"The world had gone mad... It had truly gone mad."
Beside an outdoor basketball court in Cangnan City, a tall teenage boy sat beneath the shade of a tree, staring at the livestream on his phone screen and muttering to himself.
He kept scrolling through the barrage of comments beside it.
The wind and waves stopped? How was that possible?!
This wasn't scientific... It really wasn't scientific! I majored in meteorology as an undergraduate. How could clouds disperse like that? And that was the ocean! How could the sea be calmer than a lake?!
That figure in the Crimson Cloak pointed at the sky... and the sky cleared up??
Who was he? Was he a god?
He came out of Chenglong Base. He had to be one of us from Great Xia! What did I say?! Great Xia definitely had people protecting it!!!
I remember someone above saying they'd encountered someone wearing a Crimson Cloak too...
Yes, yes, I saw it too! So were Crimson Cloaks their symbol? Some secret organization within Great Xia's military??
Impossible. I don't believe this... It had to be special-effects compositing, probably some kind of marketing stunt again.
"Zhao Zhengbin! Are you playing or not?"
Just as the boy scrolled through the comments, another boy dribbled a basketball and shouted to him from afar.
Zhao Zhengbin checked the time on his phone, tapped out of the livestream, slipped his phone back into his bag, and got up to walk away from the court.
"You guys go ahead... I'm heading home."
After saying goodbye to his companions, Zhao Zhengbin left alone along the street.
He skillfully tucked his wired earbuds into his ears and turned on some music. The clamor of the street was completely shut out of his world. Looking down at the ground,