Creation Sandbox? The Right Way to Use a Space-Time Martial Soul

"Why?"

Mother Lin's voice turned shrill, filled with resentment and grievance.

"I think the health milk tea is great. I really like drinking it. It tastes good, it's healthy, and it even has Tang Sect's exclusive secret medicine... I was just about to break even."

"I checked. Tang Sect doesn't make milk tea, and they don't partner with milk tea shops."

Lin Yan's fingers tightened around his phone.

"You've been scammed."

"I haven't!"

Mother Lin's voice rose sharply.

"Tang Sect is a big name! They do have partnerships!"

"You've been scammed."

Lin Yan's voice hardened as well.

"That partnership certificate you mentioned? I could buy an identical one online for five hundred yuan."

"Beep—beep—beep—"

The call ended.

Lin Yan stood on the steps, staring at the darkened screen without saying a word.

He waited five minutes, then opened his communicator and sent her a message.

A red exclamation mark.

She had blocked him.

Lin Yan's brow furrowed sharply.

An indescribable sense of dread welled up from the bottom of his heart.

The Spirit Transmission Tower was more than ten kilometers from home.

He could have taken a soul-guided train, but the two hundred yuan in his pocket was all the cash he had. He couldn't bear to spend it.

Gritting his teeth, he took off running.

He panted heavily, his chest heaving like a bellows, but he didn't dare stop.

When he reached that familiar street, he came to an abrupt halt.

The storefront downstairs had already been cleared out.

The glass door bore a large notice reading "Prime Shop Transfer," while the rolling shutter was only half raised.

Through the gap, he could see that the equipment, tables, chairs, and signboard were all gone. Only a mess of plastic bags and scraps of paper remained.

It had only been one morning.

Lin Yan had no time to think. Taking the stairs two at a time, he rushed upstairs.

The front door was ajar.

He pushed it open and froze in the entryway.

The living room was a complete mess.

The sofa had been moved, the TV cabinet was empty, and even the photograph of his father that had hung on the wall was gone.

Every drawer had been pulled open, its contents dumped across the floor.

Even the curtains had been torn down and thrown onto the floor, covered in footprints.

Everything valuable was gone.

His mother, who had stubbornly refused to listen when he told her not to open that milk tea shop, had actually listened to advice this time...

A middle-aged man in a leather jacket stood in the living room.

An unlit cigarette hung from his mouth as he leaned against the wall, clutching a stack of documents.

When he saw Lin Yan enter, the man straightened up.

"Lin Yan, right? Your mother has already mortgaged the house to our company. Pack up as soon as possible."

He looked around the old house, his tone calm.

"But this place won't be easy to sell for a while. For every day you stay here, rent will be fifty yuan."

Lin Yan said nothing.

He simply stood in the doorway, expressionlessly watching it all.

The middle-aged man glanced at him, and his tone softened slightly.

"Oh, right. Your family still owes our company five hundred thousand yuan. When can you pay it off? Just give us a definite answer."

He pulled out a sheet of paper from his briefcase and slapped it onto the coffee table.

"And this... the hospital bill. Stop eating mushrooms. Don't do anything stupid again."

The middle-aged debt collector looked at Lin Yan's ashen face, sighed, patted him on the shoulder, and slipped out the door.

After all, the kid had made the news a few days ago for mushroom poisoning, and the media was still watching.

It wouldn't do anyone any good if they really drove him to death.

The door closed.

The footsteps gradually faded.

Lin Yan stood in the wrecked living room for a long time without moving.

There was a letter on the coffee table.

He walked over and bent down to pick it up.

The envelope had already been opened. Inside were several densely written pages in his mother's sloppy handwriting.

Lin Yan read it from beginning to end.

The entire letter was filled with accusations.

Accusing his sister of having no conscience, of stealing the money and running away.

Accusing Lin Yan of being useless, of having his brain ruined by mushrooms and becoming a laughingstock.

Accusing the Lin Family of making her suffer for so many years without a single good day.

Lin Yan folded the letter and placed it back on the coffee table.

His family had always been like this—far from humanity, close to divinity. He was used to it.

He turned and walked into the kitchen.

The kitchen had been ransacked too, with pots, bowls, and utensils scattered everywhere.

But the pot on the stove was still there.

The dark mushroom soup inside had gone cold, with a layer of grease congealed over the surface.

Lin Yan looked at the mushrooms in the pot and let out a long breath.

A few days ago, he had been so hungry that he had no other choice. He went out of the city and picked some wild mushrooms in the woods outside town.

Others said they were poisonous, but he didn't care.

If he lived, he lived. If he died, he died.

Besides, they would be fine once cooked.

That was what he had thought.

But after eating them, something felt wrong with his whole body.

He saw hallucinations.

At that moment, he seemed to become an omnipotent god of creation.

A complete world unfolded before his eyes: first chaos, then the birth of stars, the cooling of planets, the formation of oceans, and the sprouting of life.

Civilizations grew wildly like weeds, only to be harvested by him as casually as weeds.

He destroyed era after era as easily as turning pages.

That feeling... controlling everything, transcending everything, looking down upon everything.

Even after waking up, he couldn't forget it.

Then, after returning from the hospital and approaching that pot again, he was shocked to discover—

That world truly existed.

Inside that pot.

It was tiny, absurdly tiny. But it was real.

There was land, there were oceans, and there was life.

At first, he let it develop freely. As a result, the first batch of life in the pot quickly went extinct.

Perhaps it was because the foundation of that world was mushrooms.

The creatures born from it were primitive, savage, and violent, without a trace of reason.

Like a pack of pure killing machines, they slaughtered each other until none remained.

Lin Yan was disappointed for a while.

But he soon discovered something.

As those mushroom-born lifeforms died, he received faint feedback.

His physique improved slightly, and his spiritual power became more solid.

He was instantly exhilarated.

So this was the correct way to use a space-time martial soul!

He was the protagonist of a creation sandbox.

Sitting behind the scenes, stirring up the world and harvesting all living beings.

So he began creating worlds again and again, then destroying them.

Within this microscopic world, his authority over time and space could be unleashed without limit. He could reverse time at will and knead space as he pleased.

After one batch was wiped out, the next would be born.

But after repeatedly destroying worlds, the feedback grew weaker and weaker.

The world was too small. Its total resources were limited, and no matter how much he worked it over, he couldn't squeeze out anything more.

Until not long ago.

He had finally cultivated humanoid intelligent life.

Lin Yan was overjoyed.

Creatures without intelligence were meaningless beyond being killed.

Only civilization could become the foundation of a world.

Only then could this world truly grow, evolve, and expand.

Though he also had a vague premonition.

If he kept playing this way, sooner or later, his own creations would get him killed.

But he couldn't worry about that now.

Lin Yan stood in the wrecked kitchen and looked down at the pot.

His spiritual power entered it.

A day had passed, and the civilization inside the pot had evolved again.

It had advanced from primitive tribes into an agricultural civilization.

Farmland spread along the river, divided into neat squares.

Simple stone walls enclosed the beginnings of a primitive city.

Figures patrolled atop the walls, holding bronze spears.