A Naturally Outrageous Evil Planet

After a thorough sweep, he did not find much evidence, but he really did scrape together quite a bit of money.

After all, anyone who could join this kind of secret society and take part in evil sacrifice rituals could not possibly be an ordinary person. At the very least, they needed a certain social standing, money, leisure, and resources, along with some obsession or desire, before they would pin unrealistic hopes on Evil Gods.

As for genuine ordinary people, they were already exhausting every last ounce of strength just to stay alive. Where would they find the time, energy, or spare cash to procure offerings for sacrifices? "What a shame. Most of the Demonic Beasts were dragged into the Universe Within the Belly by the Chang Ghost silhouettes and vanished. Otherwise, I could have scraped up even more wealth."

After carefully searching the murder scene, Yuan Zhu picked up a small amount of jewelry, watches, and wallets, along with nearly a thousand yuan in cash.

As he continuously picked up these valuable or commonplace items, great quantities of memories belonging to the original owner were passively triggered, pouring out and merging into his current personality and values, helping him better understand and integrate into this new world. The sense of immersion was growing stronger and stronger.

A little over a thousand yuan did not seem like much to someone from Earth. But compared against the prices in Yuan Zhu's memories, one could draw a rough conclusion: the exchange rate between the two worlds was roughly 1:20.

A filling meal at a restaurant cost him only one and a half to two yuan. If he bought groceries and cooked for himself, he could keep it under one yuan—enough to cover a full day's expenses for the two brothers. After proportional conversion, meat was slightly more expensive than in Earth's Heavenly Dynasty, but seafood and vegetables were very cheap.

For food, clothing, housing, and transportation, the currency maintained a 1:20 ratio with Earth's. Other daily necessities and goods were more expensive. The reason was simple: this world's productivity lagged behind that of the industrialized Heavenly Dynasty, so goods had higher costs and added value.

In other words, the cash he had on hand possessed purchasing power equivalent to more than twenty thousand RMB. It was not merely twenty thousand Earth yuan; in this world, it amounted to a poor family's income for an entire year.

Of course, this conversion was not perfect. The era this world was currently in was completely different from the fully industrialized and informatized Heavenly Dynasty. For now, it could be described as a modern or old era.

According to the geographical knowledge he had learned in class, this planet was called Du Ling. Yuan Zhu did not know what special meaning the name held; he only knew that the teacher had made them memorize it by rote.

Du Ling was obviously not Earth. Its geographical structure, planetary movement, seasonal changes, and racial composition were all different.

The landmass of this planet consisted of two supercontinental plates, one horizontal and one vertical. The horizontal continent sprawled across the Northern Hemisphere. It resembled Earth's Eurasia, but was even larger and longer. It was called Geng Continent, and was also known as Central Earth, the Central Immovable Land, and the Eternal Continent.

The vertical continent had existed since ancient times, but due to the dangers of the ocean, it had remained isolated from Geng Continent and unknown to the world.

Until more than three hundred years ago, a "Magic Plane Fragment" from another universe broke through the constraints of its original Crystal Wall System, traveled through time and space, fell into the ocean, and crashed into Du Ling Star, setting off a super tsunami that swept across the globe.

While bringing the catastrophic tsunami, this "Magic Plane Fragment" from another universe also leaked and released immense magical power, igniting the thunderous "First Magic Revival Great Transformation + alien race and cultural invasion + magic ecosystem invasion," historically known as the Magic Race Great Transmigration Event! (The magic version of The Wandering Earth.)

Countless aliens and otherworldly humans from the Magic Universe burst forth like mad dogs released from their cages, riding magic-enhanced flying ships to explore unfamiliar worlds beyond the "Magic Continent Fragment"—a super-sized island.

In the end, they successively came into contact with the humans of Geng Continent and were the first to discover the New Continent, likewise inhabited by natives. It counted as an alternative Age of Geographic Discovery.

This north-south-oriented New Continent happened to lie symmetrically opposite Geng Continent across the standard Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

It could be simply understood as a combined North and South America, connected into one whole and stretching toward both poles. This discovery would later be called Great Wilderness Continent, New Continent, and Zhen Continent by the residents of Geng Continent.

The act of the alien races from the Magic Universe crossing over together with an entire continental fragment sparked a century-long global upheaval, while also setting off the first revival of extraordinary power on the planet itself.

The first direct impact of the Magic Race Great Transmigration Event was the global tsunami disaster, which brought calamity upon countless nations. It also prematurely dragged Xi Kingdom, the super feudal dynasty that had prospered for more than a century on Geng Continent's eastern coast, into its historical cycle of decline.

Natural and man-made disasters erupted in concentrated waves: changes in heaven and earth, heretical sects springing up among the people, alien invasions, imperial fragmentation, otherworldly cultural shocks, magic revival, warlords carving up the land... all of it led to an unprecedented war of conquest.

The otherworldly aliens who possessed "magical civilization" were regarded by the feudal empire of that time as overseas qi refiners and treated as honored guests. The Magic Continent that had crossed over was called an Overseas Immortal Island.

The present Yuan Zhu was a descendant of the survivors from that ancient Eastern empire on Geng Continent, which had failed in its struggle for supremacy.

The aftereffects of the Magic Race Great Transmigration Event lasted around one hundred and fifty years before finally subsiding completely. Magical energy, meanwhile, had come quickly and dispersed just as quickly.

After all, having left the unique environment of its original Crystal Wall Universe, that "Magic Plane Fragment" from another world could no longer sustain a macro-scale circulation of magical energy. Its encounter with altered universal laws left it as ill-suited to the new environment as the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture.

The Immortal Scripture, however, was just a tiny piece of trash. The moment it arrived, a pack of eighteenth-rate little Evil Gods cornered it and beat it senseless. Before it could even scream, it was thrown straight into the ICU, leaving Yuan Zhu to take over as the Immortal Scripture Old Geezer's representative and secretly eye its inheritance.

The Magic Continent from more than three hundred years ago, on the other hand, had been steeped and tempered in magic before crossing over. It carried incomplete rules of the Magic Universe and possessed a semi-closed ecosystem within itself.

Thus, this continent—this super-sized island—had an exceptionally solid foundation. Even without absorbing any external magical power, it continued pumping magic into Du Ling unilaterally and transforming its natural environment for more than a century.

For a time, "magic" flourished throughout the world, only to collapse at lightspeed afterward.

Around two hundred to one hundred and fifty years ago, this world suffered another powerful invasion from a new Outer Universe. It ignited the Second Magic Industrial Revolution, an event no less significant than Earth's Second Industrial Revolution—if anything, even more outrageous.

It also caused the native humans and otherworldly magic races, already burdened with enormous accumulated conflicts, to erupt into a global melee that lasted more than fifty years. Many of the contradictions it left behind remained unresolved to this day.

At that time, a brand-new empire rose in the Divine Land of Red County in eastern Geng Continent. Meanwhile, the remnants of Xi Kingdom, after struggling repeatedly and ultimately failing to restore themselves, crossed the seas and settled on the New Continent West Coast.

On that unfamiliar New Continent, they slaughtered in every direction, ruthlessly cleared out the natives, enslaved and oppressed the magic races that had lost their magical privileges, and established a new homeland.

The utterly different geographical structure proved beyond doubt that this place had nothing to do with Earth. Yuan Zhu remembered clearly that one chapter in his middle school geography textbook specifically recorded Du Ling Star's Seven Great Wonders of the World.

One of them was the "super-sized Buddha Head from Beyond satellite" floating above Mercury Province in central Geng Continent.

He had seen the illustration in the textbook. Looking up from the ground, one could see an enormous "strange Buddha Head," with only half its face turned toward the earth, silently suspended beyond the atmosphere and rotating along with Du Ling Star. It resembled a geostationary satellite.

This Buddha, which had always existed in ancient historical records, was named the Arujāgati Lord by scholars of later Eastern empires. It was also regarded as the starting point of Buddhist civilization on Du Ling Star—the most primitive ancient Buddha.

However, the local Buddhist Sect held differing views. They believed that although the Arujāgati Lord was primitive and ancient enough, it was merely a natural wonder. The origin of Buddhist culture, by contrast, came from the Yogācāra School of an ancient Eastern kingdom.

When the original owner had attended school, he had only vaguely understood this information. He had neither cared about it nor understood it. But when Yuan Zhu recalled it now, his face immediately twisted in stunned disbelief.

Was this Yogācāra School the one I knew?!

Of course, what shocked him even more than the Yogācāra School was that enormous Buddha Head satellite, "Arujāgati." This fucking meant that in the distant ancient past, this zero-magic planet with no extraordinary powers whatsoever had possessed such a fucking huge "Buddha Head"! (He wildly spread his arms, trying to indicate just how huge.) Such an outrageously supernatural phenomenon, together with the Otherworld-crossed Overseas Immortal Island—Yingzhou, the Magic Plane—being listed among the Seven Great Wonders of the World seemed perfectly reasonable.

Unfortunately, that "Buddha Head satellite" had remained anchored above Mercury Province on Geng Continent from ancient times to the present. It was also very close to Du Ling Star, which was why it appeared incomparably enormous. Unlike the moon, it did not orbit far away from Earth where it could be seen from everywhere in the world.

Therefore, anyone wishing to witness the "Buddha Head Wonder" with their own eyes had to cross the ocean and travel to distant Mercury Province in Central Earth.

As he recalled more, increasingly bizarre pieces of knowledge battered Yuan Zhu like a raging storm.

All he could do was gasp again and again, "Holy shit!" "Holy shit!!" "What the ever-loving fuck!!!"

He could be certain: this was absolutely not Earth, much less some proper, peaceful planet.

No wonder that the instant he crossed over, someone had sacrificed him and a bunch of Evil Gods had blocked his door. Even amateur-level mortals had no fear of death, daring to tug Evil Gods in the opposite direction and play Pinduoduo with them, forcing the gods to slash prices.

Viewed from a global perspective, though, it was completely normal.

This planet was far too wrong, far too abnormal! Today's high school textbooks simply laid it all bare, openly informing the public that "Du Ling" was simultaneously dating eight different Outer Universes and maintaining ambiguous relationships with every single one.

Such heaven-defying slutty behavior—keeping in contact with eight Outer Universes at once—had shrouded every corner of the world in endlessly emerging disasters and crises. Thus, the rampant spread of Evil Gods was the most ordinary thing imaginable! He even felt that the particularly grave murder case he had become embroiled in no longer seemed so grave.

The Little Elf was equally shocked—so shocked that its worldview collapsed and it nearly crashed. It was a super cheat specifically designed to invade the Immortal Dao Universe. What grand scenes had it not seen in its lifetime? But fuck, this Du Ling Star was outrageously defiant of heaven. It really had never seen anything like this. "Holy motherfucking turtle shit! See? I told you I was right! What a filthy world—this really is a planet born evil! Can we run away? It's too dangerous here. I want to go home!"

You want to know about the worldbuilding? Then let Du Ling put on a little performance first.

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