Doomsday Battlefield: My Rule Horror

My name is Lin Shougui, and I’m a village chief. The day the National Destiny Battlefield opened, everyone else got weapons and skill books. My starter gift was a blank copy of the Village Charter. In the first trial, the rule said, “To enter the village, you must eat a bowl of noodles. The number of noodles determines how many days you’ll survive.” I took out the charter, wrote, “Villagers in need may apply for a mutual-aid loan,” and asked the noodle shop owner to lend me ten yuan to pay for my meal. That bowl of noodles kept me alive for seven days. While everyone else was barely surviving by following the rules, I was studying the soil west of the village, drafting Temporary Management Regulations for a haunted courtyard, and recruiting the “neighbor” in the well with half a bowl of leftover rice. Now my little courtyard has a vegetable garden, a chicken coop, and a child I rescued from the ruins. Survivors overseas are still on the verge of collapse, while I’m figuring out how to turn this damned rule into the Civilized Villager’s Code. Then one day, the well ran dry, and someone who looked exactly like me crawled out from the bottom. He smiled and said, “Are you having fun with the rules out there?”