After settling on the strategy of reporting it to the state, Jiang Yang did not act rashly.
This, too, required finesse.
If he were to recklessly call the police right now, or go straight to their door, he would probably be treated like a lunatic and thrown out.
In that case, it would be better to make the people from the state come to him on their own.
After some thought, Jiang Yang took out a sheet of paper and, following the memories of the “past” ten days—which, in this timeline, were the next ten days—began writing down prophecies one by one.
Fortunately, this was the information age. No matter what happened anywhere in the world, it would be pushed in front of him in the shortest possible time through short videos, online news, and the like. On top of that, his memory was fairly good. Otherwise, recalling the events of the past ten days would really not have been easy.
“On the afternoon of August 9, a sudden torrential rainstorm struck Daling City. Xiaofang Village was flooded, and hundreds of villagers were trapped;
On August 10, Carlisle was hit by a tornado. Large swathes of factories collapsed, and over a hundred people died;
On August 11, a magnitude 4.6 shallow-focus earthquake occurred in Luoxi City. Some residential houses were destroyed, with no casualties;
On August 12…”
All the way to August 18, Jiang Yang wrote down the last of the ten prophecies.
“At 12:00 a.m. on August 18, the end of the world!”
Many things had happened over these ten days.
When writing the prophecies, Jiang Yang chose only events related to natural factors. He did not pick events involving human factors, such as “a riot breaks out at XX celebrity’s concert” or “a massive pileup occurs on XX expressway.”
The reason was simple. Events involving humans could be falsified, which would greatly weaken the effectiveness of his prophecies.
Choosing events related to natural factors was different. Whether torrential rain, tornadoes, or earthquakes, given humanity’s current level of technology, none of them could be predicted with precision, much less interfered with.
Take this afternoon’s torrential rain, for example. Existing weather forecasts could determine that a certain area had a very high probability of heavy rain, but it was absolutely impossible to predict precisely where that storm would be at its strongest.
As for tornadoes and earthquakes, advance prediction was even more impossible.
This completely ruled out the possibility of human falsification.
After writing the ten prophecies, Jiang Yang did not post them directly. Instead, he opened several online tools, heavily disguised his IP address, and finally logged into a fairly popular comprehensive forum called “Weihu” through a server located in another city.
The reason he went to so much trouble disguising himself was that Jiang Yang was deliberately setting up a filter.
He was certain that if the state noticed his prophecy post and truly set out to find him, these disguises could definitely be broken through.
But for idle onlookers, or unimportant people and organizations, finding him would not be so easy.
Using a temporary, unregistered phone number to create an account, Jiang Yang posted the ten prophecies. At last, he let out a breath of relief.
All that was left to do next was wait. Wait for his prophecies to come true one by one, wait for everyone’s attention to be drawn to the post, and wait until it attracted the state’s notice and they came to find him.
After finishing all of this, Jiang Yang finally felt the hunger in his stomach.
He checked the time. It was almost nine o’clock.
On this day last time, Jiang Yang remembered that by now he had already arrived at the company and begun the day’s work.
But this time…
Whoever loves this crappy job can go to it. I’m not going!
Picking up his phone, Jiang Yang redeemed all his pitiful savings from his wealth-management app, grabbed a T-shirt, and walked out the door.
“I’ve long heard that the breakfast buffet at Hongtian Hotel is delicious. Today, I’m going to try it for myself!”
That afternoon.
After returning home and turning on his computer, Jiang Yang saw that a few replies had appeared under his post.
“I remember the last guy who pretended to be a divine prophet got dragged out and had his legs broken.”
“Marking this spot and waiting.”
“Wow, the end of the world, huh? Then I don’t need to pay my mortgage, right?”
The few scattered replies were all teasing and sarcasm. Because there were too few people replying, the post had long since sunk to the bottom.
Jiang Yang was not surprised by this at all, nor was he anxious in the slightest.
Time ticked by, bit by bit. Jiang Yang opened a real-time weather website and located Xiaofang Village in Daling City.
A torrential rain warning had already been issued, but the rain had not truly started yet. As for where the flooding would ultimately happen, no one knew.
Toward evening, a news notification was pushed to him.
“Flooding triggered by torrential rain has submerged Xiaofang Village in Daling City. Accumulated water in the village has already exceeded one meter. Hundreds of villagers are trapped, and emergency rescue efforts have begun.”
Seeing this news, Jiang Yang opened the Weihu website again.
The moment he opened it, dozens of notification messages flooded the screen.
Opening his post, Jiang Yang saw that the original single-digit number of replies had now skyrocketed to more than fifty, and it was still climbing rapidly.
The post’s position had even shot up to the first page of the forum in a short period of time.
“I just saw the news. Xiaofang Village got flooded!”
“Tch, look at all of you making such a fuss. The torrential rain in Daling City was forecast yesterday. Is it that strange for a village to get flooded?”
“A village getting flooded isn’t strange. Knowing in advance which village would be flooded is what’s strange.”
“Holy crap, OP’s prediction was godly!”
“Is OP a meteorology big shot?”
“OP, hurry and teach me how to make predictions. If I make money, I’ll split half with you!”
“Begging OP to predict tomorrow’s football match score.”
“The person upstairs has no ambition. Begging OP to predict the lottery numbers!”
“Holy crap, is no one paying attention to the end of the world?!”
After skimming through them roughly, Jiang Yang found that the onlooking netizens were still mostly there for the spectacle. Not many truly believed his prophecy.
This was likewise within his expectations.
Turning off the computer, Jiang Yang left home once more.
He had long heard of the Shandong cuisine at Linjiangxian Restaurant. Now it was time to go have a taste.
…
The next afternoon, Jiang Yang received another news notification.
“A tornado suddenly struck the city of Carlisle. Large swathes of factories were destroyed.”
Just like what he had experienced the last time, each event was unfolding in the order Jiang Yang had prophesied.
Opening the forum again, Jiang Yang saw that his post already had over a thousand replies beneath it.
Before the tornado occurred, most of the replies to the post had been people watching the spectacle and joking around. After the tornado incident, Jiang Yang could clearly see that the replies had begun to grow serious.
“Is OP a transmigrator?”
“Holy crap, predicting a tornado? How did he do it?”
“The end of the world can’t be real, can it?”
…
After refreshing the post again, Jiang Yang was astonished to see that his post had disappeared.
“It got deleted?”
His brows furrowed slightly, then relaxed again.
“No matter. At least tens of thousands of people have already seen this post. Even if it’s deleted, someone will repost it.”
Sure enough, just as Jiang Yang had expected, not long after his post disappeared, a large number of discussion threads surged onto the Weihu forum.
“Why is the divine prophecy post gone?”
“Good thing I copied the prophecy content in advance. Anyone who hasn’t seen it, come watch the fun.”
“It’s confirmed! The ‘Prophet’ really is a transmigrator!”
“Don’t tell me the ‘Prophet’ big shot got taken away?”