The Doomsday Train

[The story will be revised after completion, so the official and pirated versions differ. The full text will be free to read on September 24. I hope you'll support the official release. Thank you.]

Looking for Mom Forty Years in the Past, also known as Repaying a Mother's Kindness, is currently being serialized next door. Feel free to add it to your library and let the chapters build up!

[Blurb] Lin Yueying was twelve when both her parents died, leaving her an orphan. Her relatives in her hometown were unable to raise her, so her paternal uncle's family contacted her great-aunt, who had married far away, several hundred kilometers from home, and was widowed and childless.

Lin Yueying prepared herself to live under someone else's roof. She was ready to be a good girl in her new home: obedient and sensible, eating little and working hard. Her great-aunt lived alone in the countryside, so life must be very difficult for her. It was already generous of her great-aunt to take her in. Lin Yueying didn't want to cause her any extra trouble.

She secretly decided that once she graduated from middle school, she would go out to work and earn money to repay her great-aunt's kindness.

But nobody told her that her great-aunt's household was doing so well!

They had eggs at every meal and meat every day. The house even had an electric fan, an electric blanket, a freezer...

Lin Yueying watched as her great-aunt started a business, brought home more and more furniture and appliances, and built up her savings. Lin Yueying became the envy of every child in the village.

But one day after she was adopted, she accidentally stumbled upon her great-aunt's secret. And that secret was...

In her senior year of college, Lin An'an lost her mother in an accident at a construction site in their hometown.

Only after her mother died did she learn that she was merely an adopted child. Yet when danger came, this woman who had no blood relation to her had shielded her with her own body.

After graduating, she returned to her hometown and moved into the newly built house where she and her mother had once dreamed of the wonderful life they would share. But when she pushed open the kitchen door, she unexpectedly discovered another world beyond it.

In this world, the elders back home were all still young, and her mother, who had already passed away, was still an elementary school student. And Lin An'an had become her mother's adoptive mother.

If you had the chance to return to the 1980s, what would you do?

Lin An'an's answer was: In this life, I want to repay Mom for her kindness, change her fate, and give her a happy, fulfilling life!

As for helping family and friends get rich, Lin An'an says that's just a side benefit!

But in the end, will things go the way she hopes? Will this passage connecting different eras remain open forever?

When the moment of parting comes, will everything she has done have mattered? Can history be changed? What will become of their fates?

Blurb for this story:

[Blurb One]

At the end of May, a torrential rainstorm lasting four or five days swept across the world.

After receiving notice from the village committee, Jiang Qian's family evacuated temporarily with the rest of the villagers. They never expected the series of disasters that followed to plunge humanity into an abyss.

The doomsday prophecy nobody had taken seriously had actually come true!

Unknown mutations were occurring silently in every corner. After enduring pain and disaster, where could people go from here?

In a world rife with hidden dangers, a silvery-white train made a dazzling entrance.

Is there somewhere you'd like to go?

Would you like to travel to another city to find loved ones you've been separated from?

Would you like a completely safe place to rest?

Then come take a look at our train!

Hard seats, soft sleepers, private rooms, family suites, luxury carriages... We've got it all!

A dining car, a bar, a cinema, baths and massages... Enjoy it all!

[Blurb Two]

In a peaceful May, Jiang Qian's life was upended by some very unsettling news.

A middle-aged man started livestreaming online, claiming to have been reborn. He predicted that torrential rain would soon strike all over the world, and that the day the rain stopped would mark the beginning of the apocalypse.

Jiang Qian looked at the weather forecast, which showed seven straight days of blazing sun, and didn't believe a word of it. But the very next night, rain really did begin falling all over the world at the same time.

Seeing that the prophecy might actually be true, Jiang Qian rallied her family to prepare and take steps to save themselves. But the unknowable future still left her anxious.

Fortunately, before the apocalypse arrived, a System dropped from the sky and bound itself to her family's bus, giving them a way to survive.

Not long afterward, when everyone was at a loss in the face of the harsh conditions, a mysterious post-apocalyptic train appeared!

[Content note]

The story mainly follows a family of six as they live through the apocalypse. This isn't a wish-fulfillment story. All the characters are ordinary people, and none of them are perfect. There are some family and neighborhood matters, and the pacing may be slow at first.

The setting is a fictional modern world, completely made up! So please don't connect it to real life! Don't connect it to real life!

Please don't attribute the characters' values or actions to the author. Every word is here to serve the plot and characterization. Nobody is perfect, let alone fictional characters. Perhaps it's their imperfections that make them feel more real.

My writing skills are limited, and everyone reads from a different perspective. Whatever you take away from the story is valid and deserves respect. But I'm just writing about characters and telling a story. I don't intend to step into the story and play a part myself.

Writing already exhausts me: I have to inhabit the characters, think through every word and action from their perspective, and make the story unfold plausibly. I don't want to explain myself from my own point of view too [covers face, laughing and crying]

I'm terrible at writing blurbs, and this one only gives you a limited idea of the story, so feel free to sample the chapters.

If anything makes you uncomfortable while reading, please stop in time.

Thank you for your support!

Theme: Don't give up in the face of adversity.