Calamity of Tomorrow - Chapter 2: Awakening

The female voice rang in Zhou Bai’s ears, “How is it? Did you succeed? Primordial Spirit power can be used to move things in the air and to attack people without a trace. You can do whatever you want with it…”

“Isn’t this just telekinesis?” Zhou Bai twitched his will and felt a shapeless power sprawl out from his consciousness, extending into the real world.

Boom! The big metal door finally rammed open. A monster that looked like it was pieced together from rotten flesh walked in. It locked its white pupils in Zhou Bai’s direction.

Zhou Bai subconsciously started Primordial Spirit power and saw the air distort slightly. A shapeless power had already swept onto the monster’s body with a light breeze, tightly binding the monster before him.

Zhou Bai said gleefully, “Success?”

But the next moment, the monster’s body paused for only a bit before it charged toward Zhou Bai against the Primordial Spirit power. Its movement was somewhat slower, but it continued to close in on Zhou Bai step by step.

Zhou Bai’s face fell, and he immediately came to a realization. Looking at the board in his mind, he added all the remaining 9 points of Laziness onto Primordial Spirit Value.

He saw the number behind Primordial Spirit Value quickly change. In a blink, it had gone from 1 to 10.

Boom! Primordial Spirit power rose sharply. The strength it asserted on the monster compressed the air, creating a light thump, followed by an explosion. It sent the monster flying outward like a toy.

Zhou Bai watched this scene unfold in excitement, but before he could give it more thought, his vision went black, and he passed out.

***

Zhou Bai opened his eyes in a daze. Waves of pain came from his brain.

……

Before him was an unfamiliar ceiling, and he seemed to smell disinfectant.

He heard the sound of chewing. Zhou Bai raised his head intuitively to look, and he saw a blond girl wearing a white dress.

The little girl held a cookie on the side of the bed, crumbs all over her mouth. Her sapphire-like eyes were wide open. She put a hand over her little mouth and looked at Zhou Bai in panic.

“I didn’t eat your cookies!”

Looking at the foreign environment and the person in front of him, Zhou Bai went blank for a second, then asked out of instinct, “Who are you? Where am I?”

But the little girl acted like she hadn’t heard what he said. She ran out of the room in a flurry and yelled, “He’s awake! The person you picked up is awake! He ate all the cookies!”

Zhou Bai pursed his lips, slowly sitting up on the bed, and felt the change in his body.

“My body…”

He abruptly lifted the white robe, and an unfamiliar body appeared before him. It looked thin and lanky. He turned to look at the mirror on the side and saw a younger, 17- or 18-year-old version of himself.

“What the heck…how did I become so much younger?” Zhou Bai intuitively felt his face and was bewildered. “But frankly, I was handsome when I was younger.”

Right then, the door opened again. The little girl dragged a black-haired, black-eyed, middle-aged man into the room. The middle-aged man was tall and thin, but he looked gloomy.

He looked at Zhou Bai with a cold expression and said, “You’re up? Then come check in…”

“Wait…” Zhou Bai got up from the bed and asked, “Where is this? How did I become like this? Do you have a phone I can borrow? I want to make a call…”

The gloomy man frowned, “Check in and get an inspection first…” As he said this, he turned to leave, muttering to himself, “Another one gone mad…”

Zhou Bai could only follow him. The blond girl studied him curiously. She walked all around Zhou Bai, “Big brother, did you come from the outside?

“Big brother, do you have any more cookies?

“Big brother, why aren’t you saying anything?”

Zhou Bai wasn’t in the mood to answer the little girl’s mutterings. His head was a mess. He’d suddenly arrived at an unfamiliar place, met unfamiliar people, in this unfamiliar body, and the things that happened before he fainted—

He felt at a loss.

Suddenly, he raised his head, looking at the sides of the hallway. Doors slowly opened one by one. Children poked their little heads out to look at Zhou Bai, who walked in the middle. They carefully examined Zhou Bai, their gazes full of curiosity and caution.

Zhou Bai noticed the youngest were seven or eight, and the oldest only 15 or 16. And there were Asians, white people, and black people…all different races. What was this place?

Speaking of, before he passed out…Zhou Bai recalled what happened before he fainted, concentrating his attention on his mind. As expected, the Deva Nine Disasters Auxiliary Practice System appeared again.

Degree of Taoification: 0%

Primordial Spirit Value: 10

Divine Map: Deva Nine Disasters

Laziness: 0

This thing…seems to have been invented to assist in the practice of so-called Deva Nine Disasters, he figured. Judging from Laziness, this thing might be a super plug-in.

But after Zhou Bai saw the 0 next to Laziness in his mind, he went blank for a moment.

That’s not right, he thought. I lay for so long on the patient’s bed. Why is it still 0?

He didn’t have time to think further; he had already arrived at a white door with the gloomy man. The man turned and said to the blond girl, “Elsa, wait here for us.” Then he turned to look at Zhou Bai, “Follow me.”

The blond girl named Elsa nodded but said, “Teacher, I’m hungry.”

The gloomy man’s face fell as he said, “Didn’t you just eat lunch?”

Elsa went blank, a strong hint of doubt flashed across her eyes. “But why am I still hungry?”

The gloomy man sighed helplessly and said, “You wait here. I’ll make you something to eat when I come out.”

Zhou Bai followed the gloomy man into the room and found it was an office. The gloomy man sat behind the desk, gesturing at the chair in front of him for Zhou Bai to take a seat.

Then he took out a stack of documents and asked Zhou Bai, “What’s your name?”

“Zhou Bai.”

“Age?”

Zhou Bai looked at his much younger body. “…I don’t know.”

“Where are you from?”

“China.”

The gloomy man raised his head, frowning. “China? Where is China?”

Zhou Bai went blank for a second and said with a laugh, “You don’t know where China is?” But the next moment he became stupefied because he suddenly found that the language he spoke, including the sentence he’d just said, wasn’t Chinese. It was a language he theoretically had never learned, but he somehow knew all the vocabulary and grammar and spoke it with the same proficiency as Chinese.

He didn’t realize this when he just woke up, but now that he paid attention to it, he suddenly became aware of this language issue.

What…language is this? he wondered. It’s not in my memory at all…This guy doesn’t even know China—is it a problem with translation? Or…?

Although he had a million questions, Zhou Bai looked at the unfamiliar man’s suspicious expression and forced down the matters in his mind.

He smiled and said, “Just a small place. Maybe you don’t know it.”