A prank! A premeditated, extremely malicious prank!
A cold sweat slicked Su Jin's spine as the thought slammed into his brain.
The strange notice. The delivery slip. The name and address on the parcel were his. Some killer organization could not have sent it to the wrong person.
The spontaneous combustion of the paper? Fine. That wasn't entirely beyond the realm of science.
Maybe it was some high-tech magician's prop... a chemical compound that reacted to body heat and ignited over time.
But mailing him a real, functional firearm? What were they trying to do?
Was it Old Wang, that nightmare of a client?
Impossible. That idiot had just demanded an apology over the phone.
Su Jin's scalp prickled. A montage of thriller movies flashed through his mind.
The ones where a cabal of bored, bloated billionaires orchestrated elaborate death games just to screw with ordinary wage slaves.
Any second now, a few men might come for him, lock him away somewhere dark, and leave him to wake up fighting to survive in the wilderness.
"Fuck me."
Cursing under his breath, Su Jin decisively tapped out the police emergency number.
"Beep... beep... beep..."
The dial tone dragged on. Su Jin licked his cracked lips, his brain scrambling to compile a plausible incident report.
Finally, the line clicked open. He launched into his pitch.
"Hello! I'm calling to report—"
"Hello, this is emergency dis—"
The female dispatcher's voice was abruptly severed mid-syllable. In its place, a cold, synthesized mechanical voice hijacked his brain.
"Please do not disclose company information in any format. A secondary violation will result in severe penalization! Please equip the mask immediately and finalize preparations."
BEEEEEEP—
The line went dead. Su Jin's pupils dilated, a terrifying realization taking root.
This was getting stranger by the second.
Signal hijacking was technically feasible. But the audio fidelity of that warning? And the deafening dead air that followed?
The dispatcher sounded like she was on a phone. The mechanical voice sounded as though it had spoken inside his head.
His seven-year-old Mi 6 had only one speaker. It could not have produced sound like that.
A hallucination?
Running on autopilot, Su Jin opened Xunlei on his phone and clicked a thumbnail marked with a discreet blue dot.
Explicit, high-definition audio filled the room. He stared blankly at the screen for three seconds before locking the phone, and rejected the idea that he was dreaming.
Wrong.
'Two Days, One Night Hot Spring Date'. He had downloaded it last night, but after wearing himself out he had never gotten around to “reviewing” this one.
Even if those production studios recycled sets, and the trope was played to death...
It was a new film by his favorite adult-film actress, her first hot-spring release. He could not have dreamed up all those details.
Looking utterly hollowed out, Su Jin stumbled backward and collapsed into his computer chair.
A flicker in his peripheral vision made his pupils shrink to pinpricks!
In one corner of the job-search page, the words Heavenly Dao Infinite Liability Company stood out in plain sight!
Wait... was that the pop-up from earlier?!
He grabbed the mouse and moved the cursor toward the name, but the entire page closed before he could click.
Heart hammering, he frantically typed the name into the search bar.
No results. It was as if the company had never existed.
Su Jin exhaled a ragged breath, squeezing his eyes shut and digging his fingers into his scalp.
What was going on? Could he still run?
No. Some organization already had its eye on him. If he fled now, who knew what might happen?
A minute later, he slowly reached over to his desk, picking up the transparent mask he had tossed aside.
It looked like injection-molded plastic. Cheap. The voice in his head had ordered him to equip it...
He scrutinized it like a bomb technician for several minutes before tentatively pressing it against his face.
The moment it touched his skin, a cool sensation spread over his face—and the mask vanished!
The mask was gone. His fingers traced his own bare cheeks.
Before he could react, his vision changed.
A line of numbers appeared in his field of vision.
1:32:11
1:32:10...
Su Jin sat paralyzed for a full ten seconds, his chest heaving as he stared down the countdown.
The apartment was tomb-silent, save for the thud of his own pulse and the faint whir of the computer fan.
Snapping back to reality, he bolted for the bathroom mirror.
He clawed frantically at his jawline, trying to pry off a mask that was no longer physical.
He dug his nails in until his skin burned crimson, finally giving up to stare at his reflection.
Aside from the numbers and his violently twitching eyelid, everything else looked normal.
This wasn't a billionaire's sick reality show. He really had stumbled into something supernatural!
Gritting his teeth, Su Jin wrenched the faucet open and splashed freezing water onto his face.
Calm down. He had to think.
Something strange had entered his body. Whether it would help or harm him, he could not tell. He could not remove it, so for now he had to leave it alone.
If the mask defied physics, the pistol and briefcase were likely anomalous too.
He went to check them.
...
00:59:23
00:59:22...
Over thirty minutes wiped from the clock.
Su Jin sat cross-legged on his mattress, staring at the gun and the briefcase.
His composure was a fragile facade. The strange events had overturned everything he thought he knew.
The mask was permanently bound.
The gun and briefcase were just as strange.
The firearm returned zero hits on any database. He could not remove the magazine. The shot he had fired left no spent casing or bullet for him to find, and he could not test the gun again for now.
The briefcase was worse. When his hand touched the bottom, he felt a strange sensation, as if he could sense the hidden space beneath it. It housed exactly one cubic meter of extra-dimensional storage... completely invisible to the naked eye.
He tested it with a few household items. Stowing and retrieving was instantaneous, governed by mere thought.
It was a localized spatial pocket. A literal Dharma Treasure out of a fantasy novel, constrained only by the physical dimensions of the opening.
At any other time, he would have been overjoyed to find such a treasure. Now he could not bring himself to feel happy.
The more miraculous these things were, the more pressure he felt.
Dying World, apocalypse... Either word was enough to scare the piss out of him.
He was out of his depth, with little time left to think.
What should he do? Prepare as the notice had told him?
Swallowing his dread, Su Jin grabbed his phone.
...
Thirty minutes later.
His cramped apartment was fortified with a pile of supplies he had ordered for delivery.
Surveying the chaos, Su Jin swallowed a bitter, acidic pill of reality.
He had thought about running, but the numbers followed him wherever he looked.
He had clearly encountered something supernatural. Making preparations seemed his safest choice; struggling blindly would only get him killed faster.
00:31:09
00:31:08...
He rapidly sorted and categorized his inventory.
Su Jin sat at the computer, staring wide-eyed and breathing hard. He chose a life insurance policy and named his parents as the beneficiaries. Payout triggered after a two-year missing-persons declaration.
He took out a loan through a legitimate online platform. Together with his other funds, he had just under 170,000 yuan.
He drew up an online gift agreement transferring 150,000 yuan to his parents, hoping to make it harder for creditors to claw the money back.
He wired 10,000 to his landlord—six months' rent upfront, along with a "do not disturb" memo—and withdrew the remainder as physical cash.
Finally, he cleared his browser history.
Affairs in order, Su Jin dialed home, his chest tight.
His mother answered, her voice groggy with sleep. "Son? Why are you calling at this hour? Are you still up?"
"Yeah, just sent you and Dad a wire. Check if it cleared?"
"A wire... Huh?! A hundred and fifty thousand? Where did this come from?!" Her sleepiness vanished instantly, and he could hear his father stirring in the background.
Su Jin plastered on a fake, triumphant grin, projecting artificial excitement into the mic. "Good news, obviously! Another company tried to hire me. Manager Li panicked and threw a retention bonus at my face to keep me. I don't need it right now, so you guys take it. Buy something nice."
"Really? Look at our boy, companies are fighting over you! You scared me half to death, I thought you got mixed up in something illegal." The relief in her voice was palpable.
"Of course not. When have I ever done anything shady? Li just approved the transfer. I was so hyped I forgot what time it was. Look... uh... the company just landed a massive account. I may have to work overtime for months. Don't call me, I'll call you when I come up for air."
"Son!" His father's stern voice cut through. "Crunch time is one thing, but don't work yourself into an early grave! Don't let a bonus trick you into selling your soul to them... The harder you push, the more they'll exploit you. Just keep up appearances for the management."
"I know, Dad. You two go back to sleep. I've got an early start tomorrow."
He killed the call and slumped forward, releasing a long, shuddering sigh.
He had done all he could.
That was it. If this really was a one-way trip... at least he had done something for his parents.
...
00:00:12
00:00:11
00:00:10
The final ten seconds. Su Jin locked onto the countdown, his hand buried in his trench coat, white-knuckling the grip of his pistol.
3, 2, 1, 0!
The clock flatlined. Su Jin's pupils seized as a blinding point of light appeared before his eyes!
The point of light expanded in an instant until a golden gate stood before him.
He blinked furiously, forcing his analytical mind to boot up through the sheer, paralyzing shock.
A miracle. A real miracle!
Extraterrestrial tech, or divine intervention?
The gate was static. Logically, if he didn't cross the threshold, he remained safe, right? Maybe he should hold his phone through it first and see what happened?
"Oh, you've got to be shitting me!"
His eyes went wide as the golden gate lurched forward, rushing straight at his face and swallowing him whole...