Devastation stretched as far as the eye could see. Ruined buildings, dust, and dark stains marked where blood and human skin had dried in the sun. Not a single thatched hut remained intact.

  After carefully confirming the monster was truly gone, Xun Xie emerged from his collapsed shelter. A dirt road stretched before him, paved with finely crushed greystone that resembled granite and marble. It wound down the hillside and out of the valley, though now it was pockmarked with deep craters as if a battle had raged across its surface.

  Scattered across the ground lay dark puddles - congealed masses of flesh and bone. The blood had turned black, attracting swarms of ants that outnumbered even the rats, cockroaches, and flies drawn by the night's carnage. The sight turned his stomach, a nauseating pressure building in his chest.

  Xun Xie searched desperately for other survivors but found nothing. No people, no ghosts, not even a single animal remained - no chickens, ducks, geese, or dogs. Everyone was gone.

  "The monster... it ate them all."

  He sank down onto a low wall, mind racing. His small frame had been his salvation - the only reason he'd fit in that cellar. The screams he'd heard had all been adults, too large to hide in such tight spaces. Looking around, he noticed how uniform the village was - every hut the same size, no grand house for a village chief or local tyrant. Just simple homes with simple storage, if they had any at all. If only the village had been larger, perhaps others might have survived.

  "There's no going back, is there?"

  The sigh that escaped him carried the weight of acceptance. Strange - he'd expected to deny this reality longer, but an odd calm washed over him as his thoughts began to hurt, like worms churning in his skull. Not painful exactly, just... uncomfortable.

  He'd always been good at not overthinking things. His old life hadn't exactly been filled with certainty or hope anyway - just graduated, new job, that constant invisible pressure of survival weighing on him like a sleep paralysis demon that wouldn't fade even in daylight. No family, no true friends, just pleasant acquaintances who shared his interests.

  After hours of questions, headaches, regret, and contemplation, the truth had sunk like an anchor to the ocean floor: he had crossed over to another world.

  "Why me?"

  The question felt hollow. Xun Xie knew he wasn't special - not rich, not poor, not brilliant, not stupid. Neither handsome enough to stand out nor ugly enough to earn heaven's pity. Just... ordinary.

  Thoughts of his old world surfaced again. Even as a loner, he'd had a life. But looking at his rough clothing and the primitive buildings around him, this was clearly some ancient era - no electricity, no internet, no modern sanitation. Disease would run rampant with no vaccines to check it. The future looked bleak.

  His stomach growled, the hunger hitting him like a physical blow. His body felt hollow, as if he hadn't eaten in days. Unconsciously, he welcomed the distraction from darker thoughts about all he'd lost.

  "Get some Water first. Then food."

  Xun Xie stood and made his way to the village well. It stood near the entrance, not far from what appeared to be a dilapidated temple. Beyond that, a small river wound through the landscape, with green rice paddies stretching across its far bank.

  A bucket hung from the well's mouth, secured by a long rope. Peering down, Xun Xie saw water rippling about ten meters below, reflecting the blue sky above. He grabbed the rope and dropped the bucket.

  Bang!

  Water rushed in, but when he tried to pull it up, his weakened arms could barely budge it. He had to shake out half the water before he could lift it, and even then, his hands burned from the effort, his lungs heaving against his ribs.

  Looking into the bucket, the clear water reflected his blood-stained face. Even in this new life, it seemed he wasn't destined for good looks - though his features were youthful, they were decidedly plain. He didn't mind much.

  Xun Xie took two desperate sips before washing his face and hands, the water clouding instantly red.

  "What the...?"

  Suddenly, Xun Xie noticed something foreign in his mind - a presence he should have detected earlier but had subconsciously blocked until this moment of calm after drinking. His consciousness, normally an intangible thing that could only be vaguely sensed, had become crystal clear.

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  Within it, fog swirled everywhere except for one distinct area.

  There, floating in his mind's eye, was a greyish-white object.

  It looked exactly like...

  A lottery wheel?!

  A memory flashed through his mind - the party before all this began. Eight friends (or "acquaintances" if he was being honest, though that word felt too formal now) gathered around a table, eating and drinking. One friend, who worked at a university, had pulled something from his backpack with obvious pride.

  It was an ancient stone spinning wheel - a large main wheel with a smaller, palm-sized auxiliary wheel attached. Despite its age, both wheels still spun smoothly. Oddly, while the symbols and writing had corroded away, the stone-like material remained perfectly preserved, as if ten thousand years meant nothing to it. Except it wasn't actually stone, despite appearances.

  His friend had been about to lecture them on its probable use as an ancient lottery game, but the others had booed him into taking shots instead. Xun Xie groaned as he remembered fidgeting with the wheel just before losing consciousness.

  "That wheel... it must have caused all this."

  He tried to spin the mental wheel, but it remained stubbornly still. Though he could feel its stony texture through some impossible sense, it refused to turn. The main wheel was blank except for a single silver-gold hourglass symbol, but the smaller wheel suddenly became clear, revealing five sections carved with mysterious runes. Somehow, he understood them as numbers:

  0

  2

  10

  1000

  10000

  What could they mean? The smaller wheel proved even more immovable than the main one.

  A glint near the bucket caught his eye. He picked up a small object - not quite stone, but a smooth metal unlike anything he'd seen before.

  "What is-?!"

  A mechanical voice cut through his thoughts:

  "You spun the lottery wheel and won the treasure detector." "

  Active Duration: one day"

  "Range: 1 meter (Critical Disabled, Not activated)"

  Before he could process this, another voice - this one somehow more pleasant - spoke in his mind:

  "Go forward, there is a copper coin in the gap between the stones 1 meter away."

  Xun Xie froze, then slowly pieced it together. He had gained the ability to detect treasures within a one-meter radius!

  Heart racing, he ran to the gap and found exactly what the voice had promised - a copper coin.

  "Take six steps west, dig 0.6 meters underground, and find a piece of silver."

  He rushed to follow this new direction.

  "Ten steps south, there is a lost elephant rice jade pendant under the grass."

  This time he fumbled, overwhelmed by new prompts before completing the original instruction. "Maybe I am dumber than an amoeba," he muttered, remembering the old high school insult.

  But then he noticed something about the prompts - they continued cycling through all detected treasures within range, repeating until he collected them. The system was foolproof even for someone who couldn't follow simple instructions.

  His hidden genius IQ of 9000 wouldn't be needed after all - finding treasures would be child's play!

  ***

  The prompts echoed through his mind like a treasure map coming to life.

  Xun Xie moved forward half a meter, excitement building as he pulled away stones to reveal a stained, chipped gold coin with a square hole in its center. Though damaged, it had to be worth far more than copper - even in this backward world where copper might hold more value than he expected. His fortune was growing by the minute!

  Following the endless stream of prompts, his collection grew quickly. A tael of silver emerged from the earth, followed by an elephant rice jade pendant, warm to the touch and crystal clear. In a wooden box under a bed, he found forty-two copper coins nestled beside an impure crystal ball. Even a pair of broken straw sandals yielded treasure - thirty copper coins of private money hidden within.

  Then the prompts led him to real treasure - food. Under a pot lid, he discovered five steamed garlic dumplings. Behind a stove in one corner, one and a half bags of rice waited to be claimed. A collapsed beam concealed marinated bacon, while a bedside cabinet offered up thirty-four copper coins and a jade ring.

  His heart soared. The detector's definition of "treasure" thankfully included more than just money. With his stomach growling, he devoured the dumplings and bacon before carefully packing away the rest.

  Four hours later, he'd searched every corner of the village. His haul was impressive: a damaged gold coin, forty-three taels of silver, hundreds of copper coins, plus clothes, food, and clean bedding. Everything went onto a flatbed cart he'd found.

  He cursed the detector's one-meter range - though secretly, he knew its precise guidance had helped him find things he would have missed even right in front of him, not to mention the buried treasures and items hidden under rubble. Without it, he might have eaten something poisonous or overlooked valuable finds.

  The monster could return any moment. He had to leave this cursed place.

  Xun Xie paused to rest, the day's events crashing over him: the monster's attack, waking in another world, discovering his strange power... it was overwhelming. He'd found five other cellars while searching the village - three his size, two smaller.

  No children or even animals were inside.

  The silence confirmed what he already knew - no other survivors.

  As his busy hands finally stilled, his mind wandered into a trance-like state. When he eventually shook it off, a mix of uncertainty and faint hope filled his heart. It was time to leave.

  He grabbed the cart's handles and headed for the village entrance. Just as he passed the ruined temple, a new prompt whispered:

  "In the temple on the right, 0.9 meters away, there is a chance."

  Xun Xie's eyebrows rose. Chance? Such a vague description could mean anything - good or bad.

  After a brief hesitation, curiosity won out. He parked the cart and approached the temple's main hall, peering inside.

  What he saw made his eyes go wide with terror.