The Apocalypse Solution Provider

Chapter 2: I Didn’t Want to Cross Over!

A prank! A premeditated, extremely malicious prank!

A cold sweat slicked Su Jin’s spine as the thought slammed into his brain.

The cryptic letter. The delivery slip. Some underground assassin syndicate couldn’t have just mailed their welcome package to the wrong address.

The spontaneous combustion of the paper? Fine. That wasn’t entirely beyond the realm of science.

Maybe it was some high-tech magician’s prop… a chemical compound that reacted to body heat and ignited over time.

But mailing him a real, functional firearm? What kind of lunatic bit was this?

Was it Old Wang, that nightmare of a client?

Impossible. That corporate drone had just demanded a groveling apology over the phone.

Su Jin’s scalp prickled. A montage of thriller movies flashed through his mind.

The ones where a cabal of bored, bloated billionaires orchestrated elaborate death games just to screw with ordinary wage slaves.

Any second now, a strike team would burst through his door, bag his head, and toss him into some remote wilderness survival broadcast.

“Fuck me.”

Cursing under his breath, Su Jin decisively tapped out the police emergency number.

“Beep… beep… beep…”

The dial tone dragged on. Su Jin licked his cracked lips, his brain scrambling to compile a plausible incident report.

Finally, the line clicked open. He launched into his pitch.

“Hello! I’m calling to report—”

“Hello, this is emergency dis—”

The female dispatcher’s voice was abruptly severed mid-syllable. In its place, a cold, synthesized mechanical voice hijacked his brain.

“Please do not disclose company information in any format. A secondary violation will result in severe penalization! Please equip the mask immediately and finalize preparations.”

BEEEEEEP—

The dial tone flatlined. Su Jin’s pupils dilated, a terrifying realization taking root.

Bizarre. This was getting way past HR’s pay grade.

Signal hijacking was technically feasible. But the audio fidelity of that warning? And the deafening dead air that followed?

The dispatcher sounded like she was on a phone. The robot sounded like it was speaking directly into his cerebral cortex.

His Mi 6 was seven years old. A dying mono-speaker couldn’t output surround-sound neuro-acoustics!

A hallucination?

Running on autopilot, Su Jin opened a video player app and clicked a thumbnail marked with a discreet blue dot.

Explicit, high-definition audio filled the room. He stared blankly at the screen for three seconds before locking the phone, ruthlessly debugging his own logic.

Wrong.

‘Two Days, One Night Hot Spring Date’. He’d pirated it last night. He hadn’t ‘reviewed’ it yet due to an exhaustion-induced fluid deficit.

Even if those production studios recycled sets, and the trope was played to death…

This was his favorite idol’s newest release. Her debut in the hot spring genre. A subconscious fever dream couldn’t render anatomical details with such high-fidelity accuracy.

Looking utterly hollowed out, Su Jin stumbled backward and collapsed into his computer chair.

A flicker in his peripheral vision made his pupils shrink to pinpricks!

There, squatting in the corner of his open recruitment portal, was a glaring banner ad: Heavenly Dao Infinite Liability Company!

Wait… when did that ad load?!

With the twitch-reflexes of a seasoned gamer, he snapped his mouse over to the banner. The instant the cursor touched the pixel border, the page nuked itself.

Heart hammering, he frantically typed the name into the search bar.

Zero results. Like it had been scrubbed from the internet’s registry.

Su Jin exhaled a ragged breath, squeezing his eyes shut and digging his fingers into his scalp.

What the hell was his operational status… Could he still abort and run?

Negative. If some shadow organization had him on their radar, going off-grid now would only invite catastrophic, unquantifiable variables.

A minute later, he slowly reached over to his desk, picking up the transparent mask he had tossed aside.

It looked like injection-molded plastic. Cheap. The voice in his head had ordered him to equip it…

He scrutinized it like a bomb technician for several minutes before tentatively pressing it against his face.

The second the polymer met his skin, an icy shockwave washed over his face, and the mask vanished!

The mask was gone. His fingers traced his own bare cheeks.

Before panic could fully set in, his visual interface updated.

A digital timer manifested directly into his retinas.

1:32:11

1:32:10…

Su Jin sat paralyzed for a full ten seconds, his chest heaving as he stared down the countdown.

The apartment was tomb-silent, save for the thud of his own pulse and the faint whir of the CPU fan.

Snapping back to reality, he bolted for the bathroom mirror.

He clawed frantically at his jawline, trying to pry off a mask that was no longer physical.

He dug his nails in until his skin burned crimson, finally giving up to stare at his reflection.

Aside from the ticking HUD and his violently twitching eyelid, he looked like a perfectly normal corporate slave.

This wasn’t a billionaire’s sick reality show. This was a bona fide paranormal breach!

Gritting his teeth, Su Jin wrenched the faucet open and splashed freezing water onto his face.

Reboot… He needed a hard reboot of his logical faculties!

Foreign hardware was installed in his biology. Harmless or malicious, he lacked the admin rights to uninstall it. Ignore it for now.

If the mask defied physics, the pistol and briefcase were likely anomalous too.

Time to audit his inventory.

…

00:59:23

00:59:22…

Over thirty minutes wiped from the clock.

Su Jin sat cross-legged on his mattress, staring at the gun and the briefcase.

His composure was a fragile facade. The back-to-back anomalies had utterly crashed his operating system of reality.

The mask was permanently bound.

And the gear was just as broken.

The firearm returned zero hits on any database. The magazine was welded shut. The single round he’d accidentally discharged left no casing, no bullet hole, and no trace. Ballistics testing was currently impossible.

The briefcase was worse. Sliding his hand inside triggered a spatial distortion—a tactile synesthesia. It housed exactly one cubic meter of extra-dimensional storage… completely invisible to the naked eye.

He tested it with a few household items. Stowing and retrieving was instantaneous, governed by mere thought.

It was a localized spatial pocket. A literal Dharma Treasure out of a fantasy novel, constrained only by the physical dimensions of the opening.

A week ago, he would have monetized this and retired. Right now, he just felt nauseous.

The higher the item tier, the higher the lethality of the quest.

Dying World, apocalypse… The metadata alone was enough to make a man soil his slacks.

He was operating wildly out of spec, and his timeline was shrinking by the second.

Action items? Comply with the onboarding manual and prepare?

Swallowing his dread, Su Jin grabbed his phone.

…

Thirty minutes later.

His cramped apartment was fortified with a small mountain of expedited delivery Supplies.

Surveying the chaos, Su Jin swallowed a bitter, acidic pill of reality.

Going AWOL wasn’t an option with a neon countdown grafted to his visual cortex.

He was locked into a supernatural contract. Complying and prepping was his only viable strategy; fighting the system now was a guaranteed Game Over.

00:31:09

00:31:08…

He rapidly sorted and categorized his inventory.

Sweat dripping from his chin, Su Jin glared at his monitor. He authorized a high-premium life insurance policy, naming his parents as beneficiaries. Payout triggered after a two-year missing-persons declaration.

He systematically drained every legitimate fast-loan app he could access, liquidating just under 170,000 RMB.

Online, he funneled 150,000 of it into an irrevocable charitable donation trust for his parents, legally shielding the funds from debt collectors.

He wired 10,000 to his landlord—six months’ rent upfront, along with a “do not disturb” memo—and withdrew the remainder as physical cash.

Step six: Secure wipe of his browser history.

Affairs in order, Su Jin dialed home, his chest tight.

His mother answered, her voice groggy with sleep. “Son? Why are you calling at this hour? Are you still up?”

“Yeah, just sent you and Dad a wire. Check if it cleared?”

“A wire… Huh?! A hundred and fifty thousand? Where did this come from?!” Her sleepiness vanished instantly, and he could hear his father stirring in the background.

Su Jin plastered on a fake, triumphant grin, projecting artificial excitement into the mic. “Good news, obviously! A rival firm tried to poach me. Manager Li panicked and threw a retention bonus at my face to keep me. I don’t need it right now, so you guys take it. Buy something nice.”

“Really? Look at our boy, being fought over by the big corporations! You scared me half to death, I thought you got mixed up in something illegal.” The relief in her voice was palpable.

“Never. I only do white-collar crime,” he joked weakly. “Li just approved the transfer. I was so hyped I forgot what time it was. Look… uh… the company just landed a massive account. I’m going to be locked in crunch culture for a few months. Don’t call me, I’ll call you when I come up for air.”

“Son!” His father’s stern voice cut through. “Crunch time is one thing, but don’t work yourself into an early grave! Don’t let a bonus trick you into selling your soul to them… The harder you push, the more they’ll exploit you. Just keep up appearances for the management.”

“I know, Dad. You two go back to sleep. I’ve got an early start tomorrow.”

He killed the call and slumped forward, releasing a long, shuddering sigh.

His KPIs were met.

That was it. If this really was a one-way trip… at least his final severance package went to the right people.

…

00:00:12

00:00:11

00:00:10

The final ten seconds. Su Jin locked onto the countdown, his hand buried in his trench coat, white-knuckling the grip of his anomalous pistol.

3, 2, 1, 0!

The clock flatlined. Su Jin’s pupils seized as a blinding singularity ignited directly in front of him!

The particle of light violently expanded, unfurling into a towering portal of molten gold right in the middle of his living room.

He blinked furiously, forcing his analytical mind to boot up through the sheer, paralyzing shock.

A physical anomaly! A genuine tear in reality!

Extraterrestrial tech, or divine intervention?

The gate was static. Logically, if he didn’t cross the threshold, he remained safe, right? Maybe he should stick his phone through the event horizon to test the collision mesh?

“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me!”

His eyes went wide as the golden gate lurched forward, ignoring all laws of physics as it accelerated toward his face and swallowed him whole…