After being chosen by the Ice Queen

Gu Yan stood in the living area plaza of the "Hub-07" base, idly playing with the peculiar coin.

The coin felt cold to the touch. One side had an exaggerated smiling face, while the other side had a comical crying face, with incomprehensible twisted runes engraved along its edges. This was a little trinket he had drawn from the Jianmu Story Jar after the last incident. Its rating was merely "interesting," with no practical value. The description read, "From a world where causality is like a drunkard."

"Anyway, I'm just idling around." Gu Yan shrugged and flicked his thumb.

The coin tumbled through the air, tracing a gleaming silver arc.

Snapped.

When it lands in the palm of your hand, it forms a crying face.

"Tsk." Gu Yan curled his lip, not really caring. A bad thing randomly happening within a ten-meter radius? How bad could it be? He was inside the base, in a safe zone.

Ten seconds later, he knew the answer.

First, the overhead light bulb exploded without warning, then the vending machine next to him started spitting out drinks, cans clattering and crashing to the floor. Gu Yan instinctively stepped back, but stepped on one of the rolling cans, losing his balance—

He crashed into the wall.

A poster promoting the base's rules was hanging on the wall. The frame was crooked.

Behind the picture frame, there was a groove that he had never noticed before, resembling an old-fashioned telephone jack, whose shape perfectly matched the name tag hanging around his neck.

The nameplate slipped off the collar during the collision and clicked, fitting perfectly back in.

A low tremor came from inside the walls. Gu Yan's vision began to distort. He heard chaotic babbling in his ears—laughter, crying, and something being rapidly recited in a language he didn't understand at all.

"No way..." Gu Yan only had time to have this thought before he was sucked into the wall.

[Non-standard transmission protocol detected...]

[Coordinate matching in progress... Matching failed...]

Landing Point: Unknown Temporary Dimensional Fragment

[Warning: Local rule stability is extremely low]

Gu Yan crashed heavily onto a patch of ground that felt like cotton candy. He got up and looked around.

This was a place that defied common sense, and Gu Yan thought of a certain science fiction novel.

The sky was pinkish-purple, with clouds that changed shape on their own, sometimes turning into smiling faces, sometimes into crying faces.

In the distance, there are several trees with spiral-shaped trunks, their leaves rustling in the invisible wind.

The ground sank slightly underfoot, as if gravity was unstable. Gu Yan tried jumping and floated up more than half a meter before slowly landing.

"What kind of place is this..." he muttered, trying to mobilize the Yin-Yang energy within his body. The slightly cool energy was still there, but its flow was somewhat sluggish, as if the rules here didn't quite support its smooth operation.

"A newbie? An unlucky guy? Or someone who's actively looking for trouble?"

A voice came from the side. Gu Yan turned his head and saw a handsome young man dressed in an exaggerated clown costume. He was sitting on a floating mushroom and looking at him with curious eyes.

"I guess I'm just unlucky," Gu Yan said with a wry smile, briefly explaining the coin incident.

"Oh, that one." The young man in the clown costume nodded knowingly.

"My name is Maurice," he said, pointing to himself and bowing.

"That's a Chaos Lucky Coin, a specialty of the world of Arcania. The timeline there is knotted, and causality is random. The fact that you were teleported here means that when you flipped the coin, the crying face effect resonated with some abandoned joke teleportation array. Congratulations, you've won."

"Where am I? How do I get out?"

"Here?" Morris opened his arms. "A spacetime rift, a junkyard, an amusement park! It's a place that takes in things that have fallen out of the normal world for all sorts of bizarre reasons—including people. As for leaving..."

He scratched his head. "It depends on luck. The exits here appear randomly. It could be a door that suddenly appears, a talking rabbit hole, or you could just slip and fall and tumble out. The prerequisite is that you can adapt to the rules here."

"rule?"

"Yes, the rules. First: Don't take things too seriously, or you'll lose. Second: Logic is a luxury, intuition is the passport. Third: If something makes you laugh, laugh. If it makes you cry, cry—emotions are the energy here, holding them in will cause problems."

Morris jumped off the mushroom. "Come with me. I'll take you to meet the old folks here and find a way out."

Gu Yanming hadn't moved, but the scene suddenly changed, and four "strange people" with different expressions appeared in front of him.

A tall, thin young man, wearing a pointed hat and a dark purple robe, was frowning and muttering to himself, clutching a slightly charred wooden stick in his hand. "Unbelievable... the flow of magic here is completely chaotic. Merlin's beard, would Apparition stuff itself into a frog's belly?"

A magician? Why is it that I recognize every single word he says, but I can't understand anything when they're put together? Gu Yan muttered to himself.

Beside him stood an elderly man in a wide-sleeved robe, exuding an air of otherworldly wisdom. He was stroking his long beard, his eyes gleaming with wonder as he gazed at the ever-changing clouds in the sky, clicking his tongue in amazement.

"The spiritual energy here... well, let's just call it spiritual energy for now. It's mixed and chaotic, neither yin nor yang, neither clear nor turbid. How strange! Could it be a grotto-heaven opened up by some ancient great being?" He stood on a cloud that looked like cotton wool, yet it steadily supported him.

A little further away stood a black-clad man, holding a long sword, his expression cold and stern. He stood tall and straight, his brows furrowed, emanating an aura of swordsmanship that kept strangers at bay. He uttered two words in a low voice: "Demon Realm."

The last one was a young woman. She was wearing a white dress and looked around blankly. When her eyes met Gu Yan's, both of them were visibly startled.

"Su Wanqing...?" Gu Yan's voice was filled with disbelief. The girl he had helped out of the blue yesterday?

...

Just as Su Wanqing was about to speak, Morris clapped his hands and jumped in.

"Wow! You know each other? That's so interesting!"

Morris's eyes lit up, as if he had discovered a new toy.

"Let me guess! Mr. Realm Walker, and this... well, a mortal lady untouched by stories?"

Your meeting was due to that mischievous little coin. As it brought Mr. World Walker here, the lingering ripples of its cause and effect happened to reach her, with whom you had a brief intersection in your storyline.

A small, unstable, temporary wormhole tore open where she was. Oh dear, what a wonderful coincidence, or perhaps… the coin felt it wasn't fun alone and insisted on finding a companion?

He explained with exaggerated gestures, his tone cheerful.

"So, that coin started working after I acquired it?"

Gu Yan sighed. "Brother Kun, you've really gotten me into serious trouble. It's too late now; I can only blame my bad luck."

Su Wanqing was completely confused and subconsciously took a step closer to Gu Yan.

"Wait," the young magician (who called himself Elliott) interrupted Morris, pushing up glasses that weren't actually on his nose.

"You mean, we were all... randomly pulled in? From completely different worlds? How is that possible! Time travel requires extremely precise coordinates and immense magical power, and also..."

"Magic? Not at all," the old man in the wide robe (who called himself Yun Hezi) waved his hand, interrupting Elliott.

"In my observation, this world is a chaotic void, with loose laws, as if an unparalleled power has forcibly combined many fragments of the Great Dao. Our capture is likely not due to power, but rather to 'fate'."

The sword-wielding man (who called himself Ling Feng) sneered, "Fancy nonsense. Since this is a dangerous place, we should think of a way to break the deadlock. Where is the exit?"

The group started arguing, each offering their own opinion.

Elliott believed the color of the sky was due to some kind of confusion spell, Yun Hezi thought it was the manifestation of chaotic energy, and Ling Feng thought it was demonic mist.

Elliot suspected the texture of the ground was a failed transformation of a swamp curse, Yun Hezi said it was a mutation of "earth energy," and Ling Feng thought it was the skin of some kind of soft-bodied monster. They even argued about the spiraling strange trees, and no one could convince the other.

Morris listened with rapt attention, occasionally interjecting, "The sky is pinkish-purple because it's in a good mood today!" "The ground is soft because it's still asleep!" "The trees are spiral because they love to dance in circles!"