Lin Ke lived in a tenement building, the kind common in the old district where the apartment blocks were built so close together you could practically shake hands with your neighbor through the window. The stairwell was so narrow it could only fit one person at a time.
With the dead weight of the sandbox in his arms, every step he took felt like it was grinding his bones to dust. Sweat soaked through his shirt, clinging unpleasantly to his back—a feeling that perfectly mirrored his current life: pathetic and suffocating.
His tiny single room was on the sixth floor. There was no elevator.
When he finally shouldered open the rickety wooden door and dropped the sandbox onto the floor with a heavy THUD, the entire building seemed to shudder with him.
Lin Ke collapsed next to it as if all his energy had been drained away, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath.
It took a long while for the adrenaline—a mixture of defiance and exhilaration from his reckless purchase—to finally subside. He stared at the behemoth that now took up nearly a quarter of his rented room, then glanced at his empty bank account. An immense wave of regret and disappointment washed over him.
He truly was insane.
He had gambled away his entire net worth on the cryptic words of a common street swindler.
But what was done was done. Regret was useless. He struggled to his feet, found a rag in the bathroom, wrung it out, and began to carefully wipe the dust from the sandbox.
He had to see what kind of "world" he had actually bought.
As the layers of dust were wiped away, the sandbox's true face was gradually revealed.
On the dark red wood of the frame, intricate carvings, previously hidden by grime, began to emerge. At first, Lin Ke thought they were just common decorative patterns, but as he leaned in for a closer look, he couldn't help but gasp.
They weren't decorative patterns at all.
Carved upon the four sides of the frame were four sequential, epic murals.
On the first side, a hazy, humanoid figure in the midst of endless chaos was tearing the heavens and the earth apart with its bare hands.
On the second, the figure scattered a rain of light, and from the earth, countless bizarre and monstrous beasts were born, roaring and devouring one another.
On the third, the beasts warred, shattering the world. Innumerable skeletons piled into mountains as rivers of blood flowed.
On the fourth, all life was extinguished. The world returned to a dead silence, with only the lonely humanoid figure standing silently atop the mountain of corpses and blood.
The style of the carvings was primitive and raw, filled with a wild, savage aura, yet it possessed an indescribable power that struck him to the core. Lin Ke was mesmerized, as if he were personally witnessing the birth and destruction of a world.
He turned his gaze to the fine grey sand inside the box.
Only after cleaning the frame did he notice that the seemingly ordinary sand was also etched with a vast, swirling star chart, carved with an incredibly light touch. At the very center of the chart was a small, sun-like sigil.
This was no ordinary object.
Lin Ke's heart began to pound again, the extinguished flame of hope flickering back to life. He began to search frantically for a way to activate this "world."
He turned the sandbox over and over, knocking and tapping, searching for any hidden compartments or buttons, but found nothing. He tried pouring water on the sand, shining his phone's flashlight on it, even throwing his ID card and bank cards inside...
The sandbox remained inert, a silent, dead thing that seemed to mock his stupidity.
An hour passed, then two...
The night outside grew deeper, and with each passing minute, Lin Ke's excitement and hope were ground away.
Finally, he slumped to the cold floor, his room a mess.
He felt like a complete and utter fool.
A chance to change his destiny? A world in a box? It was all a load of crap. This thing was probably just a well-made, empty wooden box that some old charlatan had attached a good story to.
And he, Lin Ke, was the biggest idiot who had actually believed it.
"Aaargh—!"
The pressure of reality, the anger of being scammed, the despair for his future... all his negative emotions exploded in that moment. His eyes turned bloodshot as he let out a suppressed roar. Like a cornered animal, he grabbed a fruit knife from the table and lunged at the sandbox that had consumed his last hope, his face twisted in a mask of rage.
He was going to smash it! He was going to pry it open! He was going to see what this so-called "world" was really made of!
He raised the knife and, with all his might, brought it down on the frame of the sandbox.
However, he had overestimated his strength and underestimated the hardness of the wood.
*Clang!*
With a sharp ring, the knife's blade struck the wooden frame and was immediately repelled. The powerful recoil made his wrist go numb, and he lost his grip on the handle. The sharp fruit knife flipped in the air and came clattering down.
Lin Ke couldn't dodge in time. He felt a cold sting in his finger, followed by a sharp pain.
He looked down. His right index finger had been sliced open by the tip of the knife, a gash so deep he could see the bone. Dark red blood instantly welled up, dripping onto the floor.
"Fuck!"
Lin Ke cursed, and was about to look for something to wrap his hand, when he failed to notice that one plump drop of blood had fallen past the frame, landing precisely in the center of the sandbox, right on top of the sun sigil.
The drop of blood didn't soak into the sand.
Like a drop of water hitting hot oil, it sizzled and instantly vaporized into a crimson mist.
And then, the impossible happened.
**THUMP.**
A deep, muffled sound, like a giant heartbeat, suddenly echoed from within the sandbox.
Lin Ke froze, staring at the box in disbelief.
**THUMP. THUMP.**
The heartbeat grew faster and louder, as if a colossal beast, slumbering for eons, was slowly awakening.
From the point where his blood had landed, lines of blood-red light shot out, spreading like a spiderweb along the etched lines of the star chart. In the blink of an eye, the entire interior of the sandbox was bathed in an eerie, bewitching red glow.
The four murals on the frame also seemed to come to life. The humanoid figure, the roaring beasts, the shattering world... all the scenes began to flow and shift, shadows and light dancing as they silently reenacted the epic war of creation and destruction.
The entire rented room was illuminated by the ghastly red light, transforming it into a demonic domain.
Lin Ke was utterly stunned by the supernatural scene before him. He forgot the pain, forgot to think, his mind a complete blank.
Just then, an immense, irresistible suction force erupted from the swirling center of the sandbox!
The papers and miscellaneous objects in his room began to tremble and fly through the air, converging madly on the box.
To his horror, Lin Ke found that his own body was being uncontrollably dragged forward. He gripped the edge of a table with all his might, but it felt as if his very soul was being ripped from his flesh!
The world spun, his vision blurring and distorting.
In the final second before he lost consciousness, he thought he heard an ancient, majestic sigh—one that did not belong to any human language—resonate directly in the depths of his soul.
*"The... Pact... is Sealed."*