I had been living an ordinary life when, one day, I suddenly found myself in another world.
It had truly been ordinary.
I woke up in the morning, put on oil-stained work clothes, and went to work, enduring the day amid the roar of machinery while watching my boss’s mood. After finishing overtime and returning home, I would fill my stomach with whatever was at hand, then collapse and fall asleep. To others, my daily life was no different from a single part fitted into a factory, and to me, it wasn’t much different either.
I wasn’t especially outstanding, nor was I completely ruined. I waited for payday, counted the days until my next day off, and before I knew it, another month had passed. There was no great misfortune, but there was nothing in particular to look forward to either.
Maybe that was why.
At first, I accepted it rather easily.
An unfamiliar sky. Unfamiliar air. An unfamiliar body.
It was clearly an absurd situation, but panic didn’t come first. Instead, another thought came to me first.
Is this… am I the protagonist?
Thinking back on it now, it’s laughable. But at the time, it made sense.
I gained power.
Not some half-baked level of power, but something tangible enough that I had no room to doubt it.
Was it thanks to the habits I had built up by repeating the same process every day? I learned the powers of this other world at an absurdly fast pace. What I learned quickly became second nature, and what became second nature led to results. To others, it must have looked like innate talent, but to me, it was closer to an extension of skilled, simple labor.
The hands that had stamped out a single part thousands of times in a factory now drew a single hand seal thousands of times here. The form was different, but the method was the same. Repeat, correct, and repeat again. Engraving something into my body without thinking was what I had always done. Even the stages others described as comprehending the Dao were, to me, places my hands reached first after enduring long enough.
Techniques that some people clung to for years, I surpassed in months. Some only took days. Even sections that could be called walls could not hold me back for long. Once I understood, my hands followed; once my hands followed, I could use it immediately.
Ground Shrinking, Clones, Qimen Formations, Calling the Wind and Summoning the Rain.
Whatever the art, once it came into my hands, it unfolded more naturally than breathing. People called me a genius, called me a prodigy, and in the end, whispered that I was one chosen by Heaven’s Mandate.
At first, I dismissed it as nonsense.
But after hearing the same words ten times, twenty times, and after people began looking up at me with eyes that truly believed it, before I knew it, even I stopped denying it.
That I was special.
That perhaps the center of this world really was me.
It was on a certain day when that thought reached its peak.
—
The sky cracked first.
The sound came late.
What came first was sensation. The wind I governed, the rain I summoned, the earth I stood on—all of it tilted to one side at once. The world itself was being pressed down by something and torn apart.
It was behind me.
There was no need to look back.
The pressure coming from behind me said everything. It could not be explained as the force emitted by a person or beast. It was far greater, heavier, and more distant than that.
The weight of the entire sky collapsing.
Before instinct could even scream, my body had already frozen. I didn’t even think of drawing up my Dao power. Every living cell in me knew that even if I did, it would be meaningless.
Ah.
I can’t stop this.
It wasn’t even funny, but a hollow laugh escaped me first.
Right. Of course.
To think I believed I was the center of the world just because I had gone a little farther ahead than others. What a sight.
My vision collapsed.
The light went out.
I had believed too easily, and taken it far too much for granted.
Ah, this really is empty.
That was the end of my previous life.
—
It was damp.
A cold, sticky sensation seeped between my scales.
Scales?
My thoughts stopped there for a moment.
My body moved on its own. There was no sensation of planting my feet. A long, supple body flowed along the ground as if being dragged.
No sound came from my mouth. Only the tip of a forked tongue trembled.
I opened my eyes.
My field of vision was low. Far lower than I had expected. It was not the height of a human being as I remembered it.
Rusted metal structures. Cracked concrete. A damp, soaked floor. Black liquid. A strange gas shimmering with fluorescent light.
Everything was excessively clear. The smells, the humidity, the movement of the air. Things that would not have been visible to human eyes were simply there.
It would have been normal to be confused, but my head was strangely clear.
I had definitely died.
That moment when the sky cracked first. It ended before I could even respond. That was certain.
And yet, I was alive.
Saying I was alive was not enough. It was damp, cold, and filthy. My vision was absurdly low, and every sensation was strangely vivid.
I moved my body.
Only then did I realize.
I had no legs. No arms either.
Instead, I had scales.
“…This is insane.”
I thought I had spoken, but no proper sound came out. My tongue trembled, and all that remained was the feeling of my entire body, not my throat, faintly vibrating.
It was too vivid to call a previous life, and too distant to call something that had just happened. The end of my first death and the present were strangely connected.
This time, I’m not even human.
Even after that thought ended, I was not as shaken as I expected. There was bewilderment. There was disgust too. But the fear I would have felt more intensely as a human was somehow dulled.
I couldn’t tell if it was because my body had changed, or because my mind had gone numb.
Hissss.
Somewhere, there came the sound of something spraying out violently. My whole body followed toward it.
A cracked pipe.
Fluorescent gas leaking from the gap.
Dangerous.
I knew it instinctively.
It was already too late.
The moment I inhaled it, my insides began to burn. Organs that might not even have been lungs twisted. I couldn’t breathe. My entire body convulsed. Something seeped between my scales, and my insides melted.
It was poison.
I’m going to die again.
It’s going to end like this, without me being able to do anything.
My body writhed. There was no control. My senses blurred, and time blurred as well. I didn’t know how long I held on.
Then, at some point, it stopped.
The insides that had been burning began to fill in reverse. The stabbing pain flipped over and turned into an entirely different sensation.
It was hot.
Maddeningly hot. And yet I could endure it. It was not the kind of pain that could not be withstood. It was closer to the feeling of something awakening inside me.
It was alien. And yet strangely familiar. It was a sensation I had never experienced before, but my memory already knew it.
No way.
I slowly calmed it.
It was not breathing.
It was flow.
Qi.
Dao power.
The power that had made me delude myself in my previous life still remained.
My body moved.
It felt not like I was moving, but like I was following a body that was moving.
The flow of the fluorescent gas entered my sight. Where it flowed and where it pooled. How the air bent. Things that should not have been visible were now simply there.
With this body, I could live.
Clack.
From far away, I heard the sound of metal interlocking. The air was faintly compressed.
Something descended from above.
A massive shadow.
Red, flashing metal eyes.
A drone.
The name sprang from the memories of my previous life. But there was a weight to it that the name could not contain. Each time its operating hum scraped the air, this body sounded a warning.
That was no toy.
If I was late, it would be over.
I pressed my body flat against the ground and froze.
My newly acquired senses spread out automatically. It was not seeing with my eyes. Where the air flowed, where it pooled heavily, where it was empty. Which way the metal’s center of gravity leaned. Where the depth of the cracks ended.
All of it came to me at once.
The cracked pipe.
The fluorescent gas leaking from the gap.
A single rusted rebar embedded in the floor.
It will work.
I was certain.
I drew up my Dao power. In my previous life, it had flowed out as naturally as breathing. Now, even drawing out a single mouthful required me to wring out my entire insides. A faint thread barely began to flow beneath my scales.
I inhaled again.
It was different from before. My insides burned, but this time I held on to that burning.
I threaded the flow of gas, the remnants of Dao power, and the trembling of my body into a single line.
It was weak.
Better than nothing.
The air stirred. The fluorescent gas shifted direction slightly. It flowed beneath the drone.
An alarm sounded.
I’d been discovered.
Boom.
Red light dug into the floor. Concrete exploded. If I hadn’t twisted my body, I would have been where that light struck.
The light grazed beside my scales. I felt the place touched by the heat melt slightly.
Now.
My body moved before thought did. Once. Instinct knew there would only be one chance.
Crunch.
I wrapped my body around the rebar. I tightened my entire torso around the cold, rough metal.
I squeezed out my Dao power. The muscles beneath my scales pulled to their limit, and the current of air settled atop them. Into a single point.
Whoosh.
The rebar shot out.
Clang.
The drone shook.
It did not break.
The red eye fixed on me. Its output rose again.
It’s over.
Before my mind could even recognize that, my body froze first.
The thought that I had to flee did not even follow. It had been the same at the end of my days as a Daoist. In the face of death, humans can do nothing. It was no different now that I had become a snake.
It was at that moment.
The fluorescent gas gathered beneath the drone surged upward all at once.
Bzzzt.
Its outer shell melted. Its sensors wavered. Its balance collapsed.
Thud.
The drone slammed into the floor.
Smoke.
The smell of burning.
A faint reaction still remained.
I did not approach.
The realization that I had survived came to me belatedly. Before relief, surprise rose first.
Before that surprise could fade, my body stopped first.
An instinct telling me not to approach.
My mind followed after and unraveled the reason.
A beast pretending to be dead is the most dangerous.
The red light was flickering ever so faintly.
Until it stopped completely, it wasn’t over.
Slowly, I closed the distance.