I became a god by treasure hunting after arriving 500 years early

Nothing withstands the erosion of time, and the lifespan of acid-free paper is only about two hundred years.

The lower-level archives were more likely to get damp, blurring much of the writing.

He could only pick out some that were barely legible.

[Incomprehensible Supernatural Phenomena (Meida Civilization·Top Secret Archive No. 109709).]

[Author: Guang Chagou.]

[*Month* Day, large-scale serial disappearances: Continuous disappearances at the city\'s edge suggest interference by unknown superpowers from the outside.]

[The final number of missing persons totaled 44.]

Lu Yuan\'s eyes aided him in translation, thus he read at a decent pace.

[Archive 1, the first missing person\'s published post.]

[The specific contents of the post are as follows:]

[Hello everyone, I\'m a farmer on the outskirts of the city. I\'ve been farming on the edge of the city, providing food for all of you.]

[As you know, outside the Safe Zone, there are always monsters spectating. Some of these creatures have bizarre and frightening appearances.]

[It seems as if the Safe Zone is hidden in space, as long as we ignore them, they can\'t do anything to us.]

[But in recent days, a terrifying event occurred; I found part of the soil seeping out a red liquid, like blood, forming a small pit of blood.]

[Photo]

[(A bunch of netizen comments)]

The photo was blurry, possibly due to special processing.

[Actually, such incidents are common, you are not farmers, so you have no idea. In our circles, there is a jargon not disclosed to the public, known as… a live sacrifice.]

[Sometimes, the Pangu Continent seems to crave flesh and blood. As long as you bury some livestock in it, appeasing the land, the next year\'s harvest will be especially bountiful!]

[This is a well-acknowledged fact within the industry, so don\'t make a fuss about it. Lately, the number of pits requiring a live sacrifice has been increasing.]

[If no live sacrifice is made, these pits will grow larger.]

Lu Yuan frowned as he read this.

He rechecked several times to confirm that this was indeed a top secret file, not some folk tale.

[(Below are some comments from netizens, most of which are from Beauty experts condemning the farmer for his feudal superstitions, others questioning how food grown in such soil could be safe for consumption.)]

[In short, I bought some meat and threw it into the small red pit.]

[Something strange happened: that lump of meat slowly turned into my face.]

[Photo]

This photo, once again processed specially, had only two clear eyes... devoid of focus, carrying a cold, lifeless stillness.

The eyes stared blankly back at itself, with no gory or horrific scenes, yet chilling enough to make one\'s scalp tingle and break out in cold sweat.

The Extraordinary Spark within Lu Yuan\'s mind flickered, helping him suppress a sense of inexplicable panic.

However, the post ended there.

What followed was text added by the Investigator.

[Post-investigation: The poster was found buried in the pit, with an expression and pose exactly matching that photo.]

[At the same time, 43 forum users who saw the photo were all buried in the nearby soil, security footage showed they buried themselves and then lost their life force.]

[Only one individual with a Level 2 Extraordinary Fire was able to resist this fear and narrowly escaped death.]

[After-analysis: The unknown power is suspected to spread through the photo and possesses the ability of spirit manipulation, which caused the farmer to make the post.]

[Subsequent handling method: The farm soil was completely scorched at high temperatures, then covered with concrete, strictly prohibiting the phenomenon of "live sacrifices."]

[The original photo was destroyed, while the remaining copies were processed and no longer possess the ability to spread.]

The Meida Civilization ultimately couldn\'t figure out what exactly happened with the case.

Thus, they categorized it as "Unexplainable Mysterious Phenomena."]

Lu Yuan shivered involuntarily, which meant some abilities could actually cross the "Safe Zone."

Of course, the monsters themselves still couldn\'t get in.

This "crossing" of abilities must be quite a challenging feat; otherwise, it wouldn\'t be resolved so simply by scorching and pouring a bit of concrete.

"Damn it, you could be affected just by looking at a photo. Looks like I can\'t just read any paper around here."

What made him even more suspicious was that the waters of the Pangu Continent were indeed deeper than he thought.

The Safe Zone didn\'t seem to be absolutely safe... Of course, "God" didn\'t seem to guarantee absolute safety either. It just bore that name, and only a fool would believe in its absolute safety.

Lu Yuan mustered his courage and looked through several more reports.

[Incomprehensible Supernatural Phenomena (Meida Civilization·Top Secret Archive No. 109711).]

[Author: Guang Chagou.]

[*Month* Day, the Cat-faced Old Woman Incident: Inside an apartment building, an elderly woman turned into a cat-faced old lady, completely lost her sanity, and attacked single males at night.]

[The final number of missing persons was 2.]

[The specific contents are as follows: …]

[The cause: Unknown.]

[Handling method: After capturing her, she was physically destroyed through the Safe Zone\'s Light Screen.]

"What kind of bizarre archive is this?"

And then there were all sorts of "Resurrection cases," "Underground Tunnel Giant Rat cases," sending shivers down his spine.

Fortunately, these strange events mostly occurred during the latter half of the Eighth Epoch, which is about ten thousand years from now.

The frequency of such events in the early period wasn\'t actually high.

Or more precisely... almost non-existent.

...

"Ah, only found some ghost stories, still no information on the donkey-headed Monster," Lu Yuan said.

Lu Yuan simply transferred the papers from several cabinets into the Storage Space, then went to the room where the metal ball was located to slowly review them.

For every paper he examined, he ran it past the camera, effectively sending it back to the Human side as well.

"Hello, everyone, these are the special events encountered by the Meida Civilization, and they\'re making me a bit nervous," he admitted.

Lu Yuan took particular care to hold the photo of the dead person\'s eyes up to the camera for an extended period.

"Let\'s all watch them together, they all contain valid information, very valuable!" he urged.

According to the Law of Conservation of Smile: Countless smiles disappeared from people\'s faces.

Those smiles quite obviously migrated to Lu Yuan\'s face.

He was indeed rather pleased with himself.

The writing system of the Meida Civilization wasn\'t the same as the mainstream languages like Chinese, English, Spanish, etc., so Lu Yuan specifically translated some of the papers into Chinese.

But that was it, the number of articles here was, at the very least, a hundred thousand; translating them all could take him decades or even a century.

Therefore, he didn\'t translate the rest. It was good enough to run them past the camera.

Humans would have to decode the Meida Civilization\'s writing system based on his recent translations, and then read these articles by playing back the video.

As for whether or not they could decode it?

That wasn\'t Lu Yuan\'s concern!

Please, a translation issue I alone could manage.

You guys couldn\'t possibly fail, right?

He busied himself like this until the middle of the night, yawning, having read many a ghost story but still not finding what he was looking for...

"No information on the donkey-headed Monster, nor anything related to \'Demons\'…" he sighed.

"Alas, the Meida Civilization never really battled with creatures from the outside world. Perhaps they observed \'Demons,\' but were unable to identify them," he mused.

Essentially, all "ghost stories" were just the "Abilities" of some powerful existences.

The more you approach the Late Epoch, the more powerful beings there are, and naturally, the more "ghost stories" there are as well.

Thinking this way, Lu Yuan felt less worried. The most terrifying thing in the world is the unknown, but now that it had become known, there was nothing to be afraid of.

If he could live until the Late Epoch, he might even be stronger than those ghostly creatures.

With that, he waved hand to the metal ball: "Goodnight, off to sleep! Let\'s chat again tomorrow!"

Returning to his bedroom, he drifted off into a deep slumber.

...

...

Lu Yuan was up with the sun the next morning, as was his habit.

But today there was an addition to his routine—he said hello to the metal ball: "Morning, a new day begins!"

His leisurely life had disappeared without a trace, and he headed out early in the morning.

Lu Yuan had his own business to attend to.

"The plan for the year lies in spring," he thought, as he needed to plant those potatoes, along with seasonings like onions, ginger, and garlic.

He even planted a few pomegranate seeds, hoping to grow a new pomegranate tree... okay, that was perhaps a bit greedy.

He also planned to build a fence near the farm to keep the crops from being destroyed by wild animals.

The farming genes of the people from Great Dong Country made him enjoy and find happiness in the process of farming.

What else could be more rewarding than the stable harvest obtained after hard work?

Another important task that Lu Yuan had was patrolling his surroundings.

The Pangu Grey Wolf might not be a strong species, but they too had their territory.

If there were unknown animal footprints, scents, or droppings, he needed to be cautious; many wild animals would attack at night, so it was essential to prevent danger before it arose.

However, something strange happened today; after climbing a big tree, he saw an army of scorpions migrating.

Looking down from the high hill, the biggest one, the Scorpion King, was 20 meters long, its movement reminiscent of a large armored tank.

Its body was clad in purple shell, and the sting that hid deadly venom at the end of its tail glowed with a faint purple light.

[Sky Scorpion: A mutated scorpion that has lived for at least 400 years, possessing rich combat abilities. Due to its yearly evolution, it might be somewhat smarter than other scorpions.]

[Fond of soft and juicy insects, occasionally consumes some plants.]

[Warning: The sting in its tail contains deadly poison.]

[Shape: 28.3-30.1]

[Qi: 14.6-19.2]

[Spirit: 1.8-2.1]

[Ability: ???]

[Extraordinary Level: Likely Level 4.]

Lu Yuan squinted his eyes; the creature had nearly 30 in the Shape attribute and only 2 in the Spirit attribute.

The distribution of these three-dimensional attributes was extremely skewed.

This vast procession, made up of tens of thousands of scorpions, headed southwards, and it was unknown what their final destination was...