Believe in Science!

After lunch, Song Shuhang headed to a nearby rental bookstore to mooch some reading.

He liked mooching books, not because he wanted to save the little bit of rental money, but because it was his personal hobby—Shuhang felt absolutely wonderful squatting in a corner by the rental bookstore shelves and reading!

Of course, to avoid making the owner hate him, after mooching books for half a day, he would rent one or two to take back—when dealing with people, one should never go too far; a trickle runs long! That way, he could avoid having the owner dislike him and throw him out.

After all, large rental bookstores like this one, with books of every kind rather than just novels, were already becoming rare.

If he got blacklisted, he probably would not find a better bookstore anywhere near Jiangnan University Town.

They said a person's name was important, that one lived up to one's name. Song Shuhang loved reading, and he never turned away any kind of book.

Whether it was novels, literary works, classical collections, or even all sorts of dry theoretical knowledge that made one's head swell as big as a bucket just looking at it, he liked them all.

Recently, he had mainly been mooching books on motor vehicle driving skills and precautions. He planned to get a driver's license while his freshman courses were still easy. Signing up for one at school was seven or eight thousand yuan cheaper than going outside.

Time always passed especially quickly when he was mooching books.

In the blink of an eye, it was already around three in the afternoon.

"So fast... Time to head back. I still need to pick up some provisions from the nearby supermarket for a midnight snack. Saturday night, I can pull an all-nighter and go to war." Song Shuhang chuckled.

With that, he casually pulled out a book and headed to the counter to handle the rental procedures.

The counter was by the bookstore exit. Today, the sunshade outside was pretending to be broken, so the bookstore owner hid in a shady spot to avoid the direct blazing sunlight.

"The sun is really fierce. It already feels like midsummer." Song Shuhang raised one hand over his eyes and looked up at the cloudless sky, while handing the book he wanted to rent to the owner with the other.

The owner was a classic Jiangnan beauty, as though she had been made of water.

Her hobby was also reading. She likewise enjoyed holding a book and reading for an entire day. Her clothes and accessories made it clear that her quality of life was not low; opening this rental bookstore was merely a personal interest of hers.

When the owner sat quietly reading, she was simply as beautiful as a painting, a feast for the eyes. Many ordinary young men came here just to gaze frequently at this beautiful scene, forcibly twisting their own hobbies and transforming from idiotic youths into literary youths.

However, it was said that this picturesque side of the owner was only her peaceful mode...

If there was a peaceful mode, then there definitely had to be a PK mode or berserk mode. Still, Shuhang had not seen either during the half year he had been coming here.

"All right, remember to return it within two days. One extra day means one extra yuan in rental fees." After finishing the procedures, the owner waved Song Shuhang off, telling him to hurry up and get lost.

Though they had only known each other for half a semester, this young man who loved mooching books—and mooched for half a day at a time—had left a deep impression on the owner. If the kid had not known enough to rent one or two books afterward to support her business, she would have chased him out with a broom long ago.

"Hehe." Song Shuhang grinned as he accepted the book, then stepped over the bookstore threshold.

Boom!!!

Just then, a deafening blast exploded through the air.

Everyone in the rental bookstore jumped in fright. Song Shuhang, with one foot already out the door, nearly lost his footing and almost fell flat on his face!

"Fuck!"

"Ah, my mother!"

"A bolt from the blue?"

"Scared me to death." All kinds of startled cries rose and fell throughout the rental bookstore.

Song Shuhang looked up at the sky and discovered that the originally cloudless expanse had changed. At the far end of the horizon, a patch of dark clouds quietly gathered. In the blink of an eye, it covered that small stretch of sky at the horizon's edge, looking as though wind and rain were about to descend.

"Looks like there might be a rain shower? Tsk, tsk. They said weather forecasts a few years ago were unreliable and had to be read backward—if it forecast clear skies, you absolutely had to bring an umbrella. I thought weather forecasts had changed after all these years. Didn't expect them to still be unreliable." Song Shuhang sighed inwardly.

This was not even as good as back then. Back then, all he had to do was read the forecast backward; now he had to gamble on whether it was accurate or not?

While his thoughts ran wild, he held the rented book and prepared to hurry back to the dorm before the shower began.

Before Song Shuhang could take his second step—

Boom...

Another peal of thunder roared, shaking people's ears until they buzzed.

Song Shuhang pulled back the leg he had raised.

At the far end of the horizon, the region beneath the dark clouds twisted strangely. Lightning snakes emerged from the clouds with rumbling roars, forming a net of lightning.

Song Shuhang had seen thunderstorms before, but never in his life had he seen lightning packed as densely as this—this was practically the end of the world. The lightning in the sky was not striking bolt by bolt, but crashing down in whole swaths at once.

The sound of the rolling thunder was also different.

In the past, thunder in the Jiangnan Region had always begun with a single massive boom, followed by a string of rolling echoes. But now, the thunder sounded like firecrackers stuffed with a huge amount of gunpowder. Boom boom, crack crack, boom boom—loud and chaotic, drowning out even the echoes.

If this was someone being struck by lightning for committing evil, then how great did their sins have to be to bring about a scene of ten thousand thunderbolts raining down wildly?

What concerned Song Shuhang even more was that the pitch-black thunderclouds did not spread. They remained huddled at the end of the horizon, bombarding wildly without any sign of expanding.

The rolling thunder continued for roughly ten breaths, lingering without end.

It gave people the feeling that an even fiercer storm was on its way.

"What bad luck!" Song Shuhang sighed. How about mooching some more books?

Generally speaking, even if it was a thunderstorm, it came quickly and went quickly. But if the shower lasted a little longer, perhaps he could read another book?

With that thought, he turned around and went back into the bookstore, preparing to squat there a while longer.

It was as if Heaven were playing a joke on Shuhang.

The moment he turned around and stepped back into the bookstore, the roaring in his ears abruptly stopped!

The thunderclouds filling the sky and the violent lightning snakes vanished at the same time! It was as if a giant hand were painting upon the sky, and upon finding the painting unsatisfactory, casually wiped away the dark clouds and lightning snakes.

The sky returned to being cloudless, sunlight shining everywhere! It was as though the explosive thunder and lightning snakes filling the heavens just now had been nothing more than auditory and visual hallucinations.

Someone in the rental bookstore muttered, "What was that?"

"Could someone really have been struck by lightning for doing evil?"

"Superstition! Lightning is merely a natural phenomenon..."

At that moment, a little brat beside Shuhang looked up. He held a children's comic book in his left hand, raised his right palm high toward the sky, and shouted in a heroic tone, "Ah, I want this sky never to cover my eyes again, this earth never to bury my heart again! I want these clouds filling the sky to scatter without a trace!"

Song Shuhang's mouth twitched. He was certain that when this little brat grew up, recalling this scene would make him so embarrassed that he would roll around on the floor. Moreover, this black-history memory would haunt the little brat for the rest of his life. Then, just when he finally felt he had forgotten it, it might crawl out from some nook in his mind one day, making him want to scream, Go die, this is so embarrassing! And making him wish he could travel back in time and beat the foolish younger version of himself senseless.

Because he had personally experienced it himself.

Yet for some reason, upon seeing this comical little brat, Song Shuhang suddenly thought of those xianxia-chuunibyou group members in the Nine Provinces Number One Group.

'H City, undergoing the Third Stage Houtian Tribulation Lightning.'

The group chat record leaped into his mind.

Then he estimated the position at the horizon. That thunderstorm region from earlier seemed, perhaps... to be where H City was?

Even with Song Shuhang's big heart, his heartbeat skipped half a beat.

Could it... be real?

The weather forecast had said it would be clear, yet an eerie cacophony of ten thousand thunderbolts had suddenly appeared before his eyes.

"Hahaha, how could that be possible! How could there be such heaven-moving things in this world? It was probably just a coincidence?!" Song Shuhang thought to himself.

But once the thought arose, it could no longer be driven from his mind: Could there really be such a coincidence in the world? Those lightning snakes had been so strange. They truly did not look like a natural event.

The words H City and tribulation kept echoing through his mind.

Song Shuhang shook his head hard, flinging that possibility from his mind.

The worldview he had built over eighteen years told him to believe in science and reject superstition. Those thunderclouds were merely a strange natural phenomenon, not some Tribulation Lightning or anything!