have held limitless possibilities...
The next one-perhaps a couple on their honeymoon?
The next-perhaps a middle-aged couple?
Lives that had vanished drifted away like wisps of smoke.
Only when everything returned to dust did it become clear that the value of a life was not as weighty as one imagined.
Of all the countless people who had lived centuries ago, how many had gone down in history? How many had even left their names behind? The greatest event in your life was, in history, a matter so small it could scarcely be smaller.
Once you were dead, you were dead.
Zhang Ming sighed and solemnly opened the next suitcase.
Besides clothing, it actually contained a rice cooker, about two and a half kilos of rice, and a small bag of something that looked like soil.
Clutching the bag of rice, he collapsed onto the ground.
Tears spilled helplessly from his eyes.
"This saved my life."
Some people had trouble adjusting to new places, suffering diarrhea or allergic reactions whenever their surroundings changed. So when they left home, they would pack a small bag of rice and a little soil from their hometown in their suitcases.
Whenever they missed home, they could take a handful and make porridge to ease their homesickness for a while.
"The food crisis is easing. Two and a half kilos of rice should last several days."
As for the rice cooker, there was no electricity here, but its inner pot was usable. It was essentially a ready-made cooking pot.
"Thank you, whoever you are. Let's be family in our next lives!" Zhang Ming was moved to tears.
[Mental Value +2]
The next blind box.
His luck had turned. He actually scored good finds two cases in a row.
Two whole Two-Headed Black Pig hams from the Jinhua Region!
Together, they probably amounted to ten kilos of ham!
Whoever had packed these must have intended to give them as gifts. Did they have friends or relatives in Hawaii?
Even as joy filled him, Zhang Ming could not help thinking of his eldest maternal uncle's wife.
His aunt had loved giving local specialties as gifts when visiting for the New Year, especially cured foods like ham and cured pork. Even though those local specialties were not particularly tasty, and it took the whole family a year to finish one ham, she would bring another before the next New Year even arrived.
But it had already been two years since his aunt passed away.
In those two years, Zhang Ming had not eaten ham again.
He had never expected to receive such precious gifts on this deserted island-gifts that could save his life.
"Thank you."
Earth.
As time passed, mirages appeared one after another in the various Mysterious Zones.
In theory, the time zones of the Pacific Ocean, Arctic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Atlantic Ocean differed considerably, but the times shown within the mirages seemed to be synchronized.
Most people therefore shifted their attention away from Zhang Ming and began watching citizens of their own countries.
The situation facing the various groups was far from promising.
Resource shortages loomed before them. The ships in the Mysterious Zones had spent the entire night trying to establish contact, but none had managed to reach humanity's home base.
Stranded in
the vast ocean, there was no satellite signal, no trace of civilization, no birds. Nothing. There was nothing at all.
Even the sea itself was frighteningly deep. Its water was blue tinged with black, its waves barely stirred, and it stretched like a silent mirror to the boundless ends of the world.
Some groups had been lucky enough to find islands, but the plants and animals there were bizarre, utterly unlike life on Earth. There were even monsters roaming about.
The immense pressure to survive bore down on the survivors' hearts.
In the deepest reaches of the tranquil sea, bewildered and facing the unknown, they welcomed the challenges of a new day.
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