CH 1

Chapter 1: A Weird Little Game

After a long day at work, Lu Yao came back to the apartment he rents where he called home, dragging along his tired body.

Lu Yao works in a small company with only ten or so people in it, and over half of those people got the job through cronyism and favoritism. So, it is to be expected that those cronies of the higher-ups will not do much work. In the end, if you leave out the Director and the Partners of the company, the only people left that are actually doing their work and making the company function is just Lu Yao and his two other colleagues. A puny 3 employees working their ass off for the 10 others that are constantly lazing off, Lu Yao has only started working for 3 months and he’s already hating every second of it.

Still, this will stay to be his daily routine as he couldn’t quit yet, not until he finds another job to replace this one. Unfortunately, the economy is not looking good at the moment with recession undergoing, so he’ll have to think about bringing the bread home first, before considering his next step in life.

Nonetheless, this hour every day when he gets back home, is when he gets to have some room to relax. Throwing all the stress to the back of his head, he switched up his gears with a mood change for the better.

It’s gamer time now. Time to play some video games!

He opened up his old desktop computer, his mouse moving around the screen slowly.

Let’s see, which one should I play today?

Maybe some ranked matches?

Or maybe I can try out my Naga?

Or perhaps Romance of the Three Kingdoms 9 could be good too?

……

He was still pondering over all the options before an inconspicuous little icon caught his attention.

It was sitting right at the corner of the screen, directly above his right hand. The logo with a pixel art style green island on it seems to blend in easily with the green grassland of his default background image, making it almost unnoticeable.

He looked over at its name…

God Simulator?

What kind of game is this?

He has no recollection whatsoever as to how this game ever ended up being downloaded or even purchased by him. 

He went and clicked on File Properties to check it out. The source file was only 20 M, it was a pretty small game. Seeing how it’s only accessing such a small amount of storage, there’s a high chance that it might be one of those games from ages ago.

The spec of Lu Yao’s PC is on the lower end. It can’t be helped since this machine has been with him since college till now, and he couldn’t bear the thought of switching it with another one. So, when he plays LOL and Dota 2, he would have to change the settings to the lowest resolution. In the end, when it comes to device specific gaming, he ends up becoming more of a second-hand gamer relying on watching streamer’s play throughs or their livestream videos. Hence, most of the time, he enjoys playing all sorts of classic video games instead.

He moved his mouse onto the logo and tried to click on God Simulator.

The computer screen gradually got painted in black.

In the background, an old-school 8-bit Electro soundtrack started playing. One by one, white Chinese characters started to emerge on the black screen, just like any retro pixel game interface but with a classy tone behind it.

【 Today, the World finally gets to welcomed back its Almighty God. 】

【 Your presence gave the World another chance to grasp the meaning of its existence. Your Almighty Power, will definitely bring into reality a brand new civilization. 】

The black screen gradually disappeared, quickly replaced by a group of tiny humans that were immersed in the construction of various buildings, another group of them busy plowing their farmlands, while the last group of tiny humans were raising their hands up high like they were cheering for something. The pixelated art style was fresh and nostalgic, a soothing combination that caused Lu Yao to feel at ease.

Three white options started to float on the background.

【 New Game 】

【 Continue Game 】

【 Exit 】

Lu Yao clicked on【 New Game 】.

The black hue came hovering back, but this time, the top of the screen bit by bit gets filled up with uniform green pixels, like paint blocks being smeared on a blackboard.

【 World Capturing in Progress…】

Within five seconds, the green pixels had already covered up the entire screen.

【 World Positioning Completed. Welcome, The Almighty God. 】

The pixel background changed yet again.

The screen was now filled with a flat green plain, surrounded by jungles, rivers, mountains and deserts. In the middle of the screen, there stood a white domed building that looks like a temple.

A line of text appeared in the center: This is your temple, you will name it ___ Temple.

Lu Yao thought about it for a second and then proceeded to type out the word in his mind nonchalantly.

Yao Temple.

On top of the temple, the name,【 Yao Temple 】is now in the line of sight.

The screen falls into an odd state of stillness, like an animated TV-show being forcefully commanded to froze under the pause button.

He tried clicking on the temple, since there’s no other options on the screen anyway.

Nothing happened. What is going on?

What kind of gaming company came up with this old piece of tool? There’s not even a single tutorial or guide in sight.

Just when he’s getting more and more confused, two shirtless tiny humans showed up at the corner of his screen, both of them were not wearing any shoes either. These two went all the way up to the temple, and started pacing around it.

An exclamation mark popped out on top of one of the pixel human’s head, then a conversation bubble appeared. 

“Such a sophisticated and magnificent house, this must have been built by the Gods.”

The other pixel human then raised his arms high up in the air.

“The Gods, it’s the Gods!”

“This must be a revelation from the Gods that this is a place that’ll bring us good fortune, we have to bring more people to settle down here!”

“God’s Promised Land! Yes, this is God’s Promised Land!”

Smiley symbols popped up above the heads of the two tiny humans. They ran and ran till they were out of the screen, in a span of a couple seconds, they came back with five other tiny humans.

A total of seven tiny humans began to circle around the temple, worshiping the God that they believe is present in the unworldly structure. They built a small thatched hut next to the temple, and transplanted some berry-like bushes from somewhere off-screen, and with that, they started living near the temple.

Almost instantaneously, a notification came into sight.

【You have obtained the first batch of believers in this World. The Power of Faith is the means for you to perform Miracles, please amass even more Faith to progress further on. 】

Lu Yao noticed that, at what was previously an empty screen in the upper right corner, now stood a small human portrait displaying the current population, and next to it was a palace icon, displaying the current level of Faith. Both the statistics of the population and Faith were showing the number, 7.

Hence, it’s not too hard to figure out that 1 believer provides 1 Faint Point.

He used his cursor to tab on Population, no response. He then turned to click on Faith, this time, a fog-like map emerged.

【 Miracle 】

Below the frame, was a row of selections, each with its equivalent of Simplified Chinese Characters. Much to his dismay though, all the Miracle were colored in gray tinge, denoting that none of them are available for use right now.

Every miracle requires consumption of Faith Points. Even [Rainfall], which is the least of them all in terms of Faith Points spendings, still needs at least 10 Faith Points to perform it.

In other words, there must be at the very least 10 believers for him to perform a Miracle once.

Achieving population growth is the key issue right now.

Unlike other simulation video games, God Simulator does not allow players to directly build houses or create residents, he can only wait for the pixel humans to reproduce or to cluster around this grassland themselves. Since, the only operable action right now is the [Miracle] option, and nothing else.

Lu Yao watched as the pixel humans farmed on their lands, his mouse’s cursor going all over the screen trying to see if there’s any other operable options. All of sudden, his stomach went on a growling fit.

He went into the kitchen to cook a bowl of noodles, and came back with a couple cloves of garlic.

When he was back sitting in front of his computer, Lu Yao noticed that the tiny humans crowding around the temple all were acting kind of strange. Downcasted expressions were hanging on top of their heads, one by one, they’ve all arrived at the Yao Temple to pray.

Conversation boxes kept taking shape above those tiny humans as their prayers went on. 

”The Almighty God, I humbly request for your advent!”

“Please! Almighty God, please invoke your divine favor upon your humble believers!”

“The Forest Tribe thinks we’re offering our beliefs to an Evil God, they are planning to destroy the temple! Please Almighty God reveal your Miracle to prove those insolent blasphemes wrong!”

Lu Yao munched on a mouthful of noodles and thought to himself, this is potentially the first crisis of The Yao Temple.

But the reality is that, with his Current Faint Point only at 7, he can’t even make it rain. Needless to say, it’s only going to be even more impossible for him to think about using any of the other Miracle.

Lu Yao continued to explore around, and at last, the mouse clicked on a whole new interface over the temple.

A stone bonfire was happening in the center of the screen, in front of it was a gray humanoid statue in a sitting position. It’s hard to tell if it was a woman or a man, as the features on the statue were already all distorted and malformed. But, this looks as though it was the pixel human’s depiction of their God. 

A long table was placed ahead of the statue, on top of it were two slots, each with a different shape wrapping around it. 

The large placement slot on the left was labeled as【Sacrifice】.

The small one on the right had【 Blessing】written on it.

Currently, the two placement slots are both empty.

It should be pretty easy for them to wrap their minds around the concept of Sacrifices, obviously it is something these pixel humans offer to their God.  By understanding the corresponding relationship between Sacrifices and Blessing, Blessing should then be Power or Items given to the believers from a God.

Is this the so-called Miracle that they were asking for?

Lu Yao started looking around, fumbling through all kinds of stuff but there wasn’t anything that could be dragged and placed into the Blessing Slot. He was a little troubled, not knowing what to do, for he had not even started yet and the first problem in hand had already gotten him stuck.

Out of the blue, he noticed something peculiar….

The long table in front of the statue looks kind of familiar.

No way…

Why does that long altar table look exactly the same as my computer desk?

Two placement slots, the shape of the Sacrifice Slot matches the rectangular shape keyboard, the Blessing Slot is in an oval shape, is it…the mouse?

Taking a closer look, the way the God Statue is sitting on the altar, isn’t that me in front of my computer?  

The thought gave Lu Yao a scare, as goosebumps started to creep onto his skin.

No, that’s impossible…

That must have been a coincidence.

On the spur of the moment, a bold idea popped up in his mind.

He carefully placed the garlic clove that was next to the instant noodles onto the mouse.

Lu Yao stared at his mouse expectantly.

Two seconds later, the garlic clove rolled off the mouse.

“As expected, it was only just a coincidence.”

Lu Yao laughed at himself in self-mockery, a slight taint of disappointment cloaking over his heart.

Right at that moment, the falling garlic clove suddenly disappeared without a trace.

Lu Yao subconsciously turned to look at the computer screen.

The【Blessing】Slot under the temple, there is now a garlic pixel icon on it.

【Garlic】: A Divine Blessing from God, a special type of spice and herb.

A line of explanation about Garlic is displayed on the screen.

–—Would you like to bestow your Divine Blessing【Garlic】to your believers?

【Yes】【No】

Lu Yao’s hand that’s gripping on the mouse trembled.

Author’s Note: Hey! A new book is here, readers keep it in your collections and give some support!