The end of the world starts with failing the exam

Chapter 1 The Haze of Sentinel Ridge

The dog days of summer in Sentinel Ridge are always so tiring. The combination of hot weather and humidity in the mountains makes it seem like even the air has turned into a sticky, invisible quagmire.

On the mass grave in the back hill.

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

What he hesitated about was...

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

two days ago.

Chen Jing, who was working in the provincial capital, received a call from his grandfather. Before that, they had not contacted each other for a long time.

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

There is also a slight current sound with poor signal in the stiffness.

"——Come back [*signal noise]——"

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

"—take it away—and [*increasing murmur]—"

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

Chen Jing knew very well what kind of person his grandfather was.

Old-fashioned and serious.

Hard and cold.

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 smile since he was a child.

Could it be that he is talking nonsense due to his old age and lack of clarity of mind?

Nor should it.

Chen Jing knew how strong 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 the call, he immediately bought the ticket.

"What's going on...why did you die suddenly..."

Chen Jing looked at the name on the tombstone with a complicated expression, feeling confused and a little sad.

Chen Jing's parents left before he was one month old.

The only 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. It is not an exaggeration to say that he is the most familiar stranger.

Chen Jing only felt the warmth of family from his grandma.

So after his grandma passed away, he left Sentinel Ridge and only came back to see the old man during the holidays.

"How much you hate my grandma... You obviously bought a place for a joint burial in the cemetery... I didn't expect that you wouldn't want to go there even after you died..."

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

He hesitated again and again, knelt down and kowtowed three times, then walked around to the side of the tomb with a hoe.

Chen Jing finally decided to fulfill the old man's instructions, and Mou Zujin dug in with a hoe...

"Oh!"

Every time he dug the grave, Chen Jing used 100% of his strength.

Every time he swings the hoe, his eyes turn a little red.

Until finally the blackened urn was dug out.

Chen Jing's red eyes were filled with tears, but no sound came out of his mouth.

he knows.

From now on, he has no relatives in this world.

"It's quite acceptable to leave something for me in the tomb... It can't be the real estate certificate of the old house..."

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

The style seems to have been chosen by him.

That cold, black box without any patterns was exactly the same as the old man's temperament.

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

They are all made of iron.

A piece of letter paper cut into a square is attached to the box, with seven large official characters carved on it.

"It's inside, open it."

Chen Jingneng recognized that it was his grandfather's handwriting, so he just hesitated for a moment, and finally had the courage to hold his breath and open the urn...

next second.

Chen Jing was stunned.

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

There is only one key.

A note.

And an old DV camera.

There was only one sentence on the note.

The writing is very hasty.

Even before the last word was written, Chen Jing guessed it.

"Remember to watch the videos on the DV!"

At this moment, Chen Jing suddenly felt like he was playing a reasoning game. Instead of ashes, the urn contained these things...

Isn't the old man dead? ?

Thinking of this, the sadness in Chen Jing's eyes disappeared instantly.

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

Want me to remember to watch the video on DV?

Chen Jing looked at the DV in his hand.

in his memory.

This camera has never been in my home.

But this machine is obviously not new. Even if the old man just bought it, it is probably second-hand. Even the LOGO sticker on it is blurred and white, and the "Lao Suojia" trademark can only be barely recognized.

"Buying second-hand goods also buys brand names... The old man wants to recharge his faith..."

Chen Jing carefully checked the DV. Fortunately, the operation of this machine, which was almost ten years behind the times, was not complicated. After simply turning it on, he began to search for the videos stored in the DV.

There is only one video stored in this camera.

After clicking play.

The screen appeared on the flip display.

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

Because the camera is old and the pixels it shoots are not very clear, the entire video looks blurry, which is basically a loss of image quality.

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

The skinny old man was sitting at the desk wearing a knitted jacket. His expression was as cold and stiff as ever, as if his whole body were made of pig iron. His dry and hoarse voice contained no emotion.

"I know you have a lot of questions, but I don't have much time. I don't have time to explain it 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 video being played.

He didn't understand what the old man wanted 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 soon..."

Hearing what the old man said, Chen Jing, who was holding a camera, couldn't help but be startled, and the worries in his heart were mostly diluted by these wild words.

It seems that the old man is crazy.

Not even remotely crazy.

"You old madman...how many years has passed since 2012..."

Chen Jing couldn't help but sigh, looking at the grave that he had dug up on the ground, he felt helpless to the extreme.

"Did you trick me back just to cosplay the Mayans and make prophecies..."

"I did not lie to you."

The old man in the video seemed to have heard Chen Jing's words, with a hint of anxiety in his cold eyes.

"Before returning to China... yes! It was 72! That year, I and my colleagues were hired by the Wood Private Consortium to go on an expedition to Antarctica. This is what was recorded on the ancient tablet I found in Antarctica!"

1972 years?

Chen Jing couldn't help but be stunned for a moment, because he remembered that his grandma said that the old man was once a top student who studied abroad. After returning from the other side of the ocean in 1973, he only 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 an archeology professor at a certain university.

As for which university it was, grandma didn't make it clear, and the old man himself couldn't tell... But it was undeniable that Chen Jing had never believed these words before.

He really couldn't imagine it.

An old man living in a village on the border of Sichuan and Guizhou once worked as a university professor on the other side of the ocean... Is this possible?

"No one knew the existence of that stone tablet except me, so I brought it back secretly. It seemed to have a kind of magic power that kept bewitching me, making me keep deciphering the contents on it..."

"I was eroded by the content above..."

Suddenly, two voices sounded in the video.

One is grandpa’s.

The other one also belongs to grandpa.

Chen Jing originally thought it was a problem with the video recording. It was normal for old phones to freeze, but the grandfather in the video had already started beating the desk hysterically.

"Shut up!"

"Being eroded...I...everyone...will die..."

The old man in the video was pulling the white hair on his head tightly, and for the first time, his stiff and cold face showed an expression other than expressionless.

That's pain.

"I don't have much time!"

The old man stared at the camera hysterically, the whites of his yellow and cloudy eyes covered with bloodshot eyes. That crazy look in his eyes made Chen Jing shudder.

"I've finished deciphering that stone tablet! So I woke up! I'm not crazy anymore! I know I've been sorry to you and your grandma all these years!"

"That's why I want to save you! I have to save you!"

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

Maybe he was telling the truth?

Could it be that he has been hiding in the study like a madman all these years, not caring about this family, and never shed tears even when his grandma died... is it because he has been crazy before?

"Listen carefully to the next words! I can say as much as I can!"

"Every civilization that develops to a certain stage will be pulled into a biological leap test. If you fail the test, the traces of the existence of the civilization will be erased. This is how the last civilization perished, so..."

At this moment, the video began to shake violently.

Like a TV picture where the signal is affected.

A large screen of snowflakes appeared.

Even the old man's voice became intermittent, mixed with harsh and annoying electrical noise.

"The machine is about to collapse [*signal noise] - hot [*signal noise] - I know it is [*signal noise] interfering - [*signal noise] they are targeting me -"

"The iron box is for [*signal noise] - take things away - bury the box back [*signal noise] - otherwise [*signal noise] will find you -"

"We reached an agreement - I finally helped you get the [*Signal Noise] qualification - to buy some time to deal with the end of the [*Signal Noise] -"

"[*Signal noise]——[*Signal noise]——"

Along with the lengthy current noise, the old man's image and voice have completely disappeared from the display screen, and the picture has been distorted into stroboscopic lines and snowflakes.

"What the hell is going on..." Cold sweat covered Chen Jing's forehead.

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

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

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

It's as real as looking in a mirror.

Different from the crazy look before, the old man in the picture is very calm, with a smile on his face.

To be honest, Chen Jing is really scared now.

Because he has never seen the old man smile.

The old man even has a sullen face in some old photos full of memories.

"I'll take you there now."

"Where are you taking me?"

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

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

"Go where you belong,"

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

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

After those pale hands experienced a violent deformation from thin to thick, they strangled Chen Jing's neck before he was so frightened that he threw away the camera.

Then he jerked it towards the display screen.

In an instant.

Chen Jing disappeared.

The camera fell to the mud for a moment, and the display screen flashed twice and then went out.

At that moment the screen went black.

An old sigh came from the camera's speaker.

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

"Jingjing...don't blame me..."

[The background of the story is an imaginary world, please do not bring it into reality~]

[Two chapters a day, steadily updated]

[Thank you very much for reading! Everyone is welcome to collect! 】