Space Gate

Your debit card account 2280 received ¥[Amount] on August 12th (online interbank transfer), with a post-transaction balance of ¥[Amount].

Your debit card account 2280 had ¥[Amount] withdrawn via online payment on August 12th, with a post-transaction balance of ¥2850.

Looking at the nearly 500,000 yuan in his Lingqian Tong account, Zhou Qi felt a complex mix of emotions, a strange feeling swirling in his heart, making him want to laugh and cry at the same time.

"Mr. Zhou?" Beside him, a piece of paper was handed over. "Are you, are you alright!"

"Uh, no, I'm fine, fine. Just some trachoma."

"Do you want us to have Dr. Sun from the clinic take a look? Prescribe some medicine?"

"No need for that, it's an old problem!"

"Alright, Mr. Zhou, remember to come back to Tongfu Hall if you find any good medicinal herbs. We'll give you the best price..."

"Definitely, definitely!"

Leaving the pharmacy, he glanced at his phone balance again, and Zhou Qi's mood was still complicated.

Since graduating, he had worked in advertising, operations, and sales. He had been a streamer, an UP Master, and had written a novel. After it flopped, he went to work in an electronics factory.

After more than five years of hard work, he had only saved less than 40,000 yuan. Yet, yesterday, after just going out and pulling a few dozen herbs in a garden, he had exchanged them for 460,000...

Fortunately, he had some experience in the world and a strong psychological resilience. Otherwise, he might have turned into Fan Jin right now and gone mad.

Fan Jin even had a wife and a father-in-law to snap him out of it. Zhou Qi didn't even have a girlfriend!

"Nearly 500,000 yuan, how can I spend it all!" For a moment, Zhou Qi even considered spending tens of thousands of yuan in the game to experience being a big shot.

Fortunately, his self-control was strong enough, and he had developed the habit of saving money over the years...

"I should send some money home first!"

He had been away for five years, and he had rarely sent money home. Now that he had the chance, he felt a strange sense of accomplishment.

He scrolled to his mother's WeChat, tapped transfer, and directly entered 200,000.

"Huh!" The system prompted him that the daily transfer limit was 50,000...

Speechless, having been poor for so many years, he never knew this.

He changed it to 50,000 and transferred it.

Checking the time, it was 10:30 AM. His mother should still be at work at this hour and wouldn't have time to check WeChat or reply to messages.

"That saves me the trouble of explaining!" Zhou Qi shook his head, looked around, found a shady spot, and sat down. Then, he opened his phone again and downloaded a rental software.

He had wanted to move for a long time. His current place was not only small but also had poor sound insulation. Not only were the neighbors noisy, but it was also next to a main road with constant traffic. He couldn't sleep without earplugs.

"Seaside District, Beidun Community, 140 square meters, three bedrooms and one living room, fully furnished, move-in ready..."

The rent was 3700 yuan a month, three times his current rent, but the area was five times larger.

He'd take this one.

He called the number on the app, and someone answered quickly.

"Hello, I'm calling about renting. Is the 140-square-meter, three-bedroom, one-living-room apartment in Beidun Community still available?"

"Ah, yes, yes. May I have your last name, sir? When can you come to see the apartment?"

"I can come now. I'm right at the entrance of the community!"

"Then why don't you wait for me by the Huimei Supermarket? I'll be there in five minutes!"

"Okay!"

After hanging up, he was in Jinsha District, not Seaside District. It would take at least 2 hours by taxi or subway.

He couldn't possibly get there in five minutes by normal means.

So Zhou Qi searched on the map, found a public restroom within 150 meters, entered an empty stall, leaned back, and entered the Space Gate.

He emerged from a secluded alley in Beidun Community. He had worked and lived here before, so he was quite familiar with the area.

That's why he could open a gate to this place.

If it were a place he hadn't been to...

He would need to find a photo.

Half an hour later, the agent left with the contract, and Zhou Qi received all the keys to an apartment, the access card for the building, and the entry pass for the complex.

He had finally moved into a bigger place. Although it wasn't his yet, it was a good start!

He opened another portal in the room. On the other side was Zhou Qi's original rental apartment.

It was only thirty square meters, just enough to fit a bed, a desk, and a cabinet.

On the desk sat a Huawei laptop, its screen lit up, playing an anime that was paused.

Rick and Morty.

He watched this anime to help him learn how to use Space Gates, but later he found that his own Space Gates seemed much more useful than Grandpa's.

He unplugged the power cord, connected the external keyboard, mouse, and mousepad to the computer, and moved them to the new home through the portal.

The desk there wasn't a computer desk, but he wasn't picky. As long as he could put his computer on it and use it, that was enough.

Then there was the mattress. He could have bought a new one, but throwing it out downstairs was too much trouble. He'd have to go down, walk dozens of meters, and buying a new one was also a hassle.

Before, he would have been willing to walk, but now that he had a portal, he was too lazy to move a single step.

The portal could open right next to the trash can, but there were surveillance cameras downstairs.

He'd just have to make do. He hadn't used it for that long anyway, only about half a year.

Inside the closet, there weren't many clothes either.

Nanhai City was in the south, so winters weren't too cold, meaning he only had clothes for spring, summer, and autumn.

Because he was poor, Zhou Qi rarely bought clothes. The earliest piece he owned was bought in high school, and the most recent one was an ERKE he bought during Chinese New Year last year.

Half a box of instant noodles he hadn't finished, a huqin he hadn't touched since he bought it, and a Longquan sword he'd bought online for three hundred yuan.

There were also some miscellaneous items, like a wind chime, coffee cups, and toiletries, all of which could fit into a single bucket.

Yep, the kind of bucket you use for "packing up and leaving."

An induction cooker, along with matching pots, pans, bowls, and chopsticks. He'd bought them thinking he'd cook for himself to save money.

Later on, though, he found that eating out was just tastier.

"Hukou, are you moving out?" His neighbor, Old Guo, heard the commotion and came over to watch.

Zhou Qi didn't originally have a nickname. It was only after The Wandering Earth was released that people started calling him Hukou, imitating Zhao Jinmai, because his name, Qi, was the same as the protagonist's. Old Guo was just following the trend.

"Ah, yeah!" Zhou Qi nodded. "Got a new job."

"Why are you changing jobs again? Isn't that factory of yours pretty good? I remember BYD's benefits were decent?" Old Guo asked. "If I weren't too old, I'd want to work there myself!"

Zhou Qi shook his head and ignored him, getting up to close the door.

Fortunately, he had placed the portal in a blind spot around the corner after opening the door. Otherwise, it would have been seen.

This also served as a reminder. He'd only had his superpower for a short time. While he was aware of the need for secrecy, his execution wasn't careful enough. He needed to be more cautious.

"Right, that last portal..." He thought about it. He'd opened the portal in a public restroom. Surely no pervert would install cameras in a men's room!

As for the community area, it was in the middle of the building, a storage area piled with sand and gravel, blocking the view quite effectively.

After moving everything, returning the keys, and calling his team leader to resign, it was already past three in the afternoon.

Lying on the sofa in his new home, Zhou Qi rested for a while. Once his stamina was full, he put away his melancholy and finally had time to study his superpower.

He had no idea where this ability came from. It just appeared suddenly while he was watching videos and movies.

With a thought, an oval portal appeared before him.

It wasn't like the portals with blurry light in the middle from movies and TV shows. Its appearance was more like the portals used by sorcerers in Marvel.

Except there were no sparks around the edges of the portal; it was just simple lines.

The lines were gray, as if someone had drawn a circle in the air with a gray pen. One side of the door was where he was, and the other side was somewhere else.

Through the door, he could directly see the scene on the other side. One step through, and he was in another world.

The medicinal herbs he sold were picked from another world.

Yes, that's right, another world.

The first space gate he opened wasn't to another location on Earth, but to an alternate world. It wasn't an unfamiliar world either. Based on his initial judgment, it should be the One Piece world.

However, he heard human voices and, in his panic, quickly fled without staying any longer.

After that, he discovered that this space gate wasn't limited to alternate worlds.

Any place he had been to, or seen, he could open a space gate to.

This "seen" wasn't limited to what his eyes could see; photos and videos also worked. However, if it was traveling back and forth on Earth, it had to be something that existed in reality.

For example, he had opened a Marvel movie and wanted to see an alien planet, but the portal didn't open successfully. He guessed that even if it had opened, it would have led to a Hollywood film set.

As for inter-world portals, he could currently only go to One Piece. He hadn't figured out how to go to other worlds yet. Perhaps there was a condition he hadn't met?

Furthermore, the "line of sight" wasn't without limits. Just because he could see the sun didn't mean he could travel to the sun.

After some simple tests, he found it was related to resolution. He needed to see a picture that was clear enough to distinguish plants and trees before he could open a portal to that location.

He zoomed in and zoomed in on publicly available satellite maps online. He could already see blurry figures on the streets, but when he tried to teleport, the portal wouldn't open.

However, high-definition photos taken by photographers or high-definition images taken by mobile phones were fine. Even if the picture had been edited, as long as it wasn't too unrealistic, he could go there.

As for the maximum distance for opening a portal, he hadn't tested it yet.

He had tried teleporting from Nanhai to Jinmen, a distance of 2,000 kilometers, and it opened normally.

He could experiment with farther distances, but he didn't know of any sufficiently secluded places. If he teleported into a crowded public area, his ability would be exposed.

Actually, there was another very suitable destination: the moon. There were high-definition photos of the moon online, but unfortunately, he didn't have a spacesuit.