2034: Disconnected from the Cloud

In the height of summer, 2034, a prolonged spell of extreme heat scorches the city. A quantum-encryption node in the eastern district suddenly malfunctions, and cloud systems across the region begin to fail in stages.

Mobile payments stop working, smart deliveries grind to a halt, building control systems fail, and remote healthcare goes offline. In a single night, a highly digitized modern city is plunged into intermittent disconnection.

High-rise residential compounds are cut off from outside help, the power grid teeters on the brink of collapse, and medicine and drinking water grow increasingly scarce. Young people who depend on AI are at a loss, property managers weigh their options with emergency powers in hand, and kindness and selfishness among neighbors clash in the heat.

Lu Shen, an unemployed low-voltage systems engineer; Wen Zhixia, a community first-aid worker; Old Zhou, a retired waterworks repairman; Jiang Miao, a digital content creator; and Gao Lei, a property maintenance worker, band together temporarily. With no supernatural powers, no System, and no monsters or cataclysm, they rely only on their professional skills, limited supplies, and human relationships to establish a system of mutual survival in the desperate aftermath of digital civilization’s collapse.

A rainstorm is on the way. Floodwater in the underground garage destroys their only backup generator, and the roads outside are about to be completely sealed off. Trapped for seven whole days in a high-rise cage from the smart age, they face the survival challenges ordinary people might one day encounter for real, searching for a way to stay alive beneath the ruins of technology.