Believe in Science!

After lunch, Song Shuhang headed to a nearby rental bookstore to mooch off the books.

He liked mooching off books, not because he wanted to save the rental fees. It was simply a personal hobby—Shuhang felt absolutely fantastic crouching in a corner by the rental bookstore's shelves and reading!

Of course, to avoid being disliked by the owner, after mooching for half a day, he would rent one or two books to take back—one should never burn all one's bridges; a steady stream ran far! That way, he could avoid making the owner hate him and throwing him out.

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

If he got put on the Blacklist, 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 read anything that came his way.

Whether it was novels, literary works, classical collections, or even all kinds 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 about motor vehicle driving techniques and safety knowledge. He planned to get his driver's license while his freshman-year courses were still easy. Taking the test through the school was seven or eight thousand yuan cheaper than doing it elsewhere.

Time always passed especially quickly when he was mooching off 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 snacks from the nearby supermarket for a late-night meal. Saturday night calls for an all-nighter!" Song Shuhang chuckled.

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

The counter was by the rental bookstore's exit. Today, the awning outside had conveniently "broken," so the proprietress was hiding in a shady spot to avoid the direct blazing sun.

"The sun's really fierce. It already feels like midsummer." Song Shuhang raised one hand to shield his eyes and looked up at the cloudless sky, while handing the book he wanted to rent to the proprietress.

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

Her hobby was reading too, and she likewise loved holding a book and reading for an entire day. One could tell from how she dressed that her quality of life was not low; opening this rental bookstore was merely a personal interest.

When the proprietress usually sat quietly reading, she was as beautiful as a painting, a feast for the eyes. Many ordinary young men came for the chance to see that beautiful-as-a-painting scene often enough that they forcibly twisted their own hobbies around, transforming from idiotic youths into literary youths.

But supposedly, that beautiful-as-a-painting side of her was only the proprietress's peace mode...

If there was a peace mode, then there had to be a PK mode or berserk mode. Still, in the half year Shuhang had been coming here, he had never seen it.

"Done. Remember to return it within two days. One extra day means one more yuan in rental fees." After completing the rental procedure, the proprietress waved Song Shuhang off, telling him to hurry up and scram.

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

"Hehe." Song Shuhang smiled as he accepted the book and stepped over the bookstore's threshold.

BOOM!!!

Just then, a deafening blast erupted like an explosion.

Everyone in the rental bookstore was startled out of their wits. Song Shuhang, who had already taken one step out, nearly lost his footing and almost fell flat on his face!

"Fuck!"

"Ah, my god!"

"Thunder on a clear day?"

"That scared me to death." Startled cries rose and fell throughout the rental bookstore.

Song Shuhang looked up at the sky and discovered that the formerly cloudless expanse had changed. At the far end of the horizon, a patch of dark clouds had silently gathered. In the blink of an eye, it covered that portion of the distant sky, carrying the air of a coming storm.

"Looks like there might be a thunderstorm? Heh, people said weather forecasts a few years ago were unreliable—you had to read them backward. If they forecast clear weather, you definitely had to bring an umbrella. I thought weather forecasts would have improved after all these years. Who knew they were still unreliable?" Song Shuhang sighed inwardly.

This was worse than back then. In those days, he only needed to read the weather forecast backward; now, he had to gamble on whether it was accurate at all?

While his thoughts wandered, he held the rented book and prepared to hurry back to the dorm before the downpour began.

Before Song Shuhang could take a second step—

BOOM...

Another clap of thunder roared, making everyone's ears buzz.

Song Shuhang pulled his raised leg back again.

At the far end of the horizon, the region of dark clouds twisted strangely. Lightning serpents burrowed out of the clouds, rumbling as they formed a web of lightning.

Song Shuhang had seen thunderstorms before, but never in his life had he seen lightning packed together like this—it was practically the end of the world. The lightning in the sky was not flashing down bolt by bolt, but crashing down in whole sheets at once.

Even the sound of the rolling thunder was different.

Thunder in the Jiangnan Region had always been one loud boom followed by a string of rolling echoes. But now, it was like firecrackers stuffed full of gunpowder. Boom boom, crack crack, boom boom—loud and chaotic, with even the echoes drowned out.

If someone had committed sins and was being struck by lightning, just how immense would those sins have to be to summon such a barrage of ten thousand thunderbolts?

What concerned Song Shuhang even more was that the patch of pitch-black thunderclouds did not spread. It remained huddled at the far end of the horizon, bombarding and blasting away 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 about to arrive.

"What rotten luck!" Song Shuhang sighed, thinking to himself, Should I mooch off a few more books?

Generally speaking, even a thunderstorm came fast and went fast. But if this shower lasted a little longer, perhaps he could finish another book?

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

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

The moment he turned and stepped back into the bookstore, the rumbling at his ears abruptly stopped!

The dark clouds blanketing the horizon and the violent lightning serpents vanished at the same time! It was as though a great hand had used the sky as a canvas, then casually wiped away the clouds and lightning serpents when it found the painting unsatisfactory.

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

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

"Could someone really have committed sins and gotten struck by lightning?"

"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 lofty, heroic tone, "Ah, I want this sky to no longer block my eyes, this earth to no longer bury my heart! I want these clouds filling the sky to vanish without a trace!"

Song Shuhang's mouth twitched. He was certain that once this little brat grew up, merely recalling today's scene would make him so embarrassed that he would roll around on the floor. And memories of this kind of dark history would haunt the little brat for his entire life. Then, just when he finally felt he had forgotten it, it might pop out from some nook in his mind one day, making him want to scream, "Just die already, this is so embarrassing!" He would even wish he could travel back in time and beat the living daylights out of his foolish younger self.

Because he had experienced it deeply himself.

Yet for some reason, when he saw this amusing little brat, Song Shuhang suddenly thought of those xianxia chuuni groupmates in No. 1 Group of the Nine Provinces.

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

The chat records from the group leaped into his mind.

He estimated the location at the horizon again. That thunderstorm zone from just now seemed, perhaps... to be where H City was?

Even with Song Shuhang's strong nerves, his heartbeat skipped half a beat.

Could it... be real?

The weather forecast had said clear skies, yet this bizarre chorus of ten thousand thunderbolts had suddenly appeared before his eyes.

"Hahahaha, how could that be possible! How could things like heavenly tribulations exist in this world? It must be a coincidence, right?!" Song Shuhang thought to himself.

But once the thought arose, he could not shake it from his mind: Could there really be such a coincidence in the world? Those lightning serpents had been so strange; they truly did not look like a natural phenomenon.

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

Song Shuhang shook his head hard, throwing that possibility out of his mind.

The worldview he had built over eighteen years told him to believe in science and reject superstition. Those thunderclouds had merely been a bizarre natural phenomenon, not some lightning tribulation or anything!