Chapter 1

"A Zu, I have a path in Thailand..."

Chen Yaozu sat up abruptly, the feeling of nearly suffocating to death was truly unbearable; he breathed in large gulps of air, feeling the rapid heartbeat in his chest — being alive is truly wonderful!

"Sawasdee ka, sir, is there anything you need help with?"

A flight attendant walked over, greeted him in Thai, and then asked with concern.

He shook his head to indicate it was nothing: "Just fell asleep a moment ago, had a nightmare!"

The flight attendant smiled, nodded, and left; Chen Yaozu let out a breath of relief, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his hand, and glanced at the sea of clouds drifting past the porthole.

He really was on a plane, not sunk to the river bottom from exhaustion, so... this really was no return to the original world.

That's right!

This is another world; he transmigrated!

He saved sixty people in the flood, exhausted his strength, and was then washed away by the water.

Unexpectedly his life was tough; he struggled desperately back in the flood, and along the way saved another seven people.

When he pushed the last person onto the bank, he no longer had the strength to stand firm, was washed away from the bank by the flood, and directly drawn into the river bottom.

He was powerless to struggle.

When he opened his eyes again, he had arrived in this world! However, the place he appeared at that time was not on a plane, but a bathroom, and not an ordinary bathroom.

Because...

In the bathroom's bathtub there was a person, a dead person, a person who died an unnatural death.

As a rescue team veteran, Chen Yaozu reacted quickly after a brief stupor, swiftly reaching his hand into the bathtub already entirely dyed red with fresh blood, toward the neck of the man who had likely committed suicide.

Dead!

No pulse whatsoever, dead through and through! The fatal wound was only one spot — the wrist.

The murder weapon should be that sharp fruit knife fallen beside the bathtub.

Truly ruthless! Cut his own wrist like a child's mouth, and the position was precise, directly severing the artery with one slash, blood flowing away at the fastest speed, all flowing into the bathtub.

The corpse is already a bit stiff now; this is rigor mortis; this is at least dead for over half an hour, possibly even longer.

Then the question comes!

Why did I appear here? Why is there a dead person here?

Although the reason is unknown, he subconsciously believed this absolutely was not a good thing.

And, who is this person?

Chen Yaozu hurriedly lifted the dead man's head; at a glance he froze! This time, it was genuine fright! Because this person actually looked exactly like himself in his twenties; one might say they were cast from the same mold.

He hastily raised his head and looked at the mirror inside the bathroom; the mirror showed a middle-aged man in his forties.

Even ravaged by the years with some traces, one could still tell the face in the mirror and the face of this dead young man in the bathtub looked about the same.

Hiss... what's going on?

If it were merely a dead person, and I just happened to appear in the dead person's bathroom, it's very likely I was framed.

This is to make me into a murderer.

But, when this dead person looks exactly like me, and is younger by a dozen years, this matter is not simple.

He now doesn't even dare try to open the bathroom door and walk out to see what the environment outside ultimately is.

Right at this moment, his chest area suddenly felt as if scalded, burned once.

He hurriedly lowered his head, yet discovered it was actually the black wooden plaque he had always worn around his neck heating up, scorching the skin of his chest.

The intense pain made him hastily reach out wanting to take off this wooden plaque.

Unexpectedly, the moment his hand touched the black wooden plaque, the scorching sensation instantly dissipated, yet it made him recall how he came to be here.

Precisely when he was washed away from the bank by the rapids, drawn into the water bottom, and fell into darkness amid suffocation, a piece of information appeared in his heart.

【Your fate bears calamity; lifespan forty-one years, three months, twenty-one days, six shi two ke. All your life good deeds without count; in this flood you rescued to the sixty-seventh person, fell into water and died.

This is your fate, ordained by heaven.

But the Great Go To is fifty, Heaven's Calculation forty-nine; all fixed numbers in the world have a thread of heavenly secrets to seek, how much more so for one like you with deep merit.

Now a thread of life has been probed, but the fortune and calamity ahead remain unknown.

Are you willing to consume your accumulated merit as fuel, to seek this thread of life?】

When he was suffocating and falling into unconsciousness, he instinctively treated this sudden information as a life-saving straw, replied "willing" in one voice.

Then in the daze he saw the small wooden plaque hanging on his chest float before his eyes emitting five-colored light, and then he completely lost consciousness.

Waking up, he inexplicably appeared here.

So this is my thread of life? Hiss...

Finally took the small wooden plaque off his neck, brought it before his eyes to examine carefully.

Just such a protective talisman given to him by a rescue elder, a trinket engraved with inexplicable cloud patterns, seemingly ordinary, could actually pull him out of the certain-death river bottom.

So what exactly is this thing?

And most importantly, he wanted to figure out what exactly the situation is now? Just as he was pondering whether to take that phone on the side to call the police, the wooden plaque in his hand finally transmitted another piece of information to him, letting him finally understand what the current situation is.

Originally.

And he himself should have died, his lifespan exhausted

But because his merit was deep, it activated the black wooden plaque he wore on his body; this thing found a thread of life for him from a desperate situation.

Using the merit accumulated from good deeds done over these decades as fuel, through a certain fleeting point he arrived at another world.

And in this world, a person just died.

This person is also called Chen Yaozu.

This Chen Yaozu looks exactly like himself when young; the difference between the two is that this world's Chen Yaozu had not exhausted his lifespan, yet he died.

Yet his lifespan was exhausted, but he still had not died.

Therefore, the black wooden tablet worn on his chest, using merit as fuel, allowed him to borrow lifespan and live. 【This person is already dead, but his lifespan is not yet exhausted.】

【Your lifespan is exhausted, yet you have not died; if you obtain no supplement, you may still live for twelve double-hours.】

【Are you willing to exchange the merit remaining on you for the other party's remaining lifespan in the mortal world, while simultaneously accepting the other party's karma?】

Gripping the small wooden tablet, he sensed the miraculous little wooden tablet's inquiry.

How else could he choose? There was only one choice; how else could he choose? "Willing!"

The moment he uttered that word, the wooden tablet in his hand unexpectedly began to levitate, emitting a soft green glow above his palm.

Under Chen Yaozu's dumbfounded gaze, the green light sprinkled down into the bathtub.

Then, the blood color in the bathtub actually faded rapidly, absorbed from the water by that green light, and the water also began to regain clarity.

And that corpse, too, under Chen Yaozu's astonished gaze, was dissolved bit by bit by the green light, until it was seen no more.

Very soon the water in the bathtub was clear to the bottom, without a single impurity, as if a dead person had never appeared there at all.

Having completed all this, the green light returned into the wooden protective talisman, but that wooden tablet suddenly turned into a streak of green light and, catching Chen Yaozu off guard, bored into the center of his brow.

He did not even have time to be greatly alarmed; a piece of information bored into his mind: 【Fate Conversion……】

Then, he watched in surprise as that forty-something self in the mirror, amid the hazy green light, gradually grew younger.

Lowering his head to look down, the slight beer belly that had appeared from reaching middle age was slowly disappearing, and he actually began to see abdominal muscles.

He bounced on his feet and clenched his fists; the feeling of youth had returned.

The green light dispersed; looking at the mirror, that young face identical to the Chen Yaozu who had just died.

【Fate Conversion successful, Chen Yaozu lifespan eighty-seven, now consumed twenty-six, remaining sixty-one……】

The information surfacing in his mind greatly surprised him; this had actually exchanged his forty-one years of lifespan for the other party's eighty-seven, and he himself had become the other party's twenty-six years old.

So this is swapping fate? Truly miraculous!

Yet it does not feel real in the slightest! But thinking it over, one feels relieved; since transmigration into another world has appeared, a mere fate swap seems like nothing.

Just as he set his mind at ease and accepted this result, the wooden protective talisman transmitted another large packet of information to him.

At the end it even appended a sentence.

【The fate swap is done; having accepted the other party's fate, you simultaneously accepted the other party's karma; this calamity or blessing you determine yourself.】

His head slightly swelling, he rapidly fused and digested the memories of the past few months of the fate-swapped person transmitted by the wooden protective talisman, and only then learned why that person had slit his wrists to commit suicide.

Melodramatic, yet a realistic scenario.

The matchmaker's introduced marriage prospect reneged on the agreed engagement, the bride price was not returned, the parents who had emptied their savings went to confront the other party in anxiety, and on the way they suffered a car accident and both perished.

Suffering consecutive heavy blows, after handling his parents' funeral affairs, the original body drank a bottle of beer and blacked out; when he awoke he had already appeared in his ex-girlfriend's home.

And that family, blood already flowing enough to float a pestle, only he was alive at the scene, a knife still in his hand.

A major homicide case; no wonder he committed suicide out of fear of the crime.

Wrong!

Now I am him, he is me; that is to say, I, Chen Yaozu, just transmigrated over and committed a major case.

Is this the karma the wooden protective talisman meant for me to accept after the fate swap?

Chen Yaozu went numb; this is a dead end, how to break it? Life for a life, debts repaid with money? Eat a peanut on the execution ground in the original body's place? Wait!

The original body is innocent, and did not kill anyone.

The information stream in his mind unlocked another segment of footage; it seemed he had been knocked unconscious and sent there, and when he arrived the ground was already awash with blood.

When he woke up, he thought he had done it himself.

Then, in a muddled daze, a voice in his heart kept commanding him to return, lie in the bathtub, and slash his own wrist with the knife……

So, the death of the ex-girlfriend's whole family was someone else's doing, only the scene was arranged to look like he did it?

Then he was hypnotized into returning to his residence and committing suicide!

All of this, all of it, is a setup.

【Important reminder: before you have the ability for self-preservation, temporarily do not tell anyone you know the truth.

For example right now, what you must do is escape from the dead end!】

Just at this moment, the mobile phone the original body had placed to one side rang.

He picked it up and looked; the caller ID showed "San Shu", and his heart could not help but tighten.

Because according to the memories he had obtained, after the original body woke up the voice in his head made him think he had done it, and on WeChat he had sent several voice messages in hometown dialect to this now sole relative, his San Shu.

It counted as settling his affairs before slitting his wrists to commit suicide.

He never expected this San Shu would only see it now, and actually call over!

He originally did not want to answer, not knowing what to say if he picked up.

But the phone kept ringing persistently, as if urging him to his death.

In the end Chen Yaozu still answered, opened his mouth, and carefully spoke: "San Shu……"

"A Zu, where are you right now?"

Chen Yaozu fell silent, not knowing how to reply, because he now only had the original body's memories from the past few months, and his impression of this San Shu was not very deep.

Trust him or not? The other end of the phone suddenly grew urgent: "A Zu, you must absolutely not do anything foolish; we still have a way out."

Hearing the words from the other end of the phone, Chen Yaozu secretly breathed a sigh of relief; this San Shu knew, yet did not think of righteous extermination of kin.

But he also did not tell the other party that he was framed, that it was a setup; he only vaguely said: "Afraid there is no way out anymore!"

Though he spoke thus, at this moment he was pondering in his mind: since someone set up such a huge scheme to trap the original owner, and there is even mysterious hypnosis, what exactly is it for?

The information he obtained from the original body's few months of memories showed the original body was just an ordinary university student who had not long graduated.

Was it worth such an elaborate setup? Yet it was set up like this; if the other party finds out he didn't die, what then? The other end of the phone hesitated two seconds, then said: "Listen, right now you do nothing, pack nothing.

Just grab your passport and rush to the airport at the fastest speed, catch the nearest flight to Thailand.

I have a route in Thailand; the risk is a bit high, but if you can get on a plane to Bangkok before you're caught, there's still a lifeline……

(Chapter End)