Chapter 1: Prologue

"You and I are both mere mortals, born in the human world.

We toil and rush all day long, never a moment of rest.

Since we are not immortals, we inevitably have stray thoughts.

Place righteousness on both sides, and put profit right in the middle."

Not unpleasant to hear, at least not a voice completely out of tune, echoing inside a small tram. The driver amused himself, gazing at the street outside under the dim streetlights.

"Have you ever seen the city at one in the morning? I see it every day after work," the singer thought to himself.

He had expected to spend his life as a beast of burden, but when he passed a certain intersection, a glaring fog light suddenly appeared from the left.

Following it came a bass horn sound, like a bull's bellow, loud enough to nearly burst his eardrums.

The bright light and the deafening roar left the driver unable to react immediately to what was happening. The driver simply maintained his original driving posture, turning only his head to look to his left.

Ah, it turns out to be a transmigration artifact: a big truck.

When he realized what the oncoming object was, the massive impact force was like a firing pin striking the primer of a shell; the battery at the bottom of the small tram instantly exploded, sending up fierce sparks.

The big truck did not stop, because they were in a remote, suburban location. There was not a single qualified surveillance camera nearby, and there were no other vehicles on the road; even a dashcam would have been useless.

By the time the fire department received the report and arrived, the relevant photos of the crash scene had already gone viral online.

The fire had long since extinguished. A car, burned down to its skeleton alone, stood lonely on the road.

In the driver's seat area, a mark slightly different from the surroundings was faintly visible—the final proof that a certain beast of burden had once existed in this world.

The only one who missed him was that beast of burden's boss. Because someone had been absent without leave for the next few days, with no work done and no handover, the team leader flew into a rage.

Ultimately, a termination notice was sent to the empty house that still had thirty years left on its mortgage. Then, months later, it was thrown into a trash bin by the bank officials who came to seize the property.

No one cared about the missing homeowner.

—Trans—mi—gra—tion—In—Pro—gress—

When the happy beast of burden opened his eyes again, he did not see his familiar driver's seat, nor a big truck or glaring lights outside the window. Instead...

Well, even that window was different.

He felt as if he were sitting in a massage chair, tightly wrapped on the left, right, and back. Directly in front was an oval, slightly convex transparent shield; this was the only window through which he could observe the outside world.

Turning his head was difficult, but his eyeballs could still move. Looking left and right, within his limited field of vision, it seemed he was in a sealed space.

Then he looked out the observation window: a pitch-black scene dotted with twinkling starlight.

Is it night?

Just a fleeting glance, a planet with an asteroid belt and rings flashed past the window in an unimaginably huge scale.

This... the night sky wouldn't show a scene like this, something only possible in a planetarium or a movie, would it?

Carefully observing the situation outside the observation window, watching the huge celestial bodies flashing by from time to time, and the glaring bright light in the distance... Oh, this made the person trapped inside think of something that had happened not long ago: the fog lights of that big truck.

He felt his limbs; although they seemed squeezed inside a container wrapped in soft padding, at least his ability to move had not been deprived, it was just very difficult to move.

With difficulty, he freed his right hand and raised it before his eyes. This was clearly not an arm belonging to himself; or more accurately, this was clearly not an arm belonging to his age group.

Chubby, short, the skin so good it shone with an oily luster, making one doubt not at all how elastic such skin would be.

This extremely healthy, even perfect state, would not appear on a beast of burden suffering from long-term sleep deprivation; let alone that proportion, which did not belong to an adult.

So, did I reincarnate? Transmigrate? Or possess a corpse?

But there are no extra memories in my head. I don't even understand my own current situation.

Judging from the scene outside the observation window, it is neither the various bizarre quantum worlds nor the strange and magnificent metaphysical worlds; the most likely possibility is some place in outer space.

It is just impossible to infer where I am. After all, if this really is outer space, the universe is so vast that it is not surprising to be in any little corner of it.

Watching another huge celestial body flash past the observation window. From its brown and white stripes, and a large red spot like an eye, this thing looks quite like the image of Jupiter in my memory.

So, there is a high probability I am within the solar system?

And the planet with rings seen earlier might be Saturn?

Judging from this order, my flight direction is very likely pointing straight at Earth... or the Sun!

Well. In the places I can see, there are no devices resembling a rudder or a controller, not even a control panel. So it is impossible to infer whether this thing I am sitting in can control flight, or if it has been captured and attracted by the Sun's gravity.

If it is the former, then I am going home. If it is the latter, then I am going back to my hometown to sell salted duck eggs...

Just transmigrated and now heading to death? No, perhaps this is the scenery of the Naihe Bridge in a sci-fi version.

Anyway, as a qualified working beast of burden, I have given up thinking about self-rescue methods. Besides, the coffin lid hasn't been nailed shut yet; worrying about these things now is superfluous.

Moreover, I have already confirmed the environment I am in: there are no obvious control devices, nor much space to move. I seem to be inside some kind of escape pod or other spacecraft.

The appearance is unknown. But as for the internal environment, there is no sense of technology to speak of.

... Could this be like the practice in some sci-fi type films and TV works, where after a person dies, they are put in a coffin and thrown into outer space? Comparing it to a sea burial in the Age of Discovery, the space age would be a space burial?

Because the original owner of this body died, so I had the chance to occupy the nest of the magpie?

... Or am I actually a Saiyan, stuffed into a single-person space pod, deployed to a backward planet, responsible for conquering that planet?

Unfortunately, I cannot feel whether I have a tail, and because the body is tightly wrapped by the seat, I cannot reach out to touch and confirm.

Speaking of which, recalling Dragon Ball and Toriyama Akira's setting for the protagonist, I can't help but want to complain.

Although they belittle Earth's martial power, thinking that sending a baby over could conquer it, wanting to highlight the gap between Saiyans and Earthlings.

But sending a baby who doesn't even understand the situation, would he know he is supposed to conquer? Maybe a pacifier would settle it.

Although the Dragon Ball manga didn't use a pacifier to settle the protagonist, it was pretty much the same.

Such a story setting full of complaints can only be a product of that era. If it were even ten years later, or in the new century, there would be no such setting of sending a baby to conquer the world.

This is like a Demon King sending his daughter to deal with the Hero's party. Such an act of sending a daughter over a thousand li is simply like raising a flag for his daughter to assassinate him in return.

Amidst a sea of complaints, the person in the escape pod (or small spaceship) saw half a water-blue planet through the observation window, and it was getting bigger and bigger.

The reason it is called "half" is because the other half is black, on the side facing away from the Sun. However, from the black half, large-scale artificial lights can be seen, making the black less black.

Hmm, it seems we have entered the technological age. At least there is no need to worry that after landing, I will have to face primitive people who eat raw meat and drink blood, or medieval ancients who tie people to the stake at the drop of a hat.

Circling the Earth once, passing many high-orbit artificial satellites along the way. Amidst endless complaints, the person in the cabin forgot to investigate his roots, and just watched the small spaceship he was sitting in plunge headfirst into the atmosphere.

The sparks from the intense friction and burning turned the view outside the observation window a uniform red, yet the cabin interior remained comfortable. Even the constant bumping sensation so often depicted in films seemed not to exist, and of course no G-force changes could be felt either.

Judging from this one point alone, one could tell that the contraption one was riding had a technological level higher than that of the Earth one had once lived on. Otherwise, without a spacesuit on, wouldn't one have been tormented to death?

But such a thought was immediately tossed to the back of one's mind. Because this contraption's way of landing was not some high-end, stable vertical takeoff and landing; instead, it found a patch of ground and plowed straight across!

... Well, this landing method was extremely rough, yet the interior environment gave absolutely no indication of the drop, making it hard to judge whether this contraption's technological level should be considered high or low.

Or rather, a certain thought of one's own was correct. This contraption wasn't some kind of spaceship at all, but rather an escape pod or a space coffin or something of the sort.

Then what kind of thing was one, again?

Mm, surely one wouldn't see a classic scene in a moment—a group of monkeys with obvious evolutionary features dragging one out of this space coffin!

Had one returned to a future Earth where the apes had risen and humanity had fallen?

Fortunately, however, that imagined worrying scene did not appear.

Without waiting too long, a group of modern people came, opened the hatch, and dragged one out of this inexplicable space vessel.

The landing site was in the middle of a dark night, in a place where heavy snow was falling. A group of burly men wearing thick snow-white coats were muttering gurgling "Mao-zi" talk.

One had just wanted to say "Bondzho, tovarisch" to greet them, but what came out instead was the wailing cry of a baby.

Although one was crying, having left the soft cushion's embrace, one finally confirmed one's situation. One, with a short and stout little body, was not some malnourished dwarf, but simply a baby.

Then again, this damned weather was so cold...

(End of this chapter)