Shattered World

When a crisis and upheaval were about to arrive, going to pray to the Bodhisattva seemed a little like grasping at straws.

However, Qing Chen felt that something as supernatural as the phenomenon on his arm ought to be handled by a supernatural being.

Besides, praying didn't cost him anything.

He liked to make preparations in advance and leave himself no chance for regret.

It was 9:30 p.m.

Sitting on his bed, Qing Chen lowered his head and glanced at his phone. The bedroom was lit only by its faint glow. There were only a few messages from his deskmate, Nan Gengchen, on WeChat, and no one else had sent him anything.

His mother Zhang Wanfang's WeChat profile picture sat quietly there, making Qing Chen feel a trace of disappointment.

Of course, only a trace.

He did not know what he had been hoping for.

In truth, he did not blame his mother.

His father had gambled away several properties, abused his family, and cheated on her. Qing Chen did not think there was anything wrong with his mother taking the initiative to divorce him.

On the contrary, Qing Chen had personally seen his father hit his mother, and he was even glad she had made that choice.

Because it was the right choice.

On the eve of his parents' divorce, his grandmother had urged his mother not to get divorced. "You're a woman with a teenage son as baggage. How will you ever start another family? Who would remarry you?"

Having heard all that, Qing Chen chose to live with his father when his parents divorced.

He remembered the stunned looks on their faces, but Qing Chen knew that had been the right choice as well.

Now, his mother had begun a new life and formed a happy new family. Qing Chen might have felt a little disappointed, but he had still been careful not to disturb her.

Countdown: 2:31:12.

Qing Chen suddenly thought of a question: if these were the last two and a half hours of his life, what should he do?

The question was both serious and romantic.

Because it asked what, in life, you most wanted to do but had not yet had the chance to do—or had not dared to do.

Unspoken love, people you wanted to see but never met, places you wanted to go but never visited, words you wanted to say but never spoke—all of those fell within the answer.

The question went straight to the heart.

Qing Chen got up and put on his coat. With little time left on the countdown, he actually chose to go out again.

He wheeled his beat-up bicycle out of the house, mounted it, and sped toward his destination.

The autumn night wind had grown slightly chilly, and there were fewer and fewer pedestrians on the road.

Qing Chen's expression was calm as he rode. The wind on the bridge blew the hem of his coat behind him.

He truly had many regrets in this life, and many things he had not dared to do.

But tonight, he needed neither cowardice nor fear. He needed only courage.

At one point, Qing Chen thought that if he was truly going to die tonight, then he ought to finish the most important thing first. He had no time left.

He went first to the Peony Grand Hotel, then the Luocheng Hotel, and then the Luoyin Residential Area, but none of those places had the person he was looking for.

Qing Chen rode his bicycle through narrow alleys, sped across Qili River Bridge, and arrived beneath an apartment building.

When he saw the familiar battered secondhand motorcycle parked downstairs and heard the sound of mahjong tiles being shuffled on the second floor...

He took out his phone and dialed 110. "Hello, Officer. I'd like to report a gambling gathering at Room 201, Unit 2, Building 17, Longteng Residential Complex, JX District."

The dispatcher on the other end seemed to freeze for two seconds before responding, "All right. We'll dispatch officers immediately."

Only then did Qing Chen feel at ease. He turned around and rode his bicycle home.

His mind was at peace.

When he got home, Qing Chen looked at the white markings on his arm. Countdown: 1:02:21.

He began reviewing his preparations.

Wait, was he going to face that moment at home?

Qing Chen had once watched a horror movie about a protagonist who encountered something unclean, after which a ghost would find him every night at midnight.

The protagonist hid everywhere, even fleeing deep into the mountains and forests, yet the ghost always found him.

Back then, Qing Chen had wondered, why didn't the protagonist just go somewhere crowded?

Ghosts might be powerful, but people generally felt safer in crowded places.

For example, the protagonist could have stayed at a nightclub. When the ghost came knocking at midnight, hundreds of people inside would be throwing their heads around to deafening music. No matter how he looked at it, it felt like the ghost should have been more scared...

So Qing Chen began to wonder whether he should go somewhere crowded too.

Or he could go straight to White Horse Temple in Luocheng... After all, there were Bodhisattvas there.

Not only Guanyin Bodhisattva, but also Manjushri Bodhisattva and Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva.

That seemed quite reassuring too.

In the end, however, Qing Chen chose to stay home. Compared with demons and ghosts, he felt that when the countdown ended, something like zombies was more likely to appear.

If something like that really appeared, going somewhere crowded would be no different from seeking death. Besides, Bodhisattvas did not seem to handle that sort of business.

Qing Chen had already stocked supplies at home. If zombies really attacked, he could still hole up there for a while.

Countdown: 00:31:49.

In the final half hour, Qing Chen turned on the desk lamp and quietly wrote a will, leaving it on the desk.

If he died today, perhaps one day in the future, his family and friends would still be able to see the last words he wanted to say.

If he did not die, then his life might become something entirely different.

Countdown: 00:00:12.

After finishing his will, Qing Chen sat upright. He gripped a boning knife tightly in his right hand, and his pupils abruptly narrowed in his clear eyes.

The closer it came to the final moment, the calmer he became.

It was like the instant before a tsunami swallowed Lone Island, when everything froze. No undercurrents surged beneath the surface; only profound thought and blazing courage remained!

10...

9...

8...

7...

6...

5...

4...

3...

2...

1.

There were no ghosts, no zombies, no disaster.

Qing Chen quietly watched as time around him fell still. The time on his phone seemed to remain forever at 12:00:00.

The second hand on the clock hanging on the wall suddenly stopped moving, and the light outside the window no longer flickered.

He stood up. It was as though his movement had shattered the frozen time; the world before his eyes fractured like a mirror.

Holding the boning knife, Qing Chen looked around. The desk was gone, and so was the room. Only darkness remained.

Then he too sank into the darkness.

An unknown amount of time passed, yet it also seemed to have lasted only an instant. At that moment, Qing Chen suddenly lost all sense of time.

In the darkness, fragments of the world began to piece themselves back together. Fragments from nowhere instantly formed a brand-new world.

Qing Chen lay on a narrow wooden bed in a completely unfamiliar place he had never visited before.

He first looked at his palm. It was empty, and the boning knife he had been holding had long since vanished.

Then he looked at his arm and discovered that the white markings there had changed.

"Return countdown: 48:00:00."

Forty-eight hours—two days, Qing Chen thought.

The next moment, the countdown ticked down by one second: Return countdown: 47:59:59.