Oregon, Portland, East District.
Inside Room 801 of the Harden Hotel, Wu Heng stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, calmly gazing at the southern night sky.
The night was pitch-black, with dark clouds slowly drifting across the sky.
In the living room, the hour hand, minute hand, and second hand of the silent clock silently overlapped, all pointing at twelve.
Boom!
The clusters of dark clouds covering the sky seemed to be struck by an invisible shockwave, scattering into countless small black masses.
The entire street began to shake violently. Cracks split the walls, concrete burst apart, and steel reinforcement bars snapped.
An earthquake!
Houses and buildings toppled like rows of dominoes, collapsing with a series of crackles. The entire street became empty, while blue geomagnetic light flickered where the sky met the earth in the distance.
Only the eight-story Harden Hotel stood unmoving, as though it had been glued to the ground.
Even amid the violent tremors of a magnitude-nine earthquake, it remained utterly stable.
Hearing the violent commotion outside, the hotel guests came to the windows. When they saw the apocalyptic scene outside, they were so frightened that they collapsed to the floor.
Then they began praying devoutly, believing that this place was under God's protection.
"It's out!"
Wu Heng merely shook his head at the actions of the guests below before looking toward the sealed area in the south and speaking softly.
"Let me see what you really are." He seemed to be talking to himself, yet also to the world around him.
Cracks began to appear in the ground. A trench five or six meters wide spread all the way to the front of the hotel before abruptly stopping.
An identical fissure appeared behind the hotel, as though it had deliberately avoided it.
This was the only