Chapter 1 – Rain

For the past twenty-plus years of his life, Yu Sheng had always considered himself to be nothing more than an ordinary person—living an ordinary life, doing ordinary things, and in the foreseeable future, that ordinariness was destined to continue, right up until the day his life came to an ordinary end.

Yes, that was what he had always believed—but those days seemed like something from a very long time ago.

The sky was gloomy, and the heavy, cotton-like clouds gradually spread in from the northeast, blanketing the entire City. The air was saturated with a damp, humid scent, a rainstorm brewing within it—perhaps it would start falling in ten or twenty minutes.

Carrying the vegetables and seasonings he had just bought from the supermarket, Yu Sheng blended in with the Pedestrians, hurrying across the Street and heading toward his lodgings under the increasingly darkening sky.

As he passed by a shop, he instinctively stopped, staring at the sign above the Shop Entrance for several seconds before finally pulling his gaze away and continuing to hurry forward.

The Pedestrians on the road gradually thinned out, and the vast City seemed to be growing quiet in the atmosphere of impending rain. Yu Sheng raised his eyes to look at the Shopping Street ahead, illuminated by the lights of the ground-floor shops. Even though it was already a familiar sight, a certain inexplicable sense of strangeness still welled up from deep within him.

Yes, strangeness—he had lived in this City for over twenty years, and yet now, this enormous, almost boundless place known as ‘Boundary City’ felt like a very unfamiliar place to him.

Because this City was not how he truly remembered it. Although some parts were very similar, even more parts were only vaguely recognizable. The Boundary City he had grown up in wasn’t this massive; he remembered that the Building in the city center should have been called the Boyuan Tower, not the current ‘Council Tower.’ He remembered that the shop at the Intersection of Siyuan Street used to be just a Wall, and his original home was not that enormous, dilapidated, and nearly crumbling old building deep in the Old Quarter.

And more importantly, the City in his memory certainly didn’t have so many… ‘not-quite-right’ things—including but not limited to: old-fashioned phone booths styled like something from the last century that randomly appeared at certain Intersections, steam engines that drove across Rooftops in the dead of night, empty classrooms where voices could constantly be heard reading aloud, and…

On gloomy evenings just before rain, standing beneath the Streetlights—pitch-black shadows, thin and tall as utility poles.

Yu Sheng raised his head and stared hard at a Streetlight not far away. A stick-figure-like humanoid silhouette stood there rigidly, its body nearly three to four meters tall, its top a pitch-black face from which no features could be made out. The shadow seemed to notice him as well, but it simply stood there stiffly, meeting Yu Sheng’s gaze from afar.

Hurrying Pedestrians passed beneath that tall, thin shadow, as if no one noticed the bizarre thing standing beside the Streetlight. Some even walked straight through the shadow with no effect whatsoever.

Only Yu Sheng himself could see that thing.

So after a few seconds of pointless staring, he pulled his gaze away, suppressed the pounding of his heart, and took a different route, walking away quickly.

Yu Sheng had never been quite sure whether it was the City that had suddenly changed, or whether something had changed within himself. But he clearly remembered that the ordinary, normal life in his memory had left him behind on one particular morning two months ago—

He remembered that on that bright, sunny morning, he had pushed open his front Door to go to the little supermarket at the Intersection to buy some oranges.

That was the last time he had ever pushed open ‘his own front door.’ After that, he never saw the home from his memory again.

He had analyzed the situation before. Perhaps this was some kind of ‘transmigration’—he had pushed open the Door and stepped into a parallel World that was only vaguely similar to his hometown. He could no longer find the Door that would take him back to his original World, because the spacetime passage had collapsed the moment he crossed the threshold.

Another possibility was that a ‘mutation’ had occurred within himself. At the moment he stepped out the Door—or perhaps at some point afterward—due to some unknown influence, he had become ‘different from ordinary people.’ As a result, his eyes had begun to perceive certain ‘things’ hidden beneath the surface of appearances. He was still living in the familiar place he knew, just no longer able to see the familiar things he once knew…

But none of these analyses mattered.

In any case, he could no longer return to the ‘ordinary and normal World’ in his memory. This strange and enormous City was like a boundless forest, trapping a bewildered drifter layer by layer among its gloomy, tangled branches and vines. And a mere two months was not enough time for Yu Sheng to uncover the Secrets of this ‘forest.’

In truth, he had only just managed to more or less adapt to that familiar-yet-unfamiliar ‘new home,’ barely restoring a semblance of ‘daily life’ here.

Fortunately, within this Boundary City so at odds with his memories, he was still ‘Yu Sheng’—with a normal identity, a legitimate registered address, a modest amount of savings, and a somewhat dubious livelihood. If this truly was some kind of ‘transmigration,’ at least he didn’t have to face the three great ordeals that most transmigrators encountered: ‘Who am I, where am I, and where do I go to get an ID?’

Given that this was an orderly, modern metropolis, those difficulties would have been especially significant. After all, modern society has a well-developed population management system, and it’s no easy feat for a transmigrator landing in such a city to shed the status of an unregistered person.

Of course, looking at it from another angle, transmigrating to a chaotic old society or a lawless fantasy World might come with its own set of minor troubles—like being sliced up as a spy from an enemy nation, being sliced up as an invading foreigner, being sliced up as an evil creature that crawled up from underground, or being sliced up and stewed as emergency rations by goblins in a cave…

With these random, out-of-nowhere musings spinning through his mind, Yu Sheng passed through the old, narrow Small Alley beside the Shopping Street and walked toward ‘home’ by another route.

The sky grew darker and darker, and it seemed that precisely because of this deepening gloom, those ‘not-quite-right’ things began to slowly multiply.

At the Edge of Yu Sheng’s vision, some swaying Figures were reflected on the mottled, aged outer Walls of the Buildings along the road. An agile cat leaped out from a shadow on the Wall, lightly climbing up a beam of light from an unknown source. It meowed twice in Yu Sheng’s direction, then dissolved along with the raindrops, falling to the Ground and splashing Water Droplets everywhere.

The rain had started—a little earlier than expected.

The wind turned somewhat cold, the chill spinning like something tangible, burrowing into the Gaps of his clothing.

Yu Sheng clicked his tongue and could only hold his shopping bag over his head, quickening his pace.

Had he not detoured around the Black Figure beneath the Streetlight, he could have taken the main road and gotten home faster—although that building was itself somewhat unfamiliar and eerie, at least it offered shelter from the wind and rain.

Thinking of the Black Figure under the Streetlight, Yu Sheng felt somewhat annoyed. Based on experience, he knew that the strange things he saw were basically harmless—at least as long as he didn’t provoke them, they would ignore him just as ordinary people ignored them. But even knowing this, he still instinctively avoided those things that looked truly too ominous. Yet now it seemed that taking a detour today had not been a good idea.

It was getting colder and colder.

For a rainstorm, this was a rather absurd level of cold.

Yu Sheng noticed that his exhaled breath was slowly turning into condensed icy Fog, and the raindrops falling from the sky felt like sharp nails driving down—hard, ice-cold, and painfully stinging.

And the Ground was gradually turning into a smooth Mirror Surface under this freezing rain.

An overwhelming sense of unease jolted Yu Sheng into instant alertness. He realized something was wrong—very wrong. Even in this bizarre City, this was something he had never seen before.

Unlike the usual ‘shadows’ he saw, which were at most just visually unsettling, this time he sensed… malice.

This rain had malice.

He suddenly looked up, only to find that the Small Alley where there had still been a scattering of Pedestrians moments ago was now completely deserted. In the narrow Street, only he remained.

Not a single person in sight; even the Streetlights in the Distance grew hazy and indistinct. The Intersection at the end of his field of view appeared to shift back and forth as if blocked by something. Around him, aside from the cold, sealed Buildings, there was only rain—freezing rain.

He felt as though the entire World was raining just for him alone.

Yu Sheng sucked in a sharp breath and sprinted toward the nearest building. An old Iron Gate stood there—it looked like it might be the Back Door of some ground-floor shop. Whatever it was, he needed to find help as quickly as possible.

Because the Water Droplets in the rain had already begun to take on the sharp quality of a blade’s Edge, and the surrounding Temperature had dropped to the point where every breath drew needle-like pain deep into his lungs.

In just a few steps, Yu Sheng reached the door and slapped it hard with his hand: “Is anyone—”

His eyes went wide, and his voice cut off abruptly.

His hand had slapped against a Wall. The Iron Gate was painted on the Wall.

So were the nearby windows.

A rustling Sound came from somewhere nearby.

Yu Sheng slowly turned his head, looking in the direction the Sound was coming from.

In the freezing rain that fell like blades, a grotesque thing was slowly rising from the Mirror Surface of the water. It had taken on a physical form from the pitch-black shadows and was staring coldly at Yu Sheng.

It was a frog—a nearly one-meter-tall frog, its head densely covered with Eyes, its body reflecting the endless freezing rain from every angle.

The frog opened its mouth, and a sharp tongue shot straight toward the Heart of its prey.

“What the f*ck…”

Yu Sheng’s words were elegantly chosen and his Reaction swift—the exclamation had barely left his lips before his body had already acted a step ahead. He jerked to the side, one hand already pulling the collapsible baton he kept for self-defense out of his pocket, stepping forward, twisting his waist, bending low, and lunging—

The frog’s tongue bent at a sharp angle in mid-air and pierced through the back of Yu Sheng’s chest, skewering his Heart.

Yu Sheng: “…?”

He blinked, staring at the frog’s tongue protruding from his chest, a Heart beating rapidly at its tip.

“…That Bastard, that thing is mine…”

He thought about it and cursed inwardly.

Then he died.

I’m back~~

First, let me mention one thing: to celebrate the completion of the previous book, we’ve prepared a reader appreciation event. League members from ‘Deep Sea Embers’ can join the League Member Group from the book’s main page to register and claim a merchandise gift pack. Currently there are still about 100 members who haven’t been in contact—please join the group promptly and provide your mailing address. Additionally, the first 100 new League members of this book will also receive a ‘Deep Sea Embers’ completion gift pack—likewise by joining the League Member Group. There will also be a large amount of Deep Sea merchandise given away during this new book’s events, so please follow updates in the Readers’ Circle.

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(End of Chapter)