Wu Muming was awakened by the cold.
One moment he was in the flames of a laboratory explosion, and now he was frozen awake.
Like every male protagonist in Qidian, he woke up in an orphanage.
But his was even more miserable.
He woke up in the orphanage's utility room.
Aside from the muddy floor and the dust in the air, he had only a musty wooden barrel and a mop covered in black fungus for company.
Wu Muming stiffly tried to move his fingers, but he felt a pain as if he were being twisted in a meat grinder, radiating from the deepest part of his soul throughout his body. He shuddered, and a large amount of air filled with musty smell and dust rushed into his lungs. Wu Muming coughed and greedily breathed in the air, feeling his body slowly warm up.
Along with his rapid breathing and violent coughing, countless fragmented memories flooded his mind.
Wu Muming was a promising young man in the 21st century, but while working late at night on an experiment, he happened to encounter an explosion in the laboratory above him.
He didn't die in the explosion, but it did collapse the floor, sending a one-ton ultra-low-temperature freezer plummeting into the air.
Wu Muming died instantly.
He didn't even feel any pain.
A remarkably peaceful death.
Then he woke up in this utility room.
Interestingly, this body was also named Wu Muming, or Tierra Wu. Like him, she was born on June 28, 1980, with the same parents and appearance.
The only difference was that Wu Muming's parents had immigrated to the UK during the 1980s immigration wave, harboring unrealistic dreams of a foreign land.
A week after landing, they were gunned down in a dark alley next to the theater.
Tragic, truly tragic.
Tierra, meanwhile, had been sent directly to an orphanage and died of hypothermia an hour earlier.
Discrimination against Chinese people was still quite severe in the 1980s.
This discrimination was evident in every aspect: schools, workplaces, government offices, restaurants, and, of course, the orphanage itself.
And sometimes, this kind of discrimination between young children is even worse and more blatant.
You are the only one with black hair and black eyes in a group of blond and blue-eyed orphans. Who else should they bully if not you?
From the smallest things in the beginning, having your food and toys taken away, to being picked on, pushed and beaten, and now being doused with cold water as a prank and locked in the utility room.
Tiera Wu, who was already in poor health, died of hypothermia at night.
After lying on the ground for a while, Tiera slowly sat up, slowly placed her right hand on her left wrist, and silently counted to sixty seconds.
"The heartbeat is fine."
Tiera majored in biology and medicine in her previous life. Although she was not a pure medical student, she still knew some simple medical methods.
"Hmm?" After taking his own pulse, Tiera realized he had a ring on his left ring finger, a ring that clearly didn't fit his current status. "What is this..."
The utility room had no windows, the door was shut, and it was lights out, leaving it completely dark. Tiera had no choice but to grope around with his right hand.
The ring felt like it was carved from some kind of bone.
It was slightly larger than his ring finger, with uneven surfaces and what looked like a densely carved pattern covering the entire ring.
In darkness, one's other senses are amplified.
Ads by Pubfuture
Pubfuture Ads
Tiera felt around twice before she could barely make out the patterns, which she normally wouldn't notice. They seemed to be extremely distorted English words.
"th...mer...el...eas...gol...la...ei...lin..."
Tiera tried to pronounce the words based on the spacing between the patterns and the English pronunciation.
As the last syllable escaped her lips, Tiera, who was in the storage room, suddenly vanished, as if erased.
The next moment, Tiera's eyes lit up, revealing herself in a dim library.
"Ugh..."
Tiera couldn't help but dry heave, even though her stomach was empty. She felt as nauseous as if she had just been on a five-hour roller coaster.
Tiera lay limp on the ground, as weak as a dead dog. Once the nausea subsided, he rolled over and lay face up on the ground.
Tiera saw a vast, distant ceiling. Below it was a neatly trimmed stone wall, gradually shrinking in circles. Even on the lower floor where Tiera lay, it still covered nearly five hundred square meters. It was an inverted pyramid-shaped structure, estimated to have at least a thousand stories, each about half a person's height, and each hollowed out. Inside, a variety of books and scrolls were cluttered.
After regaining some strength, Tiera sat up and saw a simple wooden table next to him, piled with rolls of parchment and a lamp made of strange stone.
Tiera slowly crawled towards the table and plopped down on the wooden chair in front of it.
The parchments on the table were scattered in a chaotic manner, some even torn and crumpled.
Tiera picked up a piece at random. It was covered with a dense, twisted script that resembled English, but not entirely. After staring at it for a while, Tiera felt dizzy.
However, as his fingers touched the words, a terrifying message flooded into his mind.
"...Across all the universes, among all living beings, except for the gods and their descendants personally spawned by the Supreme Mother, no other creature can compare..."
Tiera quickly pulled his
hand away, horrified. Then, he reached for another parchment.
"...peel the Manli fruit that fell during a thunderstorm, dry it, crush it, and take two spoonfuls..."
Tiera stared at the twisted words.
He was certain he didn't recognize them, but the moment his fingers touched them, the knowledge they represented flooded into his mind.
After perusing several parchments, Tiera had a vague suspicion of something ominous, and with a heavy face, he walked towards the nearest cave.
Tiera's hand carefully traced the spines of the books, and one by one, titles filled with blasphemous and sinister meanings flooded his mind.
The largest and thickest tome... the Necronomicon.
A thinner one, resembling an ordinary textbook... the Nameless Sacrifice Book,
a tall, thin book bound in an unknown hard leather cover... the R'lyeh Text a thin book bound with cotton thread like an ancient Chinese tome... the Seven Chapters of the Mysterious Lord...
Whoosh, the ancient tome flew off the shelf and landed in front of Tiera, its pages unfurling without a breeze. At that moment, Tiera had never felt Chinese characters so terrifying and disgusting.
He knew every word. The moment his eyes met those two pages of Chinese characters, Tiera's hair stood on end, as if some incomprehensible knowledge had been forced into his soul. Chaotic mutterings, screams, and incomprehensible images filled his mind.
Goosebumps appeared one by one, growing larger and larger, crowding together into translucent, sticky pustules.
(End of Chapter)