Deities: Rulers of Nature

At noon in June, the sun baked the asphalt road until it softened.

The wind, carrying waves of heat, swept through the cemetery, swirling up a few fallen leaves, and even the shadows of the pine and cypress trees shrank into tiny clusters.

Ji Xuan squatted in front of the tombstone and arranged the last bunch of white chrysanthemums.

He raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead, his fingertips inadvertently touching the pendant hanging around his neck.

It was a round, golden acorn, cool to the touch, and gleaming faintly in the sunlight.

Five years have passed, and he has been working for almost a year since graduating from university, but the dream of Ragnarok still occasionally pops into his head.

That dream was terrifyingly real, filled with mountains of corpses and seas of blood; even the stench of blood in the air seemed to linger on my nose.

Five years have passed, and nothing has happened.

He was still an ordinary office worker, going to get off work and coming home every day, living a routine life just like everyone else his age.

Sometimes he would think that maybe it wasn't an omen at all.

On his eighteenth birthday, his adoptive father, Ji Sen, gave him this acorn and told him about his background. It was just a belated, childish dream that he had been thinking about during the day and dreaming about at night.

But a voice inside him kept telling him, "You've already experienced time travel, what else is impossible?"

Ji Xuan was not originally from this world.

In his previous life, he lived on a similarly blue planet, went to school and graduated like most people, and later became a game streamer by chance.

The income isn't top-tier, but it's enough to establish a foothold in a second-tier city.

That day, he stayed up all night recording game gameplay until 3 a.m. when a sudden, tearing pain shot through his heart. When he opened his eyes again, he was not at the company or the hospital, but here.

Aquamarine Star, a place whose technological level at the time was roughly equivalent to the early 21st century of my previous life.

Ji Xuan was taken in by Ji Sen.

Ji Sen was in his forties and had been a forest ranger who had guarded the mountains for half his life. That day, he was patrolling the forest area when he heard a baby crying. He went over and saw Ji Xuan under an oak tree.

At that time, besides the swaddling clothes that wrapped him up, the only thing beside Ji Xuan was this golden acorn.

The police searched for a long time but couldn't find any information about his biological parents. In the end, Ji Sen adopted him and named him Ji Xuan.

By the time he fully remembered his past life, he was already seven years old.

Now, the memories of my past life are not very clear, as if they are seen through a layer of frosted glass.

Ji Xuan had long since accepted his new identity: Ji Sen's son, the child of a forest ranger.

From childhood to adulthood, he was always the "other people's child" that adults talked about. He was good at studying, sensible, and never caused trouble.

Ji Sen treated him with utmost kindness, because he had no wife and always felt that Ji Xuan lacked maternal love during his upbringing, so he inevitably spoiled him a bit too much.

Fortunately, Ji Xuan possessed the soul of an adult, and his values ​​were already firmly established; otherwise, he would definitely have been spoiled by Ji Sen.

Ji Sen was especially happy on Ji Xuan's eighteenth birthday.

When Ji Xuan was a child, he was weak and sickly. He would often carry the child on his back to the health center at the foot of the mountain in the middle of the night, always afraid that he, a grown man, would not be able to raise the child well.

Watching Ji Xuan grow up, he drank two glasses of wine, and finally, with tears in his eyes, he revealed Ji Xuan's background and handed him the golden acorn that he had kept hidden for eighteen years.

Because of that dream, Ji Xuan had tormented this acorn quite a bit.

I heated it on the gas stove for ten minutes, and there wasn't even a scorch mark on the surface. I even chopped it with a kitchen knife, and the blade chipped, but the acorn remained perfectly intact.

Ji Xuan even secretly buried it in the soil behind the house, watered and fertilized it regularly, and guarded it for three whole months, but not a single root or sprout appeared. After all his efforts yielded no results, he finally had to give up and obediently wear it as a pendant around his neck.

Ji Sen passed away a year ago.

It's an old injury I sustained in the mountains when I was young. Now that I'm older, my body finally can't take it anymore.

Ji Sen left peacefully.

That day was Ji Xuan's graduation from university. The father and son drank some wine to celebrate, and he stopped breathing in his sleep.

When Ji Xuan discovered it the next day, Ji Sen still had a smile on his face.

Having endured a sudden death in his past life, Ji Xuan had no desire to relive those days of risking his life for money.

After handling Ji Sen's funeral arrangements, he declined the high-paying job offer from a top company recommended by his senior and instead found a job in logistics at a public institution.

The pay isn't much, but the workload is minimal. I work nine to five and never have to work overtime. After get off work, I can go home to cook and grow flowers. Life is simple and peaceful.

Today marks the first anniversary of Ji Sen's death.

Ji Xuan took a day off and drove for two hours from the city to come here.

After cleaning up the trash I brought, I took one last look at the photo on the tombstone. Ji Sen in the photo had a simple, honest smile, his face full of wrinkles left by the wind and sun.

"Dad, I'm leaving now. I'll come to see you again next time," Ji Xuan said softly, then turned and walked out of the cemetery.

There weren't many cars at the entrance of the cemetery. He took out his phone to call a taxi when he suddenly felt the sky darken.

It wasn't the kind of darkness where dark clouds obscure the sun; it was a sudden, abrupt darkness, as if someone had turned off the sun.

Ji Xuan looked up.

A black dot appeared in the position of the sun.

The black dot spun very quickly, like a whirlpool in water, expanding several times in the blink of an eye, and black lines spread across the sky.

Only a strange, hazy light remained in the world.

He subconsciously looked around.

The cleaning lady was still sweeping the floor with her head down, the old man selling water by the roadside was chatting with people while fanning himself, and a few people who had just come out of the cemetery were walking by calmly talking about something.

Everyone went about their business as usual, without the slightest sign of abnormality on their faces.

Ji Xuan's heart skipped a beat.

"Brother, do you see anything in the sky?" Ji Xuan grabbed a man who was about to pass by and asked, pointing to the sun.

The older brother looked in the direction he was pointing, looking completely bewildered. "There's nothing there. Young man, are you suffering from heatstroke?" he said, then reached out and touched the young man's forehead.

"Oh dear, you're sweating so much, your back is soaked. You're not really suffering from heatstroke, are you?" The older brother took his arm without saying a word, his tone full of concern. "Come on, let me help you to a shady spot over there to rest. Wait a minute, I'll go buy you a bottle of electrolyte water."

Ji Xuan opened his mouth to explain, but his throat tightened and he couldn't utter a single word.

He was half-supported and half-carried by his older brother to a shady spot not far away, where he sat on a cool stone bench.

The midday heat was blocked by the leaves, which should have made it cool, but Ji Xuan felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar, with a chill running from his spine straight to the top of his head.

He had no time to thank his kind older brother; all his attention was completely absorbed by the sky above him.

Only he can see it.

The black vortex was still spinning wildly, and the black lines on its edges continued to spread, until it had completely swallowed the sun.

Everything around me began to blur and distort. The cicadas chirping in my ears, the old man selling water calling out, the car sounds in the distance—all the sounds faded away little by little, as if they had been sucked away by something.

Ji Xuan tried to move, but found that he couldn't move his body at all.

Finally, what caught the eye was the golden acorn around the neck. It suddenly lit up, emitting a soft glow, like a tiny sun, standing out starkly against the gray sky and earth.

Then, Ji Xuan completely lost consciousness.