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Griffin Scans
Translator – Hero of death
Proofreader – Sleepyhead
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Chapter 1 - Awakening
The pale moon was shrouded in thick clouds, and the myriad stars lost their luster, dimly scattered across the velvet sky.
In a small house in Hang City, a sudden cry of anguish broke the silence.
“Ahh…it's already the Ninth time I'm having this dream!”
Lu Yu jolted awake from his nightmare, clutching his head as he fought off the groggy nausea. He murmured the words that lingered in his mind:
“…Stars… the glorious age is no more… the end times… break the shackles… blood… awakening… god… It…”
Whispers, intangible yet resounding, echoed through the room. They were like a symphony of death, a dark mother deity stretching out her hands to strangle him in a cold embrace.
But dream memories are fleeting, like blossoms of the epiphyllum—brilliant for a moment, then gone.
Rubbing his temples, Lu Yu downed a glass of water from his table in one gulp. This was the ninth time he had endured such a nightmare.
And these weren’t ordinary ghost stories. These were unspeakable horrors—indescribable terrors that crept beneath the skin and gnawed at the soul.
The whispers in his dreams were like dark scripture, chanted by dozens of masked figures carved with upside-down triangles. They etched grotesque symbols into the ground—symbols that evoked revulsion and dread just from looking at them.
They were chanting a name.
But no matter how many times Lu Yu dreamt of them, he could never make it out. It was as if that name was taboo.
His instincts screamed one thing—danger.
Shaking off sleep, Lu Yu grabbed his phone to kill time. The news headlines chilled him more than the nightmare:
[All female students in a high school dormitory in Long’an City have vanished. Only disheveled clothes and bloodstains remain. Surveillance footage—completely destroyed.]
[In Beihai City, a cult ritual was uncovered. The entire town was slaughtered as a sacrifice to summon an evil god’s spawn. The situation was only quelled by elite personnel from the Special Division.]
[Public advisory: Avoid venturing into the wild…]
Message after message scrolled across the screen, the soft light of the phone illuminated Lu Yu’s handsome, refined face.
“This world really is dangerous… My old one was much safer,” he muttered.
Lu Yu was a transmigrant, hailing from the blue planet—Earth.
This world had a modern backdrop similar to his old one, but it was plagued by monsters: some like beasts, some like demons, and others like eldritch horrors.
These creatures had always existed, lurking in the dark corners of this world, devouring human lives without mercy.
Humanity had intelligence, but frail bodies. They were powerless against these abominations.
Fortunately, all was not lost. The first Awakened emerged, and soon after, many followed. Humanity gained power to resist the grotesque.
Pioneers shed blood to reclaim land, build cities, and erect defenses. Only then could humanity survive and flourish behind fortified walls.
From this, Lu Yu confirmed what he had long suspected—this wasn’t Earth, but an unknown, dangerous world.
If given the choice, he would never have chosen to transmigrate.
Back on Earth, he had painstakingly built a fortune of several million yuan. Not a billionaire, but well-off enough to live a peaceful, comfortable life.
Just when he was about to retire early and enjoy the pleasures of life—bam, he woke up in a new world.
He didn’t even get to choose how. Just opened and closed his eyes and here he was.
Orphaned. Hard mode. Again.
It was like beating a game, forgetting to save, and losing everything.
Worse yet, the game got reset to nightmare difficulty and he didn’t even get to keep his gear!
All Lu Yu wanted now was to live quietly like a salted fish, not go adventuring in some monster-infested world!
Thankfully, his parents had left him two million in inheritance. It was enough to keep him safe and fed, so long as he didn’t go playing with ouija boards or summoning mirror ghosts like some idiot.
But even a low-key life wasn’t enough to escape horror.
He walked to the window, hoping to clear his mind by enjoying the night view.
That was when he saw them—figures in black robes in the house across the street, their curtains left open.
They were surrounding a bizarre and sinister symbol.
Cultists.
A whole group of them.
Lu Yu almost cursed aloud
“MMP!”
But he closed his mouth with his hands.
So that’s why he kept having nightmares—there was a freaking cult right next door!
“I’m not trying to be some overpowered protagonist who dominates the world—I just want to die of old age in peace! Why do they have to set up shop next to me?!”
He thought of the news reports—the horrors these cultists wrought. They didn’t care how many people they had to sacrifice to please their gods and gain power.
Wherever they appeared, death followed. Entire towns turned into bloodbaths, and people became nothing more than offerings.
Just imagining himself becoming another corpse in a pile soured his mood.
“As a law-abiding citizen who understands the core values of socialism, I should leave this to the professionals,” Lu Yu muttered.
Pulling out his phone, he prepared to report them. He wasn’t some reckless protagonist looking for trouble—he wasn’t even sure he had plot armor.
Better safe than sorry.
Besides, reporting cultists came with a reward—anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 yuan.
“Ten thousand would cover my meals for years!”
Just as he was about to dial, a grand, mechanical voice echoed in his mind:
<Evil god presence detected… Initial mission complete… Binding the Monster Editing System… Dispensing first reward…>
Lu Yu froze.
This… this was a system! His heart surged with emotion.
You took sixteen years, but you’re finally here!
Though the system claimed a “mission” had been completed, it had never even given him one—but who cared? It was here!
Suppressing the urge to rant, Lu Yu calmly called out:
“System!”
A gray mist enveloped his vision, shrouding reality and pulling him into a dreamlike space.
A streak of dark light, trailing stardust, drifted before him and transformed into an ornate bronze chest. Engraved with intricate patterns, it shimmered and shifted with the mist—as though it held entire worlds.
<Would you like to open the chest?>
Lu Yu nodded. The moment he touched it, the chest shattered into bronze light, transforming into five items:
A tattered piece of cloth stained with blood.
A glowing blue orb.
A broken blade fragment.
A black flame.
A cracked pocket watch.
<These five basic materials have been selected at random from countless worlds. Please combine and edit them to create your first monstrous servant.
Its growth potential depends on your choices. You will inherit one of its innate abilities—permanently.
Your hands… are now the Chaotic Hands of Creation.>
~~~~~~~~~~~Chapter End~~~~~~~~~~~