Chapter 1

**Boom!**

A massive azure energy suddenly erupted, instantly swallowing everything around it.

"Ha~" Zhou Chao abruptly opened his eyes, gazing at the familiar ceiling, and let out a long sigh, still feeling the lingering fear. "Here it comes again. It's been a week, and I keep having the same strange dream every day. I really don't know what's going on." He then slightly turned his body, picked up his old Nokia phone from beside the pillow, and pressed the function key to check the time—9:33 AM. He then put the phone back, used his waist strength to sit up from the bed, and got up to head to the bathroom to freshen up.

In just seven or eight minutes, Zhou Chao, looking refreshed and invigorated, returned to the bedroom and started putting on the clothes and pants lying on the floor. Soon, a clean and tidy young man appeared in the room.

Zhou Chao, male, 24 years old, from the northern region, stands at 1.8 meters tall with a well-proportioned and healthy physique. He has short hair and a rather ordinary appearance, the kind that neither disrupts the urban environment nor makes people look twice. Thus, his 24 years of life have been quite uneventful, much like the lives of countless ordinary people—birth, schooling, fighting, skipping school, first love, graduation, and work.

His parents are both alive, and he has no direct siblings, being an only child. The family's living standard is decent; although they are not wealthy, they are self-sufficient, and basic needs like food and shelter are never a problem.

However, due to his job, Zhou Chao does not live with his parents. Instead, he rents a place in the outskirts of the city where his company is located, living a simple and self-sufficient life.

Today is Wednesday, his day off. Therefore, after getting dressed, Zhou Chao, who was too lazy to cook, returned to the bed, picked up his phone, and left the rental apartment, heading towards a nearby bun shop.

Since it was a normal working day and around 10 o'clock, there were almost no people in the neighborhood except for a few elderly people out for a stroll. Even cars were scarce, so the bun shop was almost empty, allowing Zhou Chao to enjoy a personalized service.

A steamer of buns, a bowl of porridge, and a small dish of pickled vegetables—within just a few minutes, Zhou Chao had finished his meal, paid the bill, and got up to leave the bun shop. However, he did not head straight back to his rental apartment but turned and walked towards a nearby convenience store.

Zhou Chao's rental place was in an old district, which, according to the residents, had been around for two or three decades. The area was well-equipped with various facilities, including supermarkets, markets, and convenience stores. As long as you needed something, you could buy anything from a second-hand TV to a bookbinding nail in the vicinity.

*Jingle.*

"Do you have copper wire?" Zhou Chao asked the shopkeeper, who was sitting inside, as he pushed open the door of the convenience store.

"Yes." The shopkeeper, seeing a customer, quickly stood up from her small stool, walked into the store, bent down, and pulled out a bundle of thin, unwrapped copper wire from a shelf filled with shoes, belts, plastic basins, metal locks, and other small items.

"How much?" Zhou Chao asked.

"How much do you need?" The shopkeeper straightened up and asked.

Zhou Chao thought for a moment and said, "Ten meters. Also, add a pair of pliers and a pair of rubber gloves."

"Copper wire is 15 yuan, rubber gloves are 8.5 yuan, and pliers are 26 yuan, totaling 49.5 yuan." The shopkeeper said.

"Make it 49 yuan." Zhou Chao casually haggled.

"Okay." The shopkeeper agreed and bent down again to start cutting the copper wire...

"Here you go." A moment later, the shopkeeper placed the measured copper wire, the pliers, and the rubber gloves into a plastic bag and handed it to Zhou Chao. Zhou Chao took it, handed over a 50-yuan note, received the change, and said, "Thanks, I'm off."

"Take care." The shopkeeper smiled.

This time, Zhou Chao did not linger and walked straight back to his rental apartment. It didn't take long for him to return.

*Bang.* The door closed heavily.

*Bang.* Zhou Chao casually placed the plastic bag on the table, looked down at the exposed copper wire, pliers, and red rubber gloves inside.

"Damn, why did I buy these things? Could it be that the things in my dreams are real?" A moment later, Zhou Chao plopped down on a chair, shaking his head and laughing bitterly.

Fortunately, Zhou Chao is not the type to dwell on things, and he quickly shook off his gloomy mood.

"Whatever, I've already bought them. They're useless, so I might as well give it a try. It'll be a way to entertain myself today."

With that, Zhou Chao didn't hesitate. He got up, pulled the chair over to the table, and sat down. He then took out the copper wire from the plastic bag and started working.

First, Zhou Chao went to the kitchen and took out the inner pot of the rice cooker to use as a mold to shape the copper wire into a neat circle. However, when he tried to find something to fix the circle, he realized he was missing something. Reluctantly, he had to leave the rental apartment again and buy a roll of electrical tape from a nearby convenience store to solve the problem.

After fixing the copper circle, Zhou Chao picked up the copper wire again and began to weave it according to the pattern he clearly remembered from his dream. This time, due to the need for precise work, it took him over an hour and a half to complete it.

There was no way around it; the copper wire was too soft, and any slight force would deform it, requiring him to reshape it before continuing.

However, once this step was completed, a strange pattern with intricate internal designs, resembling a magic circle from Western mythology, appeared before Zhou Chao's eyes.

But the work was not yet finished. Zhou Chao carefully set the magic circle aside and picked up the remaining copper wire to continue.

This time, he shaped the copper wire into bizarre and unique patterns, carefully placing them into the copper wire magic circle, much like an expert restoring a painting. This process took him another hour.

After completing this, Zhou Chao finally relaxed, took a deep breath, straightened up, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his arm. Clearly, the work was almost done.

He then got up, drank some water, and picked up the remaining copper wire. Using the pliers, he cut a piece of copper wire over half a meter long, wrapped it with electrical tape, leaving about three centimeters of copper wire exposed at each end. He then lightly placed one end on the copper wire magic circle and plugged the other end into an extension cord he had brought over while drinking water.

*Snap!* A spark jumped out, startling Zhou Chao, but nothing else happened. The copper wire remained just that, and none of the scenes from his dream materialized.

In Zhou Chao's recurring dream over the past week, besides the explosion, there was another scene. It was a strange, fantastical scene—inside a large, enclosed room, a massive magic circle was drawn on the floor, with a person standing in the center. After saying, "Let's begin," the magic circle began to glow, brighten, and eventually turned into a massive beam of light that engulfed the person.

Apart from this, Zhou Chao's mind was filled with a bunch of mysterious rules and precautions, as well as two magic circles whose functions he didn't fully understand. One was completely unknown, while the other was the one that emitted a massive beam of light in the dream, which he had just made with copper wire.

"I knew it, how could the things in my dreams be real?" Zhou Chao sighed, feeling both regret and disappointment, as he saw no abnormality in the copper wire magic circle.

He then bent down again to grab the copper wire connected to the extension cord. However, at that moment, a faint "sizzle" sounded, and a weak blue light suddenly emerged from the copper wire magic circle, stopping his action. His lips and eyes widened as he stared intently at the copper wire magic circle on the table.

Under Zhou Chao's close watch, the light from the copper wire magic circle grew brighter, quickly turning into a deep blue, similar to an emergency light. Then, it suddenly burst, forming a blue energy beam with the same diameter as the copper wire magic circle, shooting straight up to the ceiling of the rental apartment.

"The things in my dreams... are actually real!?" Zhou Chao stared at the blue beam shooting up to the ceiling, his face full of disbelief.

But in the next moment, a muffled "bang" sounded, and a burnt smell filled the room. Startled by the sound, Zhou Chao turned his head and saw the source of the burnt smell—the extension cord, which was now completely charred and twisted around the plug where the copper wire was inserted, clearly burned by the high current.

"It seems this thing consumes a lot of electricity..." Zhou Chao looked at the copper wire magic circle, which, apart from no longer glowing, remained intact, and smiled excitedly.

Compared to the high power consumption and the burned circuit, the fact that the magic circle in his mind was real and effective was far more important. This meant that Zhou Chao was about to leave his ordinary past behind and step into an unknown new life!