The damp, dim garbage dump was littered everywhere with piles of discarded metal sheets and plastic.
In the cracks of a broken, rusted sewer, a fat gray rat darted through, then lifted its head, drawn by the pungent smell of blood.
Bai Long only felt as if there was not a single place on her body that didn’t hurt.
Every part of her felt like it had been run over by a vehicle; her internal organs seemed crushed and twisted together inside her body, and even her flesh and muscles were aching.
Her ashen clothes were soaked with blood, staining them into dark red patches.
Bai Long’s breathing was rapid. Her mind went blank for a moment, while the thick smell of blood in her nose was stimulating her nerves.
Where was this? What had happened to her?
Wasn’t she supposed to be transporting a corpse to be cremated??
Since when did the funeral home start offering immersive experience services???
Before she could figure it out, a vicious voice of abuse rang in her ears.
“…That little beast is still alive?”
“Let me see how long this sickly trash can hold on…”
Fists came down without mercy, raining blows just like countless times before.
Before Bai Long could even react, her body instinctively and skillfully protected her head, curling itself into a defensive posture.
So practiced that it made her freeze for a second.
Through the intense pain, Bai Long saw the man in front of her—his skin was pitted and uneven, his beard rough and matted, a scar cutting across his entire face, and his chest covered in dried blood.
At a glance, he was clearly a desperate criminal.
A cold glint flickered from the dagger in his hand.
“Beastman flesh and skin sell for a good price on the black market,” the man said. “Tell me, where should I start?”
The icy blade swung recklessly in front of Bai Long’s eyes.
The man didn’t think this little useless thing would resist at all—after all, it had always been like this over the years.
He raised the dagger, then suddenly felt a soul-crushing pain in his lower body. His legs clamped shut uncontrollably, and he slammed face-first onto the ground.
His eyes widened in disbelief. That little beast he had always beaten and cursed at so casually actually dared to fight back?!
Before he could react, another searing, bone-piercing pain exploded across his back.
Bai Long pushed herself up with one hand, grabbed the dagger that had fallen to the ground, and stabbed fiercely into the man’s back.
The self-defense techniques she had once learned in case of “corpse reanimation” finally came in handy at this moment.
Only when warm, sticky blood splattered across her hands, and the man’s pig-like, agonized screams filled her ears, did Bai Long slowly come back to her senses.
Subconsciously, she tried to pull out her phone to call the police—but realized her hands were thin and frail, and her field of vision was much lower than before.
This wasn’t her body.
This was…
She had transmigrated?!
Before she could fully process her shock, a sudden wave of suffocating pressure surged up, and her legs went weak as she collapsed into a seated position on the ground.
At that moment, a flood of memories that did not belong to her poured into Bai Long’s mind.
The original owner shared the same name as her.
The beatings Bai Long had just experienced after transmigrating were something the original owner had endured countless times since childhood.
Her already frail body had long been pushed beyond its limits through repeated abuse.
Even in her final moments before losing consciousness, she had instinctively protected her vital points, never daring to relax.
She was terrified that even a moment of weakness would bring even more unbearable pain.
The original owner wanted to live more than anyone else.
The man’s name was Simon. Whenever he was frustrated outside, he would come back and beat the original owner to vent his anger.
Suddenly, Simon began struggling wildly on the ground like a fish stranded on land. In the end, he clutched his own neck tightly with both hands, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed completely motionless.
Bai Long watched this scene unfold right before her eyes. She pressed her hands against the ground, slipping several times before managing to push herself up.
Even such a simple movement made her breathing grow noticeably more rapid and heavy.
This body was too weak. Back then, she could carry a coffin by herself without even getting out of breath.
After the heavy, uncomfortable sensation in her body slightly eased, Bai Long picked up a dry branch from the ground, while tightly gripping the dagger in her other hand. She cautiously prodded Simon from a distance.
She crouched behind a trash can, remaining alert in case Simon suddenly sprang back to life.
But Simon showed no reaction at all.
After hesitating for a moment, Bai Long slowly approached him. Her right hand still tightly held the dagger, while her left hand reached out to press against his neck.
He had no pulse.
Having been educated under the principles of freedom, equality, justice, and the rule of law, Bai Long’s first instinct was to find a phone and call the police and an ambulance.
But she didn’t have a phone. The surrounding area was desolate and empty—apart from the two of them, there was no one else in sight, not even anyone she could ask for help.
For a moment, she even thought she was back near the funeral home where she used to work…
Dead bodies were nothing unfamiliar to Bai Long.
She quickly calmed herself down. Simon was currently her only available source of information.
She searched him thoroughly and found a thin black circular wristband on his hand, along with a small black cloth money pouch.
The moment she removed the wristband, information about it naturally surfaced in Bai Long’s mind.
The wristband was a piece of technology developed by the United Star System. It was equipped with artificial intelligence capable of handling most aspects of daily life.
A semi-transparent holographic screen appeared from the wristband.
“Xingxing Xinwen” was a communication technology connecting the networked worlds of multiple planets. It allowed people to communicate without obstruction even across vast interstellar distances.
It overcame both distance and language barriers.
The wristbands equipped with Xingxing Xinwen were called “Star Rings.”
Star Alliance, Sector 30, Domain 130—commonly known as the Garbage Star—was where Bai Long grew up.
This was also a forgotten, abandoned land left behind by the era and its technology.
Illegal residents, criminals, gamblers… all the evils that were not welcomed or accepted by the new civilization gathered in this lawless place.
Bai Long realized she had been transmigrated into an interstellar era.
On this planet, death was no longer anything unusual. Every day, people died under strange circumstances or simply went missing, and no one cared.
Here, all behavior was no longer bound by law.
A faint chill touched her face, followed by an increasingly dense coldness that seeped into her bones.
It was raining.
Bai Long pressed down on her trembling hand, forcing herself to calm down.
This was not the time to be afraid.
Fear was useless. She was becoming increasingly aware of one thing—
—she had to survive.
Before transmigrating, Bai Long had been a “collection handler” who never worried about food or clothing, specifically responsible for transporting corpses.
Her psychological resilience was unusually strong.
She quickly accepted the fact that she had transmigrated.
After all, she still had to live.
The rain grew heavier, forcing Bai Long to get up and find shelter.
She had no understanding of this world at all. There might be useful information on the Star Ring.
Following the steps she had seen others perform in the original owner’s memories, Bai Long successfully activated the Star Ring’s holographic screen.
Fortunately, Simon was a fugitive, so his Star Ring naturally did not have the identity verification function that ordinary Star Rings were equipped with.
Both the original owner and Bai Long were encountering a Star Ring for the first time, so they were not yet familiar with its functions.
The Star Ring display was still on the last page Simon had been browsing.
【…After temperatures exceeded fifty degrees for several consecutive days the day before yesterday, many planets have now been hit by heavy rainfall today. All citizens are advised to take precautions when going out…】
【…Major hospitals across various planets reported multiple cases of sudden death today, including several interstellar citizens aged between twenty and fifty. Everyone is urged to pay attention to their health and maintain a regular routine…】
Bai Long’s gaze landed on the words “sudden death,” then shifted to Simon, who lay beside her without any sign of life.
His pale face was rigid, his pupils dilated—he had died with his eyes wide open.
Yes, just like the bodies she had seen many times over the past two years at the funeral home.
Calming herself down, she realized that the stab she had just made would only have immobilized Simon; it shouldn’t have killed him.
Recalling Simon’s violent convulsions before death and his hands clutching his throat…
It looked more like the signs of suffocation before sudden death.
But how could a physically strong person suddenly die of cardiac arrest?
“Cough, cough…”
A salty, metallic taste rose in her throat. Her vision blurred, and hunger caused a sharp twisting pain in her stomach.
Bai Long knew the original owner’s chronic illness had flared up again.
She had no choice but to turn off the Star Ring and head toward the city according to the original owner’s memory.
The medication the original owner usually took during attacks had already run out, and Bai Long needed to go buy more medicine.
The road from the garbage dump to the city was not short, and in between lay a long artificial moat.
There was only one way across.
That path was used by everyone except the original owner. If she tried to cross there, she would be attacked and driven away by others.
They said she would “dirty the road.”
Bai Long followed the slope and slowly entered the river, preparing to swim across.
The original owner had always crossed the river by swimming directly to the other side.
Coincidentally, both Bai Long and the original owner were excellent swimmers.
Bai Long had even once tested herself and found she could hold her breath underwater for over an hour!
If not for her skin becoming wrinkled from soaking too long, she could have lasted even longer.
Her colleagues at the time had even thought she had drowned.
The original owner’s body was even better at swimming than hers.
With a moat over fifty meters wide, she could swim across in a single breath without surfacing.
In the past, when people tried to surround and attack the original owner, she would often hide in the river—sometimes staying submerged for half a day without breathing—until she managed to escape.
Both Bai Long and the original owner liked the feeling of being in water.
Bai Long’s injured body came into contact with the cold river water.
Logically, it should have intensified the pain, but instead she felt the pain lessen significantly—so much so that even the pain in her internal organs eased.
Bai Long took a deep breath and submerged herself into the water.
The ripples slowly spread outward, and the water’s surface gradually returned to calm.
On the bridge across the river, pedestrians came and went, none of them noticing that there was actually a person in the water.
……
After coming ashore, Bai Long only roughly wrung the water out of her clothes before heading into the city.
Once she left the water, the pain surged back again.
The city’s buildings were scattered irregularly, and one could occasionally see starships flying overhead. Everyone wore similarly designed Star Rings on their wrists.
Before this, Bai Long was probably the only person in the entire star system without a Star Ring.
“Is this weather even going to work out anymore? The garbage dump is a total mess—can’t find anything good there at all.”
“Forget that for now. The hospitals are packed lately, and people are demanding an explanation for all those sudden deaths.”
“What’s there to argue about? Quite a few of the sudden deaths were people from illegal fighting matches. Those guys are always getting internal injuries in the ring—if they die, it’s no one else’s fault…”
“Now the hospital is full of corpses. It’s terrifying. Who would even dare go there for treatment anymore!”
Bai Long thought to herself—she would.
If she hadn’t been penniless, she could have stayed in a hospital until she was fully cured.
Being around dead bodies meant nothing to her; in fact, she even somewhat missed her former “dead colleagues.”
At some point, Bai Long suddenly noticed that the surrounding gazes were slowly converging on her.
Those gazes were far from friendly; they carried obvious disgust.
“How did that beast get here? She’s filthy… don’t tell me she’s got some contagious disease…”
“Why hasn’t she died from sudden death yet… and she even came into the city…”
“With so many people dying recently already, it’s bad enough. Running into her makes it even more unlucky…”
All of this hostility was directed at the original owner, but for a brief moment Bai Long felt a sense of dazed familiarity, as if she had returned to her childhood when she was ostracized…
She, like the original owner, was an orphan.
From childhood to adulthood, from school to work, the malice Bai Long had experienced was not much different from what she was facing now.
But she had no time to care about these people. From a young age, Bai Long had understood that only survival truly mattered.
She silently referred to them in her mind as “little trash,” and walked with clear intent toward a shop located in the corner of an alley.
She was here to buy medicine.
She wanted to live.
This shop was very hidden. She stood at the entrance for a while before her breathing finally became smoother.
On the way here, there had been other pharmacies, but all of them had shut their doors to the original owner.
Old Ta’s shop was the only place on Garbage Star that had been open to her all these years.
With a creak, the old rusted door was pushed open.
Inside, the shop was dim, lit only by a faint orange-yellow lamp that swayed gently with the wind.
Under the lamp, an old man was curled up in a rocking chair, watching a Star Ring screen. Hearing the movement, he didn’t even lift his eyes and directly took out a small bottle.
“Pure iron isn’t worth much these days. Next time, the medicine price will go up.”
Bai Long noticed that the old man’s hand wearing the Star Ring had a fairly large wound on it, already covered with a thin layer of scab.
On Garbage Star, injuries like that were nothing unusual at all.
Afraid of revealing that she wasn’t the original owner, she remained silent and placed the worn cloth pouch hanging at her waist onto the table.
On the way here, Bai Long had discovered this pouch on the original owner. Inside were scraps of iron.
From what the old man said, the original owner probably survived by collecting scrap iron at the garbage dump in exchange for medicine.
The old man glanced at the pouch, his gaze briefly sweeping over Bai Long’s body.
The girl was small and thin. Her exposed skin on her hands was pale, with blue-purple veins slightly protruding beneath it, as if they might burst through the thin skin at any moment.
She looked so malnourished she seemed like she could die at any second.
His gaze paused briefly at another spot on Bai Long’s waist, then he withdrew it and said in an unchanged tone, “Leave that money pouch here too. Go pick another one from the shelf over there.”
Bai Long noticed the bloodstains on the pouch at her waist.
Simon was a fugitive, so his money couldn’t be converted into virtual currency and stored in a Star Ring account; it was kept in a physical pouch instead.
She didn’t ask any questions. Instead, she turned and picked the largest black money pouch from the nearby shelf.
She liked big things—big is good, more is better.
After taking the medicine, Bai Long didn’t rush to leave. She planned to wait for the rain to ease before returning to the original owner’s dwelling in the garbage dump.
Or perhaps it couldn’t even be called a “dwelling”—it was nothing more than a crude shelter made of discarded iron frames.
Bai Long sat down in a ventilated spot behind the shop door and swallowed one of the pills.
The organs that felt as if they were twisted into a tight mass inside her body slowly returned to their proper place, and the dizziness that tugged at her nerves gradually eased.
As the pain in her body subsided, a belated wave of exhaustion swept over her.
Just as she was growing drowsy, movement came from Old Ta’s side.
Old Ta staggered out from behind the counter, moving slowly as he walked toward her.
Bai Long found it a little strange.
Although Old Ta was old, he had always seemed physically robust. Yet now his movements were sluggish.
The lighting was dim, but Bai Long noticed that his dark skin seemed to faintly take on a bluish-green tint.
Before she could figure it out, her body’s instinctive alertness made her duck down, narrowly avoiding Old Ta’s sudden attack.
But even that single movement caused a sharp pain to explode in her chest.
Saliva dripped from sharp fangs onto the ground. Old Ta’s eyeballs bulged, glazed over with a strange dead white. His limbs were stiff as he opened his maw, revealing sharp fangs as he lunged at Bai Long.
Was this still Old Ta? Or rather…
Was this still a human?
The shelf was violently knocked over by Old Ta. Bai Long, clutching her bleeding wound, barely managed to dodge, but her left leg was pinned beneath the fallen goods and couldn’t move.
A wave of searing pain spread from her foot all the way upward, like a spiderweb wrapping around her entire body.
Her leg might be broken.
Old Ta suddenly lunged at her.
Just as those sharp fangs were about to pierce her skin—if she were bitten and a piece of flesh torn off, she would surely die—
Bai Long gripped the dagger tightly and thrust upward with all her strength.
The sensation of the blade slicing through soft tissue came through, followed by a rush of warm liquid splattering across her body—sticky and foul-smelling.
Under the immense impact, the dagger pierced through Old Ta’s temple, and blood streamed down along the blade.
Her heart pounded violently. Bai Long gasped for breath, gradually calming the physiological tremor in her body.
Suddenly, commotion erupted outside the shop.
Through the crack in the door, Bai Long could faintly see outside.
At the entrance to the city, there were several unsteady figures, and one of them looked very familiar.
A scar running across half his face…
It was Simon.
Bai Long frowned.
She was certain she hadn’t misidentified him just now—he should have been dead.
So how was the person standing there now?
Was interstellar society really into the trend of coming back from the dead?
Something flashed through her mind, but before she could think it through, she saw sudden chaos erupt at the city entrance.
The scene descended into complete disorder.
Bai Long was too far away to see clearly, but she still caught a fleeting glimpse of a splash of vivid, shocking red.
People scattered and fled in all directions. In the chaos, countless figures fell to the ground, flesh and blood flying everywhere, and shrill, desperate screams echoed through the air.
Bulging, protruding gray-white eyeballs; bluish-gray skin covered in spiderweb-like purple veins; sharp exposed fangs that no human should have.
They looked exactly like Old Ta had just now…
What… were they?
The cold wind carried rain mixed with a thick, nauseating stench.
Desperate, piercing cries erupted across the city, and half the district was plunged into an unknown terror…
Bai Long slumped helplessly against the ground, watching as fleeing people were caught by those monsters and violently torn apart.
In the blink of an eye, those who were caught were reduced to unrecognizable masses of mangled flesh and broken bones lying on the ground.
Rain poured down heavily.
Suddenly, Bai Long felt an unbearable headache, as if a hand were stirring inside her brain. Her body alternated between freezing cold and burning hot, and her vision turned dark and blurred.
With her last bit of strength, she closed the door and pressed the electronic panel beside it to lock it. A metal roller shutter fell behind the glass door, separating her from the outside world.
Bai Long completely lost consciousness.