Astonishment and Alarm

This sudden thought surged up with surprising intensity. Just then, Huang Zhong was busy rummaging around for recording resources, and the phone line fell silent. Wu Qingchen turned his head to look at Ji Mingming, who sat beside him. “Officer Ji, these past three days—what are people saying about me out there?”

“So you finally want to know?” Ji Mingming glanced at him, raising his eyebrows, but then shook his head quickly. “But you’re asking the wrong person. I’ve been tailing you up and down for three days straight. I have no idea what the outside world thinks. From where I stand, you’re pretty unlucky, and so am I, getting dragged into a mess like this.”

Wu Qingchen, feeling even more unlucky, was left speechless again.

“Don’t make that face. Since you brought it up, we might as well move on to the next phase…”

As he spoke, Ji Mingming lifted his hand, fiddling with his earpiece and the throat mic controller. His throat bobbed a few times; presumably, he was communicating with his superiors. Afterward, he pressed the controller again and resumed talking to Wu Qingchen. “…Alright, someone will be here soon. You can ask them what you want to know.”

“Someone’s coming?”

“Yeah, and it’s someone you know well… Chen Wenming. That name rings a bell, doesn’t it?”

It certainly did.

Chen Wenming—Wu Qingchen’s classmate for all six years of middle and high school. They’d known each other for over a decade, introduced each other to multiple jobs, and even worked at several companies together.

By most standards, that could already be called the deepest of friendships. But Wu Qingchen had always been reserved by nature, never one for overt enthusiasm. Having grown up alone, he had very few friends, and Chen Wenming was one of the rare few.

Hearing the name, Wu Qingchen’s eyes widened. “Chen Wenming? He’s in the capital?”

“That’s right.” Ji Mingming nodded to confirm. “He’s probably already reached the third security checkpoint—he’ll be here any minute.”

At last, a familiar face was about to appear, and Wu Qingchen’s spirits lifted. On the other end of the phone, Huang Zhong was still shouting with others in the internet café. Wu Qingchen lifted the receiver, pondering how to end the call, when—knock, knock, knock—the door sounded three times, and two officers pushed it open and entered.

“Sorry, Brother Huang, something’s come up—let’s talk next time.”

He hung up and turned around. Behind the two officers, a tall, thin young man entered, wearing an ill-fitting T-shirt, pants without a belt or buttons, and glasses perched on his nose.

“Hey, Chen Wenming!”

Wu Qingchen jumped to his feet.

Chen Wenming’s face was visibly tense and uncertain as he entered—understandably so, since few people ever experienced “making it past the third checkpoint.” As he took in the familiar furnishings of the room, surprise flickered across his face, and at the same moment, Wu Qingchen called out his name.

“Hey, Wu Qingchen! You really are here! This place is… this place is…”

Just as Wu Qingchen had been when he first saw this room, Chen Wenming was overjoyed to see him, glancing eagerly around, but after groping for words, he couldn’t quite express what he felt.

“Sit, come on, sit.”

After less than three days apart, the two friends were reunited—now in the capital, a thousand miles away, yet in a room nearly identical to the one in Hejiang County.

It goes without saying that, after such experiences and in such a setting, both Wu Qingchen and Chen Wenming had a thousand questions and concerns for each other. But after a flurry of mutual concern, they gradually fell silent, losing the urge for further small talk.

Partly, this was because both were men, inherently unsuited to melodramatic reunions; partly, it was because…

Besides Wu Qingchen, Chen Wenming, and Ji Mingming—who had long been seated on the sofa—there were now four more officers in the room.

And ever since Chen Wenming had entered, these four officers had stood around him, faces stern, bodies motionless. On the rare occasions they did move, it was only to prevent Chen Wenming from shaking Wu Qingchen’s hand, stop him from sitting next to Wu Qingchen, or, as if facing a deadly threat, to demand he immediately drop a “dangerous sharp object”—which, as it happened, was only a keyring Wu Qingchen had tossed onto the glass coffee table, accidentally bumped by Chen Wenming as he sat down on a small stool opposite, at least three meters away.

With the officers so diligently, single-mindedly, and gravely ruining the atmosphere, any enthusiasm for conversation quickly plummeted—like a waterfall off a cliff, like a river disappearing underground, gone without a trace.

Wu Qingchen could only give up on warm greetings and get straight to the point: what was happening outside, and what kind of experience had Chen Wenming had in the past three days?

“These past three days…” Chen Wenming placed his hands flat on his knees and sat up straight. “At first…”

At first—that was 1:27:13 PM, May 8, 2012—Chen Wenming, like Wu Qingchen, had been napping at home.

His rented apartment faced the street, and he was sleeping soundly when a sudden uproar outside jolted him awake. Half-asleep, he stumbled to the window to look out and saw that pedestrians had stopped, vehicles were stalled, and countless heads were tilted upward, all staring at the sky.

A second later, Chen Wenming also looked up and, without exception, witnessed the celestial phenomenon’s real-time projection for the first time—and, again without exception, cried out in astonishment.

My god, which company is so impressive that they can put an ad in the sky?

Wait, something’s off with this thing. Not adjusted properly? Why is it playing so fast?

That was Chen Wenming’s first reaction to the celestial event—utterly typical.

As he would later learn, the vast majority of people worldwide reacted similarly: they thought it was a video, a movie, an advertisement, a mirage—something their earthly experience could just about comprehend. Most of their doubts centered on why the projection ran so quickly, making it impossible to discern any detail.

Because the images flashed by so fast, when the projection ended after only a dozen seconds and the sky returned to blue with white clouds, Chen Wenming, though he’d felt the bedroom scene at the end looked familiar, didn’t think much of it. Seeing it was nearly time for work, he splashed his face and headed out.

At work, the celestial projection barely figured in his conversations with colleagues. The truth was, for such a world-shaking event, few people were mentally prepared, and most had no immediate interest in investigating it.

But lucky—or unlucky—for those “outside the majority,” their numbers still ran into the millions. And so, within hours, everything began to change.

After work, Chen Wenming returned home, had dinner, and, as usual, sat down at his computer and went online.

Immediately, every major software—messengers, downloaders, video players, portal sites—popped up news specials about the celestial event.

What triggered this burst of news was that users in one region described seeing the sky anomaly, and soon many others reported the same. When this phenomenon was confirmed across all five continents, with everyone seeing exactly the same images, anyone with a basic knowledge of optics realized the astounding implications.

As this extraordinary story broke, another one exploded online—this time, not amazing, but terrifying.

The pattern was the same: a user posted about a mysterious red mark appearing on their lower abdomen, and soon countless others reported the same. When nearly everyone online found this mark, the news spread like wildfire.

Anyone with a functioning brain immediately linked the two events.

When Chen Wenming got home, the various websites had already combined the two stories, placing them at the top of their pages, with sensational headlines listing the latest updates.

Hundreds of organizations announced research results: animal rights groups blamed humanity’s reckless hunting and mass extinction—Earth’s environment was out of balance, and Judgment Day had come.

Environmental groups blamed large-scale industrialization—“the Three Gorges Dam disrupts Nature, unleashing global sky anomalies.”

Religious organizations proclaimed the appearance of prophets and miracles—“Seventy billion stigmata.”

Countless others accused various nations—China, France, the UK, the US, Russia, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Iran, Cuba, Pakistan—of testing new weapons and called for immediate UN intervention.

Terrorist organizations, too, claimed responsibility—“***Third Jihad Army claims responsibility, Colombian Freedom Youth Army claims responsibility, Sri Lankan Revolutionary Armed Forces claims responsibility…”

And so on, and so forth…

Beneath these headlines, every news special included the full hour-long video of Wu Qingchen’s first experience in the medieval world.

Videos came from all kinds of sources—mobile phones, security cameras, tablets, PSPs, laptop webcams, and more.

The most recommended video, and the first one Chen Wenming watched, was shot by a Finnish film company. They were testing their camera outdoors, aiming it at the sky, and happened to capture the entire phenomenon.

Their professional equipment, combined with Finland’s high latitude, pristine air, and cloudless sky, meant this video was uniquely clear, steady, and complete—from start to finish, with no shaking or omissions.

Within an hour of its upload, media across the globe rushed to buy the rights; the movie the Finnish company had planned hadn’t even started filming, but they’d already achieved the highest box office and viewership in Earth’s history: seven billion.

With the most complete video in hand, and shot with professional equipment, the websites slowed it down thirtyfold for analysis.

The version Chen Wenming watched, by a major portal, added further enhancements. At 1:27:28 PM on May 8, 2012—when Los/Wu Qingchen fell—the video triple-circled the recording device’s timestamp in red and prominently highlighted: “At this moment, seven billion people worldwide developed a red mark on their lower abdomen.”

And then, at the end of the video, as the sky anomaly displayed a bedroom and a young man sleeping (with a trickle of drool), the frame froze for five minutes, with a black caption at the drool’s location: “None of this has anything to do with me—absolutely nothing! Do you believe it?”

Do you believe it?

Do you?

Damn!

No time to consider whether he believed it—at the very instant Chen Wenming saw the bedroom freeze-frame, he immediately recognized the room and the drooling figure as his old friend…

Holy crap! That’s Wu Qingchen!

Without hesitation, Chen Wenming dashed out shirtless, sprinting toward Wu Qingchen’s apartment.

But two kilometers from his destination, he was stopped.

Blocking his way were three ranks of shield-bearing police, with thousands more people crowding nearby—some, like Chen Wenming, had recognized the room and come to confirm Wu Qingchen’s identity; others, having seen the signs outside the window in the video, guessed the general location and came for the spectacle; and, of course, there were opportunistic thieves, hawkers, anxious reporters, intelligence agents, and even professional assassins.

Whether well-intentioned, ill-intentioned, or simply curious, all these people were stopped two kilometers from Wu Qingchen’s home.

There was no way through. Behind the three ranks of police were five stretches of wire mesh, each at least two meters high and three wide, trenches dug in the pavement bristling with black gun barrels, dozens of armored vehicles, and every rooftop over three stories tall packed with armed soldiers. Overhead, at least a dozen helicopters hovered.

It was a scene straight out of a war movie, and for fifteen minutes, Chen Wenming stood there, utterly stunned.

After seeing several rowdy or suspicious onlookers led away by burly men, Chen Wenming quickly left and hurried home.

By then, it was 7:30 PM, May 8, 2012.

The assassination at the Great Hall had ended; Wu Qingchen had undergone testing, his status as the event’s central figure confirmed, and had—unwittingly—entered the dream world a second time.

The situation was too urgent, too widespread, involving too many people, and the news spread fast.

At home, Chen Wenming’s computer was now filled with pop-up messages.

Because of what had happened at the Great Hall, even after being offline for only an hour, everything had changed. Within that single hour, most fringe groups—environmental, animal rights, and the like—had vanished from sight.

The celestial anomaly was no longer seen as an isolated incident. Wu Qingchen had been confirmed as someone whose injuries would be shared by all of humanity—and this would continue into an unknown medieval dream world. Religious groups hedged their statements; Wu Qingchen’s status shifted from prophet to ambiguous omen.

With 99% of UN resolutions passed, peace organizations began to question why the world’s five major powers had suddenly united—suspecting a conspiracy.

Following the sudden Great Hall incident, with a direct attempt on the lives of seven billion humans, several terrorist organizations that had claimed responsibility—***Third Jihad Army, Colombian Freedom Youth Army, Sri Lankan Revolutionary Armed Forces—hurriedly retracted their statements, blaming typos and misunderstanding.

Within the Syrian Progressive Union, the second-in-command suddenly declared the previous leader illegitimate, released a video of his decapitation three minutes earlier, and announced himself as the new leader—his first act being to declare that the celestial event was entirely the previous leader’s fault and had nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with him or his organization.

Other terrorist groups had not yet released new “official” statements, but users in active regions reported that, just minutes ago, their neighborhoods were swarmed with helicopters, armored vehicles, fighter jets, soldiers, and the sounds of gunfire, explosions, jets, vehicle convoys, and screams.

Browsing these myriad, contradictory, yet all momentous news items, and recalling the blockade near Wu Qingchen’s home, Chen Wenming realized—right here, right now—something historic was unfolding nearby.

As he quickly opened and closed web pages, the time crept toward midnight. Suddenly, his phone chimed with a series of new text messages.

Opening them, he found they were from telecom companies, the meteorological bureau, the earthquake bureau, government offices, and related agencies, all saying much the same:

Due to cosmic radiation, climate anomalies, solar flares, typhoons, tectonic shifts, and so on, everyone should remain indoors between midnight and 9 AM tomorrow. If you must go out, take great care—especially drivers, who should keep greater distances and slow down. If you work at heights, in surgery, outdoors, or in technical fields, arrange your work for daylight hours if possible; if not, be mentally prepared, and don’t panic over minor pains or injuries caused by cosmic radiation, climate anomalies, solar flares, typhoons, or tectonic activity. Avoid unnecessary accidents.

There was no doubt—these urgent notices confirmed what the media had reported: Wu Qingchen’s health was now directly linked to the health of seven billion people, and his second entry into the medieval world had been verified.

Damn!

At that moment—and just like the five billion others who had received similar alerts from TV news, text messages, radio, or patrol car loudspeakers—Chen Wenming swore aloud.

As for the remaining two billion, if they weren’t asleep, they were surely running free across the African savannah or fighting in the war-torn Middle East. Minor injuries or pain meant nothing to these lucky souls.