Tang Ye did not linger for too long on the rooftop. After seeing that most of the people below had left, he directly jumped down from the other side to a deserted spot and then headed towards the Xiangyi Hotel.
He swiftly erged from the deserted alley and faced the direction of the Xiangyi Hotel. It didn’t take long before Tang Ye arrived at the hotel. He stood at the entrance, his gaze shifted towards the reception hall. Inside, everything seed ordinary—the receptionist at the front desk was checking in guests, housekeepers hurried in and out, hospitality staff bustled about, and the hotel manager appeared busy despite it being unclear what exactly he was doing.
None of them had left, and to Tang Ye, this scene felt as if everything he had seen before entering the recycling station was but a false dream.
After hesitating at the door for a mont, Tang Ye began to walk in. The receptionist, who was attending to guests, saw him and revealed a warm smile, nodding at him. Tang Ye returned the smile, but it seed she recognized him and was quite effected. This made Tang Ye frown—had he already checked into the hotel?
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a room card, then went to the third floor. After using the card to open the door, he found himself in the familiar hotel room.
"This..."
Standing in front of the trash can, Tang Ye looked down to find it empty. The two cell phones he had thrown away before entering the recycling station were gone. It was as if the world had deleted everything that had happened after he woke up that morning; he could not find any traces of today’s events.
He took out his cell phone, connected to the hotel’s WiFi, and imdiately opened Baidu to check the current situation online. Everything was normal; there was no catastrophic tsunami, and people carried on with their lives, blissfully unaware that in so alternate reality, a monstrous tsunami had struck like the Apocalypse, causing human society to crumble into chaos in a panic.
After scrolling through several posts in an online forum without finding any information about a tsunami, he stayed in the room a bit longer before getting up and heading out. As he passed the hotel lobby, the receptionist greeted him warmly. It was then that Tang Ye noticed her distinctive trait—she always had a smile on her face, maybe a bit professional, but natural nonetheless.
"Heading out again?"
"Yeah."
"Then take your ti." The receptionist maintained her smile as she watched Tang Ye walk away from the hotel step by step.
After leaving the hotel and turning a corner, Tang Ye thought of sothing and stopped in his tracks. Perhaps due to the complexity of the situation, his brows furrowed again. For him, it was like being a headless fly, not knowing what to do next. The letter Lu Xiaojie had given him ntioned nothing specific about what he might encounter, which left him clueless on how to think of a solution after recklessly entering the recycling station and suddenly finding himself back in Xi River city.
"Wait a mont?"
Suddenly, Tang Ye rembered sothing. He looked at his phone and focused on the ti displayed. When he arrived here, he learned from the first young man who spoke to him that it was October 9th. So, today was October 11th. Of course, the ti on his phone was correct, also showing October 11th, but this October 11th was not the sa as that October 11th. The forr was a day like any other, without disaster, without an eve of the Apocalypse, without moral decay, where people continued their repetitive lives like before the Apocalypse. In contrast, the latter was filled with a hundred-ter-high tsunami panic, and people were frantic to flee their lifelong hos, fighting over resources, just to survive.
These two different tilines initially didn’t click for Tang Ye, but now, recalling them, he realized that before he returned to this "normal" Xi River city, Dairya was attacking him. But why did he return to Xi River city? What force was helping him, or was it Dairya’s doing?
If it was Dairya’s intention, what was she trying to accomplish?
"Maybe... I should visit the recycling station again?"
Tang Ye thought to himself that it seed like the only choice he had.
Just as he decided to do so, he noticed several figures darting past a nearby alley. Tang Ye’s attention was imdiately drawn to them. They appeared to be running hastily, and although they disappeared quickly, Tang Ye’s keen eyesight allowed him to see clearly that they were wearing school uniforms.
He initially did not want to get involved, but his ears seed to catch so odd sounds.
"Hel..."
That was likely an attempt to cry out for help, but it was cut short mid-shout. Then, Tang Ye heard a series of "bangs," as if soone had crashed into so miscellaneous items and caused things placed up high to fall.
These sounds would be difficult for anyone to notice amidst the noise of the surroundings. People around continued to go about their business as usual.
After so thought, driven by either innate curiosity or a hidden suggestion, he found himself wanting to go back and check.
"Huh?" Expressing confusion, Tang Ye crossed the street and headed in that direction.
He entered the alley, kicked a small stone on the ground that flew up and hit a little weed growing in the corner by the wall. Ahead lay the barren back of a building. Turning his head to the right, his gaze imdiately caught sight of several teenagers, around fourteen or fifteen years old, huddled together doing sothing.
In total, there were six people, with one lying atop a pile of trash partially covered by black garbage bags. The others held sticks and branches picked up from unknown places.
Among these kids, one looked smug as he watched the beaten-up boy. He didn’t participate but just stood behind the group, relishing the scene, with a cigarette sandwiched between his index and middle finger, appearing deep and serious.
However, Tang Ye could see clearly that the guy had no idea how to smoke; it was purely a facade, much like classmates from his school days who liked to pose.
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