Tap, tap, tap'
In the brightly lit basement, inside clean and odorless cells, a group of humans were confined, their complexions still relatively healthy.
Clean clothes, healthy skin tones; if not for the panic in every pair of eyes, it would have been impossible to tell that this group of people had already been imprisoned for four days and nights.
When footsteps echoed through the basement, the group reacted instantly. Although they had already realized the nature of their predicament after the great change, fear still seized them as if a predator had drawn near. Like mice sensing a cat, they scrambled toward the farthest corner from the cell entrance, huddling together like a flock of quails.
Reason told them the cell was only so large, that there was nowhere left to hide, yet instinct still drove them to cluster together, trembling, stubbornly believing that togetherness could somehow bolster their courage.
Li Xi relied on his youth and strength to force his way inward, pushing the frail women aside and claiming the innermost corner for himself. He squatted low, using other people to shield his body, completely disregarding the fact that this behavior would push those women closer to death.
As the footsteps drew nearer, everyone trembled and stared toward the source of the sound with terror, as though it were the summons of the Grim Reaper or the stroke of the King of Hell's judgment brush. They were clearly no strangers to these footsteps.
Listening intently, Li Xi tightened his thick, well-trained arms around the two women in front of him, pulling them closer and closer, as if bundling winter clothes to ward off a biting wind. He lowered his head resolutely, praying that the newcomer would not notice him, his posture both humble and shameless.
If this were still Earth, Li Xi would never have acted this way. Hiding behind women—using them as shields—was something any man would be nailed to the pillar of shame for, mocked and despised for generations.
But now, he was no longer on Earth.
The moral codes and values he once believed in were no longer suited to the present world.
'Tap, tap, tap'
The sound of footsteps struck like drumbeats against the heart, each step making the people in the cell shudder.
Finally, the footsteps stopped outside the cell. Li Xi kept his head lowered, eyes tightly shut, listening intently to the sounds beyond the bars. At that moment, those sounds filled his entire world with fear and awe.
With more than a dozen people huddled together and trembling, Li Xi was suddenly reminded of newly hatched chicks. When humans approached, they too would huddle in a corner—the strongest pressing inward while the weakest were forced to the outside.
There were no announcements. Only a few mocking laughs, followed by desperate pleas for mercy and curses born from extreme fear.
"Please… let me go. I'll do anything…"
"You— I—"
Li Xi clutched the clothes of the two women in front of him even more tightly, frantically trying to shield himself. He had already grasped the pattern: the footsteps came every day, and each time, only three to five people would be taken away.
As long as today's victims were chosen, the rest could live one more day.
Only twelve people remained in the cell. Even with the best luck, they could survive for no more than three or four days. Still, the instinct for survival drove Li Xi to want to be the very last one alive.
"I can't die. I still have to find my family… and her. I can't die. Absolutely not."
Relying on this kind of self-brainwashing, Li Xi once again rationalized his despicable actions, convincing himself that looking out for oneself was only natural. If a person didn't protect themselves, heaven and earth would destroy them.
Besides, no one in the cell knew anyone else. If he survived to the end through his own abilities, who could say otherwise?
As the curses faded into the distance and the sound of the basement door closing echoed through the space, everyone knew they had earned another day of life.
In the now much more spacious cell, no one spoke. The feeling of being one big family had long since disappeared.
The grand words about surviving together and rebuilding Earth's civilization had vanished without a trace. Now, those still alive were enemies—people whose existence directly affected whether one could live another day.
Li Xi occupied the innermost position, a spot that offered the highest chance of escaping the notice of that terrifying life form.
But the Grim Reaper-like footsteps were not his only concern. He also had to remain wary of the others in the cell, for this position represented survival.
Li Xi could barely remember how many people he had punched away to defend it, whether they were men, women, or even children.
He had already accepted reality. This was no longer a peaceful country or a peaceful society. Remembering everything he had seen and experienced, Li Xi felt his mind teetering on the brink of collapse. His body shook uncontrollably from instinctive fear, his teeth chattering like a woodpecker pecking at rotten wood.
It had once been a lovely afternoon, no different from any other. Li Xi had just closed a two-million deal that would earn him at least fifty thousand.
As he thought about how to reward himself, he looked up and saw the azure sky—like shattered tempered glass—densely covered in cracks.
To the vast sky, they were only cracks, but to humanity, they revealed the boundless Universe beyond with the naked eye.
It was no beautiful spectacle, no once-in-a-millennium cosmic wonder, but the sky being torn apart.
Like dough kneaded by unseen hands, the sky was twisted into impossible shapes by an unimaginable force.
The changes did not stop there. The earth, which had supported countless lives, suddenly revealed its most violent side. Cracks several kilometers wide and bottomlessly deep tore open, as if the Earth God had opened a giant mouth, swallowing half a city in an instant.
People fell. Buildings followed. Even reinforced concrete vanished into the abyss without a sound.
Li Xi personally witnessed the client he had just sent off—driving a luxury car worth tens of millions—plunge headfirst into the earth along one of those cracks.
The fifty thousand commission disappeared with him.
Li Xi wanted to run, but his legs felt welded to the ground. No matter how his mind screamed and cursed, his body remained stiff and immobile.
This was extreme fear.
He remembered documentaries claiming that small animals could not move when facing top-of-the-food-chain hunters. He had never believed it.
Now, he did.
Before the ground finished tearing itself apart, a hundred-story landmark building was thrust skyward by a mountain rising from underground, ascending faster than a rocket launch.
Countless black dots fell from the sky. Li Xi knew they were people.
The mountain range—the so-called backbone of the world—was completed in an instant, something that should have taken millions of years.
Groundwater surged, water veins transforming into violent waves that swept across the land. Staring at the churning waters, Li Xi even thought, absurdly, that a brand-new freshwater lake might someday form here.
Nature's craftsmanship was uncanny. In just a moment, who knew how many lives had been lost? Humanity's power was laughable before forces capable of destroying the Earth itself.
No one could survive this city.
Surviving the next second was already a miracle.
Li Xi gave up on running. Faced with earthquakes, floods, and disasters beyond anything in human history, escape was impossible.
The cracked sky seemed to let out a wail that echoed throughout the Universe, its final resistance before destruction.
Boom.
A roar echoed across the entire Earth. The shattered sky flew apart into outer space without leaving a final message.
The atmosphere that had protected the planet for billions of years vanished, replaced by a black void directly facing the Universe.
Cosmic rays. Suffocation. Death.
But at that moment, no one had the luxury to care. There were already too many disasters.
Li Xi found a kitchen knife, preparing to end his life. If he had to die, he wanted the least painful way.
The blade hovered a millimeter from his artery when countless white beams of light suddenly shot down from the hole in the sky. Li Xi was instantly enveloped.
In that moment, the external chaos vanished. Storms, radiation, and devastation were sealed outside. Even the thinning oxygen became abundant once more.
Facing a world-ending disaster, he had survived.
Li Xi watched as the beams of light struck every living thing—humans, animals, plants alike. Even in the city he had already declared dead, countless beams descended, and figures beneath the ruins slowly ascended.
Earthquakes, floods, fires, cosmic rays—none could harm life beneath the white light.
With the apocalypse as its backdrop, billions were saved.
It was as if a miracle had appeared, divine radiance shining upon the world.
Li Xi stood there, trembling.
"I survived."