Zheng Rui is a prospective senior in the biology department, if she was asked to say the most regrettable thing in her life four days ago, it would definitely be this major. And now, what she regrets most is definitely not putting her phone in her pocket before the "Earth Online Refresh".

"Earth Online Refresh" is her joking name for the strange events that happened four days ago, which originated from the fact that some people on the Internet call the human civilization on Earth "8 billion players online game - Earth Online". Except for some literary works derived from this name, most people just regard this as a mockery of real life, but what happened four days ago really made Zheng Rui start to suspect that Earth might be a game.

Four days ago was August 11th, an ordinary day in the summer vacation. At 12:00 noon, Zheng Rui woke up from the single bedroom converted from her grandfather's home study, and at the urging of her grandmother, she got up slowly, washed and dressed, and came out for lunch.

Zheng Rui's grandparents lived on the outskirts of the city, in the tube building where the employees of the previous work unit lived. The heads of households in the same yard are all former colleagues of the old couple, and naturally they are all at least fifty or sixty years old. Because the building is so dilapidated that the young people will never be able to stay, only the old workers who are still in love with the old ones still live in the old house sporadically, waiting to live their lives - or wait until the building collapses before them.

Zheng Rui only lives here temporarily during the summer vacation, and even then he is an extremely rare young person in the whole hospital. She didn't have a common language with the old men and women in the yard, so she just shrank in her house all day long and surfed the Internet.

After lunch, Zheng Rui naturally returned to his study-converted bedroom, opened his laptop and swiped the 1963 version of "Doctor Who". During the peak blood sugar period after eating, the black-and-white TV series makes people sleepy. Zheng Rui was thinking about whether to go back to sleep for a while, raised his hand and rubbed his eyes, but fainted directly.

Before she lost consciousness, she could faintly see the reflection of the metal surface. She thought to herself, "What a slick metal," and she fell into a coma.

——

When she woke up, she found herself lying on the foundation of the building, still wearing her own clothes, but the world had changed.

There is no need to describe Zheng Rui's shock too much—the shock is very obvious. Because at this time, the above-ground part of the tube building in the courtyard in her memory had completely disappeared out of thin air, as if it had been cut horizontally directly against the sidewalk next to it, and the cut surface was incredibly smooth, and even the cut water pipe was still spraying water.

Grandpa and grandpa are gone. Not only grandparents, but also the old workers in the entire yard are gone. There was no other person in the radius of four thousand square meters, not even another mammal. However, the two rows of stout two-ball plane trees in the outer circle of the courtyard were still flourishing, and the vegetable patch set aside for the old workers in the center was full of grapes and tomatoes that had not had time to be picked.

It's like when Earth Online is refreshed, it loses information about the buildings on the ground and most of the players.

Zheng Rui felt extremely panicked.

- So she went to pick a tomato that was almost all red and ate it, and after eating it calmed down a little.

The first question is, what is going on?

No, the question is too broad.

Do it all over again.

The first question is, is this yard the only one that has suffered this "transformation"?

Zheng Rui looked around, and across the row of two-ball planes, he found that the new community across the road had also disappeared. She walked over and saw a person lying on the ground that had been cut flat, probably fainting like she had done before. It is uncertain what happens elsewhere than these two settlements, as there is only wasteland next to it.

Second question, how long has she passed out?

Zheng Rui habitually pulled out her mobile phone, only to be surprised to find that the flaky object in her jeans pocket was not a mobile phone, but an orange leather-faced notebook—a notebook of her experiments. This was when her grandmother asked her to pack her things yesterday, and she put them in her pocket.

And what about her phone? Zheng Rui went to the silo building where she disappeared for a while, and put forward a very reasonable hypothesis: the mobile phone had disappeared with her grandparents, along with the silo building.

Zheng Rui felt a panic again.

- She hurriedly ate a bunch of grapes, a little sour.

No problem, she comforted herself. No matter what happens, just keep asking questions and find the answers to them.

Okay, now the question is, how long has she passed out. And what else can I look at my childhood time besides my phone?

The sun is not precise enough. Zheng Rui thought hard for a while, and finally remembered an important thing. If the above-ground part of the building is cut off, then there is also the underground part. She remembered that the building in front of her had an illegally built basement, and the basement was a commissary owned by a husband and wife.

Zheng Rui hurriedly ran over and found that although the stairs leading to the commissary had been cut in half, it was still there. She hurriedly went down and was glad to see that the commissary had been preserved intact.

There was an electronic watch in the commissary that showed 15:14, and she remembered that the last time she watched Doctor Who was 14:02, and that she might have been in a panic for at least ten minutes when she woke up - and still in a panic - then she should have been unconscious for about an hour.

In just one hour, the surroundings have changed dramatically.

- She opened a bottle of Coke from the shelves of the commissary and took a sip.

Very good, very good, at least for the time being, not dying of thirst and starvation.

The third question is, can you get in touch with the outside world?

Well, I don't know if there is such a thing as the "outside world". However, if there is an "outside world", then the computer in the commissary can be connected to the Internet.

Zheng Rui hurriedly ran to the counter and was about to press the switch of the main machine, but found that the light on the power strip was off. She pressed the switch on the power strip and nothing happened. She realized that the wires had been damaged when cutting the above-ground parts of the building, and that they would not have been able to be used without electricity.

And the boss of the commissary was probably not here when the "Earth Online Refresh" was made, Zheng Rui didn't turn to the mobile phone or any other networkable device with its own power supply for a long time, but turned to a few Liu Cixin science fiction short story collections.

Okay, okay. It's not okay to rummage through boxes and cabinets like this, you have to think about it carefully.

In addition to her, there are more people left in the opposite community, and there are very few people who don't carry their mobile phones with them at this point in time, and they are most likely already trying to contact the outside world. Assuming that only this area has been flattened, then before she can find the contact information, the district government will probably have received the news and sent rescue. Assuming that the whole district is flattened, then she will have to wait for the rescue sent by the city government from farther away. Let's say the whole city is flattened...... It is estimated that there will be turmoil, and no one will come to the rescue in the short term, and it is better for other survivors not to take the initiative to contact her if they know that she occupies a commissary full of food and daily necessities.

To sum up, not reaching out is the best strategy at this time. Zheng Rui took the book of Liu Cixin's short stories and walked to the staircase where the sun could shine, sat down and began to look.

The fourth question is, do you just give up treatment?

Well, that's all.