The Whole Family Returns to Before the Extreme Cold Disaster

[I'll revise the premise. It's still a post-apocalyptic survival story, but the details are undecided.]

The apocalypse foretold for December 21, 2012, never came. Instead, it arrived as promised 160 years later.

In 2172, extreme cold spread across Blue Star. The sky was obscured by dark clouds, and crops failed everywhere.

That year, Qin Anna was brainwashed by her self-righteous cousin into sharing her family's food. In the end, her entire family starved to death in their basement.

When she woke again, she had returned to the year before the disaster. The sun was shining, and the trees were green. This time, Qin Anna finally realized the truth: they were all living inside a disaster novel.

Her cousin was the story's kindhearted heroine, while Qin Anna was a cannon-fodder character who died early. Her only purpose was to highlight the heroine's nobility: she would even share her relatives' resources for the greater good.

Qin Anna's family were the story's suckers. That day, her self-righteous cousin had stood on the moral high ground and emotionally manipulated their whole family. They were eventually left to starve, while her cousin, protected by the heroine's plot armor, lived just fine through the apocalypse.

Qin Anna: Heh.

The one bright spot was that her parents had been reborn too.

*

With another chance at life, Qin Anna began to change. She started stockpiling supplies a full year in advance and worked harder and harder at her mecha studies, even applying to skip a grade and join her cousin's class.

Her cousin got an A on her coursework? Qin Anna got an A+. Her cousin scored Excellent on the fitness test? Qin Anna scored Excellent+. The more her cousin cared about something, the more determined Qin Anna was to outperform her. After all, they had a life-and-death grudge!

Meanwhile, her father, a professor in energy studies, began researching energy stones for storing power. Her mother, a botanist, gave up her chance to publish a research paper and worked day and night to develop all kinds of plants that could survive the extreme cold.

In time, disaster arrived as foretold. Frozen corpses lay along the roads, while a paradise took shape on the other side of the mountain.

When her cousin showed up shamelessly, still trying to emotionally manipulate the family, Qin Anna waved her away, said nothing more, and slammed the specially reinforced metal door shut.

Her cousin, shut out before she could put on a full performance, hadn't even managed to say a word with that silver tongue of hers: "?!"

[Reader's Guide]

1. There is a romance, but the plot is the main focus.

2. The story takes place in a world where someone transmigrated into a book. Nothing in the story is connected to real life.

Revised October 10, 2022, and September 20, 2023.

Theme: Stand united and overcome hardship together.