Pain.

Intense pain.

Unmatched intense pain, like a Husky tearing up the insides of my head, ripping every nerve apart.

Rod had been violently awoken from a deep sleep by the pain.

"Shit... why does my head hurt so much, is someone trying to brainstorm for me?"

"Damn it, whoever else says drinking prevents brain strokes, I'll make them have a stroke first..."

Rod opened his eyes, ready to get up.

However, the next moment, he froze.

This wasn't the dormitory, nor was it his home, his booze-guzzling buddies were gone, and he wasn't in a bed but was sleeping on the dry, hard wasteland.

What was creepy was that there were many people scattered haphazardly across the wasteland, motionless, without a trace of life.

They had clearly been dead for a while.

The hairs on the back of Rod's neck stood up in an instant.

Why were there so many dead bodies?

Was I dumped here as a corpse?

But this wasn't a crematorium.

Rod forced himself to calm down, and as he moved his gaze, he noticed more bizarre details.

The dead wore strange clothes, not of modern style, and their bodies were shriveled and dark, not like a normal death, and there were signs of destruction around, but as a man who had seen over a thousand episodes of Conan, he sharply realized that these signs didn't match.

But what was even more peculiar was a lamp.

In the center of the pile of corpses, tightly held by a dry hand.

Its exterior was a gray metal grate, and the inner layer was thick, semi-transparent glass; through it, one could vaguely see a tiny, seemingly about to extinguish, flame.

And this fragile flame, the light it emitted, illuminated the area within a hundred meters.

Beyond this hundred-meter radius of light, there was a continuously rolling thick Black Fog.

There was no night sky, no stars, no moon, and no sun.

Only darkness.

Rod opened his mouth wide, unable to breathe, only the Husky in his head still tearing things up.

Undoubtedly, this was not a normal, understandable world.

If it weren't for the pain that continued, Rod would have thought he was dreaming.

"Damn, am I in a bizarre world... This usually means a terrible death..."

Rod regreted having watched so many horror movies. Various horrific scenes from his memory uncontrollably surged in his mind: being devoured by monsters, being forcefully stuffed into storm drains, squished into suitcases, turned into preserves, among other disturbing images.

"Calm down, calm down, I need to stay calm now."

Rod took several deep breaths.

"Don't panic, don't panic, Mr. Lu Xun once said the best way to overcome fear is to face it. Not all supernatural horror films end in a total massacre..."

"I must survive, I must return to my world; Yuuki, Yayu, Nai, and the others are still waiting for me, I can't let them be saddened over me..."

It took great effort before Rod finally calmed down, and as soon as rational thinking returned, fragments of memory surged from his brain.

After spending tens of minutes to digest this not-so-long but immensely fragmented information, Rod's heart sank to the bottom of the sea.

As he had seen, this was a world enveloped in Black Fog.

The pervasive Black Fog would erode all living beings, and only monsters roamed within it.

The world had fallen, numerous nations were destroyed, turned into lairs for monsters, and it was hard to catch a glimpse of the sun, moon, or stars.

The only refuge for humanity was fire.

They called it Guardian Fire, or Bright Fire, Fire of Life, Fire of Hope, Eternal Fire, and built human settlements around them, surviving in this dark hell.

The settlements completely depended on the fire's power, the stronger the fire, the larger the settlement.

And the strongest Guardian Fire was the Holy Fire in the Royal City, which was also their largest settlement, all villages and other habitations existed within its radius of power, revolving around it.

The Redstone Village where he lived was such a settlement, tasked with mining Red Stone for the Royal City.

He was naturally a miner, as were his parents; his grandfather, great-grandfather, and his great-great-grandfather were all miners, leading a joy-filled life of mining all year round until one day, disaster struck.

In a world enveloped by Black Fog, unrest occurred, and the Royal City was forced to reduce its extent, abandoning some lands and settlements.

Redstone Village was unfortunately among those forsaken; they were forced to move.

And the bodies on the ground were members of the Redstone Village's migration team to the Royal City.

"Has...everyone perished? Am I the only one alive?"

Rod felt a strong chill.

This was not a good sign; it usually meant he would encounter even more terrible and dreadful misfortune.

He didn't know what had happened during the migration, how they had died, or how he had survived.

His memory was fragmented, with large blanks.

"What should I do, am I going to die here?"

"No no, that's not possible."

"Observe, I need to observe, maybe I can find clues to get home."

Rod looked around, quickly noticing the red stones scattered among the bodies.

They seemed to have been deliberately arranged, showing a strong directionality.

At the center of this directionality was a strange pattern drawn with blood.

It was less than half a meter in diameter, the outer layer a circle, inside which were two intersecting lightning bolt lines, its strong visual impact made it extremely aggressive-looking, and the dark blood stains added a layer of eeriness.

Rod's pupils constricted, and for a moment, both the fear and the headache were forgotten.

This symbol on the pattern, wasn't it the same as the symbol for courage in the title page of the famous psychological book "Dream Analysis" he had previously read?