2. Activation of the Ring

Yang Fan went to resign from the foreman. The foreman didn’t waste any time; this kind of life-risking work rarely lasted a full year for most people. Yang Fan had bitten the bullet and worked for three years, which was already quite rare.

He agreed readily. Stepping out of the foreman’s shabby office, Yang Fan walked under the moonlight. The construction site was littered with puddles and garbage, with piles of building materials covered by tarps scattered around.

Suddenly, he sensed something unusual; the hairs on his body stood on end, and an electric arc-like sensation swirled around him. Uneasy, he stopped and looked around. Nothing was amiss—dark and silent all around. Yet, he felt an impending danger.

At that moment, a sudden warmth spread through his finger. The ring on it suddenly glowed, countless faint white threads flew out from the moon, drawn into the ring’s surface. As the moonlight threads infused into the ring, its face gradually changed color, eventually turning a perfect, blood-red hue. A ruby appeared on the ring’s surface.

A burning pain followed.

As the flow of moonlight threads ceased, the ring visibly reddened, as if aflame.

“Ah!” Yang Fan cried out in pain, struggling to pull the ring off his finger. In his flustered attempts, his index finger snagged on a nearby piece of wood, breaking the skin and drawing a drop of blood. Yang Fan wiped his bloodied finger across the ring’s surface.

With a sharp crack, a luminous gate three meters square appeared two meters away on an empty patch. Yang Fan stood on a slope, and the sudden change startled him so much that he slipped and slid directly into the glowing portal.

Terrified, Yang Fan frantically tried to grab something to steady himself, but there was nothing fixed nearby. His hand caught onto something cold and hard—steel pipe, he realized.

And then he slipped entirely into the portal.

In shock, Yang Fan lost consciousness.

After an unknown amount of time, he slowly came to.

He felt an itch on his face, and when he reached up and opened his eyes, he saw a large millipede.

Disliking insects, Yang Fan threw it far away.

He got up and looked around—where was he?

Beneath his feet lay a strange steel pipe—a seamless pipe five centimeters in diameter and one meter long, welded at one end to a twenty-centimeter iron chain, and at the other end to a short steel pipe thirty centimeters long and fifteen centimeters in diameter. Both pipes were seamless and sturdy, with the shorter pipe filled with cement.

In the countryside, this tool was called a flail, typically used for threshing wheat. On construction sites, it was used to break cement blocks.

The short end was studded with many conical steel spikes, resembling a mace.

Yang Fan picked it up and examined it. The lower end of the long rod was wrapped in rubber to prevent vibration from shaking the hands.

This was a formidable weapon.

He swung it once, feeling that if it struck a bull’s head, it would surely shatter the skull.

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