Xiao Daidzhao

Growing up with eccentric materialistic parents who left him in the care of his grandfather for a job overseas, Zhang Heng had learned to adapt and be unfettered by the oddities and challenges in life. But he would soon learn the baffling truth about the world he thought he knew when one day at midnight time froze and he found himself in a world so quiet and still it was deafening. That night, he discovered that he had 24 hours more than everybody else and thus, marked the beginning of his adventures. The mysteries surrounding his newfound ability only deepened when a strange old man claimed to have given Zhang Heng that ‘gift of time’ and recruited the young man to participate in a cryptic ‘life-changing’ game on his behalf. Little did Zhang Heng know that accepting those terms meant embroiling himself in many versions of reality and exposing himself to the hidden secrets of the world—a decision he could never undo.

48 Hours a Day

The wheels of the bus rubbed against the asphalt surface, making a dull grinding, its roaring engine particularly clear in the silence of the night.

The players had obtained a watch from the unconscious bus driver, so they finally knew the exact time.

It was 1:44 a.m., and according to Zhang Heng's calculations, the explosion should have happened 15 to 20 minutes ago.

There was still a long time before daybreak. For the town of Pripyat, three kilometers away from the nuclear power plant, most of the residents were still sleeping soundly, having none the explosion's shockwave had already sent a portion of the core's material into the sky, forming a large masses of strong radioactive particles.

At first, the mass only wrapped around the nuclear power plant, but it quickly began to expand and spread in all directions with the wind.

The residents of Pripyat who first noticed the explosion were probably a group of night anglers.