20: Chapter 20: The Live Stream for All Members Disconnects

The three white lines drawn by the anti-aircraft missiles at the horizon burst open upon reaching their peak, like three hastily blooming fireworks.

The speedometer needle was pinned at eighty-two.

Li Li pressed down on the handlebars, the wind cutting against his skin like a knife, whipping the stray hair on his forehead.

In the rearview mirror, the smoke screen of the failed interception was torn open, and a burning red iron point pierced through.

It hadn't been stopped.

That warhead dragged a bizarre zigzag line, precisely bypassing two layers of interception fire, and plunged toward the runway area on the west side of the terminal.

The trajectory grew steeper, the red glow brighter.

"Hold on tight."

Li Li's voice sounded like it was squeezed out from between his teeth.

The arms around his waist tightened suddenly, and Jiang Rumu's fingertips dug deep into the contours of his abdominal muscles through the thin shirt.

She didn't speak, nor did she look up at the sky.

She simply buried her face deeper, the micro-lens at her collar pressed firmly against her body and Li Li's back. In the livestream room of 7.5 million people, the screen was pitch black, with only the monotonous humming of the Yadea motor and the gale blowing into the microphone remaining.

Three seconds.

At the end of the rearview mirror, an orange-red fireball exploded on the horizon.

The expansion speed of that fireball exceeded the limits of visual perception, swallowing the terminal's control tower within half a second. Immediately after, thick smoke shot into the sky, billowing into a ferocious gray-black mushroom.

The shockwave was faster than the sound.

First came the sand. The yellow sand on both sides of the highway was whipped up by an invisible force, hitting the rearview mirror with a pattering sound like hail.

Then came the sound.

Boom—

It wasn't an explosion; it was a crushing weight. A heavy, low, muffled sound traveled through the asphalt road, pouring from the tires into the footrests, then drilling into his bones; his internal organs were resonating.

The Yadea's body shifted fifteen centimeters to the left abruptly.

The rear wheel skidded, and the tail of the bike swung out!

Li Li stomped his left foot firmly onto the edge of the pedal, his waist and abdomen exerted force instantly, and his entire body's muscles tensed like a steel cable. The front of the bike tilted fifteen degrees to the right, and he forcibly pulled it back relying purely on muscle memory.

Vehicle Mastery.

This wasn't some kind of knowledge; it was an instinct carved into his bones—three years of delivering food, rainy days, slippery downhill roads, a bus braking suddenly in front... the same angle of skidding, the same force of correction.

The difference was, in his past life, what he had hanging on the back of his bike was a 9.9-yuan meal.

In this life, it was a woman with a net worth of over 100 million and 32 million followers.

The bike steadied.

Li Li quickly glanced at the rearview mirror; the fireball was located on the west runway, about a kilometer away from the main terminal building.

"It didn't hit the building."

He said in a low voice, his tone as calm as if he were confirming a food delivery address.

Just as he finished speaking—

Crackle, crackle, crackle...

A tooth-aching sound pierced through the wind noise, as if the glass of the entire city were wailing and disintegrating at the same time.

The glass curtain wall of the terminal.

Dubai Airport VIP Lounge.

"Run!"

Han Xubai was the first to roar. He grabbed Gu Zeyan's sleeve, not even caring that his gold-rimmed glasses had slid to the tip of his nose. "Everyone, stop standing there—run!"

The moment he roared, a crack appeared from the bottom of the huge floor-to-ceiling glass wall behind them, spreading crazily upward with a creaking sound.

The sunny smile on Gu Zeyan's face shattered completely; the corners of his mouth still held a stiff, professional arc, but his muscles were twitching uncontrollably, and his entire face presented a wax-like gray-white.

"Wuu—"

Wen Ditang slumped on the floor, her canvas bag toppled, and the cookies she had carefully baked rolled everywhere. She didn't even look, just covered her ears tightly, tears streaming down silently, her whole person curled into a ball, shaking like a fallen leaf in the wind.

"Where is Li Li? Where is Jiang Rumu?!" Yin Ruoying clutched her high heels, barefoot, her phoenix eyes filled with terror for the first time.

Qi Wanyin held onto the windowsill, her thermos having already rolled to the feet of Director Pei Zhao. She glanced at the black smoke rising outside the window, then at the hall entrance everyone was passing through as they fled.

"They were right."

Four words, no tremor, like stating the final answer to a math problem.

D89 Highway.

Speed seventy-eight.

Jiang Rumu's chin rested on Li Li's right shoulder, her long hair blown by the wind, sweeping across his neck.

Hot.

It wasn't just the forty-one-degree temperature; it was the body heat she pressed against his back, radiating through two layers of sweat-soaked fabric, scorching hot.

Li Li stared ahead; the edge of Dubai's city center was already appearing, and the traffic on the road was starting to increase. This city built on money clearly hadn't reacted yet; the Lamborghinis and Rolls-Royces on the roadside were still moving slowly.

Only the ever-growing black smoke in the rearview mirror was silently testifying to everything.

One of the arms wrapped around his waist suddenly let go.

The right hand.

Li Li felt the center of gravity behind him shift.

"What are you doing?"

"Making a call!"

In the wind noise, her voice was pressed extremely low, her lips almost pressed against his shoulder blade as she spoke.

Li Li didn't turn back, his left hand holding the handlebars steady, his right hand reaching backward, pressing down on the back of her left hand that was still wrapped around his waist. Her fingers were digging hard into his shirt fabric.

He pressed her left hand an inch tighter against his abdomen.

"Hold on."

Not one extra word.

Jiang Rumu took out her phone with her right hand, her thumb swiping open the screen, finding Shen Jue's WeChat, and long-pressing the record button. The wind noise poured madly into the microphone; she pressed her voice to the limit, three sentences, fast, accurate, ruthless:

"Shen Jue, look at the airport map at the hall entrance, find 'Underground Shelters'!"

"Turn right at the door for fifty meters, at the end of the corridor!"

"Don't take luggage, take the people down, quickly!"

Let go, send.

Right hand retracted, re-wrapping around Li Li's waist. Fingers crossed, locked back in place.

From letting go to locking back, seven seconds.

Li Li clearly felt that those ten fingers had regained their original strength.

Even, tighter than before.

VIP Lounge.

The phone in Shen Jue's pocket vibrated madly.

It was a WeChat voice message from Jiang Rumu.

He tapped it with trembling fingers, and the voice coming from the speaker was wrapped in intense wind noise, but every word was as clear as a bullet.

Everyone in the hall heard it.

Shen Jue stood up as if electrocuted, kicked open the side door.

"Here! This way! Follow me!" He pointed to the "Underground Shelters ↓" guide sign by the door, his voice cracking, and the 1.87-meter-tall man took the lead in sprinting toward the corridor.

Director Pei Zhao grabbed the walkie-talkie, his bright red nails tapping the button with a clatter: "All camera positions! Save your lives! Follow and run!"

Eight guests, twenty-six staff members, like a school of fish fleeing for their lives, swarmed into the corridor.

Cen Ye grabbed the still-trembling Wen Ditang from the ground, tucked her under his arm, and ran.

Han Xubai dragged the shell-shocked Gu Zeyan, that face with a broken smile looking like a sticker that hadn't been peeled off.

The last cameraman had just stepped into the blast-proof door of the shelter—

Bang!

The second wave of explosions.

That missile that broke through the interception hit the aviation fuel depot near the runway precisely.

The entire terminal trembled violently.

The VIP lounge where they had been standing thirty seconds ago, that huge floor-to-ceiling glass, turned into powder in this instant. Countless fragments, wrapped in air waves, swept across the entire hall.

Director Pei Zhao leaned against the inside of the shelter's blast-proof door, his face as pale as paper.

A harsh noise came from the walkie-talkie.

"Signal... the signal is cut." A staff member slumped on the steps, clutching a half-torn cable in his hand. "All livestream rooms, they've all gone black."

Domestic.

All livestreaming platforms.

The livestream rooms of the eight celebrity guests, in the same second, had their screens replaced by snow and a line of cold system prompts:

[Livestream interrupted.]

Tens of millions of viewers stared at the pitch-black screens, and then, panic ignited the entire internet.

#Dubai Airport Explosion#

#Dating Reality Show Guests All Lost Contact#

#Jiang Rumu Livestream Black Screen#

Three trending topics landed on the top of the list within three seconds, followed by a dark purple "Explosive" tag.

And at this moment, only one livestream room was still lit.

Li Li's.

The micro-lens pinned to his collar became the world's only window into the war zone.

In the lens, a Chinese Yadea electric scooter sped across the empty coastal highway.

Behind him was the sky full of smoke and the sunset sinking into the sea level.

In front of him was that solitary white sail standing in the Persian Gulf.

Burj Al Arab.

This frame was captured and spread globally within three minutes.

The caption was only one sentence:

"He is the only surviving perspective."

Burj Al Arab entrance.

Li Li didn't slow down, twisting the last gear of the throttle to the end, the Yadea crashing through the lonely isolation bollards, the tires rubbing a glaring black scorch mark on the expensive stone road surface.

He kicked down the kickstand. The bike stopped.

He patted the pair of hands still clasped at his waist.

"We're here."

Jiang Rumu let go of her fingers and slowly got off the back seat. She stood under the hotel's magnificent golden domed porch, turned around, and looked in the direction they had come from.

On the skyline, five new white smoke columns were rising.

Not just the airport. There were other targets.

Li Li took the bulging backpack off her back, unzipped it, and pulled out a Dove chocolate bar from the gaps between a pile of energy bars and nut packs.

He tore open the foil and handed it over.

"Eat some sugar to calm your nerves."

Jiang Rumu looked at the chocolate, then at his sweat-soaked back. That cheap shirt was clinging tightly to the contours of the muscles on both sides of his spine, with a crease in the middle left by her chin for a long time.

She took the chocolate, her fingertips trembling slightly.

But she didn't eat it herself; instead, with that still-shaking hand, she broke the chocolate in half.

Then, she steadily stuffed half of it into Li Li's mouth.

"You should calm your nerves too."

Li Li bit down on the half piece of Dove; the bitterness of the cocoa and the sweetness of the sugar exploded at the root of his tongue simultaneously.

The number of people in his livestream room was skyrocketing at a terrifying speed—

Ten million.

Twelve million.

Fifteen million—

The screen froze for a frame.

The server, crashed.

But he didn't have time to look at these.

He looked at that huge brass revolving door of the Burj Al Arab.

The door was moving.

It wasn't the wind.

That heavy door was rotating a quarter turn by itself in a slow, constant motion.

The metal bearings let out a slight, hair-raising moan.

Then, it stopped.

Inside the door, there was someone.