September 9, 2030, the twelfth day of the eighth lunar month. Suitable for sacrifices and school enrollment; unsuitable for opening a business or breaking ground.
As it happened, the day had only just begun when Lei Jian enrolled in school, and Major Luo's world was turned upside down.
It was also Anti-Drunk Driving Day, so there were noticeably more traffic police on the roads these past two days.
"Rumble, rumble, rumble..."
Brilliant fireworks blossomed, visible across the entire city. Countless citizens were jolted awake by the earth-shaking explosions.
The prolonged tremors sent people scrambling up from their shaking beds in panic. Some rushed downstairs without even putting on pants, some wrapped themselves in blankets and carried their children toward open ground, while others ran barefoot through the soaked streets.
"Earthquake!"
"Is the sky falling?"
"Help! Save me! Save me!"
Screams, sobs, people calling for friends and family, and terrified pets barking all blended together, boiling over in the streets of the rainy night. Phone flashlights flickered rising and falling, and the tremors even reached the outskirts. Drivers sleeping in trucks as they waited to enter the city were shaken awake, while guard dogs beside farmland barked wildly without pause.
Yet as the tremors gradually subsided, the imagined sight of split earth and collapsing buildings never appeared. People stopped, gasping for breath, then looked up in lingering terror.
Then, they saw—
On the distant horizon, brilliant fireworks burned across the sky. Billowing black smoke mixed with brazen crimson flames, dyeing the heavens into bizarre, shifting colors. It looked like the end of the world.
It wasn't an earthquake.
People gradually realized this fact. They first breathed a sigh of relief, then shuddered in alarm.
"The ground was shaking like crazy just now... and it turned out there was an explosion in