“Wake up!”
“Hurry and wake up!”
A hazy, gentle white light leapt into his eyes. Powerless, exhausted, weak, he opened them.
His memories seemed to be separated from him by a heavy layer of gauze, unreal and indistinct. His mind was blank; he could not even remember his own name.
“What’s going on?”
Su Yu realized he was in a bedroom. It was very small, about ten square meters. There was no electric light, only a lit candle. Under the dim glow, the floor was fairly clean, and there was only a bed, a desk, and a bookshelf.
“Hm? This doesn’t seem to be modern?”
That sense of age was difficult to ignore. What stood out in particular was the smell permeating the air—a scent of decay, or rather, the smell of a funeral home.
A fine drizzle was falling outside the window. He could hear it, but he could not see the threads of rain, because they were cut off by thick, dark-gray curtains. Even an accidental glance at them immediately gave one a deep chill.
“?”
“No, something’s very wrong!”
Su Yu cautiously sat up and realized he had been lying on the bed. Just then, the curtain moved, and the candle flame suddenly flickered. In that instant, the entire room became blurred and distorted.
A tremendous wave of dizziness struck him, and bursts of murmuring whispers sounded beside his ear.
Those murmurs seemed very familiar, yet they quickly faded. When the dizziness dispersed, Su Yu tilted his head slightly. Although nothing before his eyes had changed, a sense of familiarity had been added to it.
He tilted his head slightly and saw the bookcase. Dozens of books were arranged inside. Without needing to look, he knew they were textbooks.
“This is my room.”
“The room from when I was fourteen.”
Su Yu’s gaze swept over the window again. He could hear the faint, minute sounds of damp, icy raindrops striking the glass.
Memories slowly rose like the tide, as if they had been suppressed deep within his soul. Memories belonging to another world also kept surfacing.
The two converged into one.
After a long while, Su Yu finally muttered to himself in a low voice.
“So, I’ve been reborn again? Right now it’s May 3rd, 1855, by the Ying calendar?”
“As a transmigrator, I’m truly not qualified. I actually went twenty-four years without awakening the wisdom of my previous life.”
“If I hadn’t died again and been reborn… I’m afraid I would have simply become a native, lived out my life as one, and been completely assimilated by this world.”
He subconsciously stood up and trimmed the candlewick with a small pair of scissors.
Su Yu recalled what could only be called his tragic experiences in this world after transmigrating and being reborn.
“How pitiful.”
Transmigration and rebirth should have meant a life with cheats. If nothing else, an adult’s experience, knowledge, and insight alone were already a rich fortune.
Many people had experienced this: even after decades without studying, if they picked up elementary or middle school textbooks, they would still feel they were very simple—they could master them in a few days or half a month.
But no matter how smart a child was, they would still have to study for half a year.
This was the fundamental difference in thinking structure.
Even without any other golden finger, even if he did not recognize the writing of this world, becoming a Jiang Lang would not have been a problem—yes, Jiang Lang’s talent would eventually run dry, but as a youth he would still become famous throughout the land, only becoming ordinary after adulthood when his thinking structure no longer held an advantage.
Even so, he would already have surpassed tens of millions of people!
Yet the memories belonging to the transmigrator had not awakened for a long, long time. In this life, he had truly been born like a native, learned to read, gone to school, and in his memories, all the way until he was twenty-four…
Only before his death, under intense pain, had the inverted golden hourglass finally surfaced.
In his field of vision, golden motes of light continuously fell. A warm golden radiance gradually enveloped everything… That mighty power almost made him feel as if his self were melting into it.
This became the final brilliance in the native’s memories.
The native did not know what it was, but he did.
Thinking of this, Su Yu subconsciously touched the back of his hand.
“System, are you there?”
Amid his murmured words, a faint golden light rose before his eyes like mist, gradually condensing into an illusory, transparent golden hourglass that floated in front of him.
The hourglass was only the size of a palm, its radiance dim and transparent.
Looking carefully, there were extremely tiny gray crystalline motes of light at the bottom, merely spread in a shallow layer, faint and almost nonexistent. If one did not look closely, they would not notice them at all.
Unlike the previous, brimming golden motes of light, the fine gray crystalline sand gave him an extremely weak feeling.
“This is the game I stayed up all night rushing to design before I transmigrated.”
Su Yu’s heart was filled with intense confusion and surprise.
“The golden hourglass has the function of traversing time and space. It can bring its host back to the past to change a fixed destiny.”
“It is the key to the Courtyard, and also its core—the symbol of the protagonist in the game.”
But this was only a game setting. To put it plainly, it was just the reason for opening dungeons in the game. It was said to be unique, but in reality, every player had one.
Why had it actually become real here?
No one answered this question.
There was only silence around him. The candle gave off a hazy glow. Beyond the thin light, there was a vague grayness that seemed to have no end, making one’s hair stand on end.
Su Yu’s heart tightened. This place was not safe.
“Open character panel.”
Su Yu hesitated no longer. His gaze lowered, and he saw a speck of golden light rapidly expand, turning into a faint white glow floating in his vision.
Character Name: Su Yu
Residence: No. 128 Residence, Baker District, Black County, Ying Kingdom
Age: 14
Mundane Occupation: Third-year student at Ivy Middle School
Mystical Occupation: None
Bloodline: None
Title: None
Vitality: 5/9
Attributes: Strength 9 (-1), Agility 10 (+0), Constitution 10 (+0), Intelligence 15 (previous-life thinking structure +2), Perception 13 (+1), Charisma 11 (+0)
Skills: Ying Language LV2, Fa Language LV0, Ying Kingdom Systematic Education LV2
Currently Active Passive Skill: Courtyard Protection LV0
Funds Held: 12 silver sirens, 10 copper starfish
“Judging from the data, I really have returned to when the host was fourteen. Is this the mighty power of the game cheat?”
An ordinary person’s data was 10–11 (+0). Since he was only fourteen, being weaker than an adult was completely normal, so Strength 9 (-1) made sense. His Agility and Constitution were already close to the weaker side among adults, which was also normal. His Intelligence had originally been 13 (+1), meaning he was a little smarter than ordinary people, an excellent student in class.
He also had some talent in Perception, allowing him to sense the mysterious. His Charisma meant he was somewhat handsome.
Leaving aside the increase from a transmigrator’s thinking structure, the data was very normal.
“Never mind that for now. Once I wake up, I’ll have to face a real problem—the death of this native host is deeply suspicious.”
He stared out the window, feeling the raindrops strike the glass, and sensing the smell of a decaying funeral home diffusing through the air.
“And the crisis is tonight!”
A sharp look appeared in the transmigrator’s eyes.
The native boy who had not awakened might not have seen the problem, but now that Su Yu had awakened the memories of his previous life and was reviewing his life once more—
At once, he felt that everything was suspicious, that something was wrong everywhere.
“In my last life, I didn’t awaken and only lived a short twenty-four years.”
“But even without awakening the memories from before my transmigration, in my last life I originally had considerable mystical talent. Normally speaking, my prospects would not have been low.”
Even without the +2 from experience, Intelligence 13 (+1) and Perception 13 (+1) were still decent talents.
“It’s just that I suffered heavy losses right at the start…”
The transmigrator pressed his lips together, his face slightly pale. Su Yu remembered the failure from back then.
“This crisis is actually not difficult for an adult, especially one with experience, but for anyone at the age of fourteen, it is a severe test.”
Speaking of tests without considering age—without considering experience—was nothing but hooliganism.