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ch 1

Chapter 1 - матрёшка 1

Friday, 10 p.m.

Xu RenDong, who had just finished working overtime to write his report, left his company building. It was late night during early summer and the stars were low. There was a refreshing fragrance of plants in the night air and Xu RenDong took large, greedy breaths in. Then slowly breathed out to expel the stuffy feelings inside his chest.

Huh... I'm a little tired.

The parking lot was opposite him and the traffic lights were still red. He rubbed his eyes and stood patiently in front of the zebra crossing. The traffic lights soon jumped into the green. He took a step forward and that's when the scenery suddenly shook, like a drop of water falling into a calm lake, and then his whole field of view blurred in an instant. He instinctively rubbed his eyes while hearing a sharp braking sound and screams erupting around him.

"Be careful!"

"Quickly, move away!"

There's a car coming?!

The sense of crisis was like the crack of a whip, instantly stirring up his adrenaline. Xu RenDong opened his eyes wide and instinctively backed away two steps. Then he looked towards the source of the sound of the brakes. As soon as he looked though, his sense of fear was replaced by a feeling of shock. Instantly, goosebumps shot up on his skin.

An elevator? {Also known as a lift, the type that looks like a metallic box, not a stairwell.}

Yes, it was a rectangular shaped elevator that had come hurtling down at high speed and then breaked abruptly after landing on the ground.

The elevator was empty and the metallic sides reflected a cold silver glow. The elevator doors were closed and there was a metal button on the side. It looked like an ordinary, ubiquitous elevator.

But it's not ordinary to almost be flattened by an elevator while crossing the road, okay?

Xu RenDong's face changed because he realized this was not the only weird thing that had just happened!

Just now, two girls had screamed at him to be careful. They were still standing there, their faces full of panic and worry, mouth wide open. Their hands were pointing in the direction of the elevator. Yet their entire persons appeared to be frozen solid; they kept the exaggerated action and exuded a strange dead air.

Behind them, a bent over old man was walking his dog. His left foot was lifted and he hadn't put it down yet. At the supermarket across the road, the clerk had just picked up the customer's money and several coins slipped between their fingers and remained stationary in the air.

It's like someone had pressed the stop button and everyone was frozen in time. The whole world had fallen silent. Xu RenDong had a horrifying momentary illusion that he had suddenly entered a wax museum and that the people in front of him were not flesh and blood living people at all, but instead cold wax figures.

In this sudden strange world, Xu RenDong's heartbeat and breathing sped up suddenly. He forced himself to calm down and look around with caution. At the same time a question flashed through him:

Why can I still move?

He moved his fingers and didn't feel anything unusual. He took two more steps to confirm what was going on around him but he didn't expect to suddenly run into something invisible. His foot kicked something that he couldn't see, making a banging noise.

Xu RenDong frowned again, tentatively reaching forward. He touched something hard and which felt like a wall. But there was really nothing in front of him.