The Residential District That Fell into the Abyss

The giant trees had trunks so thick that several people would have had to join hands to encircle them, and the cracks in their heavy bark were wide enough to fit a fist.

Looking up, dark green crowns covered the tops of the giant trees dozens of meters overhead. These primeval giants grew densely throughout the tropical rainforest, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Above, branches, leaves, and vines intertwined into a green canopy. Occasionally, a few hazy, almost solid shafts of light pierced the forest gloom, moisture and dust drifting within them as the low shrubs below greedily absorbed the precious sunlight.

The thick layer of fallen leaves on the ground gave off the smell of decay and damp earth, punctuated by occasional rustling as unknown insects and snakes crawled through it.

Tiny black-and-red tangles covered the shrub leaves. A closer look revealed densely packed land leeches writhing and even springing about. Combined with the oppressive heat and humidity, the mere sight was enough to make a person's whole body itch.

The occasional wolf howl and the roars of unidentified beasts made the primeval rainforest all the more unnerving.

Yet deep within this untouched forest, where there was no sign of human activity, a row of reinforced-concrete buildings had appeared, utterly out of place.

A four-lane road seemed to have been severed by some unknown force, its jagged concrete edges and warped asphalt meeting the primeval forest.

On one side of the road stood a high-rise apartment building and a large shopping mall. Opposite them was a residential complex protected by a perimeter wall.

White metal railings divided the road down the middle, half of them already toppled to the ground. A pedestrian overpass also connected the two sides.

The apartment building, the mall, and the residential complex all stood almost directly against the rainforest, as though they had materialized out of thin air. An eerie silence hung over everything.

"Aah! Help! Don't kill me! Don't kill me! Urgh..."

The sudden scream shattered the silence, only to die away moments later. In several windows of the apartment building, curtains shifted as people peered outside.

Faint murmurs seemed to rise here and there...

On the twenty-third floor, an apartment room of roughly ten square meters was somewhat cluttered. Torn-open instant noodle wrappers littered the floor, and a desk made of composite wood had several conspicuous dents exposing the wood particles inside. Judging by their edges, the damage appeared fresh.

A mirror hanging on the wall above the desk reflected a figure leaning forward to look out the window.

Lin Hao stood by the window, gazing at the towering rainforest trees outside, and sighed.

"Who was the unlucky bastard this time...?"

Several days had passed since they had fallen into this hellhole. Fortunately, he had reacted quickly, filling his large collapsible bathtub before all the water in the rooftop tank had been divided up. Along with his stockpile of instant noodles, sausages, and beef jerky, it had kept him from going hungry these past few days.

"I can't keep putting this off. Phew..."

Lin Hao glanced at the mirror on the wall. His handsome face was pale from a lack of sunlight. With his slim build, no one could tell if he claimed to be 180 centimeters tall rather than his actual 178. His somewhat slender physique had been quite popular back in their former society.

But in this hellish environment, Lin Hao truly felt just how poor his under-exercised, less-than-healthy body was. After swinging the wooden ruler he used as a weapon a few dozen times, his arm already ached.

His surroundings were anything but safe, so once the soreness set in, he did not dare keep practicing...

"Even with a mismatched weapon, the added weight penalty is only a tenth. Since when did half a jin feel this heavy?"

He picked up the wooden ruler from the desk again and swung it forward. Moving at high speed, it cut through the air with a heavy whoosh.

Thud!

The ruler struck his landlord's composite-wood desk with a dull crash. Its surface split open, sending wood fragments flying.

It was only a wooden ruler, yet it had chopped a deep notch into the desk.

Several similar marks already covered the desk, leaving its surface pitted and uneven.

Anyone watching an ordinary wooden ruler cause such damage would have been stunned. Lin Hao, despite his unimpressive physique, showed little reaction. He merely rubbed his aching arm.

Before the apartment building had fallen into this hellhole-or rather, when he had been very young-Lin Hao had discovered that he possessed a strange equipment interface. He could see it with a thought, and it had puzzled him for years.

Previously, he had never found anything he could equip.

Yet whenever he focused on it, he could understand certain properties of the equipment interface almost instinctively, making him feel that it might not be a hallucination.

For instance, equipped items did not appear on the corresponding body part. Instead, they worked more like an "enchantment."

Take the large iron pot weighing six jin currently equipped to his right hand. When he was not using a weapon, a mere thought could enchant his entire right arm with the pot, making his skin as tough as iron and adding the impact of the pot's weight to his attacks.

In exchange, he had to expend a little more stamina and bear a load on his arm that felt like roughly half a jin.

That half-jin burden was the penalty for not using a weapon of the category corresponding to his equipment slot.

In other words, if he held another iron pot, he would feel no additional exertion at all when enchanting his attacks.

Using an ordinary iron pot as a weapon was simply too inconvenient, though. After searching his rented apartment, Lin Hao had decided that the meter-long ruler his landlord used to smack his children with was his best option.

The ruler itself was light and could be swung considerably faster than a fist. Its length also gave him more room for error. Combined with the added mass of six jin, it could produce the damage he had inflicted on the desk.

For that, an additional weight penalty of one tenth-roughly half a jin-was acceptable. It just felt heavier than he had originally imagined, about the weight of a canned drink.

Holding a canned drink normally might not feel like much, but swinging it repeatedly would make an arm ache.

An ordinary claw hammer weighed only about two jin, and most people could not swing one particularly fast. Its destructive power could not compare to Lin Hao's ruler now!

After all, kinetic energy scaled with V^2, so the additional damage from the ruler's swing speed rose exponentially.

Combined with the ruler's narrow edge, even if it could hardly be called sharp, that much mass produced extremely high pressure. It inflicted far more damage than Lin Hao had achieved when testing with his bare fingers.

[Mom's Treasured Iron Pot (gray)]

[Value: 10 wish power]

[Mass: 3 kg]

[Additional attribute: increased effectiveness of cooking practice (gray)]

[Extra

additional attribute: improved goose-stewing results (gray)]

[A tool its owner intended to use to stew goose, but it was left unused because the commercial apartment building had no open-flame stove. Its owner had always found this regrettable.]

This was Lin Hao's only piece of equipment at present. He had discovered it only after the world changed drastically and the apartment building fell into this hellhole.

After he graduated, started working, and rented this place, his mother had spent two days on a slow train, traveling all that way to visit him. She had brought this pot with her, along with two big, fat geese.

The plan had fallen through because his rented commercial apartment had no open-flame stove.

He could not bear to make his mother carry it all the way home again, so he had insisted on keeping it.

The iron pot had originally sat beneath his bed like any ordinary object. But when he dug it out to store more water, he discovered that it had acquired attributes-and could be equipped!

It had become the first item to enter his equipment interface, proving that the interface really was no hallucination!

As for the 10 wish power listed as its value, Lin Hao had a rough idea of what that meant. This knowledge did not come from his equipment interface, but from the information the awakened [earth will] had given all humanity after they fell into this hellhole.

The information transmitted by the [earth will] could be understood directly, making it even more efficient than written words.

Earth had been captured by the Abyss. To survive, the earth will had deliberately torn Earth apart and fallen into the Abyss, sending residential districts into areas suitable for human habitation wherever possible.

Objects that held the thoughts and feelings of intelligent beings would become wish power products. Most were collectibles with no attributes, but a small number would develop equipment attributes.

Because the earth will had deliberately gone along with the pull into the Abyss, it had preserved its own strength. During the descent, it had left anchors in many worlds that were being eroded by the Abyss.

Every residential district would have a teleportation point, allowing people to enter those worlds and obtain more wish power items to hand over to the world will. The wish power they turned in could be used to heal injuries, improve training results, repair equipment...

Note: only the protagonist has an equipment interface. Ordinary people can use equipment normally by holding it, while the protagonist can hold equipment and also gain enchantments from his equipment interface. As his overall abilities improve, the interface will also gain functions such as additional slots and switching.

Because of the one-tenth weight penalty, flexible implements such as willow switches and whips, which can be swung at higher speeds, are less useful than the wooden ruler.

While using a weapon, his arm still receives the corresponding enchantment's hardness and protection, allowing it to absorb some of the excessive impact.

Equipment within the interface will not be damaged, but an attack exceeding its threshold can temporarily break through its defenses. Equipment used normally in the physical world can be damaged and can be repaired with wish power.