On television.
Fireworks bloomed across the sky, their trails forming enormous footprints, as though a giant's footsteps were slowly drawing closer.
The host on television announced the opening of the Olympics in a loud, excited voice...
"The Olympic Games have officially begun!"
"The boss said today's a day for the whole nation to celebrate. Everyone gets a drink on the house!"
A server brought over a glass of champagne, and Zhang Tianyuan forced out a smile in thanks.
Then he slumped over the bar again, staring blankly at the drink in his glass.
Today was a happy day for many people, but he wasn't very happy.
It wasn't because of the Olympics, but something else.
"What's wrong, young fellow? Today's a joyous occasion. Why the long face?"
A middle-aged man beside him came over with easy familiarity and draped an arm over his shoulders, casually setting his phone on the bar. His other arm was still around a woman in heavy makeup.
Zhang Tianyuan glanced at the phone he had set down.
It was a keypad phone, something that had been obsolete for ages in the era he lived in.
"Ah!"
"It's 2008!"
"I came too early!"
Zhang Tianyuan couldn't help lamenting.
That left the middle-aged man confused.
"If it's not 2008, what year could it be?"
Zhang Tianyuan shook his head. "You wouldn't understand, mister!"
With that, he drained the glass of champagne on the bar.
The middle-aged stranger and the woman in his arms stared, dumbfounded.
Zhang Tianyuan pointed at the floor.
"If I told you that in four years, this world would face the apocalypse, and most people on Earth would die, would you believe me?"
???
The apocalypse?
The middle-aged stranger took one step back, and the woman in his arms took two.
So he wasn't drowning his sorrows.
He was going mad?
The apocalypse was coming in 2012?
Who would believe that!
Time to go, time to go.
Watching the man and woman flee in panic, Zhang Tianyuan shook his head and ordered another drink.
"I never expected the anchored point in time to be off. I thought it would anchor to the start of the plot..."
Zhang Tianyuan was utterly dejected.
This wasn't the real world.
It was a movie world.
"2012."
A movie about a terrifying natural catastrophe that struck the world on December 21, 2012, in which crustal displacement caused unprecedented earthquakes and tsunamis, leaving humanity no choice but to build arks to survive.
He was in that world now.
He had simply arrived a few years too early.
It wasn't 2012, only 2008.
If he remembered correctly, scientists wouldn't discover signs of the apocalypse until 2009.
In other words, at this point, the human world was still singing and dancing in peace and prosperity, with not a single person aware that humanity would face a disaster that would swallow it whole in four years.
As for Zhang Tianyuan himself.
His purpose in coming to this world was simple.
He wanted to recruit as many people as possible from this disaster-stricken world.
The more, the better. He needed population.
Now, however, that goal was impossible to achieve.
Just as the others' reactions after he revealed the news of the apocalypse had shown.
No one believed that this world would face the apocalypse in four years.
Naturally, no one would go back with him, either.
"Ah!"
Zhang Tianyuan sighed again, intending to leave once he finished this drink.
But a young man suddenly sat down beside him.
"You just said the world would end in four years. What evidence do you have?" the young man asked right away, clearly interested in what he had said.
Zhang Tianyuan sipped his drink and said indifferently, "I don't have any evidence, but I can tell you how the apocalypse will unfold."
The young man nodded and listened.
"First, starting next year, solar activity will gradually reach its peak, becoming more frequent and larger in scale, releasing massive quantities of neutrinos."
The young man grew increasingly interested.
Was this an apocalyptic tale with a scientific basis?
"Then these neutrinos will mutate into a new kind of nucleon, penetrating the crust and heating the core. Then the crust will loosen, Earth's magnetic field will weaken, and various minor geological disasters will become frequent: fissures, subsidence, earthquakes. And finally..."
Zhang Tianyuan picked up two glasses and smashed them together!
At the same time, he said, "The continental plates will collide..."
Crash!
The two glasses shattered on the bar.
Everyone's attention was drawn over.
Zhang Tianyuan waved to indicate that he would pay for them.
Then he said to the young man in front of him:
"If you want to survive, you can move to a plateau now, or give me your phone number. When I come back, since fate brought us together, I can contact you."
The young man smiled.
"You mean that when the apocalypse comes, you'll be the only one who can save me? You're the savior of the apocalypse?"
Zhang Tianyuan carefully sized up the young man before him. His clothes were ordinary, there was nothing remarkable about him, and he was tanned dark. No matter how he looked at him, he didn't seem able to afford an ark ticket costing a billion euros.
So he nodded. "For ordinary people like you, I really will be the only one who can save you then."
The young man looked a little puzzled. "Then why would you save me? What's your purpose?"
Zhang Tianyuan said casually, "You're the second person in this bar to talk to me today. Whoever I save, I'll still be saving someone, so there's no harm in giving you a spot."
"Well, thank you very much..." The young man smiled, seemingly thinking about something.
Zhang Tianyuan asked a server for pen and paper and handed them to the young man. "Here, write down your number. I'll contact you the next time I come back."
The young man took the pen and paper and instinctively wrote down his number. Only after finishing did he suddenly come to his senses, finding the situation both laughable and exasperating.
These cults...
They were even trying to swindle a criminal investigator like him.
Yes, he was a criminal investigator named Bai Xu.
If he hadn't sensed a potential case coming his way, who would have come over to listen to Zhang Tianyuan's tedious apocalypse theories?
Criminal investigator Bai Xu shook his head and clamped a callused hand around Zhang Tianyuan's wrist.
Zhang Tianyuan was stunned.
"Have you misunderstood something?"
"I don't have any unusual kinks."
"What kinks? I'm a criminal investigator. In light of what you just told me, come back with me for some tea."
As he spoke, Bai Xu twisted Zhang Tianyuan's arms behind his back and restrained him.
Everyone in the bar froze, instinctively clearing a path.
Zhang Tianyuan seemed not to have processed it, either.
But before he was escorted away, he casually slipped the paper bearing the phone number from the bar into his pocket.
"Look at you, so young. Why get involved in this harmful stuff?!"
On the way out of the bar, Bai Xu sounded deeply regretful about Zhang Tianyuan's situation.
Zhang Tianyuan, however, said nothing.
Until they reached a bend in the corridor, just before the bar's entrance came into view.
Looking at the deserted corridor, Zhang Tianyuan decided it was time.
He turned his head and smiled at Bai Xu.
"Remember, don't change your number. The next time I come back, I'll find you, or your people, for a proper talk."
"What?" Before Bai Xu could react further, he heard Zhang Tianyuan, whom he was restraining, murmur:
"Return."
Then Bai Xu felt his hands empty. Zhang Tianyuan had actually vanished into thin air!
Bai Xu reached out and felt around in front of him, touching nothing but air.
Ahead lay only the empty corridor, with the plastic bead curtain at its end swaying gently...
On the night of the Olympic opening ceremony.
A bar in the Imperial Capital was sealed off.
All its surveillance footage was retrieved, everyone inside had their identity checked one by one, and people carrying infrared detectors searched every corner.
Even so, the troops maintaining the outer cordon still didn't withdraw. Not even a rat could get out.
A few days later, a scientific team moved in and began recording the surrounding magnetic field...
"The surrounding surveillance cameras showed no sign of him entering or leaving the bar. His earliest appearance seems to have been in the bar's restroom."
"There were no issues with the identities of anyone in the bar that night."
"Every corner of the bar has been searched."
"There are no tunnels beneath the bar."
"There are no anomalies in the bar's magnetic field or other readings..."
"The other two people who had contact with the target that night have been found. Their accounts match the information we currently have."
"The bar has resumed business under surveillance..."
Results came back one after another.
Bai Xu, who had been isolated and housed in a recuperation area, watched that night's surveillance footage again.
He talked with that man at the bar, then pinned his arms behind his back and escorted him out...
The footage switched between several cameras along the way, until the two appeared in the entrance corridor.
Then,
That man vanished from the surveillance footage, just like that.
Without any warning.
Unless the word "return" he had spoken counted.
What drew Bai Xu's attention even more was something the surveillance footage had clearly recorded.
Before leaving the bar with him, that man had silently slipped the piece of paper bearing his phone number into his pocket!
His blood ran cold!
"Don't change this number from now on, and don't give it to anyone else. If he calls, tell us immediately..."
Someone told him that.