As expected, the road from Suzhou to Shanghai is congested. Before he even reaches the highway, Tang Mo’s already stopped the car twice to push away the cars blocking the road.

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Yes, he pushed these cars away by himself.

After the Black Tower Incident, Tang Mo had already realized that, aside from receiving an ability, both his physical and mental conditions have both greatly increased.

On one hand, there are the changes in his body. His strength has increased, his vision has become better, and his healing ability is stronger too. His skin has also become as hard as steel.

When Tang Mo tricked Qian Sankun to let him get his suitcase, he specifically tested the hardness of his skin on the lock of the trunk. The palm is one of the tenderest parts of the human body, and the sharp lock sliced across his skin without leaving a single wound. Not only that, but it didn’t even hurt much. That was why Tang Mo decisively attacked Qian Sankun, and that was also why when Qian Sankun stabbed at his calf, the knife didn’t go all the way to his bone but instead only left a scratch.

On the other hand, there’s his increase in mental strength.

In his entire life, Tang Mo had never gotten a ‘Three-Good Student’[1] award, but he’s also never done anything bad. Nope, nothing sneaky. He’s even too lazy to cheat on tests.

This was his first time killing someone.

Even if it was self-defense and an accident, he still killed someone.

But other than that one moment of panic and helplessness, he quickly calmed down and considered what he had to do next.

He doesn’t know if he’s become cold because of the recent changes in his body, or if he was always like this.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tang Mo looks at the book sitting on the passenger seat, then moves his gaze away and looks calmly forward, continuing to drive.

Because he has to clear the road, one hour of driving stretches out infinitely long. The sky turns fish-belly white, and Tang Mo has just driven into Shanghai’s city border. He’s not even off the highway yet; there are still two kilometers until the last toll booth when he suddenly comes across a seven-car accident that’s completely blocked the road.

Tang Mo gets out of the car and starts to push the cars away.

“Squee——”

The sound of tires rubbing on asphalt is loud on the empty highway. This seven-car accident is very serious; the first four cars have been squashed into metal plates, and the dividers in the middle of the highway are toppled over. Tang Mo moves the cars away starting from the back, and after a lot of effort, finally reaches the first car.

“It’s a fancy car, too?” Tang Mo laughs.

The first car is a Maserati sports car. The bright red body of the car is ruined, but it’s an expensive car, after all, so even in such a terrible state, the tires are still in place and haven’t rolled anywhere else.

The desolate autumn wind blows past as Tang Mo shoves the Maserati away. Right when he’s about to open his own car door, he suddenly stops and turns. “Who?”

Only the wind answers him.

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Tang Mo does not open the car door. He stands beside the car, fingers pressing down on the match tattoo on his wrist, coldly asking again, “Who’s there?”

Still, no one appears.

But Tang Mo isn’t in a hurry. Step by step, he walks toward the Maserati with quiet footsteps. His body is tense, and he’s on-guard for anything that could happen at any time. His hand touches the ruined Maserati and is about to open the door when he hears a trembling voice.

“Don’t, I’ll… I’ll come out, I’ll come out. I don’t mean any harm.”

Tang Mo raises his head to look at the young man walking out from behind the Maserati.

He’s a black-haired young man, about 180cm tall, wearing a thin white button-up and jeans. His clothes are ripped and bloodied, and there are many wounds on his body as well, but they’ve all scabbed over and are no longer bleeding.

This person’s lips are purple in the cold wind. Shakily, he raises his hands and walks out from behind the car, looking at Tang Mo fearfully.

“I’m the owner of this car, I don’t mean any harm. I saw you pushing the cars away earlier. If I wanted to attack you, I would have done it when you were doing that.”

Tang Mo looks at him, then around. “Why didn’t I notice you before?”

The young man says, “I was hiding off-road. It’s too cold, and there was a lot of grass there, so it was warmer. Yesterday morning I was driving from Nanjing back to Shanghai, but when I was nearly there, the cars behind me all crashed into me for some reason. When I woke up, I realized that I had been thrown out of the car, but somehow I hadn’t died. And then I discovered…” A hint of fear appears on his face. “I discovered that there was no one in those cars that crashed into me! There wasn’t even a single drop of blood!”

Tang Mo looks at him calmly but does not let down his guard. “They’ve disappeared. When the Black Tower announced the start of the game, you might have still been unconscious because of the car accident. Right now, there are less than 500,000,000 people left on Earth. The others…” Tang Mo raises his hand and points to those other cars. “Like them, they’ve all mysteriously disappeared.”

The young man opens his eyes wide in fear, shaking in the cold wind. He looks at the cars that crashed into him, then at Tang Mo, and says quietly, “I live in Shanghai. You were going there, right? Can you… can you take me too? I saw you earlier, you’re really strong, you could push all those cars away. Please take me with you, I’ll give you money when we get there. However much you want.”

Tang Mo laughs softly.

The young man looks at him, lost.

Tang Mo says, “I am going to Shanghai, and it’s not a big deal if you come along. But do you think that money is still useful in this world?”

The young man freezes in place, face gradually turning pale, as if he’d just understood what kind of a world he would be facing from now on.

Tang Mo gets in the car, and the young man sits in the passenger seat as well. Tang Mo discreetly moves the book away and puts it beside his own seat, but right when he puts it down, the book slowly disappears. Tang Mo is slightly shocked, but he quickly recovers and drives towards Shanghai with the young man.

“My name is Li Wen,” the young man says shakily, wrapped in a coat that Tang Mo loaned him. “Thank you so much. I woke up not even two hours ago, and I checked the toll booth in front of us, but there was no one there. I really didn’t know what to do, so I went back to my car, and after a while, I saw you. You’re really, really strong. My coat is in my car, but the entire car’s flat, and I couldn’t get it out. I nearly froze to death.”

“I’m Tang Mo.” Tang Mo casually asks, “You’re not strong?”

Li Wen shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I couldn’t push those cars away, and I couldn’t even get my coat out.”

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“But you lived, didn’t you?”

Li Wen looks at Tang Mo in confusion.

Tang Mo drives with one hand and says lightly, “You survived such a serious accident, and you didn’t even lose any limbs… don’t you think that’s a little odd?”

Li Wen freezes.

Tang Mo says nothing more, and Li Wen lowers his head, thinking about who-knows-what. But he wears his feelings on his sleeve. Tang Mo glances at him out of the corner of his eye and knows that he must be thinking about what happened to his body, how he could recover so quickly, how he didn’t die.

Tang Mo looks like he’s driving, but he’s actually focused on Li Wen.

In this kind of situation, even if being alone is the safest, having a companion is even better. Li Wen should be like him, having participated in some Black Tower game and survived and won. Tang Mo can’t take these kinds of people lightly, but after observation, Li Wen really seems like a naive rich kid[2] and not threatening at all.

And, if he’d really left him there on the highway, Tang Mo thinks that… this person could really probably get himself into a life-or-death situation[3].

Li Wen: “Tang Mo, can you tell me what the Black Tower said when I was unconscious?”

Tang Mo summarizes the events of the Black Tower Incident.

“Are you going to Shanghai to find relatives? I’m familiar with Shanghai, do you need any help?” Li Wen asks.

Even though Tang Mo has been to Shanghai many times, he’s still not a local and it would be hard to find people on his own. He says, “I need to go to Shibeili to find a student. I only know her name, so I was planning on going to the school to find her files. If she’s not at school, then I’ll go to her house.” This is the only thing that he can do for Weirdo. If she’s not there either, then he can’t do anything else.

Tang Mo doesn’t mention that he wants to go find his friend, too. Everyone has their secrets, and he doesn’t trust Li Wen that much just yet.

Li Wen says, “Shibeili? That’s in Jingan District. I live there, and I went to that school for junior middle school. I’ll go with you, it’s easier that way.”

Tang Mo looks at him weirdly.

Is he really this naive, or is he so secretive that no one knows what he’s actually thinking?

Tang Mo thinks for a bit. It’s probably the former.

After Li Wen puts on Tang Mo’s coat, he begins to warm up and talks a lot more.

“We’ll get off the highway and go to Shibeili. Then we’ll go in and look for the person. Do you know which class she’s in? If you know the grade, that’s even better. It’ll help with finding files too.”

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Tang Mo: “I only know her name. Right, and she’s in seventh grade.”

Li Wen nods. “Knowing that helps too.”

After a few more exchanges, Li Wen hesitates. He still can’t hold back a question. “Can I ask something, Tang Mo? Do you know… what the Black Tower is about? Why did some people disappear, and other people didn’t?”

He’s talked so much, but in the end, this is what he really wanted to ask.

Li Wen’s been unconscious from the accident until now. He’s lost an entire day’s worth of time and is missing a lot of information. He’s helping Tang Mo because on one hand, he’s thankful that he’s bringing him back to Shanghai, but on the other hand, he wants to know more information and find out what sort of situation he’s in right now.

But if he’s asking, then that means he likely didn’t participate in a Black Tower game.

Tang Mo furrows his eyebrows slightly.

People who didn’t participate in a game can also live? He purses his lips, considering how to answer Li Wen. But right when he’s about to open his mouth, a joyful song rings across all of Shanghai.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you
Let’s all say thank you
We will all say thank you
On this special day!”[4]

After the bright woman’s voice, a children’s chorus begins to sing. The happy song doesn’t fit at all with the silent city, but the song continues anyway. Tang Mo brakes hard, and Li Wen raises his head in a panic, looking up at that giant black tower floating above the center of Shanghai.

After the entire Thanksgiving Song is done, the flashing rainbow lights disappear from the Black Tower. Tang Mo holds his breath, watching it closely.

And then he hears—--

“Ding dong! China District 1 stowaway Fu Wenduo has successfully unlocked the Black Tower: Floor 1! In three minutes, all China players, please begin to attack the tower!”

“Ding dong! China District 1 stowaway Fu Wenduo has successfully unlocked…”

“Ding dong! China District 1 stowaway Fu Wenduo...”

For the first time, the Black Tower announces its information three times in a row.

Tang Mo’s eyes open wide. The phrase ‘begin to attack the tower’ echoes in his ears, and the very next moment, his vision goes black, and he begins to fall.

Notes

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[1]

三好学生 ('Three-Good Student') is an award in Chinese schools given out to students who have 'good morals, good academics, and a good/healthy body', though different regions may have a slightly different definition. It would probably be translated as 'Merit Student', but since it's such a widely-known phenomenon, I chose to keep the meaning.

[2]

The original term used here was not 'naive rich kid' but instead 傻白甜, which means 'dumb, pale, and sweet'. It's used as an overall term for someone who's so nice and naive that they're dumb. To explain the 'pale' bit: in olden days, the only kind of people who were pale were the rich kind because they didn't have to do manual labor in the sun. Hence, being pale used to signify that someone was spoiled or rich (or both). Nowadays, you don't have to be super rich to be pale, but the general reason for wanting to be pale is still because it signifies that you have an office job and don't have to work manual labor. Alternatively, working an office job makes a lot more money than working manual labor, so it still signifies that you're rich in comparison to those who labor. People who are 傻白甜 don't have to be rich, but it sort of comes with the definition. If you're rich and spoiled, you're obviously going to be sheltered from the world, which means you'll most likely be naive. People who are poorer won't have that kind of blessing :( they'll likely experience the harshness of the world much sooner. That was a long explanation, but anyway, calling Li Wen a 'naive rich kid' isn't exactly wrong. He drives a Maserati lol.

[3]

The term originally used wasn't 'life or death situation', it was 作死.  This term is a little hard to translate... the word 作 (zuo, fourth tone) means 'to make'. However, the slang term 作 (zuo, first tone) means something akin to 'high-maintenance', 'dramatic', 'fussy', 'bitchy'... you get the point. 作死 (zuo1 si3) usually means something like 'you're asking for death' (ex. 你作死啊！--> You're asking for it!). In this context, since Li Wen is a 'naive rich kid' (see note above), Tang Mo was worried that he'd do smth dumb and end up getting himself killed.

[4]

Let me preface this by saying that I have never ever heard this song before. Here is the song, but this was the only source I could find. Literally zero other information about it. ​I'm going to guess that maybe Chinese students have to listen to this song when they learn about American holidays...? Because as far as I know, no one I know has ever heard this song before, either.

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