Chapter 20: Beneath the Natural Disaster

B City’s Meteorological Bureau.

Clouds piled up as radar echoes rapidly relayed the detected data to the computers. The weather monitoring instruments, which had displayed calm green readouts moments before, suddenly flashed the red warning of a colossal disaster. A vivid red heavy rain alert popped up on meteorologist Xia Feng’s screen.

In the display, the white blotches representing clouds accumulated with alarming speed. Air pressure climbed steadily, heralding a massive deluge about to engulf B City!

The kind that struck once every fifty years—one capable of triggering urban flooding!

Xia Feng’s first reaction was outright disbelief. How could this be possible? There hadn’t been the slightest precursor to rain of this magnitude. Their calculations from the meteorological equations had forecasted clear skies for the next few days.

B City had always been arid, with low annual precipitation. So why had clouds of this scale coalesced out of nowhere? And how had they missed every sign?

Was this part of the global climate anomalies?

Even so, anomalies always came with some warning…

No time for speculation now. Xia Feng immediately escalated the report.

They had to issue citywide alerts before the rain hit—to avert disasters from the torrential downpour!

The city government needed to be informed too. Citywide management protocols had to be activated before the storm arrived. Hurry! The rain was almost here; every department had to mobilize!

~~~

Rain? Su Mingyao’s heart jolted.

Nothing like this had happened in his previous life!

The details were fuzzy, but he distinctly remembered that the day Su Shang spoke to him had been sunny!

Sunlight dappling the rosebushes around them, bees flitting about—it had been anything but overcast.

Su Mingyao looked up. The sky had already turned ominously dark in moments, as if the sun had plummeted from the heavens.

This… was Su Shang’s power?

Could he control the weather?

[Yeah, let’s whip up a rainstorm. Mom won’t be able to fly out—she’ll have no choice but to come back.] Luo Shang said.

[Not a bad idea.] The System replied.

It was Su Shang! Su Mingyao’s eyelids twitched furiously as he fired off a message to Su Bingyao.

“Don’t bother running; you can’t get away.”

“Flights out of B City today are probably all grounded. When he said there was ‘no way,’ he didn’t mean he couldn’t—it meant…”

“Mom has no escape at all! Su Shang just conjured a massive rainstorm to keep her from flying off!”

Su Bingyao: ?!!

His life was pure misery!

But first, prayers for Mom… Messing with Su Shang never ended well. Su Bingyao reaffirmed that truth.

Deep down, Su Mingyao knew better. With “Plot Following” in play, Su Shang wouldn’t kill Li Qingshu. At worst, he’d give her a scare and some hardship.

Sigh. The thought left Su Mingyao depressed—and sympathetic.

Not for Li Qingshu’s ordeal, but for his own.

Trapped in a private jet at the heart of the storm was gentle compared to what he and Su Bingyao had endured: locked in that apocalyptic void after the world ended, for who knew how long, before release!

He hoped Mom would see reason and return. Otherwise, Su Shang wouldn’t let up on the rain. Black clouds pressed down on the sky like a lid. Su Mingyao shook his head subtly.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers from the Su Family’s Suburban Manor, the Su Family’s private plane bucked wildly in the gale and rain.

From the air, the shift was even more stark.

Clear skies had stretched endlessly moments ago, the sun blazing high. Then, in mere seconds—clouds boiled up, blanketing the heavens and blocking their path.

Thunder rumbled ominously from the roiling black mass. The plane had barreled into the thunderhead, lightning crackling everywhere, arcs snapping along the fuselage.

Li Qingshu sat in the cabin, still processing, when darkness swallowed everything.

Pitch black—no hand in front of her face. Only her phone screen glowed faintly.

It showed the last message before plunging into the storm cloud, from her eldest son: Mom, come back now! Su Shang’s made his move!

His move? That’s exactly why she shouldn’t return! Li Qingshu started typing a retort and hit send—but no signal. The message hung, unsent.

She looked up. An end-of-days vista confronted her.

The airplane darted through the raging thunder and lightning, its surroundings visible only in the sporadic flashes. Thick black clouds enveloped the tiny craft, as if intent on swallowing it whole. The dense vapors seemed almost tangible.

In that moment, the terror of nature was on full display. Beneath such a cataclysm, all mortals were mere ants.