Chapter 1: Darkness
In a small wooden cabin in an area outside the city, similar to the suburbs of the old era, some unknown changes were taking place.
If someone were to look at the wooden cabin at this moment, they would notice the air distorting in waves, much like pixel blocks appearing in normal vision, extraordinarily jarring.
Things in the darkness also turned to look at this nearly dilapidated small wooden cabin, as if they too were curious about what was happening inside.
Until the cabin returned to its normal state.
Xu Le slowly opened his eyes. This simple action seemed somewhat difficult for him at the moment.
His slightly thin eyelids felt extraordinarily heavy.
"Am I... dead?"
The roof was missing a few ceiling panels, and the hot night wind howled outside the door.
Here, apart from the rather bright moonlight and the occasional appearance of pale green outside the window, almost no other light could be seen.
The pain of sweat soaking into wounds made Xu Le grit his teeth.
Hiss!
Twisting his stiff neck, Xu Le managed to look around.
A dilapidated house, occasional insect sounds, blood stains on his body, and a person lying on the ground with blood-soaked clothes.
"Well, looks like I'm not dead."
This environment doesn't seem right. Could that guy on the ground be dead?
The pain made Xu Le avert his gaze. He stared at the ceiling and took a few deep breaths, which could slightly ease the pain in his chest.
Even if most of it was just a psychological effect.
Just as he was about to brush away the hair that had become damp enough to obscure his vision, the wall at the edge of his view suddenly began to distort.
Crooked text appeared on the wall.
[Current light level of the house: 2, in a state of darkness. A level 1 anomaly will appear in 9 minutes and 1 second.]
"What?"
The wall continued to distort and flow, the wooden boards moving like pixel blocks, and the protruding part of the wall gradually took on the appearance of a little girl.
The wall's mutation came without warning. Even though Xu Le's psychological tolerance was fairly good, he couldn't help but feel his scalp tingle.
Before him was a girl lying in the arms of a black sheep, but Xu Le couldn't see her face clearly.
Her face seemed to be covered by several mixed color blocks, creating a strong sense of incongruity that would suffocate those with OCD.
She was staring at Xu Le and pointed at the wall.
[Current light level of the house: 2, in a state of darkness. A level 1 anomaly will appear in 8 minutes and 45 seconds.]
"Uh?"
Looking at the information in the text, Xu Le's eyebrows twitched a few times. He instinctively wanted to reach out and touch the little girl in front of him.
However, before his fingers could touch the girl's cheek, these unreal things disappeared again.
Like pixel blocks instantly scraped away.
The walls were still those drafty stone bricks, the ceiling still those damp wooden boards.
Everything was as it was.
Xu Le carefully felt the wall, but the text didn't appear again.
"What was that thing just now?"
A hallucination? But could something so real be a hallucination?
Although he was puzzled, there were no clues to investigate further.
Moreover, the surrounding environment left him no room to delve deeper. There was still someone lying on the ground, their life or death unknown.
The primary task now was to determine where he was and whether it was safe.
As for the person on the ground...
Hiss!
The pain made Xu Le clutch his chest again.
The current environment made him feel a bit strange. Despite the room being drafty and the perceived temperature not being high,
he still felt an intense stuffiness, like the oppressive air just before a summer rainstorm, making it hard to breathe.
The stuffiness made him sweat more and more, and every time sweat soaked into his wounds, it caused intense pain.
Pain could be endured, but it would also distract his attention, so Xu Le felt he needed to deal with the chest wound as soon as possible.
Lifting his shirt, he carefully peeled away the flesh that had stuck to the fabric.
A huge, flower-shaped wound came into view.
"Damn, with a wound like this, how did I survive?"
The wound was large, as big as a child's fist, caused by some unknown object.
However, the wound had stopped bleeding, which was the only thing Xu Le was grateful for.
Looking at the person on the ground, he pondered for a few seconds before finally shaking his head:
"I don't even know what relationship this person has with me."
After sitting up, Xu Le first checked his immediate surroundings.
Next to his buttocks was a long dagger that looked quite sharp, with a notch in the blade and a lot of blood stains.
Beside the dagger was a strange-looking iron frame with rollers, with a triangular stone on it.
The label made Xu Le understand that this thing was a lighter.
And that stone was probably a flint.
"403 Lifeng Lighter.
Heh, a lighter as big as half a brick, I've never seen one before."
Putting down the lighter, Xu Le looked at other items.
A canvas backpack, with some crushed bread and biscuits inside.
Like the dagger, the backpack also had many distinct bloodstains, though these stains had already dried.
He picked up the dagger, pressed his fingernail against the notch on the blade, and looked at the person lying on the ground.
"If this dagger is mine, then the person below, was he..."
Xu Le questioned himself briefly, although he didn't know where he was.
But bearing the burden of killing someone would be difficult to deal with anywhere, even if it was self-defense, it would be very troublesome.
Let alone in this remote wild area, where it would be impossible to explain clearly.
He sighed! Better deal with the wound first.
Taking off his shirt, he wrapped it around above the wound, which could more or less block some sweat.
While carefully examining the wound on his chest, the dried bloodstains at his hand suddenly began to squirm.
The squirming blood gradually converged into a line of jumping small text:
[Zion Pioneer - R35 Bullet Gun Wound, Diameter 4.7 cm, Guyondo, Distorted.]
This information was very chaotic.
A bullet gun? What era would still use such a thing?
Was Zion the manufacturer's name?
As for the latter part, Guyondo and Distorted, he couldn't understand their meaning at all.
Xu Le was about to touch those bloodstains with his finger, but before he could touch those words, the bloodstains returned to their original state.
"Another hallucination? Something's not right."
Xu Le suddenly raised his head, looking at the person lying on the ground, and slightly raised his voice:
"Let me tell you, I've been a very brave person since I was a child, I don't fall for this playing dead act, understand?"
The fingers gripping the dagger turned white, but after a while, they relaxed.
Because the person on the ground didn't respond to him, the room remained quiet.
It seems it's not an act, but if it's not an act... isn't that even more terrifying?
A dead person!
Xu Le looked at that pool of blood again, knowing well the importance of information.
This time, he had the idea to try that ability from earlier.
"Subtitles, come out." No response?
Then try another, looking at the dagger, Xu Le began to stare.
"Eyes, brain." Still no response.
After pondering for a moment, Xu Le spoke with a hint of hope in his voice:
"System?"
Well, it seems he hadn't obtained that kind of powerful thing.
After several unsuccessful attempts, Xu Le thought about the feeling he had when checking his chest earlier.
Serious, focused, careful, and that heat, that unusual heat!
Although he wasn't sure if these conditions were necessary, Xu Le chose to try again.
Enduring the pain of the wound, Xu Le's mind gradually focused, his body becoming hot again.
His eyes stared at the dagger, but after a long time, there was no response.
However, the reappearing feeling of heat made Xu Le feel he was on the right track.
He scanned the surroundings, wanting to find something in the house to observe and test his ability.
But just with this casual sweep, the entire house began to distort in Xu Le's vision, as if he had eaten too many unknown mushrooms.
This time, with mental preparation, Xu Le's expression was unusually focused, his emotions very calm.
Although no text appeared in the distorting room, Xu Le heard a whisper in his ear.
[Ribbit, are you looking for me? Too bad, you have no tribute.]
Tribute? While Xu Le was slightly surprised, text appeared again.
But this time the text appeared directly in front of his eyes, appearing much more rigid compared to the previous softness, feeling like a middle-aged man perfunctorily paying taxes:
[The house is in a dilapidated state, light level 2, in a state of darkness. A level 1 anomaly will appear in 6 minutes and 31 seconds.]
After hearing the whisper, the scene before his eyes returned to normal again.
Xu Le was silent for about 5 seconds.
These 5 seconds were used to calm down.
Then came:
"Damn!"
Next, he needed to organize the information useful to him.
The house is dilapidated, this is clear, light intensity 2 represents darkness, and then there's the level 1 anomaly!
Xu Le tightened his grip on the dagger.
He roughly imagined the possible situations when the so-called level 1 anomaly would appear.
"What would a level 1 anomaly be? How strong? Is it dangerous?"
Without any intelligence information, not even knowing if this was the previous world, Xu Le felt somewhat at a loss.
However, from the information currently known, Xu Le could still determine a few things.
First, he needed light, or rather, the room needed a bright environment.
Second, he had about 6 minutes to start a fire.
Third, he had a lighter!
Xu Le searched through this very spacious house, and the only sustainable combustible material was probably a pile of broken, damp wood.
But trying to light these pieces of wood directly would be too difficult, requiring certain burning conditions to dry them out.
"Find some flammable material."
Xu Le muttered to himself before continuing to look around.
His shirt had already been used for bandaging, and in this situation, he couldn't very well take off his pants.
Apart from the backpack on the ground and that man's clothes, there seemed to be no more flammable materials here.
Thinking of this, Xu Le could only squat down, wanting to check the other person.
To confirm whether the person was really dead.
As a former struggling novelist, he had researched a lot about corpses.
Walking to the man's side, Xu Le could basically confirm that this person was dead.
"This wound!"
Examining the wound on the back of the man's heart, Xu Le was slightly stunned, then looked at the dagger in his hand.
"Did I kill him?"
With just over 5 minutes left, Xu Le opened the backpack on the ground.
There were still some supplies in the backpack.
Paper-packaged food like compressed biscuits, half a bottle of water, a shovel, rope, and a plastic bag containing fluorescent-colored mixed soil powder.
Xu Le picked up the biscuits, not to eat of course, but to look at the paper packaging of the food.
The packaging was labeled [Lighthouse No. 7 Biscuits].
However, the packaging was somewhat crudely made, like a very poor quality knockoff.
Like "Sprite" becoming "Spite" or "Coca-Cola" becoming "Coke-Cola" or "Yue Li Yue" and such.
"Lighthouse No. 7, this biscuit name..."
After looking at the text, Xu Le didn't continue to check the items in the backpack.
Instead, he directly dumped out all the contents, so he could find useful things as quickly as possible.
Xu Le counted the time in his heart, more than 1 minute had passed since the 6-minute prompt earlier.
He now had to light some items to obtain light.
And preferably, these flammable materials should be able to ignite the wood in a short time.
Feeling the ground, it was very soft soil.
Xu Le picked up the shovel from the ground and quickly dug a depression in the ground for ventilation.
Then he arranged these damp pieces of wood in a circle, and split a thick, soft wooden block into three thin pieces, piling them in the center.
Finally, he lit the corpse's clothes and backpack with the lighter and stuffed them into the small ventilation hole.
Whoosh!
Xu Le blew hard, and the flames gradually grew stronger.
Sizzle! Sizzle! Sizzle!
Accompanied by the low murmur of the wood, a large amount of white smoke rose from the wooden blocks.
This white smoke was a product of water vapor mixed with dust, emitting a moldy and rotten smell.
Lighting clothes was easy, but trying to light wood had some difficulty.
Fortunately, there was still time for error.
As the flames gradually solidified, Xu Le's face slightly lifted.
Maintaining focus again, feeling that heat, the flames in front of him distorted into a pile of text.
[The house is in a dilapidated state, light level 4, in a bright state, temporarily stable.]
Looking at this not-so-normal flame in front of him, Xu Le's expression finally returned to normal.
The light brought by the flames at least meant he didn't have to face the so-called level 1 anomaly.
"Phew! Fire truly is the hope of human civilization, things are looking up!"
Xu Le's suspended heart gradually settled, and there was even a hint of a smile on his face.
Now he just needed to keep the flames from going out.
Gazing at the flames, with a sense of security, Xu Le even began his usual routine: writing!
He scratched on the wooden board with the dagger:
I must be sick, feeling uncomfortable all over, it must be from thinking too much about the stories in books, causing these hallucinations.
My head is also foggy, lacking energy to do anything, might as well take some medicine.
Forget it, taking medicine is seven days, not taking medicine is also seven days, I've always known this.
Xu Le secretly sniffed, damn, one side is blocked, the other side is still blocked.
Thinking of this, Xu Le couldn't help but spit at himself.
He was already such a failure, why was he still trying to be so literary?
"Just a failure with a life thinner than paper."
Could he do what Lu Shuren did?
Pulling back his thoughts, he was about to add some firewood.
But the flames in front of him suddenly started turning an eerie green.
Xu Le's heart skipped a beat, but he still forced himself to keep watching, until formed text appeared in these green flames.
[There is a corpse within the safe area, dead for over 4 hours, the corpse will become a level 1 anomaly in 10 minutes.]
[The current house is in a dilapidated and unsealed state, a level 1 anomaly will appear in 14 minutes and 56 seconds, at midnight 0:00.]
[Currently May 28th, Red Moon Calamity countdown: 2 days 0 hours 14 minutes 56 seconds]
Xu Le: ...
?