After Saving The Universe A Thousand Times: Chapter 1

Chapter 1: All Gods’ Descent 1

It was night.

Under the dim yellow light, Dong Jin stood before the floor-to-ceiling window on the top floor, quietly gazing at his reflection with lowered eyes.

His gaze swept over his black hair that reached down to his tailbone, over the pale yet smoothly contoured body beneath his shirt, and over the face that was so beautiful it seemed almost inhuman. Finally, his eyes rested for a long time on his own pair of eyes.

They were eyes that radiated coldness down to the core.

As the night deepened and the lights in the room gradually brightened, those eyes shifted from pitch black to a faint gray, and then to a unique shade of dark blue. To describe it a bit more romantically, it was as if the night sky, dawn, and the universe all favored the same person.

But in reality, it was just a rare case of heterochromia.

— It was also the only thing that proved he came from Earth.

Yes, Dong Jin was a transmigrator, and the kind who had reverted back to an infant form in this new world.

What did that mean? It meant that he had to face the survival conditions of the interstellar era with the physical constitution of a carbon-based organism, while also carrying various bacteria that either had never existed in this era or had long gone extinct, posing a potential threat to the safety of the entire universe.

Had it not been for the fact that the universe he transmigrated into was a high-dimensional one with universal consciousness, which granted all intelligent life forms within it the ability of “equivalent exchange,” he might have become the first transmigrator to die upon arrival.

At the time of his transmigration, just seconds in, Dong Jin, as expected, was penniless. But he himself was the most precious miracle.

Encountering a black hole while traveling and being transported here was already a miracle. To revert to infancy, so weak that even breathing was a struggle, yet still clinging to a thread of life—this was a miracle among miracles.

And so, using this miraculous luck that couldn’t even be described by odds of one in a billion, he made a deal with the cosmic will, exchanging it for the possibility of survival.

The result of that transaction was—he awakened a talent that prevented him from dying instantly, along with a simple game panel and a health bar that, though slowly decreasing, could be restored through actions like eating.

The game panel’s description of this talent was as follows:

Talent Name: The Fourth Calamity  

Talent Level: S-Class  

Talent Description: The world is a game, and you are the only player.  

Talent Evaluation: What kind of madman would dare to single-handedly overturn the entire world right from the start?  

Darling, are you an unprecedented genius, or an unparalleled lunatic?

Dong Jin didn’t consider himself a genius, but he certainly wasn’t a lunatic either.

To explain it, for a transmigrator born as the “Fourth Calamity,” viewing the world as a game might just be the norm.

Although Dong Jin had barely solved his life-or-death problem, his body was still a ticking time bomb for the entire universe.

So, ten minutes after awakening his talent, he was promptly sent to the sterile chamber of the First Prison for “endangering universal public safety.”

Over the next eighteen years, he clung to life in that sterile chamber, relying on his health bar while accumulating experience through continuous learning to further develop his abilities.

After eighteen years of diligent effort, his once simplistic game panel, which initially had only six tabs—”Level,” “Health Bar,” “Experience,” “Achievements,” “Skills,” and “Talents”—finally gained a new option: “Instance.”

The night the “Instance” option appeared, Dong Jin clicked on it without hesitation.

The limited experience available in prison had already been completely harvested by him, and it was barely enough to make a difference.

It’s known that it took nearly 3 million years for ancient apes on Earth to evolve into humans—a process that could be called a miracle. At his current rate of accumulating experience, how many years would it take for his carbon-based body to evolve to the minimum level needed to function normally in the universe?

Moreover, as a short-lived species, what Dong Jin needed wasn’t just experience; he needed a miracle, one as extraordinary as that final evolution 3 million years ago, beyond human imagination.

Now, his miraculous luck was gone. To achieve a second miracle in his human form, his only option was to gamble with his life.

If it didn’t work once, he’d try a hundred times. If a hundred didn’t work, then a thousand.

As long as he didn’t die, he could eventually reach the end of the evolutionary chain.

With this realization, starting from that night, Dong Jin began dreaming of the same god destined to destroy everything.

Although he didn’t know why the “Instance” appeared in the form of dreams, every time he successfully stopped that god from destroying the universe in his dreams, he was rewarded with massive amounts of experience granted by the saved universe.

For three consecutive years, through one thousand nights and one thousand dreams, Dong Jin never lost. In doing so, he achieved a miraculous evolution, advancing from a fragile human to surpassing the universal average.

Not only that, but the series of achievement points he earned in the instances could be used to enhance his skills.

Dong Jin had no interest in spreading his points thin. Whether it was music, cooking, or anything else he could learn on his own, he didn’t allocate even half an achievement point to them.

Instead, he chose to invest every achievement point he’d earned into the “Eye of Truth” skill, which had appeared alongside his talent.

Originally, this skill only allowed him to see others’ health bars. But after he poured all his achievement points into it, the skill underwent an evolution as well.

Skill Name: Eye of Truth  

Skill Description: Only special eyes can perceive special information.  

Skill Effect: You can see partial information about the people, events, and objects before you. When you pay a sufficient price, you will be able to see through everything.  

Skill Evaluation: You possess eyes that artists would rave about, even lose their minds over, but you chose to use them to see through the weaknesses of the world. Baby, did I ever tell you? There may now be one more person willing to go mad for you.

These eyes indeed helped Dong Jin tremendously—they allowed him to see through the professions, abilities, and personalities of NPCs in his dreams, and even identify the weak points of others during attacks.

But these eyes also exacted a heavy toll—battling a god is never simple. As the price for using them to repeatedly thwart that god over a thousand nights, Dong Jin, who sacrificed his lifespan, was already nearing death.

Clearly, in those thousand gambles with his life, he both won and lost.

——Now, he had only 37 days left to live.

Dong Jin had long accepted this fact calmly, even before using the skill.

He had even planned out a travel route for his remaining 37 days. After all, before transmigrating, he had been terminally ill and on the verge of death. Living an extra 20-plus years was already a bonus for him.

However, just as Dong Jin was holding his freshly printed medical report, preparing to go through his release procedures, an identical sight abruptly appeared above every planet in the universe—two thrones, facing each other from afar.

Behind these two dark, intricately patterned thrones stood vast, silent reflections of figures, whose identities—whether god or demon—remained unclear.

They eventually formed a semicircle, overshadowing the entire sky, day and night.

Accompanying these unnatural elements was a cold, mechanical voice.

Devoid of emotion, the voice echoed in the ears of every intelligent being, stating:

“The ‘Divine Selection’ ceremony is about to begin. Countdown: 30 natural days.”

Having been in this universe for so long, Dong Jin naturally understood what the Divine Selection ceremony was.

In short, it was a trial run by the Supreme Universe, involving the first- and second-tier universes. Every century, seven third-tier universes would be randomly selected to participate.

This trial, where death was nearly certain, was always hosted, judged, and narrated by the gods and demons of the Supreme Universe. The citizens of the first- and second-tier universes were the audience, and every being in the selected third-tier universes became the trial participants.

It sounded quite unfriendly to the third-tier universes, but since ancient times, none of the chosen third-tier universes had ever declined.

Because it symbolized evolution.

Not only the evolution of the universe itself but also the personal evolution of the participants.

The trial was known to consist of seven rounds.

After each trial round, the surviving participants and their respective universes would receive significant rewards.

Once all seven trials were completed, the universe with the best performance would not only undergo major civilization upgrades, but those who perished during the trial would be resurrected. Furthermore, the MVP from the best-performing universe would undoubtedly receive an invitation from the Supreme Universe.

Even those trial participants who performed slightly worse could still catch the attention of higher-dimensional universes, thus gaining more opportunities.

Therefore, this process gradually became known as “Divine Selection.”

Because passing the “Divine Selection” meant there was a real chance of becoming a god.

Undoubtedly, this was the path to ascendancy for the ambitious and the final glimmer of hope for those nearing death.

But was it truly hope?

As the countdown progressed, the originally pitch-black projections gradually became clearer from the outside in, like fog dissipating at midnight, revealing the partial faces of the gods and demons in half-light and half-shadow.

By the 30th day, today, only the two opposing, suspended thrones in the center of the projection remained entirely shrouded in darkness.

As midnight approached, the patterns carved into these thrones slowly began to emerge.

Standing by the floor-to-ceiling window, Dong Jin glanced at the clock behind him.

It was 23:55 by the universal standard time—five minutes before the “Divine Selection” ceremony began.

At this rate, in two minutes, the patterns on the thrones would fully reveal themselves.

And as Dong Jin had predicted, that was exactly what happened.

But what he hadn’t expected was that three minutes later, what greeted him was not only the dispersal of the fog but also the descent of the gods.

23:58 Universal Standard Time.

Under the starless, moonless night, the sky began to crack without warning, inch by inch. A group of figures, resembling both gods and demons, appeared in place of the silent projection, faintly flickering in the void. And the throne on the left…

When Dong Jin raised his eyes and saw the crescent moon pattern, shaped like a smiling arc, engraved on the back of the left throne—along with the half-closed eye within the crescent—a cold sweat silently crawled down his spine.

Thirty days ago, when the gods’ projection first appeared, Dong Jin had a vague sense of foreboding.

Now, thirty days later, that premonition had come true.

—Because that was the throne of the God of Night and Drama.  

—Because that was the throne of  Lei Ming ((Thunder rolls), the one he had battled through a thousand nights’.

It’s over… completely over.

This “Divine Selection” ceremony wasn’t his lifeline; it was clearly his death warrant!

As Dong Jin recalled the final night, when he had unilaterally said “goodbye,” only to see Lei Ming’s golden eyes filled with an overwhelming, barely suppressed killing intent, his vision darkened, and his future seemed bleak.

No, realizing that the chief judge of his universe was his old enemy wasn’t even the worst part.

The worst was yet to come.

Dong Jin watched in silence as the throne of Night and Drama solidified from illusion to reality, and as the figure seated there gradually became visible—a man wearing a strange half-black, half-white mask and, for the first time, clad in a suit. They exchanged a glance, Dong Jin’s expression emotionless.

His windows were made of special glass, designed so that those outside couldn’t see inside.

Moreover, with the entire planet’s gaze directed at the sky, it was almost impossible for Lei Ming to distinguish one specific glance aimed at him.

But he had forgotten that Lei Ming never played by the rules.

Dong Jin watched helplessly as the gray-haired god, who had been half-reclining on the throne, casually resting his forearm on the armrest bearing the same pattern, suddenly tensed, his lithe and powerful body leaning forward like a poised predator. In that moment of eye contact, Lei Ming immediately pinpointed the source.

Then, the lower half of his face, which wasn’t covered by the mask, slowly and subtly curved into a smile in Dong Jin’s direction.

And just a second before the “Divine Selection” countdown reached zero, he silently mouthed a phrase.

He said: “Ti ho trovato (Found you).”

Perhaps Dong Jin knew him too well. Even though Lei Ming had only mouthed the words, locking eyes with those eerily calm, dark golden irises made him feel as if he could almost hear the slow, insidious whisper, like the quiet rasp of a predator about to consume its prey, creeping into his ears.

Classic Lei Ming.

Extreme to the core, insanity multiplied by insanity.

Just one look, one sentence, was enough to drag Dong Jin back to countless near-death moments from past midnights.

What could be worse than discovering that your old enemy is the chief judge?

Dong Jin’s answer: what’s worse is that your old enemy recognizes you.

——Tonight, the god who symbolizes the night has finally descended.

TN:

Disclaimer 1: I’m an MTLER! As such, I do not promise accurate output from this site. There might be awkward-sounding texts that might bring about confusion. Be warned. The most I can promise is to edit enough to make it readable. If you spot any discrepancies in the sentence structure or flow e.g. random name changes, wrong pronouns etc., kindly inform me. HELP ME HELP YOU! I’ve already said it so if it ends up being a bit too much to handle all the errors and mistakes, it’s okay to stop reading until hopefully a human translator picks up the story in future. I accept productive criticism just don’t be harsh and make me feel like sh*t about it. I’m doing this for fun and it’s not fun being dissed.

Disclaimer 2: This story is listed under Danmei. For the pure ones out there, this refers to BL(Boys’ Love). TWO MEN WILL FALL IN LOVE! Kindly heed this before getting into the story if that is not something you’re comfortable with.

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