Chapter 1: The Mysterious Portal
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
“Top lane support needed. Hurry to the top and provide me with a.s.sistance!”
“I’m in the top lane defending against four enemy champions! What are all of you doing?”
“Please, stop messing around! Hurry to the top and provide a.s.sistance!”
“The enemy has pushed forward onto our base; you guys still aren’t coming back?”
Boom!
The crystal nexus in his base exploded. A large “FAIL” floated up the computer screen.
“d.a.m.n! I’ve got a group of dumb teammates again!” Chen Jin hit his keyboard in agitation. He had played LOL five times in a row today, and each time he had gotten noobs and dumb teammates. He had lost all five times and had blacklisted more than 10 people. It was really terrible luck.
“Forget it, I’m not playing anymore. I always get the elementary students during the summer holidays. All of them are useless! There’s no point in still playing.” Switching off his computer, Chen Jin shook his head. He realized that the gaming experience was extremely horrible when it came to games that were active with lots of elementary students.
Taking out his newly-bought twilight-colored Huawei P20 mobile, he lay on the hanging rattan chair and played a mobile game called “Crash 3.” Putting his favorite wife, Yayi, into operation, he s.a.d.i.s.tically killed wave after wave of monsters as she panted lightly.
Chen Jin, 24 and slightly handsome, was a homebody who loved gaming and anime the most. But he much prefered to call himself an “anime-body.”
He had bought many anime-themed and related items. For example: self-a.s.sembled figurines of Madoka, Asuna, and Rem, posters of Furukawa Nagisa, Katou Megumi, and Gokou Ruri, a PC wallpaper of Menma, a black silk bolster featuring Kasumigaoka Utaha, and a T-s.h.i.+rt printed with “King Saber.” Such items were filling up every corner of his bedroom. As someone with a big heart, he called all of them “wifey.”
Chen Jin was also part of the Elderly Devouring Generation. There was nothing he could do about it. He could never work, not in this lifetime. The easy jobs paid so little he could not even support himself, while the good-paying jobs were not easy to do, and the stress was too great to take. He could only stay at home and devour his elderly parents’ money just like this.
In addition, his family situation was good. His dad was a high-ranking engineer in a state enterprise and his mom was a government branch official. Their old house had been demolished a few years ago, and the developer had offered six houses as compensation.
As an only son, he had been spoiled by his mother since he was young. Actually, simply by looking at the self-a.s.sembled figurines, which were all based on characters from the two-dimensional world, crammed into the three levels of his bedside drawer, one could tell that he had the ability to devour the elderly.
Moreover, with his current single status, he could be rated as an “eligible bachelor.”
He played his mobile game for more than an hour. Putting down his cellphone, Chen Jin rubbed his aching and swollen eyes. Feeling the urge to pee, he put aside his mobile and walked towards the bathroom. As it was an ensuite, it was very convenient to go to the bathroom.
Click~
Opening the bathroom door, Chen Jin was immediately stunned.
The toilet bowl, which was placed directly in front of him and could be promptly utilized after taking down his pants, was now unusable. A translucent circle of light floated above the toilet bowl, emitting a gentle fluorescent glow.
“What is this? Could it be a hallucination caused by gaming for too long?”
Rubbing his eyes a few times, Chen Jin looked with a fixed stare. The translucent circle of light was still floating there.
“A portal from another dimension, or… a sheet of glowing stickers, with the purpose of pranking me?” April Fool’s Day was long past. If that was the case…
Raising his fist and lifting his brows, Chen Jin adopted a slightly arrogant tone. “There is only one truth! Fist of the One and Only Profound Truth, break it!”
He swung his fist towards the translucent circle of light. Immediately, a strange expression came over his face. The pain that he expected never came. On the contrary, his right arm sank deeply into the circle of light with no resistance, with faint ripples appearing on the surface.
Chen Jin’s eyes instantly grew wide. Then, he took his hand out, put it back in and did it all over again more than 10 times. It was almost like he was masturbating his own atrophied arm. Taking his hand out for the final time, he said with gleaming eyes, “So it really is a portal to another dimension!”
Even I, a carefree homebody who stays in all day and has no worries over food or clothing, can get a “gold finger” dropped onto my lap. Lord in Heaven, you are too good to me! It is the poor who need this the most.
Chen Jin was ecstatic. He actually received an explosion of luck immediately after losing five games in a row today. Speaking of which, what would lie beyond the portal? A fantasy world of magic or a dimension of the G.o.ds? A post-apocalyptic planet filled with zombies or the so-called training battlefield for paranormals? No matter what laid beyond, there was one thing that he is 100 percent sure of: This time, he definitely hit the jackpot!
But…
Suppressing the excitement inside him, Chen Jin planned to cautiously probe the world lying beyond the portal. First, he took a rope and tied it around his Huawei P20 mobile. After turning on the HDR video recording, he slowly put it into the portal and shot an HD video segment. The video showed a monotonous scene that was just like the flat surface of a mirror. Almost as if it was a piece of translucent gla.s.s. The shot would occasionally sweep across a scene of a sand clouded sky.
“A world that is a wasteland?” Again, he put his hand inside the portal. Feeling the temperature of the environment over there, he realized that it was within the normal range of 20-plus degrees. “Can the air there be inhaled directly?”
Chen Jin took a bottle of mineral water from the fridge. Twisting off the cap, he poured away the water inside. Then he tied a rope to it and put it into the portal. 10 minutes later, he lifted the bottle out and leaned his nose close to the mouth of the bottle. Twitching the sides of his nose, he smelled the air from the other world.
“No strange smells that irritate the nose; a whiff of sand and dust; contains oxygen, too. It should be breathable.”
Okay. There was no need to do other experiments. He could hold his breath and just stick his head in to see. So long as his face did not get torn off instantly, he could take a look at the landscape in the other world.
With this thought in mind, Chen Jin knelt on the ground and half supported himself with two hands on the toilet lid. Adopting a somewhat vulgar pose, his head slowly extended towards the translucent circle of light. The top of his head went in first, followed by half a forehead, then the eyes, nose, mouth… until his whole head was totally submerged inside the circle of light.
Opening his eyes, he took in as much as he could of the landscape from the other dimension. A huge crater. The first thing he saw was the biggest crater ever. Its spherical shape was extremely uniform. On the surface of the spherical crater was gla.s.s of a dense and thick colour, which was the result of melted sand. Chen Jin immediately thought of explosions caused by nuclear weapons.
The sky was overshadowed by the sand as far as the eye could see, and the rays of light were dim, making it difficult to be certain of the sun’s position. The air was indeed breathable, but it was very dry, carrying a much stronger scent of dust. He could hear the whoosh of the wind pa.s.sing by his ears and feel the movement and temperature of the air on his face. The wilderness carried with it a sense of tranquility.
Opening his eyes wide, Chen Jin took a sweeping glance of his surroundings and imprinted it on his mind. Quietly, he told himself, “This world is mine!”
…
The same day, through various channels, Chen Jin bought a great number of specialized items. He bought: a hazmat suit, a filter mask, hiking shoes, a metal walking staff, a big backpack, a small backpack, a bivy, a field tent, windproof goggles, binoculars, thick gloves, a torch, a compa.s.s, a canteen, a Swiss Army knife, a windproof lighter, and other necessary equipment for an outdoor expedition. Furthermore, he purchased a radiation dosimeter, a gravimeter, and a portable air monitoring device, as well as other measuring equipment for the physical world.
Purchasing all the items cost Chen Jin a total of more than 50,000 RMB. As someone with only a little income, he had spent all the savings that he had.