April 1. Sunday. Night, 23:20.

The three white candles on the candlestick have been burned in half, and the tears that are slowly flowing down have cooled and condensed.

From time to time, a cold wind blew from the depths of the black atrium, the candlelight continued to tremble and sway in the faint wind, and the shadows on the wall behind it were suddenly clear, blurred, and hysterical.

Yoko Tamada hugged her sleeping son tightly and stared at the three-o'clock candle flame with her eyes in a daze, imagining that her face was also shrouded in candlelight, emitting a warm reflection like animal fat—this was not an imagination.

She imagined her pale cheeks, red from the dark light of a winter morning. Digging out of the thick quilt and looking out the window, the misty skyline, lit up with some kind of strange light of extreme beauty—I will never forget that moment until I die.

That year, she was thirteen years old.

After the silence of the morning, the tatami mats under her shook violently, and half a minute later her house was in ruins.

She regained consciousness in the rubble, glad she was still crawling. A beam rested overhead, shielding her from the deadly wood, stone, and bricks. In the bitterly cold air, she faced the gray sky and climbed to the edge of a collapsing wall. She saw the flesh-and-blood body of a woman, and a man buried in the rubble. Tears blurred his eyes, and his parched throat couldn't make a sound. She struggled to reach out a hand through the large pile of scattered books and grab Daddy's still moving fingers.

I remember my dad looking at her eyes for a few seconds and then becoming cloudy and dim. She couldn't hold her dad who was crushed under the rubble. When she heard the screams of the search and rescue personnel, she wanted to climb out of this grave, but found that her right hand had been firmly clenched by her dead father, and she couldn't move no matter what, and a few crooked fingers were as hard as steel, and she was reluctant to let go of her daughter.

She knew it wasn't imagination either.

Seventeen years later.

Yoko Tamada spread out her right hand, and her palm glowed dazzlingly white in the candlelight—just now, in order to help the young Chinese, her soft and slender hand actually broke two dead fingers......

Suddenly, a blinding light flashed overhead, and she subconsciously closed her eyes while not forgetting to block Shota's face. The light flickered a few times, making a serpentine "sizzling" sound, followed by a "bang" sound. Then, the atrium of the entire Future Dream Building is lit up with various lights, including the corridors upstairs.

Shrouded in darkness for an hour, it was so bright in front of me compared to the faint candlelight just now, like day falling into the night.

Who saved the planet?

Cheers and cheers rang from all corners of the mall's ground floor, as if the dead had been resurrected and armoured rescuers were about to fall from the sky.

Shota opened his eyes, and Yoko Tamada hugged him tighter, afraid that this sudden light, as long as it was a few degrees brighter, would make him disappear. She didn't notice that the lights weren't as bright now as they were before the disaster struck. The brightest rows of lights were not turned on, and almost a third of the lights were on, evenly distributed throughout the mall, and it felt like the power had been restored, due to the fact that the eyeballs had been in the dark for too long. Lights illuminate the expansive mall's atrium, where dozens of corpses lie in the horrific rubble. Yoko Tamada seemed to have become numb to death, and just blindfolded her son to prevent him from seeing this scene.

The circuit is not very stable, and the light of several lamps still beats from time to time, each time it is bright and dark, like opening a revolving door.

Some living people emerge from the base of the wall, and the light illuminates the terrified faces of the rest of the catastrophe, like walking corpses emerging from the ruins of a nuclear bombing. Yoko Tamada saw Tao Ye's face, a Chinese man a few years younger than herself, wearing a tattered and dirty supermarket overalls, with several survivors behind him. He shouted, "Hey! Is anyone still alive? Everyone is ready to come out! ”

More people crawled out of the shadows, some weeping and trembling, some hugging each other, some red with blood, and some crawling on the ground, fearing serious injuries or broken bones.

Yoko Tamada roughly counted, there were about thirty survivors in total, including those lying on the ground who were not dead, and it seemed that the situation was not as bad as imagined. In addition to Tao Ye, she also recognized a person, the famous Professor Wu who is often seen on TV and in commercials, and his name and photo have recently appeared on the front pages of major Japanese newspapers, and many Japanese who believe in the end of the world worship him fiercely.

The professor was followed by several unfamiliar faces—young women wrapped in cloaks, her hair and face covered in dust, but her eyebrows and eyes were beautiful. A man in his twenties in a security uniform knew at first glance that he had come from the countryside to work in the city. He supported a female cleaner who looked injured, a typical middle-aged Chinese woman, with vicissitudes and hardships written on her face. Also injured was a man with a tag, about the same age as Yoko Tamada, who looked like a white-collar worker in terms of his temperament, with bandages wrapped around his arms.

In the distance, a young man and a woman were present. The boy's long thin hair covers his eyes, which has the feeling of a beautiful boy in a Japanese drama, and the girl follows closely on the left and right, like a match between Fujii and Fujii. It's just that when the boys wanted to get close to the group of Tao Ye and the professor, the girls frowned and stood still. Still want to be alone with guys? The grim young man stopped moving a single step forward, and his gaze crossed the pile of dead people whose bones were still cold, and collided with Yoko Tamada's sight.

She is good at observing and analyzing everyone in front of her, which she learned from her father since she was a child, and she also has a pair of eyes that are sometimes drunk and sometimes cold.

Yoko Tamada subconsciously lowered her head, her chin resting on her seven-year-old son's forehead, no longer looking at the young boy and girl.

People in the mall gathered here from all directions, probably seeing Tao Ye's backpack the largest, and holding bandages for bandaging in his hands, suspecting that he was the rescuer sent from above.

Tao Ye waved at Yoko and Shota, who thought he would walk quickly, but instead he half-crouched down and clumsily bandaged the wound of a badly injured man by the wall.

At some point, the candle flame quietly went out.

In the bright light, she thought of the candlelight dancing in the darkness, and the shadow cast on her face.

Most of the survivors recognized Professor Wu and gathered around him and Tao Ye crying and fussing. Some of them are loyal readers of Professor Wu and believe in the apocalypse, and such a catastrophe confirms his prediction. Some people bow their heads in despair and sigh, thinking that there is no hope of escape. But most people are full of desire to survive, and want to ask Professor Wu about the possibility of a glimmer of life, even if it is just self-comforting.

"Professor, tell me quickly! How can I escape? ”

"I don't know." Professor Wu sighed helplessly, he was no longer as personable and eloquent as he was on TV, but kept his head down, not daring to face the fact that his prediction had come true.

"Professor, don't hide it, I know you must have an escape trick, but I don't want to tell everyone about it, because only one or two people can escape, right?" The young man who asked him was slender and fair-skinned, wearing a tight-fitting casual suit, although it was so dirty that he couldn't see the color, but judging from the cut and workmanship, it should be genuine Dior men's clothing. On his wrist was a watch that was still intact, and it was certainly a Swiss Patek Philippe – although there were many copycat luxury goods in China, Yoko Tamada had a precise eye for the Dior and Patek Philippe, both of which were genuine. She remembered her boyfriend in college and her later husband, who was also a thin boy wearing Dior and a Patek Philippe, because his father was the president of a large trading company. The young man in front of him is China's so-called "rich second generation".

"You're overestimating me." The professor smiled wryly.

The young rich second generation whispered to him, and the people around him looked at him angrily, but they couldn't hear what he said. In fact, what he said was not a secret: "Professor Wu, as long as you tell me how to escape, I can give you a lot of money." Million? Dollar? 100 million? My dad can give you half of his shares in the public company! ”

Professor Wu shook his head, and there was a chorus of boos all around. The young man in Dior looked back and shouted, "Get out of here!" ”

His domineering outrage angered all the survivors, and several hands reached out at the same time, as if they were going to beat him up. How could his thin figure be the opponent of these fighters who were holding back their bellies?

Tao Ye jumped up from the ground, stopped in front of the rich second generation, and shouted loudly: "You better use the strength of the fight to escape!" ”

As soon as the words fell, a loud voice came from upstairs: "Hey! Someone has found a way out on the top floor! ”

Everyone looked up excitedly. On the side of the railing of the atrium on the third floor, there is a man in work clothes, who at first glance is the property staff of the Future Dream Building. He waved his hand upwards, then turned and disappeared.

Everyone was silent for a few seconds, and then rushed to the escape passage as if a small universe had exploded. This time they didn't run down, but towards the top of the nineteenth floor.

Now that power has been restored to the building, rescuers will surely arrive soon. The collapse of the exit from the ground floor just now shows that the building is indeed buried in the ground. But the top floor may still be above ground, and that's where it's easiest to be rescued and the easiest to escape. Maybe all the surviving building workers have rushed to the top floor to escape, leaving these fools still waiting to die on the ground floor - didn't they all trample on each other?

In the blink of an eye, most of the people with nimble legs had rushed upstairs.

Professor Wu remained in place, the rich second generation was also shocked, and the security guard wanted to run but had to support the female cleaner, but he didn't run a few steps far, and the injured white-collar worker only ran to the staircase with his arm covered.

As for Tao Ye, he walked up to Yoko Tamada, stretched out his hand to her, and said, "Come with me." ”

She reached out and took the young man's palm, pulled up by his strong arm.

Still blindfolded, she held him in her arms and struggled to walk up the stairs. Alone with her children all year round, Yoko Tamada's endurance has also become amazing, and she walked two flights of stairs with her seven-year-old son in her arms before she was a little out of breath. Tao Ye took Zhengtai from her.

Two people holding the child can't run fast. In front is an injured white-collar worker, and in the back is a security guard supporting a female cleaner. As for the young woman wrapped in a cloak, she seemed to be deliberately left behind, looking around in fear, not knowing what she had been frightened about. In the end, it was the rich second generation who took it one step at a time, probably because he was afraid that he would be beaten down by that group of angry people after escaping. The professor didn't know where he had gone, let alone the mysterious boy and girl.

While everyone else rushed to the top of the dozen floors, the gang dragged mud and water only to the seventh floor. The building shook again, and everyone habitually fell to the ground, or squatted down with their heads in the nearest wall, and all of them became masters of earthquake escape.

The shaking lasted less than two seconds.

"Wait!" Yoko Tamada, who has personally experienced two major earthquakes, speaks a fluent Chinese sentence. She took Zhengtai from Tao Ye's hand. There is an outdoor shop on the seventh floor, and the window panes are mostly broken. She walked into the store with her son in her arms, walked around the dust, and found something that resembled a watch, no strap, just a dashboard, among a pile of tents, sleeping bags and trekking poles.

"What are you doing?" Tao Ye followed up and asked.

She replied softly, "This outdoor store has a lot of things we need most." ”

"Aren't you going to get out soon? Why do you want this? "It was a young woman wrapped in a woollen cloak who happened to be stepping on top of a tent.

Yoko Tamada doesn't want to argue, she is Japanese after all, and no matter how good she speaks Chinese, she can't speak Chinese. She handed her son into Tao Ye's hand, lowered her head and adjusted the watch-like thing, which soon showed the result. She froze, and the instrument in her hand fell to the ground.

"What's wrong?" Tao Ye helped her pick it up. Fortunately, the "watch" was sturdy and did not appear to have been damaged at all.

She bowed and apologized for her gaffe: "I'm sorry. He looked at the "watch" carefully, and finally gave up completely, frowned and said, "We, now, are one hundred and fifty meters from the ground!" ”

"What?" The security guards, the female cleaners, the injured white-collar workers, and the cloaked girl uttered the words almost in unison.

"Let me see!" The rich second generation wearing Dior squeezed over, "Ah! I know this thing, an altimeter that is commonly used when climbing mountains, and I used this last year on the Alps to accurately measure altitude. Now, this altimeter shows - no, it can't be, what's going on? ”

Unfortunately, he was not mistaken.

The altitudes show - 150 meters.

This is the exact altitude at which they are currently located, one hundred and fifty meters below sea level!

Given that the city is located on the eastern coast of China, the Future Dream Tower is only three or four meters above sea level. And this is the seventh floor of the building, a total of nineteen floors of buildings, and the upper twelve floors, even if each floor is four meters high, it cannot be more than fifty meters, which means that the entire Future Dream Mansion has sunk deep into the ground, buried deeper than the tomb.

Assuming that the overall structure of the building has not been damaged, the roof of the building is at least 100 meters above the ground at this moment.