Wuyang, late autumn, evening of November 17, 2016. People throughout the city looked up at the northeastern night sky. Comet McNaught tore open the sky with its silver tail, and a waterfall of cold white light poured down, coating the old buildings, glass curtain walls, and iron roofs with a thin layer of frost. An old man walking tremblingly held up his mobile phone. Students crowded on the overpass and marveled. Chen Mo from the police station opened the window and looked up. The evening breeze blew away the leaves of the phoenix tree, and he was completely unaware of it.
In an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city, the multi-frequency radiation equipment was overloaded and the screen was shaking violently. Lin Zhenguo wore worn gold-rimmed glasses and pressed the emergency voltage regulator switch with trembling fingers. The particle flow floats along the ventilation ducts towards the streets and merges with the comet radiation at high altitude. The two forces complete the fateful collision.
In the basement of the city center, Lu Mingyuan was curled up on a moldy mattress, the severe pain of cancer cells gnawing at his bones reaching its peak. His nails dug into the cement floor, cold sweat soaked through his shirt, and all he could see was the white light leaking through the ventilation window - that was salvation, but also a curse, and the beginning of seventy-five years of lonely killing.
Downstairs of the newspaper office, intern reporter Su Xiao held the interview transcript and raised her hand to cover the silver light. The blue ink on her fingertips was still wet. She didn't know that the comet would drag the three of them to two paths that would never intersect.
The comet shone for three hours before dissipating, and the city returned to normal. Only the fate of three people has been rewritten. No one recorded this celestial phenomenon, only a photo in Lu Mingyuan's old photo album: On the Yinhui Street, three blurry figures walked towards different lives.
The fate of the Southern Cross begins with this star fall.
