Surviving the Long Night: Starting from the Gas Station and Infinite Upgrades

Chapter 1 The Long Night, Gas Station and Wooden Door Repair

The gas station's warehouse was dilapidated, and sunlight streamed in through a hole in the roof, falling on a silver revolver.

The front of the pistol was coated with a warm light, while the back was soaked in blood. Following the direction of the blood flow, a young man lying on the ground twitched.

Lu Sheng rolled over, used his hands to push himself up on the cold cement floor, and as he got up, his vision went from blurry to clear.

"!"

He was startled by the blood covering his hands and body, and then a series of images flooded his mind—memories.

"Did I kill myself?"

A minute later, he understood the situation and calmed down.

He had transmigrated into the body of someone with the same name and even a similar build, who had recently committed suicide by shooting himself.

Following his memories, Lu Sheng learned about the situation in this world and the reason why his predecessor committed suicide.

He picked up the gun from the ground, wiped it clean, and opened the magazine. It was empty. His predecessor had saved the last bullet for himself. This was a practical wisdom of the times.

Lu Sheng put the gun back in its holster and covered his mouth and nose with his hand.

The air was thick with the stench of mold, rust, gasoline, and blood. He walked to the half-open warehouse door and noticed the gas station next to it.

The screen showed that there were still 300 liters of gasoline left, less than one-tenth of the usual reserve.

Stepping out of the warehouse, a two-way dirt road comes into view, and further on lies a desolate, yellowish-brown plain. This place is far from the national highway, and traffic is sparse.

Looking towards the horizon, the sun had sunk halfway down, and the long night was about to begin.

"What a disastrous start."

According to his predecessor's memories, Lu Sheng learned that this world, like his hometown, was a place of civilization, prosperity, and peaceful life hundreds of years ago.

Until the days shortened dramatically and the nights became long.

Within a month, daylight shortened to four hours and night extended to eighteen hours, with one hour of dusk and one hour of dawn in between.

Because the days are shorter, crop yields are greatly reduced, and because the nights are longer, energy consumption for heating, lighting, and other purposes is greatly increased.

Resource reserves soon became insufficient to sustain everyone's survival. To make matters worse, the plants and animals in the night mutated, transforming into monsters that attacked human settlements.

Internal and external troubles erupted simultaneously, and within a hundred years, human society fell apart, entering a long period of darkness.

Steel, gunpowder, and high technology were insufficient to combat the long night, and humanity, having exhausted all other options, began to pray to gods and Buddhas.

The gods and Buddhas actually responded.

The god of machines, embodying engineering and technology, bestows blessings, and by performing a simple ritual, one has a chance to resonate with machinery and become an awakened being.

On the front lines, powerful Awakened Ones formed an iron torrent, holding back the surging tide of creatures of the night.

In the rear, each of them was a construction team, rebuilding the city at an astonishing speed and forging an impregnable fortress.

With the help of the awakened, humanity rebuilt social order, established strongholds of all sizes, and restarted the old world's transportation system for goods transport.

Because of the importance of transportation hubs, the district heads of service areas, the stationmasters of railway stations, and the airport managers held extremely high positions in this era.

As part of a service area, gas stations are crucial facilities for ensuring fuel supply, and their locations have long been monopolized by major corporations.

His predecessor was able to become a gas station manager precisely because of his background. As a local powerful family, the Lu family ruled a city that never sleeps and were veritable local emperors.

However, he was an illegitimate child, born to the Lu family patriarch when he was young and had an affair with a female celebrity. Due to a lack of proper protection, he was sent to the Lu family after his mother died, just to get a meal.

After he came of age, his father saw that he could not awaken, so he arranged for him to work at an abandoned transportation station far from the national highway. He sent someone to do some simple repairs on the gas station there and made him the gas station manager.

It's somewhat like letting him fend for himself.

The days that followed were very difficult.

During the day, traffic is sparse, business is slow, and sufficient profits cannot be handed over. Supplies have also been reduced to the bare minimum, leaving people to survive on compressed dry rations.

Monsters often storm the gas station at night. I haven't had a good night's sleep in the three months I've been here. A few times, the monsters broke through the door and rushed in. If I hadn't pulled the trigger a little slower, I would have been eaten alive.

Under such high pressure, his spirits gradually weakened, and the delay in the supply of materials this month became the last straw that broke him.

So not long ago, he went into the warehouse and committed suicide by shooting himself with his last bullet, leaving Lu Sheng with this leaky gas station and about three days' worth of food.

Night is approaching, the pistol is out of bullets, and the warehouse door, which was attacked last night, has not yet been repaired. Whether we can survive the night is uncertain.

Lu Sheng took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. After thoroughly reviewing the current situation, he even had the urge to shoot himself.

However, he quickly regained his composure.

First, being able to live again as a human is very rare. Whether you can travel through time after dying again, and whether you will still be human after traveling through time, are all unknown. Who knows, the next time you open your eyes, you might become a big, fat yellow dragon.

Secondly, he was out of bullets. Of all the ways to die that he could think of, none was as quick and painless as shooting himself. He figured he might as well live, since he was quite afraid of pain.

"We need to get through tonight first. There are still nails and stockpiled firewood in the warehouse, enough to reinforce the door."

Lu Sheng recalled for a moment and quickly found a claw hammer and a box of nails of various shapes and lengths in the warehouse. He also found a lot of wooden boards in a pile of miscellaneous items and stacked them next to the warehouse door.

After doing all that, he stood up and looked at the warehouse door, pondering how to reinforce it.

Just as I was concentrating, my vision suddenly blurred. I blinked and looked again, and a line of small characters appeared on the door:

"The dilapidated warehouse door can be repaired and reinforced by consuming one unit of wood. After reinforcement, it can be upgraded by consuming more materials."

"Holy crap, they've got a cheat code! How much is one unit?"

The text did not respond to Lu Sheng, but in his field of vision, the edge of the pile of wood placed to the side emitted a faint glow, as if telling him that this was about enough.

"Okay, I'll fix it. If it's not enough, I'll find you more."

At Lu Sheng's command, the wood transformed into streams of light and entered the gate. The warehouse gate, which was originally dilapidated and looked like it could be punched through, was transformed in the blink of an eye and became much thicker.

dong dong.

He reached out and knocked on it; the sound that returned was solid and reassuring.

"Wait here, I'll bring you some more materials and see what we can upgrade."

As Lu Sheng was about to turn around, he suddenly heard a car horn outside the door.

"Waaah—waaah—"

This remote gas station actually had customers.