The dog days at Sentinel Ridge are always so hot, and the combination of hot weather and humidity in the mountains seems to turn even the air into a sticky and invisible mire.

On a mass grave in the back mountain.

Chen Jing hesitantly held a hoe, looking at the name of his grandfather "Chen Bofu" on the white marble tombstone in front of him, his expression was full of hesitation.

What he hesitated was......

Do you want to dig up his grave according to your grandfather's instructions?

Two days ago.

Chen Jing, who was working in the provincial capital, received a call from his grandfather, and before that, the two of them had not been in touch for a long time.

On the phone, the old man's voice sounded very unfamiliar.

There is also a slight sound of electricity with a bad signal in the stiffness.

"-Back [*Signal noise]-"

"-Go to the east of the back mountain [*signal murmur] and dig up my grave--I left something for you-"

"-Take-take-and [*Worsening cacophony]-"

The phone was cut off at this point, and Chen Jing was confused.

Chen Jing knows very well what kind of person his grandfather is.

Old-fashioned and serious.

Stiff and cold.

It's like a piece of rusty iron.

The old man is not the kind of person who can joke, not to mention that Chen Jing has never seen him laugh since he was a child.

Could it be that you are talking nonsense when you are old and your brain is not clear?

Nor should it be.

Chen Jing knew how tough the old man's body was.

It is no exaggeration to say that in Chen Jing's memory, the old man has never been sick, let alone Alzheimer's disease.

So after Chen Jing received that phone call, he immediately bought a ticket back.

"What the hell is going on...... How did you suddenly die......"

Chen Jing looked at the name on the tombstone with a complicated expression, and his heart was a little sad at the same time.

Chen Jing's parents left before he was a full moon.

The only two relatives he remembers are his grandparents.

But grandpa is like a transparent person in Chen Jing's life, he has never cared about him since he was a child, and it is not too much to say that he is the most familiar stranger.

Chen Jing has only felt the warmth of his family in his grandmother.

So after his grandmother died, he left Sentinel Ridge and only came back to see the old man during the New Year's holidays.

"How much do you hate my grandma...... Obviously, they all bought a place for joint burial in the cemetery...... I didn't expect you to die and didn't want to go over......"

Thinking of the past, the expression on Chen Jing's face became more and more complicated.

He hesitated, knelt down again and kowtowed three times, and then went around the side of the grave with his hoe.

Chen Jing finally decided to complete the old man's entrustment, and Mu Zujin shaved a hoe and planed it down......

"Bang!"

Every time he dug the grave, Chen Jing used ten percent of his strength.

Every time he swung his hoe, his eyes turned red.

Until finally the blackened urn was dug out.

Chen Jingtong's red eyes were already full of tears, but he didn't make a sound in his mouth.

He knows.

From now on, he will have no relatives in this world.

"It's good enough to leave me something in the tomb...... It won't be the title deed of the old house......"

The urn of the elderly is different from the common urn.

The style seems to have been chosen by himself.

The kind of cold and black box without any pattern is simply the same as the old man's temperament.

Chen Jing suspected that the box was the same as the old man.

It's all made of iron.

On the box is a piece of letter paper cut into a square, with seven large characters written on the surface of the knife.

"Stuff inside, open."

Chen Jingneng recognized that it was his grandfather's handwriting, so he just hesitated for a moment, and finally opened the urn with bated breath......

The next second.

Chen Jing was stunned.

Because there were no ashes in the box that he imagined.

There is only one key.

A note.

and an old DV camcorder.

There was only one sentence on the note.

The handwriting was hurried.

Even the last word was not written, Chen Jing guessed it.

"Remember to watch the video in the DV!"

At this moment, Chen Jing suddenly had the feeling of playing a reasoning game, and the urn did not contain ashes but contained these things......

Isn't the old man dead??

Thinking of this, the sadness in Chen Jing's eyes was instantly swept away.

"What the hell is the old man doing...... Chen Jing muttered, picking up the camera from the tin box with a puzzled expression.

Let me remember to watch the video in the DV?

Chen Jing looked at the DV in his hand.

In his memory.

The camera has never been seen in his own home.

But this machine is obviously not new, even if the old man just bought it, it is estimated that it is second-hand, and even the LOGO stickers on it are blurry and white, and I can only barely recognize the trademark of "Lao Suojia".

"Buy second-hand goods and buy brands...... Old man, this is to recharge your faith......"

Chen Jing carefully checked the DV, fortunately, the operation of this kind of machine, which was almost ten years behind, was not complicated, and he began to rummage through the videos stored in the DV after a simple start.

There is only one video stored in this camera.

After clicking Play.

The picture appears on the flip display.

It should have been taken by the old man in his study.

Due to the age of the camera, the shooting pixels are not very clear, so the whole video looks blurry, which is basically a war-damaged image quality.

"By the time you saw this video, I should have disappeared."

The thin old man sat at the desk in a knitted jacket, his cold and stiff expression was as always, as if the whole person was made of pig iron, and his dry and hoarse voice could not hear any emotional component.

"I know you have a lot of questions, but I don't have much time, so I don't have time to explain to you, listen carefully to every word I say......"

Chen Jing stood next to the grave bag with a video camera, frowning as he watched the footage playing in the video.

He didn't understand what the old man was trying to do, and what the phrase "I should have disappeared" meant.

Is it missing?

Still is......

"Human civilization has come to an end...... The end is coming......"

Hearing the old man's words, Chen Jing, who was holding the camera, couldn't help but be stunned, and the worry in his heart was diluted by this whimsical sentence.

It seems that the old man is crazy.

It's not light.

"You old madman...... How many years have passed since 2012......"

Chen Jing couldn't help sighing, looking at the grave bag that had been cut open by himself on the ground, he was even more helpless.

"Did you trick me back just to coss the Mayans into prophecy......

"I didn't lie to you."

The old man in the video seemed to hear Chen Jing's words, and there was a trace of anxiety in his cold eyes.

"Before returning home...... Right! It's 72 years! That year, I was hired by the 'Wood Private Consortium' with my colleagues to go on an expedition to Antarctica, and that's what I found on the ancient monument I found in Antarctica! ”

In 1972?

Chen Jing couldn't help but be stunned for a moment, because he remembered that his grandmother had said that the old man used to be a high-achieving student who stayed abroad, and after returning from the other side of the ocean in 1973, he met her because of an accident......

Before 1973, the old man had been living on the other side of the ocean.

He seems to be a professor of archaeology at a university.

As for which university it was, my grandmother didn't say it clearly, and the old man himself couldn't say it...... But it is undeniable that Chen Jing had never believed these words before.

He really couldn't imagine it.

An old man living in a village at the junction of Sichuan and Guizhou used to be a university professor on the other side of the ocean...... Is this possible?

"No one but me knew about the existence of that stele, so I secretly brought it back, and it seemed to have a magical power that kept bewitching me and making me keep deciphering its contents......"

"I'm being eroded by the above ......"

Suddenly, two voices rang out in the video.

One is grandpa's.

The other one, too, is grandpa's.

Chen Jing thought that this was a problem with video recording, and it was normal for the old machine to freeze, but the grandfather in the video had already begun to pound the desk hysterically.

"Shut up!"

"Eroded...... I...... All of them...... will all die ......"

The old man in the video was holding the white hair on his head, and for the first time, an expression other than expressionlessness appeared on his stiff and cold face.

That's pain.

"I'm running out of time!"

The old man stared at the camera hysterically, the whites of his yellowed and cloudy eyes were covered with bloodshots, and that kind of crazy look made Chen Jing shudder a little.

"I've finished deciphering that stele! So I woke up! I'm not crazy anymore! I know I'm sorry for you and your grandma all these years! ”

"So I'm going to save you! I have to save you! ”

If the old man's words and deeds before were crazy in Chen Jing's eyes, then these words at this moment made Chen Jing suddenly feel a feeling.

Maybe he's telling the truth?

Could it be that he has been in the study like a madman all these years and has not come out, not caring about this family, even if his grandmother is dead, he has never shed tears...... Is it because he's been going crazy before?

"Listen carefully to what is next! I can say as much as I can! ”

"Every civilization develops to a stage, it will be pulled into a biological leap exam, and if you fail the exam, you will erase the traces of the existence of the civilization, and the previous civilization will perish in this way, so ......"

At this moment, the video began to tremble violently.

It's like a TV picture with an affected signal.

A large area of snowflake screen appeared.

Even the old man's voice became choppy, mixed with a harsh and muffled murmur of electricity.

"The machine doesn't bounce [*signal noise]—hot[*signal noise]—I know it's [*signal noise] intervening—[*signal noise] is eyeing me—"

"The tin box is for [*signal murmur]—the thing is taken away—the box is buried back [*signal murmur]—or [*signal murmur] will find you-"

"We've made a deal - I've finally helped you get [*Signal Noise] - to buy you some time to deal with the last [*Signal Noise]-"

"[*Signal Noise]—[*Signal Noise]—"

With the long murmur of electricity, the image and voice of the old man have completely disappeared from the display, and the picture has been distorted into strobeling lines and snowflakes.

"What the hell is going on......" Chen Jing's forehead was covered with cold sweat.

Although he didn't know what the old man meant by these words, and even the "doomsday theory" he couldn't believe it was true, the old man's paranoid and crazy behavior really frightened him.

But at this moment, the picture flickered violently a few times, and suddenly returned to normal without warning.

The image of the old man is incomparably clear, even too clear for this old machine......

It's as real as looking in a mirror.

Unlike the previous crazy appearance, the old man in the picture is very calm, with a smile on his face.

To be honest, Chen Jing is really a little scared now.

Because he had never seen an old man laugh.

The old man even wore a face in some old photographs full of memories.

"I'll take you there now."

"Where are you taking me?"

Chen Jing subconsciously asked, and then couldn't help but be stunned for a moment, only to feel that he was stupid to talk to the video.

But in the next second, he knew that he was not stupid.

"Go where you need to go,"

The old man in the video seemed to be able to see Chen Jing and hear what he said, and after giving an answer, the old man raised his hand and reached out to the camera.

At this moment, Chen Jing was still immersed in the question of "is it a coincidence or haunted", and when he reacted, a pair of pale and shriveled hands had already stretched out from the display screen......

After the pale hands underwent a violent deformation from thin to thick, Chen Jing choked his neck before he could throw away the camera in fright.

Then he jerked in the direction of the display.

In an instant.

Chen Jing disappeared.

The camera fell to the ground for a moment, and the display flashed twice before going off.

Right at the moment when the screen went black.

An old sigh came from the camera's speaker.

It's a pity that Chen Jing never had a chance to hear it again.

"Jingjing...... Don't blame me......"