A Strange Obsession

In a villa in Aolai City, Douluo Continent.

"Ah!"

A low, hoarse roar suddenly tore through the silence, filled with unbearable pain and suffocation, as if someone had him by the throat. The sound came out in agony.

The youth on the bed abruptly sat bolt upright. His handsome face was now as pale as paper, utterly bloodless.

Fine beads of sweat covered his forehead, trickling down his temples and soaking the stray hairs over his brow.

He gasped for breath, his chest heaving violently like a drowning man.

After a long while, his ragged breathing gradually settled.

The youth raised a hand and gently brushed his fingertips over his cold forehead, wiping away the beads of sweat as he murmured to himself.

"One thousand and eight hundred times... This time, I heard one more sentence clearly."

He silently swung his legs off the bed. His movements were brisk, yet carried a trace of fatigue that was hard to detect.

Step by step, he walked to the desk by the window, slowly sat down, and drew a deep breath of the sweltering summer-night air.

It was midsummer, and the night held not a hint of coolness. The heat clung to everything, while only the cicadas outside the window made a racket.

The youth sat quietly, but his gaze drifted unconsciously toward the dark night sky beyond the window. It was ink-black, with not a star in sight.

His heart was full of lingering melancholy and bewilderment.

The youth was named Lin Qingzhou, and he did not belong to this world.

He had been an ordinary university student on Blue Star, a lonely orphan with no ties to anyone.

One day, while kindly helping an old woman cross the road, he had unexpectedly collided head-on with the legendary supreme imperial weapon, the Great Fortune.

The might of such an "imperial weapon" was terrifying beyond measure. In the blink of an eye, his flesh was obliterated, and his life ended.

To put it plainly, the protagonist had been crushed into a puddle of goo, so thoroughly that not even a scrap could be scraped off the ground.

When he thought back on his previous life, Lin Qingzhou felt little attachment to it, only guilt weighing heavily on his heart.

He had received state assistance from childhood, which had allowed him to get into university. He had never imagined that before he could repay his country, an unforeseen disaster would sweep him away to this unfamiliar world.

After all, Lin Qingzhou had been a model youth of the new era in his previous life. Now, he was stranded in a foreign land.

Irritably rubbing the bridge of his nose, Lin Qingzhou stood and gently opened the drawer beside him. He moved with the utmost care, as if handling some priceless treasure, and took out a notebook with a leather cover.

He slowly opened the leather-bound notebook. Page after page of densely written Chinese came into view, recording every secret Lin Qingzhou had discovered over this period.

It was a record of all the whispers he had heard during this time.

A quick glance brought memories of the past flooding back.

So many days have already passed, huh? I really have no idea what to do. When will this ever end?

He could grumble all he wanted, but he still instinctively glanced around. The wind outside continued to howl, and inside the house, there was not a single unusual sound beyond the cicadas. Only after confirming that no one was around did Lin Qingzhou relax and continue reading.

Then, gripping his pen, he solemnly wrote the sentence he had heard clearly in his dream just now on the last page of the notebook.

"I am the end. I am the calamity."

The moment his pen touched the page, Lin Qingzhou furrowed his brow, his eyes full of confusion and distress.

He racked his brains, but could not figure out where this abrupt and bizarre phrase had come from, or what profound meaning it concealed.

In this life, he was an orphan too.

His parents had been killed by an Evil Soul Master when he was young. They had left behind only this villa and some assets. Since he had been so young at the time, the Federation had managed his inheritance on his behalf, returning all of it only after he was deemed capable of living independently.

The Federation had to be commended for handling this matter properly. Not a single asset had been misappropriated, giving him a place to call home in this unfamiliar world.

When Lin Qingzhou had first transmigrated, he could not speak this world's language.

But as a university student from Blue Star, his mind and ability to learn were still at their peak.

It had not taken long for him to master the common language of Douluo Continent.

It was then that he had been shocked to discover that he had not transmigrated to some ordinary alternate world, but to the setting of a novel he had once read: Douluo Continent.

"The supreme imperial weapon, the Great Fortune, can even cross the river of time and travel between worlds? Then why did I bother dreaming about transmigrating? Couldn't I have just found a truck to run into?"

Lin Qingzhou muttered helplessly under his breath, yet a few glimmers flashed in his eyes and the corners of his mouth lifted into an uncontrollable smile.

Transmigrating to another world and making waves had always been the dream of countless youths. Who wouldn't want to set foot in another world, wield supreme power, and rise above the ordinary?

Although the cultivation system of Douluo Continent was more like leveling up in an online game—cultivating diligently, then hunting Soul Beasts and absorbing Soul Rings once you reached the required level to advance—it was completely different from the legendary path of cultivating immortality. And although people online often criticized Douluo's worldbuilding...

It was still far beyond anything Blue Star could offer, because here, one truly had the chance to touch immortality and ascend to godhood.

After all, people could say whatever they wanted online, but who wouldn't want to be Tang San, showing off his Soul Rings in real life?

But that longing was utterly shattered at the Martial Soul Awakening ceremony three years later.

As the magic circle's light faded, Lin Qingzhou stood rooted to the spot, his mind roaring and buzzing.

The chatter of his peers and the instructor's sighs were shut out. Only one fact came through to him with perfect clarity.

He had not awakened a Martial Soul.

He had repeatedly checked the timeline in preparation for this day. After learning that he was in Aolai City, he had gone out of his way to investigate and discovered that he was the same age as Tang Wulin.

He knew perfectly well that in this era, Evil Soul Masters ran rampant and the Abyss Plane watched hungrily from the shadows. All of Douluo Continent was teetering on the brink, buffeted by wind and rain.

For an ordinary person like Lin Qingzhou, the plan from here on would be to hurry to a more remote city.

And he would have to stay far away from the Far North, since that was where the Abyss Plane had first appeared.

As a transmigrator, Lin Qingzhou had once harbored great ambitions. He had wanted to stir up a storm on this continent, climb to the peak, and become a god above the heavens, looking down on all living beings.

But reality had dealt him its cruelest blow.

Without a Martial Soul, he did not even qualify to set foot on the path of a Soul Master. For the rest of his life, he could only be an ordinary nobody.

After the awakening ceremony, Lin Qingzhou had applied to live on his own. He smoothly received the entire inheritance his parents had left him and moved into this villa in Aolai City.

Lin Qingzhou did not feel much regret over failing to become a Soul Master. He was merely a little helpless, since ordinary people held such a low status in this world.

And even if there were laws to protect ordinary people, if a Soul Master wanted to kill you, wouldn't it take only a word?

Having a sword and choosing not to use it was not the same as having no sword at all.

Lin Qingzhou had made a rough estimate. If he lived frugally, his inheritance would be enough to keep him going safely until he turned eighteen.

He had thought the rest of his life would pass in such quiet mediocrity, but another bizarre turn of events soon came.

Starting the night of his Martial Soul Awakening, every night, an invisible force dragged Lin Qingzhou's spiritual body into a mysterious battlefield.

What a terrifying place it was!

The carcasses of colossal beasts stretched across the land as far as the eye could see. Dragons, ancient gods, alien races... the remains of countless powerful species lay scattered all around.

Even though they had been dead for who knew how many tens of thousands of years, the traces of their auras remained terrifying beyond compare. A mere wisp could easily kill him.

Worse still, the battlefield was riddled with aftershocks of power capable of destroying the heavens and earth. Every time he entered, those violent forces instantly tore him to shreds and crushed him, subjecting him to endless agony.

Yet, strangely, Lin Qingzhou never truly died. Whenever death came, he would be reborn on the spot, again and again, enduring ceaseless torment.

At the same time, whenever Lin Qingzhou died, countless indistinct murmurs, roars, and whispers echoed ceaselessly in his mind, making his head throb until he felt on the verge of a mental breakdown.

Lin Qingzhou had lost count of how many times he'd cursed out the ancestors of heaven itself.