At this moment, everyone was half-asleep, trapped here with nothing to do all day except eat and sleep.
The area near the door had already turned completely white.
The snowflakes hadn't even melted yet; for some reason, the snow had piled up into a drift.
Sometime after the drop in temperature, it had ended up like this.
Leo opened the door and walked in, sweeping his flashlight across the crowd.
The beam of light locked onto Leo's side and stopped.
Then came that sentimental scene straight out of a movie.
After the father and son embraced, Leo's father contacted the United States top brass to inform them that there were still survivors in New York.
The other side replied that they would send a plane to pick them up.
Leo's father told everyone to follow him outside to an open space to wait for the helicopter.
Everyone got up and followed Leo's father outside.
They walked through the frozen corridor and saw the library lobby, completely packed with snow.
The front doors were completely buried; the entire library had been submerged in snow.
Liu Hong followed the others as they climbed toward the windowsill.
The glass on the windowsill had been shattered by the weight of the snow, or perhaps it had broken when the temperature plummeted so suddenly—there was no way to know for sure now.
However, they needed to get out from there.
That was also the quickest way to reach ground level.
Once they crawled out of the window, they realized it wasn't the ground at all.
By now, the snow had nearly engulfed the entire library, and their current height was at least twenty meters or more.
When the tsunami had surged in, the seawater had flooded half of the library's ground floor.
The first floors of all the surrounding buildings outside were completely gone.
By calculation, that layer might have been about five meters deep.
In other words, the frozen solid layer of seawater beneath was around five meters thick, which meant the snow piled on top of it was over ten meters deep!
Good thing they hadn't gone outside back then; heaven only knows what happened to the people who did.
Leo muttered to himself with a hint of worry.
Liu Hong paid no attention to that; the only thing on his mind was that the movie was almost over, and he needed to figure out what to do next.
Would he be sent back, or would he stay in the movie world?
To be honest, it didn't really matter to him where he ended up, since he didn't have anyone special to miss back home anyway.
Yet in the movie world, other than knowing his name was Hunter, he was completely clueless about everything else.
What if he ran into someone who knew this body?!
Just as Liu Hong was following them toward the open area, not long after they started walking, the sound of helicopter blades roared overhead.
A helicopter descended straight down toward them.
Sure enough, sticking with Leo meant getting priority rescue.
They boarded the helicopter, and once inside—
A homeless man clutched his dog, while the librarian cradled that supposedly precious book.
Everyone bundled up tightly in their clothes, remaining silent.
Grieving for this disaster, mourning those who had perished in this catastrophe.
Liu Hong felt no sense of involvement; he still firmly believed this was just a movie.
Right now, he cared about only one thing: with the finale approaching, what on earth was going to happen to him?!
At that moment, Sarah saw people standing atop all the skyscrapers outside the aircraft, realizing that they weren't the only few survivors left in all of New York.
She urged the others to look. When the rest of them saw people being rescued, they finally cheered up.
This was good news—they weren't the only ones who had survived. This was wonderful news!
The helicopter flew farther and farther away into the sunlight.
Liu Hong felt a bit puzzled. Had this movie really turned into a real world?
Then why were there so many self-correcting and self-regulating phenomena going on?
Just as Liu Hong began to think he would remain in this world and that it was a genuine reality—
The world instantly went dark, and the final image in his eyes was a row of large characters slowly scrolling up from the bottom.
Then came a blinding flash of light, and the buzzing roar of the helicopter blades in his ears vanished.
In its place came absolute quiet, accompanied by the gradually sharpening sounds of surrounding traffic, car horns, all sorts of doors opening and closing, and hawkers shouting in the streets.
Liu Hong felt as though he had suddenly broken the surface of the water, gasping for air.
He jerked his head up, his right hand gripping his phone tightly while his left hand clutched the sleeve of his heavy coat.
Several layers of clothing had suddenly been added to his body, and their sudden, heavy weight almost knocked Liu Hong off balance.
He blinked hard, taking in the familiar sight before him, and nervously turned his head to look around.
He confirmed it was his own tiny room.
He stood up, spun around, and raised his hand to check his phone. The notification time for a transaction from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China showed it had just arrived.
Everything was so real, which finally convinced him that he had indeed returned.
Liu Hong suspected for a moment that he had just had a dream, a brief nap, but the heavy clothes suddenly appearing on his body reminded him that none of this was a dream.
Remembering something, he lifted the phone in his right hand, turned off the screen to look at his reflection, and confirmed it was indeed his own face.
Only then did he let out a sigh of relief.
The thick layers of winter clothing made him unbearably hot.
He stripped the clothes off one by one; there were a full five layers of heavy garments on him.
Though something felt a bit off—he remembered wearing everything he possibly could back then; surely it couldn't have been just five layers?!
Still, he couldn't concern himself with that right now.
First, he needed to stand in front of the fan and cool off for a bit.
Wearing five layers of winter clothes in the dead of summer was downright lethal.
Yet he begrudged the electricity bill and hadn't turned on the air conditioner, so he had to make do with the fan for now.
He found the remote control hidden at the very bottom of the bedside table, clicked on the air conditioner, and waited for the temperature to drop.
Even though Liu Hong had eaten a meal before setting out in the movie, in this real world, he was genuinely starving.
He looked at the instant noodles he had soaked before crossing over.
He walked over, sat down at the desk, and lifted the small plate covering the noodles.
They were still stubbornly hard.
He couldn't wait any longer; he needed to eat something right now to calm his chaotic thoughts.
He picked up his chopsticks and stirred the noodles, barely managing to break the clump apart.
He shoveled them straight into his mouth, devouring the entire bowl in just a couple of bites.
Normally, he would never eat like this; he always let the noodles soak until they were exceptionally soft and bloated.
That way, he could get a few more bites out of it and wouldn't get hungry so easily.
After finishing the noodles, he couldn't bear to waste the soup. He sipped the broth while trying to recall what on earth had happened.
Yet no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember why he had crossed over in the first place.
He hadn't done anything unusual; every day was the same routine—living the same life, saying the same words, doing the same things.
It was entirely uneventful, with not a single change.
So how on earth had he crossed over?
And to top it off, he had ended up in a world struck by disaster.
Besides, what movie was that first world anyway?
Thinking of that first world reminded him of the bag of what he had previously thought was garbage.
He had brought it back with him right after waking up.
Back then, he had been in agonizing pain upon waking and had no idea what was going on.
During those few idle days in The Day After Tomorrow, he had spent his time pondering what had transpired.
Now that he thought about it, right before he died, he seemed to have grabbed a shopping bag.
It looked identical to that trash bag.
Although the bag had become old and brittle.
From its shape, one could still vaguely recognize it as the bag he had held in his hands in the first world.
He immediately bent down to rummage through the wastebasket, fishing out the shopping bag from beneath the instant noodle wrappers.
The bag was truly ancient, looking completely different from when Liu Hong had held it in his hands in the first world.
The moment his fingers brushed against it to pick it up, his finger poked straight through the material.
Carefully, he unfolded the bag, hoping to retrieve whatever was inside and see what it actually was.
The second he opened it, however, the bag fell apart like ash, disintegrating into tiny scraps of garbage.
Nevertheless, amidst this pile of ash-like debris, Liu Hong spotted a piece of packaging fragment with an engraved production date.
May 2012.
No wonder it was so old—more than a decade had passed, how could it not be old?!
Wait! He had brought this bag back from the movie world this very morning!
At the time, the bag had still looked brand new!
Why was it so old the moment he brought it across?!
That wasn't right either; even if it aged, it shouldn't have turned to dust like this.
He pushed those thoughts aside for the moment, focusing instead on the date.
2012?
Recalling the earthquake and tsunami right before his death, he didn't even need to investigate to know which movie he had entered; coupled with that airplane, it was just too obvious!
It was 2012!
The film 2012 was all about a global earthquake and tsunami!
So both times he had crossed over, it was into disaster films?!
Would he cross over again?
If he crossed over again, would it still be a disaster movie?
Or would it be some other kind of film?
The current Liu Hong had no way of knowing any of this.
After examining the contents of the garbage bag and realizing he could actually bring items out from the movie worlds, something clicked in his mind, and he whirled around to stare at the clothes he had just tossed onto the bed.
He strode directly over and picked up the garments.
"Not this one! Nor this one! No! It's this one!! Exactly this one!!"
Finding the clothing he was looking for, a wave of excitement washed over him.
He had been terrified that this piece wouldn't be among the clothes he brought back!
He picked up the coat and gave it a shake. It was a woolen overcoat and looked quite worn out, but Liu Hong didn't care about that.
What he cared about was what was inside the pockets!
The identity he had assumed over there was wealthy, and he remembered feeling a wallet in his pocket that contained a stack of cash!
Liu Hong thrust his hand straight into the coat pocket, and sure enough, his fingers brushed against something.
He pulled everything out of the pocket.
A wallet, a watch, a handkerchief that tore easily, and a set of keys!
He tossed everything else aside and opened the wallet. The ID card inside had turned yellow, and the ink was badly blurred.
The facial features on it were unrecognizable.
There were several credit cards, but they weren't from Huaguo; they were American.
Liu Hong had no intention of using those cards.
For one, they were probably fake, or completely unusable in this world.
Even if they could be used here, how could he prove the cards belonged to him?
Those cards bore the name Hunter.
That would only bring endless trouble.
What he needed was the cash inside that wallet!
The day after tomorrow was his credit card payment due date! He was really strapped for cash right now!
He pulled out all the bills and counted them.
There were sixty-two hundred-dollar bills! That really was a thick stack of cash!
The remaining loose change amounted to less than a hundred, so he set that aside.
Then he searched the other clothes to see if there were any pleasant surprises.
Unsurprisingly, aside from two lighters that had run out of fuel, he found absolutely nothing else.
That made sense, too—those were clothes belonging to someone else stored away there, what important items could possibly be left behind?
Valuables would obviously be carried on one's person!
He checked the current exchange rate.
1 USD to 6.8 RMB.
6,200 USD was over 42,000 RMB!
That was more than enough, entirely enough!
Finally, he wouldn't have to worry about his credit card payment being overdue.
Clutching the money, Liu Hong wanted to rush to a bank and exchange it immediately; that credit card bill was breathing down his neck.
Besides, he had no idea which bank handled foreign currency exchanges.
As he walked toward the door, searching his phone for which banks could exchange US dollars, he reached out to lock his bedroom door.
Just then, voices drifted over from the neighboring bedroom.
"Are you even capable of playing a game?! I told you to revive me first, revive me first! You just lie there camping like a coward!
The moment the enemy dies, all you know how to do is loot boxes! Is there really anyone as cowardly as you in this world?! Damn it, this world is hopeless! Just let it all burn down!!"
This time, Liu Hong clearly saw a white light erupt from his left hand, and the moment he opened his eyes, he found himself seated inside a train.