Hot wind swept up the lingering smoke; a small mountain village in the mountains had become a completely silent ruin.
The shattered houses looked as if they had been torn apart by a demon's claws, their charred frames pitch-black.
Wisps of green smoke curled upward, twisting as if countless suffering souls were struggling to break free.
The air was thick with black ash, a nauseating mix of burned wood and the metallic scent of blood.
The ancient tree by the village gate had changed beyond recognition, its blackened branches hanging helplessly as if crying to the heavens about an unjust fate.
In a dry well, Silas Frost shouted with all his strength, "Is anyone there? Someone help me! Where is this place?"
His young voice echoed upward, but no one answered; his body was black with soot, his tattered clothes just as dark.
At the dim bottom of the well, without exceptionally sharp eyesight it would have been almost impossible to notice anyone.
Silas Frost sat on the ground and hit his head in frustration; a hoarse voice escaped him: "What is this?"
Silas Frost had transmigrated: moments earlier he had been asleep in his own bed, phone charging while he played a village card game.
Who could have guessed the phone would suddenly overheat and explode right in front of him; his last memory was a shard
of the phone stabbing straight into his eye, and then nothing. When he woke again, he was already in this dry well, inside a little boy's body.
His whole body burned with pain; he cried to the heavens, but the heavens did not hear; he cried to the earth, but the earth did not answer.
"So hungry." The sky above his head turned black. Silas Frost rubbed his stomach; there was no memory fusion, and he did not know what this body had experienced before.
The shallow well was about ten meters deep; with Silas Frost's small arms and legs, and with hunger gnawing at him,
climbing out was basically impossible.
As for the golden finger, Silas Frost's mind stirred, and a village-themed anime card-game interface quickly appeared.
It was indeed the game he had played before, though he did not know whether the phone's explosion afterward had damaged it.
Now this so-called cheat seemed to have only three things left: the team screen, the training screen, and the card-draw screen.
Features related to adventure, arena, and so on had basically become decoration.
As for the cards and the team Silas Frost had built before, everything was gone.
He opened the character screen; after a blank flash, his current status appeared:
Name: Silas Frost
Level: 1
Body: 1
Strength: 1
Agility: 1
Spells: [Body] Unlimited release for physique, endurance, and stamina;
[Strength] Unlimited release for power, attacks, and magic output;
[Agility] Unlimited release for speed, reflexes, and attack rate.
Skills: None
Equipment: None
Card Slot: None
This was Silas Frost's current state, having nothing and still painfully weak.
As for the card-draw screen, Silas Frost opened it and tried. There was basically no response; it just kept prompting him to recharge.
Shopping with Jewel. High-tier Miscellaneous: 100 Jewel for a single draw; ten consecutive draws at 98%, 908 Jewel for ten.
Standard Miscellaneous: 10,000 Jewel for a single draw; ten consecutive draws reduced to 80%, 80,000 Jewel for ten.
Unfortunately, Silas Frost did not have a single coin.
If the adventure feature still existed, he could at least go questing a little, stockpile some resources, then try a draw, and maybe defy fate.
But… huh? Silas Frost looked at the card-draw screen and suddenly noticed that Standard Miscellaneous showed Free.
Could it be the usual mobile game perk, one free draw every day?
"This saves me!" Silas Frost suddenly stood up. According to the rules of those village mobile games, the first pull would not be too strong, but it would be reliable enough to clear the first few stages. So if he drew a card and put it in his card slot, did that mean he could also use the card's power? Ability?!
Thinking of this, Silas Frost rubbed his hands, then rubbed his face so he would not look so grimy.
Then, excited and trembling, Silas Frost chose to draw.
The next moment, the pool burst with a shower of yellow cards that filled him with anticipation at first glance.
The cards fell one after another, and finally one card stopped in midair.
Silas Frost looked at the card hanging there, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
The back of the card was pure, jade-white. It looked gorgeous, but in truth it was only a white-rarity card, mostly used as fodder.
Silas Frost sighed. A white card was still a white card, though even that was better than his current state.
He tapped the card. The white card spun and revealed a middle-aged man with a crew cut and a beard, raising both arms in victory, his build solid and powerful.
Silas Frost recognized it immediately. It was Satan.
In other works, a name like that would belong to a final boss, or at least high-tier combat power.
But that name belonged to those shows from his old world.
Recalling the "savior" antics of Satan, Silas Frost felt his heart tighten for a moment.
"Let's try it first." Silas Frost was helpless; he had no other choice.
Holding the Satan card, Silas Frost slotted it into his card tray.
Name: Silas Frost
Level: 1
Body: 1 + (3)
Strength: 1 + (2)
Agility: 1 + (2)
Note: A card slot can only extract 10% of a card's attributes. Attributes auto-assign; when odd numbers appear, the remainder after one is skipped.
Looking at the updated screen, Silas Frost had not expected it to work so well.
Very quickly, Silas Frost understood. Although Satan played a comedic role in those anime, the main cast was too overpowered, naturally leaving others with no chance to shine.
But when the spotlight fell on Satan, he was still impressive.
Outside the main cast, he was someone who could win a world martial arts tournament.
Among ordinary people, Satan was absolutely top tier.
Just by measuring raw strength, he could post a score that ordinary people really could not reach.
And the blessing from this card on Silas Frost's body, compared to his base stats, was a bit exaggerated.
His physical endurance tripled, while strength and agility doubled.
In the blink of an eye, Silas Frost felt almost superhuman.
He still could not punch through bricks or break big trees, but the ten-meter-deep dry well here could no longer stop him.
Silas Frost walked to the edge of the well and studied the uneven stone wall.
He took a deep breath, used his boosted attributes to press against the protrusions, and climbed like a gecko, quickly scaling out of the dry well.
Rumble, rumble.
After finally climbing out of that bottomless, dark, bone-dry pit, Silas Frost felt as if he had used up all his strength and collapsed beside the well like a pile of mud.
He opened his mouth wide, greedily gulping air, panting hard as if to replace all the oxygen he had just lost at the bottom of the well.
At that moment, the once-clear sky gave a dull thunderclap, followed by bean-sized raindrops that fell like broken pearls.
The rain drummed fiercely against Silas Frost's body, sending waves of bone-chilling cold through him, yet he did not react.
He simply lay there quietly, letting the rain wash over him again and again.
As time passed, the mud and grime on Silas Frost's skin were rinsed away bit by bit, revealing his naturally fair skin.
In that moment, he looked like a newborn, pure and flawless, untouched by the dust of the world.
This sudden heavy rain felt like a trial of his spirit, filling him with a peace and tranquility he had never known.