Reborn a day later, I emptied my enemy's possessions beforehand.

When Lao Ma rode his electric bike into the industrial area, it was already broad daylight.

He worked as a security guard at the No. 1 Pharmaceutical Factory of Haibing Pharmaceutical Company for six years. He came to work at the same time every day and knew this road by heart.

He parked his electric bike in the parking shed at the factory gate—the shed was still there, but something just didn't feel right.

He was stunned for a moment before he realized that the other electric bikes parked in the shed were gone.

Old Liu was on duty last night. His electric scooter should have been parked here, but the spot was empty.

Old Ma carried his thermos and slowly walked towards the guardhouse.

The thermos contained goji berries, which his wife brewed for him before he left home.

He unscrewed the cap and took a sip as he walked, only to hiss from the heat.

The moment he pushed open the door, still holding the thermos, he froze on the threshold.

The guardhouse was empty.

The desk that used to be against the wall is gone, the computer on the desk that had been used for several years is gone, the monitor on the wall is gone, and even the old chair that I had been sitting in for three years is gone.

The curtains were ripped off the window frame, leaving the bare Roman rod leaning to one side.

The ground was spotless, not even a crumpled piece of paper was left behind. Only a few broken wire ends hung down from the hole in the wall, like dead snakes.

Old Ma thought he had gone to the wrong guardhouse.

He stepped out and looked up at the three words "Guard's Room" on the gate—yes, it was the room where he stayed every day.

He went back inside, stood in the center of the room and walked around to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

Some water spilled from the thermos and burned the back of his hand before he came to his senses.

"Old Liu?" he called out.

No one answered.

He called out again, "Old Liu! Where are you?"

His answer came from the echoing sound in the empty factory, a buzzing sound like someone talking in the distance.

Old Ma's heart skipped a beat.

He turned and left the guardhouse, walking briskly toward the office building.

The office building doors were wide open, and the first-floor corridor was empty; even the fire extinguishers on the walls were gone.

He walked to the door of the monitoring room, which was open and empty.

All the monitoring equipment was gone, as were the control panel, chairs, and the anti-static flooring on the wall. All that remained was a bare white wall and a few screw holes on the floor.

Old Ma stood at the door of the monitoring room, his heart sinking.

He quickened his pace, almost running through the corridor between the office building and the factory, and pushed open the door to the production workshop.

The fluorescent lights in the workshop were still on, but there was nothing under the lights.

Crusher, mixer, granulator, dryer, tablet press, coating machine, filling machine, sealing machine, labeling machine —

Those large pieces of equipment he saw every day, those machines whose names he couldn't recall but which looked very valuable, were all gone.

Only the traces of the equipment base remain on the ground, with several neat rows of bolt holes, like rows of wide-open eyes.

Water, electricity, and gas pipes hung down from the ceiling, the hose connections had been unscrewed, and the copper joints at the breaks still reflected the white light of fluorescent lamps.

Old Ma stood in the middle of the empty workshop, mouth agape, unable to utter a single word.

His thermos slipped from his hand and smashed on the ground, spilling water everywhere.

He tried to bend down to pick it up, but stopped halfway down.

He ran out again.

The raw material warehouse is empty.

The packaging materials warehouse is empty.

The finished goods warehouse is empty.

The offices in the office building were all empty.

He opened the door to the staff break room and saw the same scene—

The tables and chairs were gone, the refrigerator was gone, the microwave was gone, the water dispenser in the corner was gone, and even the employee schedule hanging on the wall was taken down, leaving only small holes made by thumbtacks.

The entire pharmaceutical factory, from the factory buildings to the warehouses to the office buildings, was completely destroyed except for the buildings themselves.

Old Ma stood in the middle of the cement road in the factory area. The sun had already risen, shining on his dark face, and his forehead was covered in sweat.

He shakily pulled his phone out of his pocket, scrolled to Lao Liu's name in his contacts, and dialed the number.

The phone rang three times, then it connected.

"Old Liu!" Old Ma's voice was urgent and loud, as if he were calling out to someone standing on the other side of the river.

"What did you do last night?!"

Old Liu's voice on the other end of the phone was groggy, as if he hadn't fully woken up:

"Old Ma? What's up? I went home last night."

"You're going home? You haven't come to work today? Do you know about the major incident at the pharmaceutical factory?!"

Old Liu's voice suddenly became clear: "What happened?"

"The pharmaceutical factory has been emptied out!" Old Ma's voice trembled.

"The guardhouse, the monitoring room, the workshop, the warehouse, the office building—everything's empty! Everything's gone! Wasn't everything fine when you left last night?"

There was a two-second silence on Old Liu's end, then his voice changed: "What did you say? Empty? How is that possible?"

"How would I know what's going on! This is how it is when I arrived! You were on night shift last night, didn't you notice anything wrong before you left?"

Old Liu said, "No! Manager Zhou came over last night and told everyone on the night shift to go home and rest, so we left."

"President Zhou?" Old Ma was taken aback. "President Zhou came over last night?"

"Yes, it was just Mr. Zhou, who came by car."

He told us all to go home, saying we didn't need to work tonight and our wages would still be paid.

We were quite happy, so we left.

Old Ma's hand trembled as he held the phone: "Old Liu, come over here right now! Stop dawdling!"

"I'm coming! You wait there, I'll be right there!"

The phone hangs up.

Old Ma clutched his phone in his hand, his palms sweaty.

Less than half an hour later, Lao Liu arrived on his electric bike.

There were two other people following behind him.

Xiao Zhao and another security guard, Lao Li, were on duty together last night.

The three people parked their electric bikes in the shed and ran into the factory area.

Old Liu was the first to rush into the guardhouse. When he saw the empty room, his face turned pale.

He ran to the monitoring room, the workshop, and the warehouse, going from room to room. The more he ran, the worse his face looked. Finally, when he stood at the entrance of the finished product warehouse, his legs were so weak that he had to use his hands to support himself against the wall to avoid falling.

"This...this is impossible..." Old Liu murmured.

"Everything was fine last night, all the goods are still here..."

Xiao Zhao was a young man, around twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, but he was timid and turned pale at the sight.

"Brother Liu, is this some kind of paranormal event? So many things disappeared overnight?"

Old Li, the oldest of the group, with half his hair white, squatted on the ground, smoking a cigarette, and said in a muffled voice:

"What kind of supernatural event? A supernatural event could make all the things in these warehouses disappear? Someone must have stolen them."

"But how many people and how many vehicles would it take to move all this stuff?" Xiao Zhao's voice was trembling.