Knocking at the Door

A phantom boom suddenly rang out, and the screen before him went black. The next second, Zhou Ming felt every sound recede from him—the computer fan fell silent, the refrigerator's hum nearby gradually faded, and the entire room sank into an unnatural dead silence. The atmosphere around him... was changing.

And all of this had happened after he typed the words "Reverse Singularity" into the search bar.

He blinked, pushed his chair back, and stood up from the computer desk.

The chair slid backward without a sound. His movement made no noise either. A pen beside the desk was knocked to the floor, yet landed in utter silence.

For those brief seconds, Zhou Ming had thought he had gone deaf.

Then he realized that it was the environment around him that was wrong—the room was growing dim.

The lights vanished. Everything in the room was gradually covered by a layer of chaotic shadow, all objects losing their color in the deepening darkness. The patterned curtains were the first to become gray-white blocks of color, followed by his desk, chair, and bed. One object after another turned gray-white before being gradually swallowed by the thick, rising darkness...

It was as though the various units of some vast system were shutting down one by one. In little more than ten seconds, the "room" in Zhou Ming's eyes had become a chaotic, murky space. When even the surrounding walls disappeared, true darkness filled his vision.

Zhou Ming stood where he was and looked around. In the darkness that had suddenly descended, he felt an inexplicable... familiarity, along with an unusual sense of reassurance.

After a while, his "vision" seemed to adapt to the dim environment. Deep within the chaos, several faint outlines caught his attention.

Zhou Ming hesitated briefly, then connected something with