Chapter 2: The Lottery System

The sudden notification sound startled Liang Yuan.

He quickly got up and looked around, but found nothing.

After a moment, he calmed down, his eyes revealing astonishment.

"System?"

In the next instant, a system interface appeared before his eyes.

Host: Liang Yuan

Constitution: 0.8 Strength: 0.9 Agility: 0.8 Spirit: 0.7 Mutation Progress: 0% Points: 1

Lottery Draws Remaining: 0 Lottery Items: None

This interface floated like a transparent fluorescent layer before his eyes. He reached out to touch it but couldn't feel anything.

This left Liang Yuan bewildered: "Am I hallucinating?"

He quickly examined himself all over, and finding nothing wrong, the system interface remained visible in his eyes.

Gathering his thoughts, Liang Yuan focused his attention on this system.

After some investigation, he roughly understood the system's function.

It was a lottery system that, besides the lottery function, also displayed his physical attribute status.

However, this lottery required spending so-called points.

"These points must be what the system notification mentioned I got from killing a mutated sardine."

But Liang Yuan found it strange, when had he killed a mutated sardine?

"Let me try one draw."

With a nervous heart, Liang Yuan quickly clicked on the lottery.

Instantly, 1 point disappeared, and a wheel appeared before his eyes.

The wheel was densely divided into many sections. He quickly scanned it, only managing to glimpse items like bread, soy sauce, and similar things.

Then the wheel rapidly began to spin, completing the lottery process in the blink of an eye.

"Congratulations, you've won a bottle of Lao Gan Ma chili sauce."

Liang Yuan was stunned, then his eyes widened as he saw that a bottle of Lao Gan Ma had indeed appeared in his item inventory!

He immediately showed a delighted expression: "It's actually real!"

With a thought, the bottle of Lao Gan Ma appeared in his hand.

Liang Yuan hurriedly opened the Lao Gan Ma, and a strong spicy aroma wafted out. He couldn't help but swallow.

Without hesitation, he dipped his finger in and put it in his mouth.

The salty and spicy taste almost moved Liang Yuan to tears.

After half a year of torrential rain, heaven knows how long it had been since he'd tasted chili.

He worried about food constantly. Trapped by floods for half a year, every household had long run out of food and water.

He had survived until now only because he had stored some supplies in advance, but even so, his household stock was running low.

Now this suddenly appearing lottery system could provide food, filling him with excitement and joy.

In this flood-ravaged apocalypse, the appearance of the lottery system was like a ray of dawn, giving him a glimmer of hope.

"As long as I have enough points, I can get more food!"

"But... these points..."

Liang Yuan frowned, looking at the system notification about obtaining points, wondering: "Sardines? Where did mutated sardines come from?"

Liang Yuan was puzzled. He quickly checked the kill record through the system.

"The iron nail you shot was accidentally swallowed by a mutated sardine, successfully killing mutated sardine *1!"

Liang Yuan was shocked. During this period, he had only used his nail gun to shoot at people who tried to break into his home, never at fish.

Suddenly something occurred to him, and he quickly walked to the window to look outside.

The pitch-black sky made it difficult to see anything.

The torrential rain struck the water's surface, making a pattering sound.

Liang Yuan took a flashlight and shined it on the water's surface.

At the tenth floor level, there were many floating household items, mattresses, bed boards, foam boxes...

It seemed some people had built makeshift boats on the water, tethering them to windows outside the building with ropes.

And beyond this pile of garbage, many bloated corpses were floating!

Liang Yuan stared at those corpses, his eyes revealing thoughtfulness.

"Could it be that someone I shot earlier fell into the water outside and was eaten by a sardine?"

His expression became quite strange, had he accidentally killed a mutated sardine in such a roundabout way?

But wait, a mutated sardine is still a sardine, right? Aren't sardines sea creatures? How did they appear here?

"Has seawater backflowed into the Yangtze River and spread to Linjiang City?"

Thinking of this possibility, Liang Yuan's heart sank.

The situation was very critical. If the heavy rain continued like this, even living on the 32nd floor might not be sustainable.

He frowned deeply. And what did the system mean by 'mutated' sardine? Were sardines starting to mutate? What was happening to this world?

He couldn't help feeling worried, his gaze involuntarily looking toward the water level.

"In all of Linjiang City, my location is among the highest. There probably aren't many buildings higher than mine, except for those landmark buildings in the city center."

"No, going to the city center would be waiting for death. Once the rain doesn't stop and the water level continues to rise, even the landmark buildings will be submerged."

"Where nearby has higher elevation?"

"Sun Mountain? Mei Mountain?"

He quickly thought about it. About a month before the flood came, sensing trouble, he had already downloaded offline maps of the entire country on his computer and personally drawn a map of Linjiang City. He had a general understanding of the city's topography in his mind.

So he clearly knew which buildings and hills near him had higher elevations.

Linjiang City was in Jiangnan Province, without any steep or towering mountains. The highest in the entire city was only Mount Cangqiong at 341.7 meters above sea level, the highest among the mountains on the east bank of Taihu Lake.

But that place was too far from Liang Yuan's location, requiring crossing a development zone.

The raging storm outside was not suitable for travel.

Most crucially, during flashes of lightning, he had vaguely seen huge shadows moving beneath the water's surface.

"If even sardines have mutated, could there be other mutated marine creatures?"

Unless absolutely necessary, Liang Yuan did not plan to leave Meidou Garden now.

Putting aside his complex thoughts, Liang Yuan turned back to the kitchen and took out the meat and green peppers he had thawed in the morning.

His home had not only an upright refrigerator but also a large freezer.

This large freezer wasn't purchased but rented.

During renovation, he thought about storing some popsicles and cold drinks for himself and the construction workers.

He had planned to return it after the renovation, but then the heavy rain hit.

After that, he simply kept it and took advantage of the first month to stock up on supplies from the supermarket at the community entrance.

These included pork, sausages, vegetables, dried tofu, and other common items.

The upright refrigerator was also filled with items like eggs.

However, after half a year, as the water level continued to rise, the power system had long collapsed.

The refrigerator could still be used now only because of a portable gasoline generator.

Back then, because of a serious dispute with the developer, the developer wouldn't provide electricity to his house.

So he borrowed this generator from a friend.

But now the gasoline at home was also running low. Although he only turned it on for a few hours each day to power the refrigerator, even so, the gasoline simply couldn't last.

Before the flood submerged the first floor, he had risked going outside several times to get gasoline from abandoned vehicles, gradually accumulating quite a bit, which is why he could hold out for half a year.

"Once this batch of gasoline is used up, there really won't be any chance to get more."

Looking at the vast waters outside, Liang Yuan sighed. The generator was certainly useful, but given the situation outside, it was impossible to get more gasoline.

"Forget it, it doesn't matter if I can't get more. The food in the refrigerator is almost gone anyway."

He felt some regret but quickly came to terms with it.

Without supplies, the refrigerator was just a decoration.

It wasn't that he hadn't tried to go out and get more supplies.

But by then, the second floor had already been submerged, and the underground garage had formed a funnel-shaped vortex.

Some people, with one careless move, were directly sucked into the garage, never to return.

Seeing this, Liang Yuan decisively retreated and relied on these supplies, using them sparingly to last for half a year.

Nevertheless, with supplies dwindling, the situation was not optimistic.

While cutting the meat strips, Liang Yuan calculated the remaining items.

"Oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar are still okay. I don't eat much alone, and I stocked a box of each back then, so there's still quite a bit left."

"But meat and vegetables are almost gone. If I don't find a solution, there won't be any vegetables to eat."

"Four bags of rice left, quite a few grains, and five bags of flour."

Glancing at the rice stacked in the corner, only four bags remained. He had originally carried 10 bags of rice back, all small 10-pound bags.

There were simply too many people panic buying at that time. Being able to buy 10 bags of rice was only because he was familiar with the store owner.

Back then, many people wanted to buy but couldn't.