Chapter 1: Rain

In the past twenty-plus years of his life, Yu Sheng had always believed he was just an ordinary person, living an ordinary life and doing ordinary things, and in the foreseeable future, this ordinariness was destined to continue—until the day his life ended in an equally ordinary fashion.

Yes, he had always thought so—but those days seemed like a very long time ago.

The sky was gloomy; heavy, dim clouds spread gradually from the northeast like thick cotton wool, shrouding the entire city. The air was saturated with dampness, and a rainstorm was brewing within that moisture, likely to begin within ten or twenty minutes.

Carrying vegetables and seasonings just bought from the supermarket, Yu Sheng mingled with the pedestrians, walking briskly through the streets toward his residence under the increasingly dim daylight.

Passing a shop, he subconsciously stopped, staring at the signboard at the entrance. He fixed his gaze on it for several seconds before withdrawing his eyes and continuing to walk briskly forward.

Pedestrians on the road gradually grew scarce; the vast city seemed to be quieting down amidst the atmosphere of the impending rain. Yu Sheng lifted his gaze to look at the commercial street ahead, illuminated by the lights of the ground-floor shops. Even though it was a familiar scene, an indescribable sense of strangeness inevitably rose from the bottom of his heart.

Yes, strangeness—he had lived and dwelled in this city for over twenty years, but now, this ridiculously huge, seemingly boundless "Boundary City" was a very strange place to him.

Because this city was not the "true" form he remembered in his memory. Although some places were very similar, most were deceptive—he remembered the Boundary City where he grew up was not this huge; he recalled the tall building in the city center should be called Boyuan Building, not the current "Council Tower"; he remembered the shop at the intersection of Siyuan Street was originally a wall, and his original home was not that huge, dilapidated, and crumbling old house deep in the old town district.

And more importantly, the city in his memory did not have so many... "off" things, including but not limited to old-fashioned telephone booths with a style reminiscent of the last century that randomly appeared at certain intersections, steam locomotives driving over rooftops in the dead of night, empty classrooms constantly emitting the sound of reading, and...

In the evening just before rain, standing under a streetlamp, a pitch-black shadow as thin and tall as a utility pole.

Yu Sheng raised his head, staring fixedly at the streetlamp not far away. A stick-figure-like human silhouette stood rigidly there; the top of its three-to-four-meter-tall body was a pitch-black face with no distinguishable features. That shadow seemed to have noticed him too, but it merely stood rigidly, locked in a distant standoff with Yu Sheng's gaze.

Pedestrians in a hurry passed beneath that tall, thin shadow, as if no one noticed this strange object standing beside the streetlamp; some even walked directly through the shadow without suffering any effect.

Only Yu Sheng himself could see that thing.

So after a few seconds of meaningless staring contest, he withdrew his gaze, suppressed his somewhat pounding heart, switched to another path, and walked away briskly.

Yu Sheng was never quite sure whether this city had suddenly changed or if something had changed within himself, but he clearly remembered that the ordinary, normal life in his memory had drifted away from him on a certain morning two months ago—

He remembered that on that sunny morning, he pushed open the front door of his home to go to the small supermarket at the intersection to buy a few oranges.

That was the last time he pushed open "his own front door"; after that, he never saw the home from his memory again.

He had also analyzed that perhaps this was some kind of "transmigration"; he pushed open his door and stepped into another parallel world that was similar yet different from his hometown. He could no longer find the door that led back to the original world because the space-time passage collapsed the moment he crossed the threshold.

And another possibility was that something "abnormal" had happened to him; when stepping out the door, or perhaps at some moment after that, due to some unknown influence, he had become "abnormal," causing his eyes to begin seeing certain "things" hidden beneath the surface. He still lived in the place he was familiar with, he just could no longer see those familiar things...

But these analyses were meaningless.

Regardless, he could not return to that "ordinary and normal world" in his memory. This strange and huge city was like a boundless forest, trapping a bewildered drifter layer by layer within its gloomy, interwoven branches and vines, and the short span of two months was not enough 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" and barely managed to resume "daily life" here.

Fortunately, in this Boundary City that clashed with his memories, he was still "Yu Sheng," possessing normal identification documents, a legal and valid address, some savings (neither too much nor too little), and a livelihood that looked somewhat unreliable—if this was truly some kind of "transmigration," then at least he did not have to face the three major problems that most transmigrators faced: "Who am I, where am I, and where should I go to get an ID card?"

Considering this was an orderly modern metropolis, the aforementioned problems were particularly important; after all, modern society had a perfect population management system, and it was not easy for a transmigrator to shed the status of an illegal resident in such a city.

Of course, looking at it from another angle, being transported to a chaotic old society or a lawless alien world might bring other little troubles—like being sliced up as a spy from an enemy nation, sliced up as an invading alien race, sliced up as an evil creature emerging from underground, or sliced up and stewed as temporary rations by goblins in a cave...

With these random associations, which he didn't know where they suddenly came from, swirling in his mind, Yu Sheng crossed the old alley beside the commercial street and walked toward "home" via another route.

The sky grew even gloomier, and seemingly due to this increasingly gloomy sky, those "off" things began to slowly increase in number.

At the edge of Yu Sheng's vision, some swaying human figures were reflected on the mottled, weathered exterior walls of the buildings beside the road. A nimble cat jumped out of the shadow on the wall, lightly climbed a beam of light shining down from nowhere, meowed twice in Yu Sheng's direction, and then melted and scattered along with the raindrops, splashing up patches of water upon hitting the ground.

The rain started, a bit earlier than expected.

The wind became somewhat cold; the cold air, as if having substance, swirled and drilled into the gaps of his clothes.

Yu Sheng made a "tsk" sound and could only hold the shopping bag in his hand over his head, speeding up his pace.

If it weren't for avoiding that black shadow under the streetlamp, he could have taken the main road, getting home faster—although that building was also somewhat strange and eerie, it was at least a place to shelter from wind and rain.

Recalling that black shadow under the streetlamp, Yu Sheng felt somewhat regretful. Based on experience, he knew that the weird things he saw were basically harmless; at least, if he didn't provoke them, those things would ignore him just as ordinary people ignored them. But even though he knew this in his heart, he would instinctively avoid those things that looked truly too sinister in his daily life—but it seemed now that taking a detour today was not a good idea.

It was getting colder and colder.

For a rainstorm, this cold was a bit ridiculous.

Yu Sheng discovered that his exhaled breath was slowly turning into condensed ice fog; the raindrops falling from the sky hammered down like sharp nails, hard and icy, causing stinging pain.

And the ground was gradually turning into a smooth mirror in this freezing rain.

A huge sense of unease instantly alerted Yu Sheng; he realized the situation was wrong, very wrong. Even in this strange city, this was the first time he had encountered such a situation.

Unlike the "shadows" he usually saw, which were at most slightly unsightly, this time he felt... malice.

This rain had malice.

He suddenly looked up, only to see that the small road, which had a few passersby earlier, was now empty; the not-so-wide streets and alleys contained only himself.

Not a single person was visible; the lights in the distance became hazy and illusory; the intersection at the end of his vision seemed blocked by something, appearing alternately far and near; surrounding him, besides the cold and enclosed buildings, there was only rain, cold rain.

He felt as if the entire world was raining just for him alone.

!.

Yu Sheng suddenly took a deep breath and ran quickly toward the nearest house. An old iron door stood there, which should be the back door of some ground-floor shop—regardless of what it was, he had to find someone to help him as soon as possible.

Because the raindrops in the rain had begun to possess the sharp texture of blades, and the surrounding temperature had dropped so low that every breath caused a needle-like pain in his lungs.

In just a few steps, Yu Sheng reached that door and slapped it hard with his hand: "Is anyone..."

His eyes widened, and his voice cut off abruptly.

His hand slapped against the wall; that 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 in the direction the sound came from.

In the freezing rain falling like blades, a strangely shaped thing was slowly rising from the mirror-like water surface; it had obtained physical form from the pitch-black shadow and was staring coldly at Yu Sheng.

It was a frog, a frog nearly one meter tall, its head densely covered with eyes, its body reflecting the freezing rain filling the sky.

The frog opened its mouth, and a sharp tongue shot straight toward the prey's heart.

"F*** your m..."

Yu Sheng used elegant language and reacted quickly; before the expletive in his mouth even hit the ground, his body had already reacted a step ahead—he suddenly dodged to the side, one hand already pulling out the collapsible baton he usually carried for self-defense from his pocket, stepping in, twisting his waist, bending forward, and charging...

The frog's tongue made a sharp turn in mid-air, piercing through Yu Sheng's heart position from his back.

Yu Sheng: "...?"

He blinked, watching the frog's tongue protrude from his chest, with a heart beating rapidly at its tip.

"... Damn it, this thing is mine..."

He thought for a moment and cursed like that in his heart.

Then he died.

I'm back~~

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(End of this chapter)