FYN What does Chapter 1 mean?
What does Chapter 1 mean?
The mist, which seemed to flow like fabric around Nan'an, was casually brushed aside.
"This time it's 1534 steps..."
He murmured to himself, took the last step forward, completely breaking free from the lingering mist behind him, and walked towards the only dwelling place in this area that could accommodate him.
As the sun sets, the shadows of the two-story quaint wooden houses in the distance are stretched long by the lazy afterglow, merging into the orange grove.
Nan'an wasn't a qualified time traveler. After crossing the Nora continent, he only lasted for 6 years before embarking on a path of giving back to nature with his body.
"never mind."
Since we've already come all this way, especially during the Lunar New Year, and he's just a child, things aren't easy for anyone. He's probably already dead, so I guess we should say that.
Hopefully, that bookworm can make the most of his talent; after all, it's not the elderly who create the new era.
The random thoughts that had been swirling in my mind on the way back vanished the moment I returned to the cabin.
Nan'an wrote "1534" on the ground by the tree branch.
The numbers on the side were already densely packed.
"1145"
"956"
"777"
To be brought back to life... In fact, Nan'an didn't even know if this counted as being brought back to life.
He was trapped in a strange space.
Looking out from the wooden house, one can see undulating mountains, with clouds swirling around the peaks and lush, verdant forests at the foot of the mountains.
Only the north side has a gap, offering a flat view with faint, shimmering blue ripples dancing on the horizon.
No matter which direction he heads, the increasingly thick, all-consuming fog will engulf him like a swamp.
If you keep walking, when the fog dissipates, Nan'an will only return to where it started.
Calculating by the number of steps is meaningless, and the pattern of how far one can go is currently unclear.
The two-story wooden house has little decoration or furniture; the chairs, beds, and tables are unremarkable.
It stands abruptly in the very center of this space, like a landmark and a reference point.
For a moment, Nan'an felt that its existence was merely to fulfill his basic imagination of "home".
About 150 meters away from the wooden house is an orange grove.
The oranges are juicy, with a glossy orange-yellow peel, a fresh aroma, and crisp, sweet flesh.
There are no oranges on the continent of Nora, at least not when he died.
Since Nan'an regained consciousness, he has never had a physiological craving for food.
He did not feel hungry.
Picking oranges to eat is just a craving; laying orange peels on the ground to dry is just to see if the sun in the sky is real.
In the first few days after the city was revived, the sun shone over Nan'an but brought no warmth whatsoever, as if it were just a large incandescent light bulb that was turned on at fixed times and hung in the sky.
The orange peels were wrinkled and rolled up at the edges. Nan'an casually gathered them into a pile, lay them down in the sunset, and felt the ground, which was still a little hot after being baked all day.
Hesitantly, he reached for his collar.
A gentle glow emerges from beneath the skin, and a Rubik's Cube hangs silently in the air.
It is entirely crescent-white, with the squares forming a seamless whole without any color difference or seams. The material is crystal clear and semi-transparent.
When Nan'an woke up, it lay quietly beside him.
I just picked it up and played with it casually, and it was inexplicably sucked into my body.
Nan'an used it as a mirror to confirm that he was not a bloody, mangled zombie or a skeleton.
Perhaps because he has experienced time travel and death, he has a very high tolerance threshold for incomprehensible anomalies.
If their fate is unknown, then they are dead.
It's not surprising that there are so many inexplicable strange phenomena around us.
What he can be fairly certain of now is that he is still in Nora.
As consciousness returned, traces of magical flow gradually appeared in this area that was in a magical vacuum, and the magical aura was no different from that before his death.
As magic flowed in, Nan'an's parched body regained some of the muscle memories of the half-baked magic warrior he had been before his death.
Aslipan, a wolf girl as burly as a bear, possesses the power to punch Nan'an so hard she could be slammed into a wall and never come off.
She assisted Nan'an in completing the training of a martial artist.
For a long time, the Red Rat Adventure Team was a transient group—members came and went like flowing water.
Nan'an was fortunate enough to survive three rounds following in Aslipan's footsteps, becoming a veteran of the adventurer's group, while she inherited the Red Rat Adventurer's Group and became its leader.
"Little one, it's the leader's responsibility to take care of the group members. I'll protect you."
As a time traveler, Nan'an's first reaction to those words was not to be moved, but to instinctively look around, fearing that a black luxury carriage might suddenly appear.
Given the nature of the collaboration, the unorthodox mages who join the team will share the magic they have learned from taverns, the dead, the black market, and brothels with Nan'an, without revealing their core skills.
As a result, his basic understanding of magic had a somewhat cobbled-together feel to it—and it probably would have remained so unless some nerd corrected him.
Next to the open space in front of the "home" where dried tangerine peel is dried, within a circle with a radius of 5 meters, intricate lines resemble wildly growing plant roots intertwined and woven into incomprehensible patterns.
The [Communication Array Without Physical Medium] was the first functional array he systematically learned after moving away from the "Pinhao Rice" style of magic.
Even today, he can still recall the rare sight of his bookish teacher, who would nag on and on with a cold face.
The mage stands at the center, his own magic abundant, and he uses this magic to infuse the magic circle, enabling remote information transmission.
It may seem like a positive step towards breaking free from the status quo, but that's not actually the case.
First, Nan'an couldn't remember any exact "phone number".
Secondly, the magic in this space recovers extremely slowly, taking about seven days to barely accumulate enough magic for one "dialing".
In his first two attempts, he made minor adjustments to some of the patterns on the magic array for blind testing, but the results were like throwing a stone into the sea.
Upon reflection, a voice message involuntarily played in his mind.
"The number you dialed is not in service..."
Now that the magic power is about to meet the demand for another call, Nan'an is pondering whether to save up more magic power to try for a guaranteed pull, or continue with single pulls to try for a miracle.
A white light enveloped Nan'an in an instant. In the blinding light screen where it was impossible to distinguish up from down from left from right, a feeling of weightlessness followed, as if one had stepped into thin air and was falling straight down from the clouds.
He did not dial, which is inconsistent with the normal phenomenon of establishing communication through a communication array.
The feeling of falling stopped, and it was as if something was dragging Nan'an from the other end of the magic circle, pulling her into a roaring vortex.
The field of vision was distorted into bizarre blocks of color and lines by the white light and "water pressure".
Amidst the chaos and suffocation, a rapid female voice shattered the surging noise in our ears.
"Whoever you are, I order you to stall for time!"
The white light in his field of vision vanished with a roar, and what Nan'an saw was a figure moving at high speed and leaping high into the air.
The dazzling white light still made ghostly figures appear in his field of vision.
Nan'an couldn't see the other person's appearance or moves clearly, but he had a distinct human-shaped outline, so he slightly tilted his body and casually raised his elbow.
The movements were so simple they bordered on laziness.
Like dealing with a novice in a mecha game who bites the tail and doesn't slow down, I slightly shifted my feet and changed my position, causing the shadowy figure's overly forceful charge to hit nothing but air.
"Thump!"
In the instant the two crossed paths, Nan'an delivered a simple and unadorned elbow strike to the back of his opponent's neck.
The dark figure fell to the ground with a thud, blood streaming down its face.
The pungent smell of blood startled Nan An, who quickly looked around, his brows furrowed.
Beneath the leaden clouds, as far as the eye could see, the meadow in the woods was a scene of utter devastation, littered with corpses.
The voice that gave him the orders was also engaged in a fierce close-quarters battle with an enemy.
If there were corpses, they should be fresh. Where did the strong, pungent stench of decay come from?
Imagine going on a long trip and the refrigerator suddenly loses power, only to return home a week later and enjoy the "feast".
"The guy under your feet isn't dead!"
These words interrupted Nan'an's intention to watch the battle. He lowered his head suspiciously and lifted the long robe covering the entire body of the dark figure.
"hiss……"
It was a reddish-brown mass, resembling a mixture of minced meat that had been pulverized by a high-speed blender.
It looked as if someone had maliciously stuffed minced meat into a human-shaped mold and then crushed it.
The moment the robe was lifted, blood seeped out from the gaps in the flesh, and the glue that held the body together vanished rapidly, leaving behind bursts of white foam.
A foul stench gushed out from every tiny hole!
"Isn't he completely dead?"
Nan'an has a high threshold. With six years of experience as an adventurer and countless encounters with corpses, he can endure the physical discomfort and immerse his hands, which are now burning, into the gradually darkening, minced flesh.
A fiery fist ignited the inside of his flesh and blood, a whirlwind fueled the flames on his body, and a raging fire shot into the sky.
The spectacular sight, almost like an explosion, stunned Nan'an—aside from the grease, the monster's body was highly concentrated with magic.
He didn't sense any magical dissipation reaction at the time of death.
"Bang!"
The dull thud drew Nan'an's attention to the area not far away.
Despite being at a disadvantage, the girl with bull horns suddenly punched her opponent away.
The man's skin was as white as a vampire's, frighteningly pale, with a bluish tinge in his pupils.
He stared intently at Nan'an, his pupils trembling violently, as if he had seen a ghost.
The next second, without hesitation, he lifted his robe, black mist billowed out, and he turned and disappeared into the surging darkness.
The girl was breathing heavily, but she still didn't turn her head.
"Summoning canceled, dispel."
"So I was pulled out by a summoning ritual? Haven't you learned summoning magic? Who told you that you could undo it by just shouting incantations?" Nan An never expected to be someone's magic teacher one day. "Summoning magic isn't like that. You should..."
"Summoning canceled, dispel!"
"Calm down, let me introduce myself. My name is Nan'an, which means 'grain root' in the Nora continent language..."
He planned to start by addressing the fact that his name was being mocked by the members of the Red Rat Adventurers, and then properly establish connections with the rare, living people he met.
"Swoosh!"
A flash of white light, and when he came to his senses, Nan'an was back in the familiar space shrouded in white mist.
After a long, stunned silence, he gathered his thoughts, rubbed his forehead, and murmured, "I've become a summoned creature?"
What does that mean?