Chapter 1: Rain
For the past twenty-plus years of his life, Yu Sheng had always believed he was just an ordinary person, living an ordinary life, doing ordinary things. And in the foreseeable future, this ordinariness was destined to continue—until the day his life ended in an ordinary way.
Yes, that’s what he had always thought—but those days seemed like a long time ago now.
The sky was overcast, thick, drowsy clouds spreading from the northeast like wads of cotton, gradually engulfing the entire city. The air was saturated with moisture, and a rain was brewing within that dampness, likely to fall in a dozen or so minutes.
Carrying vegetables and seasonings he’d just bought from the supermarket, Yu Sheng mingled with the pedestrians, hurrying across the street, walking toward his lodgings under the darkening sky.
As he passed a shop, he subconsciously stopped, stared at the store’s signboard for several seconds, then withdrew his gaze and continued on his way with quick steps.
The pedestrians gradually thinned out. The vast city seemed to quieten in the impending rain. Yu Sheng raised his eyes to look at the commercial street lit by the shopfront lights. Though it was a familiar scene, an indescribable sense of strangeness still surfaced from the depths of his heart.
Yes, strangeness—he had lived in this city for over twenty years, but now this ridiculously huge, seemingly boundless “Jiecheng” was a very unfamiliar place to him.
Because this city was not the “real” one in his memory. Though some parts were very similar, many more were misleadingly alike—the Jiecheng where he had grown up wasn’t this vast. He remembered the big building in the city center should be called Boyuan Building, not the “Council Tower” that stood there now. He remembered that the shop at the intersection of Siyuan Street had originally been a wall, and his original home wasn’t that enormous, dilapidated, tottering old house deep in the old city district.
And more importantly, there weren’t that many… “off” things in the city of his memory. Including but not limited to old-fashioned telephone booths that randomly appeared at certain intersections, styled like something from the last century; steam locomotives crossing the rooftops late at night; empty classrooms from which came the sound of reading; and…
In the evening, just before it rained, a pitch-black shadow standing under a streetlamp, thin and tall like a utility pole.
Yu Sheng lifted his head, staring fixedly at the streetlamp not far away. A humanoid silhouette like a beanpole stood there stiffly. At the top of its three-to-four-meter-tall body was a pitch-black face with no discernible features. That shadow seemed to notice him, but it only stood there rigidly, silently confronting Yu Sheng’s gaze from afar.
Hurried pedestrians passed beneath the tall, thin shadow, as if no one noticed this eerie thing standing beside the streetlamp. Some even walked directly through the shadow, suffering no effect.
Only Yu Sheng himself could see that thing.
So after a few seconds of meaningless staring, he averted his gaze, suppressed his slightly accelerated heartbeat, and changed to another road, walking away quickly.
Yu Sheng had never been quite sure whether it was the city that had suddenly changed, or something that had changed in himself. But he clearly remembered that the ordinary, normal life in his memory had departed from him one morning two months ago—
He remembered that on that sunny morning, he had pushed open the front door of his home, intending to go buy some oranges at the small supermarket at the intersection.
That was the last time he had pushed open “his own front door.” After that, he had never again seen the home of his memory.
He had also analyzed that perhaps this was some kind of “transmigration”—when he pushed open the door, he had stepped into another parallel world that was similar yet different from his hometown. He could no longer find the door that would lead back to the original world because the space-time passage had collapsed the moment he crossed it.
Another possibility was that some “mutation” had happened to him. When he stepped out of the door, or perhaps at some moment afterward, due to some unknown influence, he had become “abnormal.” And so his eyes had begun to see certain “things” hidden beneath the surface. He was still living in the place he was familiar with, only he could no longer see those familiar things…
But these analyses were meaningless.
Either way, he could not go back to that “ordinary, normal world” in his memory. This unfamiliar and enormous city was like a boundless forest, trapping a bewildered drifter layer by layer between its gloomy, intertwined branches and vines. And two months was not enough time for Yu Sheng to uncover the secrets of this “forest.”
In fact, he had only just roughly adapted to that familiar yet strange “new home,” barely managing to restore a “daily life” here.
Fortunately, in this Jiecheng that stood in stark contrast to his memory, he was still “Yu Sheng.” He had a valid identity certificate, a legally valid address, some modest savings, and a seemingly unreliable livelihood—if this was really some kind of “transmigration,” then at least he didn’t have to face the three major problems that most transmigrators encountered: “Who am I, where am I, and where do I go to get an ID card?”
Considering this was a well-ordered modern metropolis, those problems were especially important. After all, in modern society with a perfected population management system, it wasn’t easy for a transmigrator to shake off illegal-resident status in a city like this.
Of course, looking from another angle, transmigrating into an old society with chaotic order or a barbaric law-world might bring other small troubles—for example, being cut down as a spy from an enemy country, being cut down as an invading alien, being cut down as an evil creature emerging from underground, or being cut down and stewed as emergency rations by goblins in a cave…
These random associations that suddenly came from nowhere swirled through Yu Sheng’s mind as he crossed the old alley next to the commercial street, heading toward “home” via another route.
The sky grew darker, and it seemed that due to this deepening darkness, the number of those “off” things began to increase gradually.
At the edge of his vision, some swaying human figures were reflected on the mottled, old outer walls of buildings along the road. A nimble cat jumped out of a shadow on the wall, lightly climbing onto a beam of light shining from somewhere, meowed twice at Yu Sheng, then melted and scattered with the raindrops, splashing into puddles on the ground.
The rain was falling, earlier than expected.
The wind turned cold, the cold feeling almost tangible, swirling and drilling into the gaps in his clothes.
Yu Sheng clicked his tongue, could only hold the shopping bag over his head, and quickened his pace.
If it weren’t for avoiding that black shadow under the streetlamp, he could have taken the main road and gotten home faster—though that house was also somewhat strange and eerie, at least it was a place to shelter from the wind and rain.
Thinking of that black shadow under the streetlamp, Yu Sheng felt somewhat annoyed.
From experience, he knew that those strange things he saw were basically harmless. At least, if he didn’t actively provoke them, those things would ignore him just like ordinary people ignored them. But even though he knew that, he still instinctively avoided those things that looked too sinister—but it seemed now that taking a detour today hadn’t been a good idea.
It was getting colder and colder.
For a rain, it was strangely cold.
Yu Sheng found that his exhalations were slowly turning into frozen mist. The raindrops falling from the sky came down like sharp nails—hard, icy, stinging painfully.
And the ground was gradually turning into a smooth mirror under this freezing rain.
A huge unease instantly alerted Yu Sheng. He realized something was wrong, very wrong. Even in this strange city, this situation was the first he had encountered.
Unlike the usual “shadows” that were at most a bit unsightly, this time he felt… malice.
This rain had malice.
He suddenly looked up, only to find that the alley, which had had a few scattered pedestrians just a moment ago, was now empty. In the not-very-wide street, only he remained.
No one could be seen. The distant lights had become blurred and illusory. The intersection at the end of the street seemed to flicker between near and far, blocked by something. Around him, there was only the cold, closed-in architecture and the rain, the freezing rain.
It felt as if the entire world was raining only for him.
Yu Sheng took a sharp breath and ran swiftly toward the nearest building. An old iron door stood there, apparently the back door of some ground-floor shop—whatever it was, he needed to find someone to help him quickly.
Because the water droplets in the rain had begun to take on the sharp quality of blades, and the surrounding temperature had dropped to the point where each breath brought a needle-like pain in his lungs.
In just a few steps, Yu Sheng reached the door and slapped his hand against it: “Hey, is anyone…”
His eyes widened, and his voice stopped abruptly.
His hand hit the wall. The door was painted on the wall.
The nearby windows were also painted on the wall.
A rustling sound came from nearby.
Yu Sheng slowly turned his head, looking toward the source of the sound.
In the freezing rain that fell like blades, a grotesque thing was slowly rising from the mirror-like water surface. It gained substance from the pitch-black shadow, watching Yu Sheng coldly.
It was a frog. A frog nearly a meter tall, its head densely covered with countless eyes, its body reflecting the freezing rain that filled the sky.
The frog opened its mouth, and a razor-sharp tongue shot straight toward the prey’s heart.
“F*ck me sideways…”
Yu Sheng’s vocabulary was refined, his reflexes sharp. Before the expletive even hit the ground, his body had already reacted—he dodged sharply to the side, one hand already pulling out the collapsible baton he carried for self-defense. He planted his foot, twisted his waist, lowered his body, and charged forward…
The frog’s tongue made a sharp turn in midair, piercing through Yu Sheng’s back and out through his heart.
Yu Sheng: “…?”
He blinked, watching the frog’s tongue emerge from his chest, a still-beating heart pulsating on its tip.
“…Damn it, that’s mine…”
He thought, and cursed like that in his mind.
Then he died.
I’m back~~
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