Shen Feng felt as though he could barely breathe. He widened his eyes and studied the photograph carefully.
The photo had been taken with a Polaroid and had faded considerably, but the expressions on the people's faces were still visible.
His expression in the photo was somewhat grave, while Ji Xin still wore that carefree grin.
He shook the journal again, and several more photographs immediately fell out.
This time, they showed Ji Xin with several classmates, as well as his parents.
What was going on!?
Shen Feng looked up at the skeleton. Could this skeleton be Ji Xin!?
Had Ji Xin been the one hiding in this shelter all along?
The best friend who had joked around with him just days ago, the Ji Xin who had warned him to be careful of Li Chang?
What world was this? Was it the future of the Earth he lived on!?
He hurriedly opened the journal and began reading it page by page.
Though it was called a journal, it was more like a memoir, spanning more than twenty years.
A long-buried past after a nuclear war unfolded before his eyes.
The earliest event recorded in the journal began one year after the outbreak of the nuclear war, in 2026.
That year, the entire world had already collapsed completely. When the nuclear strikes occurred, Ji Xin had been vacationing in his rural hometown while pursuing a master's degree in mechanical engineering, allowing him to escape the devastating attack.
His family and friends, however, had mostly failed to escape that catastrophe.
Fortunately, human civilization had not been completely cut off. Many people were still alive. While medium and large cities had collectively suffered total devastation, some small towns and villages had survived.
After the first wave of acute radiation sickness patients died,