Tire traction began to fail. The rear of the car fishtailed several times, but Chu Xinghe held the steering wheel firm, searching for a route on slightly higher ground. However, the giant wave slammed into the back of the vehicle. The sound of the water's impact was deafening. The rear window shattered into a thousand shards. Cold, thick seawater smelling of metallic rust immediately swept through the cabin.
"Hold your breath!" Chu Xinghe shouted a second before their car was lifted entirely off the asphalt road.
The force of the water hoisted the one-and-a-half-ton sedan into the air, flipped it, and then slammed it back into the swirling flood. The car spun underwater. The ceiling buckled inward. Water filled every inch of air space within seconds. Chu Xinghe gripped the steering wheel with both hands, maintaining his position in the seat.
His lungs strained as he held his breath. His eyes opened in the murky water, trying to assess the situation. Beside him, Xin Yan struggled frantically, her hands clawing at the car roof which was now beneath them. In the back, Li Wei and Yun Hai clung to each other tightly, their bodies tossed about while held by their seatbelts. The car continued to be dragged by the torrential current. The exterior metal scraped against asphalt, building walls, and other vehicles.
The sound of tearing iron echoed through the water. Suddenly, the car struck a concrete pillar supporting an overpass. The impact severely dented the left side door. Chu Xinghe's jacket pocket was pressed against the crumpled door. The old bronze watch inside heated up again, radiating a high temperature that scorched the fabric of his jacket. But Chu Xinghe had no time to think about that. The water pressure pushed the car into another spin.
The car body rolled dozens of times following the current that swept into higher terrain. They could see nothing but the darkness of muddy water. Chu Xinghe's lungs began to burn. He saw Xin Yan starting to lose consciousness, her eyes closing as the last air bubbles escaped her mouth. Suddenly, the rush of water hit a sharp upward incline in the road.
That momentum threw Chu Xinghe's car out of the main whirlpool. The car tumbled across the wet asphalt, sliding for dozens of meters in an inverted position, creating sparks from the friction of metal and stone, before finally coming to a dead stop after hitting a concrete road barrier. Silence followed, filled only by the sound of the floodwaters rushing below and the pitter-patter of rain starting to fall.
Inside the wrecked and overturned car, Chu Xinghe coughed violently. Murky water escaped his mouth. He felt for his seatbelt, pressed the release button, and his body fell onto the roof of the car, which was now the floor. His shoulder throbbed with pain, and his temple bled warm blood that trickled into the corner of his eye.
"Wei... Xin Yan..." Chu Xinghe called out in a hoarse voice. He kicked the door beside him, which was already half-open. The hinges were broken. The door fell off. Chu Xinghe crawled out of the wreckage of his car. The cold night air immediately bit into his soaking wet skin.
He wasted no time. He reached back into the car, pulling Xin Yan's seatbelt until it snapped using a sharp shard of glass, then dragged the girl out. Xin Yan coughed hard, hacking up seawater from her lungs. She sobbed uncontrollably while clutching her chest. Chu Xinghe turned to the back door. He forced the jammed door open until the muscles in his arms strained to their limit. Li Wei and Yun Hai were still conscious, though their faces were covered in bruises. Chu Xinghe pulled them both out.
The four of them lay on the wet asphalt, trying to regain their senses and their breath. Once his breathing regulated slightly, Chu Xinghe stood up on his knees. He wiped the blood from his temple and looked around. They were in the open parking area of the Baiyun Temple, one of the highest points in the district. This plateau sat dozens of meters above the level of the normal highway. His car had been dragged to this spot by the giant wave. However, they were not the only ones there.
A few meters from Xinghe's destroyed car, dozens of luxury cars were parked, dented here and there. Hundreds of people who had managed to escape earlier were gathered; some were crying, others stood frozen with blank stares toward the bottom of the hill. Among the crowd, Chu Xinghe saw Zhao Lin. The youth stood near a white SUV with a crumpled hood. His expensive shirt was torn and dirty. Around him, several of his personal guards stood watch with tense faces. Zhao Lin turned, his eyes widening as he saw Chu Xinghe, Xin Yan, Li Wei, and Yun Hai walking limping toward them.
"You..." Zhao Lin's voice trembled. He pointed at Chu Xinghe. "Your car was swept away by that wave and you're still alive?"
Chu Xinghe ignored Zhao Lin. He walked past the youth, approaching the perimeter fence of the highlands that overlooked the city of Guangzhou. Li Wei, Xin Yan, and Yun Hai followed behind him, their steps heavy and dragging. Reaching the fence, Chu Xinghe stared down. The logical understanding and historical knowledge he had gathered over the years in his grandfather's library instantly crumbled into dust.
Guangzhou had drowned. The remaining skyscrapers were visible only halfway up their structures, surrounded by dark, churning seawater. The concrete jungle had turned into a dead sea. At the edge of the coastal horizon, far through the pitch-black storm clouds, a sight that defied all laws of the universe was clearly presented. Nine giant corpses—five dragons and four birds—floated stiffly above the boiling sea surface.
Their black scales and dead feathers reflected the lightning that flashed from the sky. And behind them, connected by black iron chains as thick as a highway, the ancient bronze furnace stood tall, towering through the clouds. The carvings of the sun, moon, and stars on the surface of the furnace now glowed with a blood-red light, illuminating the dark ocean with an intense aura of destruction.
Gravity around the furnace appeared broken. The seawater beneath it was pulled upward, forming pillars of water that floated against the earth's pull, swirling around the legs of the bronze furnace. Chu Xinghe gripped the iron fence until his knuckles turned white. His eyes did not blink as he stared at the massive object. It made no sense. Not a single book he had read in his grandfather's library held a theory to explain this.
"What is that, Xinghe..." Li Wei's voice trembled beside him. The chubby youth collapsed onto the asphalt, no longer able to support his own weight. "The world... is it over?"
Behind them, Zhao Lin backed away slowly, his face filled with absolute terror. "The military... where is the military? Why didn't the air defense missiles destroy it when it fell?"
Chu Xinghe did not answer Zhao Lin's question. His eyes were still fixed on the pillars of water floating around the bronze furnace. He tried to search for a comparison in his memory—perhaps a massive magnetic anomaly or an unidentified extreme weather phenomenon—but there was nothing. What was before him was a physical impossibility forced into reality. The sound of hurried footsteps on gravel broke the chilling silence of the parking area.
From the row of cars parked on the west side, three people ran toward them. They were part of the same group from 'The Nebula' nightclub, but they had managed to get out earlier in their respective sports cars. Two women—one wearing a black leather jacket and breathing heavily named Fang Hua, and beside her Lin Mei, who still held her phone with trembling hands. Behind them, an athletic man with a crew cut named Han Dong, a member of the school's track team, looked deathly pale.
"Xinghe! Wei! You guys made it?" Fang Hua cried out, her voice shrill with panic. She stopped beside Li Wei, who was still sitting on the ground. "We saw your car get hit by the wave at the intersection. We thought... we thought you were gone."
Han Dong stood by the fence, his eyes following Chu Xinghe's gaze. He immediately clutched his head with both hands. "God... what on earth is that? That's not an asteroid. That thing has legs! That thing has chains!"
Lin Mei pointed her phone toward the sea, trying to record a video, but the screen only displayed chaotic static lines. "My phone isn't working! The camera, the signal, everything went totally dead the moment that thing touched the water. Xinghe, you read all those weird history books, tell me this is just some kind of military holographic projection or something, right?"
Chu Xinghe turned his head slightly, looking at Lin Mei with cold eyes. "Holograms don't create tsunamis that drown half of Guangzhou, Lin Mei. Holograms don't warp gravity until seawater floats into the sky."
"But those are dragons!" Han Dong screamed, his voice breaking. "Dragons are myths! Fiction! And those... those giant birds... their size is impossible! How could they float in space and then fall to earth without being incinerated by the atmosphere?"
Zhao Lin, who had been terrified, now approached again with a forced expression of skepticism. "Han Dong is right. This must be some kind of secret weapon. Maybe America or Russia. They used bio-engineering to create those monsters to make us panic. Yes, that makes sense! It's definitely a giant biological weapon coated in metal!"
"Biological weapons don't bring a bronze furnace the size of a skyscraper from outer space, Zhao Lin," Xin Yan interrupted with a trembling voice. She stood beside Xinghe, hugging her shivering body. "Did you hear what I said earlier? This isn't man-made. Your father was terrified. The people at the Artemis station were terrified. They saw those corpses floating in the depths of the cosmos long before they arrived here."
"Don't be ridiculous, Xin Yan!" Zhao Lin snapped, his voice rising to cover his fear. "You believe in ancient superstitions now? Dragons? Phoenixes? Those are just pictures in old, decaying temples! Scientifically, creatures like that couldn't possibly fly, let alone live in a vacuum. This must be some kind of mechanical technology wrapped in the guise of monsters to break our morale!"
Lin Mei nodded quickly, trying to grasp onto her rationality. "Right. Maybe it's a giant drone. A material transport vessel from another planet that failed to land. That furnace... maybe it's an ancient nuclear reactor or an energy storage container. Yes, it must be an alien energy vessel!"
Li Wei looked up from the ground, staring at his friends one by one. "Nuclear reactors aren't decorated with carvings of the sun and moon that glow blood-red, Mei. And look at the chains... the chains bind them. It's as if they are livestock forced to pull that weight even though they are dead."
"Dead?" Fang Hua swallowed hard. "You mean, those things are corpses? Corpses pulling a carriage?"
"It is a funerary procession," Chu Xinghe said suddenly. His voice was low, but for some reason, it made everyone there fall silent instantly.
Xinghe looked at the bronze furnace once more. His memory flashed back to one of the forbidden scrolls he had seen in his grandfather's library—a text he had considered an overly dramatic poem of death at the time. "In ancient records not recognized by modern history, there is a concept of the 'Eternal Journey.' Nine celestial figures dragging the furnace of life across the river of time to find a final resting place. I always thought it was just a metaphor for constellations."
"Eternal Journey? What do you mean?" Han Dong asked, his face full of disbelief. "You're saying those corpses are on a journey?"
"It's not the corpses that are journeying, but what is inside that furnace," Xinghe replied. He pointed toward the floating pillars of water. "Look at how the water is swirling. It didn't just fall here by accident. It chose this place."
"Oh, come on, Xinghe!" Zhao Lin laughed bitterly, his voice sounding hysterical. "You're starting to babble about essence and celestial journeys? It's 2026! We have satellites, we have lasers, we have knowledge of atoms! Are you trying to say these nine dragon carcasses are smarter than all our scientists?"
"I didn't say they were smart," Chu Xinghe replied flatly. "I said they are here, and your laws of physics cannot explain their existence. If you have a scientific explanation for why gravity is gone at that point, feel free to speak. If not, be quiet."
Zhao Lin was silenced, his face hardening with embarrassment and anger.
"Xinghe, if it really is a funerary furnace or whatever you call it..." Lin Mei spoke in a pleading tone. "Why are they here? Why Earth? And why now?"
Chu Xinghe was silent for a moment. The heat in his pocket had not faded. "I don't know, Mei. I don't have the answer either."
"We have to get out of here," Han Dong said, starting to panic again as he saw the seawater beginning to overflow higher toward the hill. "If a follow-up tsunami comes, this place won't be high enough. We have to go inland, toward the north, as far as possible from the sea!"
"To where?" Fang Hua asked. "The entire communication network is down. The highways must be completely jammed by panicked people. Our cars don't even have enough gas to get out of the province!"
"We have the cars here!" Zhao Lin pointed toward his white SUV. "We gather everyone who has a vehicle and form a convoy. My father has a bunker on the outskirts of the city. We can go there!"
"Your father's bunker won't be useful if this world truly changes, Zhao Lin," Chu Xinghe replied. "We can only wait for the water to recede and see what is out there."