Doomsday Cruise

Chapter 1: Misty Track (1)

     Mo Xiaoyao never thought that her life might stop at the age of 24.

    The old people like to say that the natal year* is a hurdle, and this year will not be too smooth. Mo Xiaoyao didn't believe it at first, but in the moment before her consciousness dissipated, she believed it.

*natal year in Chinese zodiac is a year where a person's age equal to a multiple of 12.

    She just didn't know if this year would also be the natal year of the Mother Earth.

    Three minutes ago, at the moment when the sun set, the earth finally got tired of the parasites on her body who only knew to get what they wanted but did not know how to return it.

    At that time, Mo Xiaoyao had just gotten off work. She was walking with high heels and felt a violent shaking under her feet. She squatted down subconsciously to keep steady, and then saw that the stone bricks on the sidewalk were cracked to their original shapes.

    People's exclamations came one after another, and the high-decibel cries and screams stimulated Mo Xiaoyao's eardrums. At this time, she stepped on two hexagonal stone bricks of different colors with her feet on the left and the right. Looking down, the gray-brown soil has been opened by an unknown force, revealing a deep, invisible underground world.

    For a moment, Mo Xiaoyao thought she had seen the core magma.

    The screams in her ears were now much less, and the noisy car horns stopped. Mo Xiaoyao was surprised, why was she so calm after such an incredible thing happened.

    She even leisurely looked at the torn atmosphere, looking up at the real universe with the filter removed, and watching the cracked crust under her feet...

    eh?

    Mo Xiaoyao suddenly realized that, if her body had been torn apart, why was there no pain at all? Could it be the last mercy given by Mother Earth?

    After thinking for a while, but couldn't understand, Mo Xiaoyao felt like she was out of her body, attracted by the atmosphere that split the sky. The higher she floated, the wider her vision became.

    She saw the solid ground under her feet disintegrate, and also saw the collapse of buildings that displayed human civilization. The humans who thought they were standing at the top of the food chain either fell or were torn apart... The expression on their faces were mostly fixed in panic and bewilderment.

    Mo Xiaoyao felt that her brain was getting slower and slower, and it was even more difficult to gather any emotions. She was like an alien who stayed out of the matter, watching her home die indifferently.

    They were going to die anyway, so it's also very good. Everyone could still be a companion on the road.

    Weird thoughts came up, but she couldn't get rid of them. As if instinctively, Mo Xiaoyao looked up and looked around, trying to find out if there was someone of her kind who was in the same state as her.

    Then, she saw a piece of shard-like colorful glass floating in front of her eyes.

    The shards are about the size of a palm, and they were irregular strips, like fragments that fell from a broken mirror. It was just a flash of brilliance, which was very eye-catching.

    Like a greedy person smelling the mellow wine, and like a drowning person who saw a life-saving straw, involuntarily, Mo Xiaoyao reached out and grabbed the piece of debris that was floating in front of her.

    The next second, she found herself standing on a flat avenue surrounded by heavy fog. Her body returned to her position, her mind returned to the cage, and Mo Xiaoyao became the Mo Xiaoyao who dared to fight the world.

    After taking a long breath, Mo Xiaoyao stabilized her mind and carefully observed the surrounding situation. She lowered her head and looked. Taking the place where she was standing as the center, about 3 steps away, there was a circle composed of a black halo surrounding her.

    Mo Xiaoyao tried to move a bit, and encountered no obstacles in the circle, but she was unable to step out of the black circle that was only a bit higher than her feet.

    This made Mo Xiaoyao feel a little uneasy. She changed direction and tried several times, only to confirm in frustration that she couldn't go out.

    Forget it, she had came here somehow, she couldn't be trapped in the circle for a lifetime. Thinking of this, Mo Xiaoyao began to look around again.

    The ground was light orange, visually flat, and strong enough. There were seven solid white lines extending from near to far on the ground, dividing the entire road into eight long and narrow sections, which look similar to racing tracks.

    About 20 meters away from Mo Xiaoyao's right hand side, there is a thick white line running horizontally. At the inner end of the line, Arabic numerals 1-8 are written from left to right on each narrow and long road.

    It must be some kind of track.

    Mo Xiaoyao guessed, and then looked to her left. She saw that many people were standing in the same place and looking around. Like herself, there was a black halo circle under their feet, which restricted their activities' scope.

    Among those people, some were alone like her, and there were also some with two or three companions. The most exaggerated thing was that there were eight people standing in a circle, but the circle did not expand, and they could only squeeze awkwardly. Together, there were two people who looked a little more introverted, embarrassed to touch others, but they couldn't get back to their side, so they had to stretch out their tied hands into the air.

    This seemed ridiculous, but Mo Xiaoyao was not in the mood to laugh. Before those people noticed her gaze, she turned her head away. There was so much to observe here, and there was no need to waste it looking at creatures she had long been familiar with.

    Even if it was her compatriot.

    But the earth had been blown up, compatriots and so on, in theory, did they exist?

    Shaking her head gently, Mo Xiaoyao drove this strange thought out of her mind, just like she often raised her hand to drive away uninvited flies in summer, very natural.

    Did she stand for about 5 minutes? Or 10 minutes or more. The mobile phone in her pocket was off no matter how she pressed it. She didn't know if it was out of power, or it was disturbed by some strange magnetic field.

    The small lady's watch on her wrist was still turning, but it was limited to the second hand. The minute and hour hands seem to be rusted on the dial. No matter how many times the second hand rotates, they remained motionless.

    "My watch may be 'March Hare's*." Mo Xiaoyao muttered and sighed, she suddenly felt tired from standing. In the eyes of many female colleagues, the pair of high-heeled shoes under her feet were almost the same as flat heels, but for Mo Xiaoyao, it was already her limit.

*March Hare, a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's 1865 book Alice in Wonderland. I'm not very familiar with the story

    Squatting down without an image, Mo Xiaoyao rubbed her calf and glanced at the road again, and found that there was nothing to see, so she kept her squatting posture and turned her body in another direction.

    That was, the direction of the mist on both sides of the road.

    It was a kind of mist that was disturbing to look at. It was a bit like the special haze in northern winter, but it was much thicker than that, and even light could not penetrate it.

    The black circle under her feet not only limited the range of people's movement, but also blocked all sounds in the circle. Mo Xiaoyao slowly stood up and took two steps towards the mist. The high heels under his feet were stepping on the road of unknown material, making a crisp "click" sound.

    Mo Xiaoyao's voice of swallowing saliva was clearly discernible in the silent fog that could not be seen through. She stared at the mist for a long time, her whole body seemed to be fascinated by being sucked in. She knew that she should not continue to watch, but she couldn't move her eyes.

    It's like that kind of morbid picture. She knew in her mind that she shouldn't continue to look at it, but her eyes couldn't look away.

    Horrible infatuation.

    What saved Mo Xiaoyao's spirit was a harsh whistle sound. She immediately turned back to her body and took a deep breath. She was afraid that she had lost control just now, and decided to never look at the mist again.

    "Welcome all the racers to the Misty Track, the exciting round-the-island rally is about to begin!"

    After the flute, a mechanical voice narrated what should have been an enthusiastic opening remarks in an unwavering tone.

    Mo Xiaoyao stood up straight and listened intently to the voices coming from somewhere in the air. There were also a few other people in the black circle who acted just like her. More often, they looked around in panic, or kept opening and closing their mouths, and if anyone could read their lips, they could see that they were begging for mercy, questioning, and yelling meaningless things.

    The mechanical voice obviously couldn't hear these, or didn't care if it heard it, because it almost immediately started to tell the next paragraph.

    Glancing at the situation in the other circles, Mo Xiaoyao suddenly felt fortunate that the black circle was soundproof, otherwise she might have missed important explanations because the surroundings were too noisy.

    "Please get on your cars as soon as possible, and stand by after the starting line. The race will officially start in 3 minutes."

    "The first three groups of competitors who reach the finish line will win the championship and Asian season championship prizes!

    "Players in group 4-10 will receive the Finalist Award!"

    "The players in group 11-20 will receive the consolation prize!"

    "The players after the 20th group will be completely wiped out!"

    "The 3-minute countdown begins, please cheer up all the racers, try your best to rush forward!"

    "Fweeeet——"

    After the whistle sound, Mo Xiaoyao's eyes flashed, and many strange-shaped things appeared scattered in the starting line at the same time. At the same time, she found that the black circle of light under her feet was gone, and immediately tried to step forward and ran to the item closest to her position.

    Mo Xiaoyao, who had read too many similar novels, did not dare to hesitate at all. The earth was blown up, what else could happen? Anyway, Mo Xiaoyao consciously cherished her life. Even if the livable home planet was gone, if she could find another foothold, she didn't mind going to an agency to rent a house.

    Mo Xiaoyao thought very clearly that the rules of this competition mainly have two points, one was to grab the so-called "car", and the other was to reach the finish line as soon as possible - at least within the top 20, otherwise the competition would be meaningless.

    And when she was bored, she calculated that the number of people in this opening was far more than 20, almost more than 200 people. However, the number of cars on the field was about 20.

    Even if some of them were obviously large enough to accommodate 5 or 6 people, it was impossible to squeeze 200 people up.

    Considering the consequences that she might get nothing if she chose to go far, Mo Xiaoyao tried her best to rush over to the one closest to her. No matter what it was, getting into the car first would guarantee at least half of her safety.

    Therefore, she was relieved when she used her heels as a price to get on the vehicle with a single stride.

    Then, she realized that there was no steering wheel in front of her, but drums, bass, guitar, keyboard, and... a microphone.

    Mo Xiaoyao: Excuse me? Is it still too late to go down and choose again?