Chapter 8: The Innately Defiant and Outrageous Evil Planet

After a thorough search, not much evidence was found, but quite a bit of money was indeed uncovered.

After all, to join such a secret society and participate in sinister ritual ceremonies, one could not be an ordinary person. At the very least, they needed to hold a certain social status, possess wealth, leisure, resources, and harbor some obsession or desire that led them to place unrealistic hopes on an evil deity.

As for truly ordinary people, who already struggle to survive, where would they find the time, energy, or spare money to prepare offerings for sacrifices?

“A pity most of the monsters were dragged away by the phantom shadows into the ‘Inner Universe’ and vanished. Otherwise, we could have plundered even more wealth.”

Carefully searching the crime scene, Yuan Zhu gathered a small amount of jewelry, luxury watches, and wallets, along with nearly a thousand units of paper currency.

As he continuously collected these precious and common items, memories belonging to his former self were triggered, flooding forth and merging with his current personality and worldview, helping him better understand and integrate into this new world. His sense of immersion grew stronger.

To an Earthling, a thousand units of currency seemed insignificant. But comparing prices from Yuan Zhu’s memories suggested a rough exchange rate of about 1 to 20 between the two worlds’ currencies.

A hearty meal at a restaurant cost only about one and a half to two units. If buying groceries to cook at home, expenses could be compressed to under one unit, enough for the daily expenses of the two brothers. Meat prices were slightly higher than in Earth’s Celestial Empire, but seafood and vegetables were quite cheap.

In terms of clothing, food, housing, and transportation, currency values maintained a 1:20 ratio with Earth. However, prices for other daily necessities and goods were somewhat higher. The reason was simple: this world’s productivity lagged behind the industrialized Celestial Empire, so production costs and added value were greater.

In other words, the banknotes in his hand had roughly the purchasing power of over twenty thousand yuan. This was not merely twenty thousand yuan on Earth; in this world, it equated to the annual income of a poor family.

Of course, this conversion was imperfect. The current era of this world was vastly different from the fully industrialized and information-driven Celestial Empire, better described as modern or even an earlier age.

...

According to what he learned in geography class, this planet was called “Duling.” Yuan Zhu did not know its precise meaning, only that the teacher had instructed them to memorize it by rote.

Duling was clearly not Earth; its geography, planetary rotation, seasonal changes, and racial composition were entirely different.

The landmass consisted of two massive continental plates arranged horizontally and vertically:

The horizontal continent, situated in the northern hemisphere and similar to Earth’s Eurasian continent but larger and longer, was called the “Eternal Continent,” also known as “Central Land,” “Immovable Central Earth,” or “The Perpetual Continent.”

The vertical continent had existed since ancient times but remained isolated from the Eternal Continent due to treacherous seas, thus remaining unknown.

Over three hundred years ago, a “magical dimensional plate” from an alternate universe broke through the constraints of the primal crystal barrier system, traversed space-time, and crashed into Duling’s ocean, unleashing a global super-tsunami.

This magical dimensional plate from another universe brought not only natural disasters but also immense magical energy, triggering the grand “First Magical Awakening Reform + Alien Racial Cultural Invasion + Magical Ecosystem Invasion,” historically known as the “Great Magical Race Transmigration Incident.” (The Magic Edition of The Wandering Earth)

Countless aliens and otherworldly humans from the magical universe ran wild, sailing magic-enhanced floating ships to explore worlds beyond the “Magical Continent Plate (Super Island).”

Eventually, they made contact with the humans of the Eternal Continent and discovered a new continent inhabited by indigenous peoples—an unconventional geographic discovery.

...

The vertically aligned new continent lay symmetrically opposite the Eternal Continent, forming a pair akin to a combined North and South America stretching from pole to pole. This discovery was later called the “Great Wilderness Continent,” “New Continent,” or “Shaken Continent” by the Eternal Continent’s inhabitants.

The traversal of the magical continental plate by the alien magical races sparked a century-long global upheaval and initiated the planet’s first surge of extraordinary powers.

The initial shockwave of the “Great Magical Race Transmigration Incident” was a worldwide tsunami disaster, devastating countless nations. It also prematurely dragged the century-old super-feudal kingdom, the “Xi Kingdom,” on the eastern coast of the Eternal Continent, into decline.

A confluence of natural disasters and man-made calamities erupted: celestial anomalies, widespread heretical cults, alien invasions, imperial fragmentation, cultural clashes with otherworldly realms, magical awakenings, and warlord divides—all culminating in an unprecedented war.

The alien invaders wielding “magical civilization” were regarded as overseas alchemists by the feudal empire and treated as honored guests. The traversed magical continent was called the “Overseas Immortal Isle.”

Yuan Zhu was now a descendant of the defeated ancient Eastern Empire that once vied for supremacy on the Eternal Continent.

...

The aftershocks of the “Great Magical Race Transmigration Incident” lasted about 150 years before finally subsiding. The magical energy came swiftly and faded rapidly.

Separated from the primal crystal universe’s unique environment, the magical dimensional plate from the otherworld could not sustain a macro-level magical energy cycle. It suffered from cosmic rule shifts, akin to an alien environment causing “magical indigestion,” much like the “Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture.”

However, the “Immortal Scripture” was a minor nuisance, arriving only to be cornered and brutally beaten by a group of obscure minor evil deities, silenced before it could cry out, ending up in intensive care—leaving Yuan Zhu to become the proxy for the “Old Immortal Scripture” while secretly eyeing its inheritance.

The magical continent from three centuries ago, having endured magical corruption and refinement, carried with it incomplete magical universe rules and a semi-closed ecosystem.

Thus, the continent (a super-large island) had a profoundly strong foundation, continuously outputting magical energy and remodeling the natural environment of Duling unilaterally for over a century, allowing magic to flourish worldwide before collapsing at lightning speed.

Between roughly 200 and 150 years ago, the world experienced another powerful external cosmic invasion, igniting the second “Magical Industrial Revolution,” whose significance rivaled Earth’s second industrial revolution, perhaps even more dramatically.

This also triggered a world-spanning conflict lasting over fifty years between the native humans and the alien magical races, leaving many unresolved tensions to this day.

At that time, a new empire rose in the eastern “Red County” region of the Eternal Continent. Meanwhile, the remnants of the struggling and ultimately failed Xi Kingdom crossed the sea to settle on the western coast of the New Continent.

On this unfamiliar land, they rampaged, ruthlessly cleansing indigenous peoples, enslaving and oppressing magical races stripped of their magical privileges, and establishing a new homeland.

The starkly different geography clearly indicated this was no Earth. Yuan Zhu distinctly remembered a chapter in his middle school geography textbook that recorded the Seven Great Wonders of Duling.

One of these wonders was the “Super Large Extraterrestrial Buddha Head Satellite,” floating above Mercury State in the middle of the Eternal Continent.

He had seen the textbook illustration: from the ground looking up, one could see a gigantic “strange Buddha head,” with only half its face turned toward the earth, quietly suspended just beyond the atmosphere, rotating in sync with Duling like a satellite.

...

This Buddha, recorded throughout ancient history, was named by later Eastern Empire scholars as “Arjagatishvara,” regarded as the origin of Duling’s Buddhist civilization and the most ancient Buddha.

However, local Buddhist sects held differing views, believing Arjagatishvara, though ancient, was merely a natural marvel. They argued that Buddhist culture actually originated from the ancient Eastern nation’s “Consciousness-Only School.”

Back in his previous life, Yuan Zhu had only a vague, uninterested understanding of this. But now recalling it, he was utterly stunned.

Could this “Consciousness-Only School” be the very one he knew?

Of course, more astonishing to him than the Consciousness-Only School was the enormous Buddha Head Satellite, which implied that in a distant ancient past, this utterly magic-less, powerless planet bore such a colossal “Buddha head”! (He spread his arms wide, trying to signify “huge.”)

Such a supernatural phenomenon, alongside the alien-transcended “Overseas Immortal Isle of Yingzhou (Magical Plane),” was rightly counted among the world’s seven great wonders.

Unfortunately, the Buddha Head Satellite had remained anchored above Mercury State on the Eternal Continent since ancient times and was very close to Duling, hence its immense apparent size, unlike Earth’s moon which orbits far away and is visible worldwide.

Therefore, to witness the “Buddha Head Wonder” in person, one must cross an ocean to the distant Mercury State in the Central Land.

As memories flooded back, more and more strange facts bombarded Yuan Zhu like a storm.

All he could do was exclaim repeatedly: “Holy shit!”, “Holy shit!!”, “Oh my god!!!”

One thing was certain: this was definitely not Earth, nor any decent or peaceful planet.

No wonder, upon crossing over, he was sacrificed, blocked by a horde of evil gods at his doorstep. Even amateur-level mortals fearlessly fought back against gods, daring to pull and tug them in reverse, forcing the gods to strike.

From a global perspective, such chaos was perfectly normal.

This planet was profoundly wrong, profoundly abnormal! Today’s advanced high school textbooks openly declared that Duling was simultaneously entangled romantically with eight different external universes, maintaining vague and ambiguous connections with all.

Such godlike promiscuity, sustaining contact with eight external universes, shrouded the world in endless disasters and crises. Thus, the rampant presence of evil gods was utterly commonplace!

He even felt his involvement in a major vicious murder case paled in comparison.

The little spirit was equally shocked, its worldview nearly shattered to the point of system crash. Designed as a super cheat for invading the Immortal Dao Universe, it had seen all manner of grand events.

Yet this Duling planet was utterly outrageous; it had never seen anything like this before: “Holy turtle! I knew it! What a filthy world! This is a planet born evil! Can we run away? It’s too dangerous here, I want to go home!”