Chapter 2: Analyzing All Things

"Transmigration is one thing, but why is it this kind of hellish start?"

"Watching a meat-egg grow from the inside out using my own body as nutrition, finally invading my brain to completely replace me?"

"What kind of low-budget Hollywood eldritch horror plot is this?"

It was no wonder Li Yu couldn't help but complain.

At this moment, besides being able to see his shell self-repairing, he could even see the entire process of those egg-filaments consuming and replacing "himself."

It seemed only the final bit remained, which was the cranium.

Strands of egg-filaments that seemed to have "come to life" looked exactly like tens of thousands of scarlet horsehair worms, wriggling as they tried to drill into his brain, only to be blocked by an inexplicable force.

But the side effects were not small; Li Yu felt as if a million green-headed flies and diseased rats were making strange, disgusting noises in his ears, his brain matter nearly boiling, making him wish he could just explode and die.

Yet, mixed in between were soft, seductive voices, urging him to give up, claiming that if he only gave up, he could obtain extraordinary, great power and live forever.

These pains and encounters originally belonged to the original body, but now they all belonged to him.

Li Yu trembled all over, enduring the pain in his mind while pondering:

"Why would a good person like me transmigrate into such a state?"

"Is there any way to go back?"

"I haven't done anything lately; I wasn't hit by a car, nor did I jump... hmm? Could it be that game?"

Abruptly, he recalled something.

Last night, bored out of his mind, he had downloaded a puzzle game called [All Things Return to One] on the internet. Its promotional content claimed that once the game's protagonist successfully solved the mysteries of all things step by step, they could obtain the Silver Key, open the Ultimate Gate, and become the omniscient and omnipotent Lord of a Billion Radiance, the All-Things-Return-to-One who transcends everything.

But Li Yu had just finished downloading it and hadn't even started playing when he suddenly began encountering strange events.

No matter what he looked at, some kind of analysis or hint would appear in his eyes. His thinking also suddenly became strange, with crazy thoughts constantly popping up, feeling muddled and drowsy.

Before falling into a deep sleep, he even dreamed that he had transformed into a special existence—a sphere of infinite, mysterious, and majestic radiance, carrying a magnificent silver key, gathering and erupting from an unknown place, and ascending toward the vast universe. Ahead, there seemed to be an incomparably magnificent and archaic door, surrounded by countless souls who vainly sought the truth of the universe....

As Li Yu recalled this, it was as if he had triggered a switch, and a rather psychedelic game startup music played.

Suddenly, billions of rays of light erupted before his eyes, but this "miracle" abruptly retracted before it could truly manifest, finally turning into a pattern of a magnificent door embedded with billions of bubbles and surrounded by a silver key, embedded in Li Yu's eye membrane, though it was gray.

However, looking closely, although the door was dim, the endless bubbles inside were somewhat unusual. The tiny, tiny bubble at the very bottom seemed to be "charging," slowly turning from gray toward iridescent, though the speed was extremely, extremely slow.

"What the hell? Startup failed?"

"Because there's no internet here?"

This turn of events made Li Yu almost scream.

First came wild joy, then panic.

Since there was finally hope of going back, he naturally had to hold onto it tightly.

However, no matter how he called out verbally or summoned with his mind—shouting names like All Things Return to One, System, Golden Finger, Deep Blue, and so on—the Gate of Truth remained unmoved, with only the smallest bubble flickering on its own.

After much tossing and turning to no avail, Li Yu still refused to give up.

After all, that Gate of Truth looked exactly like the standard Golden Finger for transmigrators; perhaps if he awakened it, he could transmigrate back to his poor but warm rented room.

Although many chuunibyou youths addicted to web novels dreamed of transmigrating, Li Yu didn't want to at all.

How wonderful modern society was: there was Qidian Reading, TikTok, Bilibili, games, food delivery, and if he was really bored, he could go online and find a contrarian to argue with.

This transmigration was a disaster; he hadn't even seen what kind of world it was, and he started off trapped in a vat with an eldritch spawn in his belly—even novels wouldn't dare write that.

If no chance of survival appeared next, he, Li Yu, would have only one end.

That was to be possessed and become a man-eating monster.

Fortunately, Li Yu was also someone with a strong spirit despite his disabled body; since the Golden Finger couldn't be relied upon for now, he endured the pain and fear and began frantically searching the original body's memories, trying to find a way out.

The original body was mostly locked in a small dark room, but the couple were chatterboxes and never avoided him when talking, so he lacked no common knowledge and knew many secrets unknown to mortals.

Very quickly, Li Yu learned that this was an incomparably vast continent.

There were three superpowers: Gan, Li, and Jing.

Each country had vastly different customs and traditions, and there were many extraordinary things, as well as true behemoths: the Haotian Sect, the Earth Mother Sect, the Demon-Slaying Sect, the Red God Sect, the Buddhist Sect, and the Heavenly Craftsman Sect.

These were the Six Great Orthodox Sects!

The "Forbidden God" worshipped by the original body's parents was an ancient eldritch god capable of contending with the Six Great Orthodox Sects. As believers, the two of them possessed some abilities beyond those of ordinary people, and in Wanfu City, they operated a very special and mysterious butcher shop.

The two claimed: what they sold was extremely delicious lamb that they had caught and prepared themselves.

"Heh, what lamb? I'm afraid it's two-legged."

"No, these memories are useless."

"Those orthodox gods like Haotian, Earth Mother, and the Demon-Slaying Heavenly Venerable are far away and can't save me at all... eh?"

As Li Yu was muttering, he suddenly seemed to have discovered something. He looked fiercely at his eye membrane and sure enough, saw that the bubble that was charging had suddenly accelerated its flickering speed.

Especially when he muttered the names of the Six Great Orthodox Sects, the Forbidden God, and other such memories, it became even more obvious.

Li Yu blinked, a guess forming in his heart:

"Ordinary memories seem ineffective; only those involving the extraordinary can accelerate it?"

"Could it be that this Golden Finger needs to be opened by absorbing extraordinary knowledge?"

Once this thought arose, Li Yu was ecstatic and dared not delay any longer.

His mind completely immersed, almost squeezing, he extracted information related to the extraordinary from the original body's memories.

Although it was all heard from the fragmented conversations of his foster parents, there was quite a lot of it.

"So this world, regardless of orthodox or evil, has a rigorous path of cultivation, usually divided into sequences, climbing upward until achieving godhood."

"It's just that cultivation is incomparably arduous, often requiring one to experience life and death, and what's more, every stage requires paying an incomparably huge price."

"For example, the [Dish-Person] that the original body's parents wanted to advance to is actually the initial stage of the Forbidden God Sect's path to godhood, also called Sequence Eight. Not only does it require refining the Dish-Person secret medicine, but it also requires undergoing a Dish-Person ritual."

=9+Shu_ba

"The method is to sell one's own body at the Dish-Person market and let the butcher carve it up alive. If one faints from pain or goes insane in the process, it counts as a failure. Not only will one fail to obtain extraordinary power, but one will die directly or mutate into some kind of monster."

"Jiao Qing and Sun Sanniang didn't have the guts to attempt proper cultivation, so they planned to take a shortcut: raising the original body as a so-called 'Child of the Forbidden God' and then consuming it, using this circuitous method to obtain the power of a Dish-Person."

"To raise a mature Child of the Forbidden God, besides that Forbidden Egg, the most important thing is to gather the so-called [Hundred Flavors]. Sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty are only five of them; one still needs to find various rare foods...."

"On the day the Hundred Flavors are complete, the Forbidden Egg will fully hatch. As long as the two are quick with their hands and mouths and consume the original body, both can achieve extraordinary existence."

"It's just a pity that the two had no experience in raising a Child of the Forbidden God for the first time, and instead ended their own lives."

As this long passage of memory surfaced, Li Yu looked at the bubble again.

The result made him even more excited; the charging was already more than halfway done. It was indeed effective.

He pressed on, continuing to squeeze.

"Jiao Qing and Sun Sanniang were originally from the borderlands of the Li Kingdom and suffered a strange disaster called 'Funeral Gate,' where nine out of ten houses were empty and corpses were everywhere."

"To survive, the two had to trade children with their neighbors to eat. Just as they were about to take a bite, they bumped into fate and accidentally found the corpse of a Forbidden God cultist, searched the body to obtain the inheritance, and ate the flesh to survive."

"Because they ate the flesh of an evil cultivator, their bodies, personalities, and hobbies all mutated. Fearing they would be hunted down by the [Haotian Sect] that dominated the Li Kingdom, they had to flee all the way to this Wanfu City."

"This city is surrounded by three powerful countries, but because outside the city are dangerous strange domains like the Ten Thousand Strange Frozen Plains, the Terror Valley, and the Ancient Black Forest, it has always been a chaotic land of no-man's-land."

"Evil cultivators and villains from all over the world gathered here for different reasons, leading to many large and small evil cults in the city, where humans and strange entities live together, maintaining a delicate balance."

"No one knows how many Forbidden God believers there are in Wanfu City?"

He didn't know how long he had been recalling, but Li Yu looked at his eye membrane again.

He saw that the bubble was already more than half full, with only a tiny bit left before it could completely turn from dim to iridescent.

The light was right ahead.

And in the next breath, he abruptly captured a piece of extraordinary memory that could be called heavyweight.

A recipe!

A secret medicine recipe that could allow a mortal to completely transform into a cultivator.

"Dish-Person Secret Medicine!"

"Using one's own essence and blood as a medicine primer, supplemented by poisonous five grains, rotten five fruits, plus the five meats—mad cow, rabid dog, epileptic sheep, pus pig, and plague chicken—and finally cooked with ancient methods of freshly pressed human oil. After taking it, one then performs the Dish-Person ritual. As long as one passes, one can officially advance to a Dish-Person."

"As the first stage of the Forbidden God path, a Dish-Person possesses strength far exceeding that of mortals, as well as enhanced five senses, especially super smell and taste."

"The most critical thing is that a Dish-Person has the opportunity to obtain some special recipes from the daily 'Forbidden God Prayer,' as well as extraordinary culinary skills for humans. Thus, every Dish-Person is an amazing chef, but ordinary people have no chance and cannot taste their cooking, unless they are the ingredients themselves."

When this recipe, which could fully be called a rare extraordinary secret, became known to Li Yu.

That smallest bubble was finally completely filled, the gray gone, turning into a mysterious, gorgeous iridescent bubble that seemed to reflect the universe.

In an instant, billions of rays of light erupted in Li Yu's eyes.

In a trance, his soul seemed to undergo a mutation, filled with countless iridescent bubbles, and drifted out of his shell.

And the world before his eyes also began to undergo earth-shaking changes.

Everything, in the eyes of Li Yu at this moment, seemed to have no secrets to speak of.

Even, including himself.

(End of chapter)