Chu Xinghe stared at the droplets of water falling into the drain, as if that small whirlpool were a representation of time that he could never turn back. He still remembered the look in his grandfather's eyes that night—it wasn't the gaze of an old man slipping into senility, but rather the look of an explorer who had just seen the edge of the world but didn't know how to explain it to the ones he loved.
"The Eternal Star," Chu Xinghe whispered again, his tone more bitter this time. "You read too many fairy tales, Grandpa."
He pulled out a tissue and dried his hands with methodical movements. Just as he was about to step out, he felt a short vibration in his jacket pocket. It wasn't from his phone, but from something harder and colder. Chu Xinghe reached into his pocket and pulled out a round object the size of a ping-pong ball wrapped in black velvet.
It was an old bronze pocket watch without numbers, featuring only interlocking geometric patterns carved on its surface. This object was the only heirloom from his grandfather that Xinghe had found under the old man's pillow the day after he disappeared. For two years, the hands of that watch had never moved. But tonight, Xinghe felt it. The watch felt warm, almost like a faint heartbeat.
"Why now?" he muttered, furrowing his brow. He pressed the watch to his ear, trying to catch any internal mechanism that should have been dead for decades.
Chu Xinghe quickly hid the watch again when the restroom door swung open violently. Zhao Lin stumbled in, followed by two large-bodied henchmen. The smell of alcohol from Zhao Lin's mouth was detectable even from two meters away.
"Still here, huh? Is the Grand Hermit talking to the mirror?" Zhao Lin mocked, leaning against the restroom entrance and blocking Xinghe's exit. His eyes were red and swollen from the influence of liquor. "You know, Xinghe... you're weird. You have the height everyone wants, you have the brains, but you choose to be trash obsessed with rotten history. Xin Yan... she needs a man with a future, not a man living in the past."
Chu Xinghe stood tall; his 190cm height forced Zhao Lin to look up quite a bit even while trying to appear intimidating. Chu Xinghe did not return the insult with anger. Instead, he looked at Zhao Lin with a gaze of cold pity—the kind of look that was more painful than a physical blow.
"You talk about the future, Zhao Lin? Your future is inheriting your father's plastic factory and spending the rest of your life trying to prove you aren't just a failed product of wealthy sperm," Chu Xinghe said in a very calm tone, almost like a professor giving a lecture. "Move. The smell of your alcohol makes me want to vomit."
"You bastard!" Zhao Lin lunged forward, trying to grab the collar of Chu Xinghe's jacket.
However, before Zhao Lin's hand could touch the fabric, Chu Xinghe had already caught the youth's wrist with an unexpected reflex. Xinghe's grip was strong and precise; he had never formally trained in martial arts, but his experience climbing mountains and exploring remote caves while following his grandfather's hobbies had forged his physique to be highly functional.
"Don't use your hands to touch me if you don't want to end up in the hospital tonight," Chu Xinghe whispered directly into Zhao Lin's ear. He released Zhao Lin's hand with a jerk that sent the youth staggering back a few steps until he hit the sink.
Zhao Lin's two friends were about to move forward, but Chu Xinghe only glanced at them with sharp eyes. "The two of you, think carefully. Is the salary from his father enough to pay for your medical bills?"
The two men hesitated. Chu Xinghe used that opening to walk past them and out of the restroom without looking back. Outside, the music was still thumping, but to Chu Xinghe, the sound now felt distant. He walked back to the VIP area, intending to pull Li Wei away. However, as he crossed the crowd, he saw Xin Yan standing near a pillar, free from the watch of Zhao Lin who was still held up in the restroom.
"Xinghe, wait!" Xin Yan called out, her voice soft but full of urgency.
Chu Xinghe stopped his steps, though he did not turn fully. "What is it? Shouldn't you be enjoying your expensive champagne?"
Xin Yan approached, her face appearing very pale under the purple neon lights. "Earlier... before you guys arrived... I overheard Zhao Lin's father on the phone. He is one of the major financiers for that space station. Something is happening up there, Xinghe. Something so big that they were ordered to immediately secure all their personal data assets. They are terrified."
Chu Xinghe narrowed his eyes. "Everyone on the internet is talking about the Artemis station anomaly, Xin Yan. That isn't new news."
"No, this is different!" Xin Yan gripped Chu Xinghe's arm, her hands trembling. "His father mentioned a coordinate on mainland China. Xinghe, I know you're obsessed with these things. Please, leave this city tonight. Go somewhere far from dense settlements."
Chu Xinghe looked at Xin Yan's hand gripping his arm, then back at the girl's eyes. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because..." Xin Yan swallowed hard, her voice catching. "Because your grandfather warned my father years ago. And now, everything is starting to make sense."
Before Chu Xinghe could ask further, a shrill scream from the dance floor below stopped everything. The EDM music that had been thumping loudly suddenly cut out completely, leaving a suffocating silence filled only by the breathing of hundreds of people.
Everyone in the nightclub froze. Not because of a fight, but because the phone in everyone's pocket in the room began to ring simultaneously—a high-pitched, piercing national emergency alert tone. Chu Xinghe took out his phone. On the screen, a short message was written in red capital letters.
[EMERGENCY ALERT: ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUESTED TO REMAIN INDOORS. ATMOSPHERIC ANOMALY DETECTED. DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SKY.]
"What the hell is this?" Li Wei appeared from behind, clutching his throbbing head. "What kind of joke is this? Are we under a nuclear attack?"
Xinghe didn't answer. He felt the pocket watch in his pocket vibrating violently now, almost as if it wanted to explode. That warmth had now turned into a heat that stung the skin of his upper thigh. At the same time, he felt the air pressure in the room rise drastically, making his ears ring painfully.
He looked toward the large glass window at the end of the VIP floor that faced the Guangzhou night sky. The clouds of pollution that were usually a dull orange from the city lights were now slowly parting, as if a giant hand were pulling back a curtain.
Chu Xinghe walked slowly toward the window, ignoring the emergency alert on his phone. He pressed his hand against the glass, which felt cold. Up there, among the stars that shouldn't have been visible, something blackish that split the earth's atmosphere began to approach with very distinct movement.
To the south of Guangzhou, the sea area leading to the South China Sea began to churn. The water in Guangzhou Harbor, usually calm, now began to crash against the pier walls with heavy thudding sounds. Giant cargo ships rocked violently, their anchor chains groaning under the pressure of a sudden, wild underwater current.
"What is this? Why is the sky like that?" Chu Xinghe muttered, staring at the approaching darkness, his eyes widening slightly. "By Li Wei's head, that isn't a crack. It's something moving."
Chu Xinghe pressed his forehead against the cold window glass. Up there, the darkness wasn't just a cloud shadow. Something massive was tearing through the stratosphere, creating friction that should have produced fire, yet all that was visible was a black aura swallowing the moonlight.
"Xinghe! Get away from the window!" Li Wei shouted from behind, his voice hoarse with fear.
Chu Xinghe did not budge. His pupils dilated as he saw the black lines that had initially seemed small now transform into terrifying shapes. From behind the shroud of the burning atmosphere emerged five giant heads with long muzzles and sharp, branching horns. They were followed by the flapping of wide wings that were not made of ordinary feathers, but like a frozen weave of black smoke.
"Dragons... and birds?" Chu Xinghe whispered. He tried to find a logical explanation. However, his sharp vision caught a more horrific detail: the chains binding them. The chains rattled; the sound wasn't audible because the room was soundproof, but the vibration traveled through the air, shaking the window glass until small cracks began to appear. Right behind those nine dead creatures, a bronze object shaped like a large furnace followed.
The object radiated an extraordinary gravitational pressure. CRACK! The first explosion did not come from the sky, but from the base of the building. The sudden change in air pressure caused the glass on the lower floors of 'The Nebula' club to shatter into pieces. The seawater in the Guangzhou Harbor just a few kilometers away suddenly rose—not as a normal tidal wave, but as a ten-meter wall of water pushed by something falling from the sky.
"Run! Get out of here!" shouted one of Zhao Lin's guards.
Mass panic broke out. People who had been dancing were now trampling over each other toward the emergency stairs. Zhao Lin himself had already run out front, leaving Xin Yan who was still frozen staring at Chu Xinghe.
"Wei, grab your bag! We have to get to the parking lot!" Chu Xinghe grabbed Li Wei's arm and pulled him by force. He glanced at Xin Yan. "Come with us if you want to survive!"
Xin Yan nodded stiffly. Her feet followed Chu Xinghe's pull. They pushed through the hundreds of panicked people, elbowing and shoving toward the emergency stairs. The club's main lights went out entirely, leaving only the blinding flash of red emergency lights. Amidst the chaos, Li Wei looked to the left. He saw a girl with shoulder-length hair in a white dress, torn at the bottom, being pushed against the wall by a group of large men.
"Xinghe! Wait!" Li Wei released his grip on Chu Xinghe's arm and pushed through the stream of people. He collided with the two large men with his shoulder, then grabbed Yun Hai's wrist roughly. "Come with me! You could get trampled to death here!"
Yun Hai didn't have time to protest. Her face was deathly pale, her breath coming in gasps. Li Wei immediately dragged her back to Chu Xinghe's side. The four of them now moved in a tight formation. Chu Xinghe was in front, using his broad shoulders to ram through an emergency door jammed by the pressure of dozens of people. Just as they descended the last steps toward the fourth-floor parking area, an indescribable sound of an explosion split the air.
It was the sound of massive physical friction between extraterrestrial matter and the earth's atmosphere hitting the sea surface. The nine giant corpses and the bronze furnace slammed into the waters of the South China Sea, just a few kilometers from the Guangzhou coastline. The shock traveled through the tectonic plates. The concrete of the parking garage cracked within seconds.
Parked cars collided with each other due to the extreme ground tremors. The alarms of dozens of vehicles went off simultaneously, creating a deafening cacophony of mechanical noise. Chu Xinghe was thrown forward, his knees hitting the hood of his own sedan. He winced in pain, but his hand quickly reached into his pocket, pulled out the keys, and opened the door.
"Get in! Everyone get in!" Chu Xinghe shouted.
Li Wei pushed Yun Hai into the back seat and followed her in. Xin Yan sat in the front passenger seat, her hands trembling violently as she tried to fasten her seatbelt. Chu Xinghe started the engine. The tires screeched loudly as he floored the gas pedal, steering the car down the parking building's spiral ramp toward the highway.
As their car burst through the already broken exit gate, the scene outside made their blood run cold. Guangzhou no longer looked like a metropolitan city. The surge of seawater pushed by the mass of the giant bronze furnace's fall had created a tsunami over thirty meters high. A wall of black water mixed with mud, asphalt, and building debris swallowed the city's coastline in one absolute sweep.
"Water! Xinghe, the water is coming!" Li Wei screamed from the back seat. Yun Hai covered her face and screamed hysterically.
Chu Xinghe spun the steering wheel sharply. His brain worked to process the remaining information. The center of the object's fall was to the south. The wave was moving north. The only way was toward the Baiyun Highlands in the northwest of the city. He floored the gas. The black sedan sped through the asphalt streets that were beginning to crack. Floodwaters up to an adult's knees had already flooded the roads.
Chu Xinghe's car plowed through the puddles, splitting the dirty brown water. Debris from billboards, fallen streetlights, and several abandoned cars became deadly obstacles. Chu Xinghe drove with total focus. His eyes stared sharply ahead, ignoring Xin Yan's screams beside him every time their car nearly hit building debris.
"We won't make it!" Xin Yan pointed toward the rearview mirror.
Chu Xinghe glanced briefly. Behind them, a secondary wave as high as a three-story building rolled forward with terrifying speed. The wave carried the remains of subway cars and tram carriages thrown onto the streets. The car engine roared as Chu Xinghe forced the transmission to its limit. The water on the street had now reached halfway up the wheels.