May 2025, afternoon.
With no air conditioning, a small desk fan whirred away.
“An afternoon jerk, heavenly bliss!”
Having released his pent-up stress, Luke’s eyes were glazed over.
He lay flat on his back on the hardboard bed of his rental room, which measured less than ten square meters.
Staring up at the yellow-edged water stain left on the ceiling by an old leak, he felt like a frog pinned down by an invisible hand, choking for breath.
His phone screen remained lit, continuing to play the Western adult flick *White Lives Matter* with Chinese subtitles.
Two years out of college, he had cycled through seven or eight jobs.
Sinking from ambitious optimism into sheer numbness hadn’t taken long at all.
His savings had hit rock bottom, and next month’s rent was still up in the air.
He closed his eyes, wanting to shut out this thick, suffocating reality for a while.
Yet his mind buzzed incessantly, trapped in an endless loop: *What do I do tomorrow?
What about the day after?
What about next month…?*
After who knew how long, his consciousness finally sank into a murky haze.
*Sleep.
Once I’m asleep, at least I won’t have to think.*
His sense of smell was the first thing to return.
“Ugh…”
An indescribable stench—a vile concoction of rotting garbage, raw sewage, cheap rotgut, sweat, animal reek, and aged moldy wood—slammed into his nostrils like a bludgeon, violently yanking him from the haze.
His stomach heaved.
“Did a sewage pipe burst?”
He snapped his eyes open.
A leaden gray sky hung so low it felt within arm’s reach, weighed down by fragmented storm clouds.
As far as the eye could see were filthy, crooked, haphazardly assembled building facades.
Mud bricks, rotting wood, and mismatched stones were piled together with no rhyme or reason, forming a narrow, twisted, pothole-riddled alleyway.
Corners were piled with unidentifiable refuse, and murky runoff flowed sluggishly through the gutter at his feet, shimmering with a suspicious oily sheen.
Figures moved about.
They were dressed in rags of a uniform dingy color, stained by years of grime.
The bizarre cuts looked like extras who had walked off the set of some cheap historical drama.
Men, women, children…
with all sorts of hair colors.
Straw-like yellow, dirty brown, faded red, and glossy black curls!
Their skin tones were equally varied—pale, sallow, sunburned red, and vast swaths of dark brown, even jet black.
*Damn, a bunch of foreigners.*
“This definitely isn’t home?!”
Luke’s heart skipped a beat, then began hammering frantically, pounding painfully against his ribs.
He blinked hard and pinched his thigh with all his might.
“Hiss…
It hurts.
Not a dream!”
A sharp ache flared, yet the scenery before him remained utterly unchanged.
A scrawny boy with a messy mop of red hair dashed past him, his bare feet splashing into a puddle of black sludge.
“Ptui, ptui, ptui!”
Specks of that unnamable filth spattered onto Luke’s lips, sending a full-body wave of goosebumps down his spine!
Not far off, two women in faded homespun skirts, their hair greasy and matted, hovered over a wooden tub, scrubbing vigorously while chattering away in an unintelligible tongue.
He scrambled to his feet on weak knees, pressing his back against a relatively dry stone wall behind him.
The icy chill seeped through his thin T-shirt.
*The language…*
He pricked up his ears, catching fragmented words drifting through the air—nasal, heavily rolled syllables.
It sounded familiar, very familiar…
like English!
Yet it was distinctly unlike any accent or usage he knew; the cadence was thick and slurred, the stresses odd, peppered with heavy, incomprehensible slang.
Panic began creeping up like strangling vines, tightening around his throat.
He tried to speak, but his parched throat could barely manage a sound.
“Excuse me… Where… where is this?”
“How are you?”
He squeezed out a dry question tinged with standard Dragon Country classroom English.
The nearest washerwoman paused and turned her head.
Her face was weathered rough by hardship, her eyes a mix of wariness and habitual numbness.
She stared at him for a few seconds, brow furrowing as her lips fired off a rapid string of syllables, before she waved him off impatiently, shooing him away like a nuisance of a fly.
Complete gibberish to him.
Luke took a step back, the back of his head resting against the rough stone wall as a chill pierced straight to his crown.
This wasn’t a prank, not a film set, nor some immersive VR experience.
There were no cameras, no director, and not even any genuine curiosity toward him, an outsider clad in anachronistic “strange clothes” and speaking a bizarre dialect.
Beyond the initial caution, what met him was a pervasive, detached apathy, as if he were merely another jarring yet utterly inconsequential pixel in this filthy backdrop.
Leaving the corner, he began wandering aimlessly along the foul-smelling alleyway.
The further he walked, the further his heart sank.
On the wider “streets,” the crowds grew thicker and more chaotic.
Crude stalls hawked black bread of questionable ingredients, wilted greens, and dubiously colored hunks of meat.
Men resembling guards in rusty half-plate armor, longswords at their hips, occasionally patrolled past, their sharp gazes sweeping over the mob.
The squalid buildings grew denser and more dilapidated, the air hanging heavy with an ever more pungent and layered reek.
In the distance, rising past a sea of low, haphazard shanties, an imposing colossal castle of dark red stone stood silently atop a hill at the edge of his vision, casting a massive, brooding shadow against the leaden sky.
Relying on his college English and a habit of watching American TV shows, he managed to catch several distinct words: “Westeros,” “King’s Landing,” “Red Keep,” and “Iron Throne”!
*A Song of Slaying and Fucking?!*
An utterly absurd yet chillingly coherent thought slithered into his mind like a venomous snake.
Westeros!
King’s Landing!
Flea Bottom!
The Red Keep…
He had watched the show multiple times and read the book.
After losing his job, bored out of his mind, he had recently started rewatching the American drama *Game of Thrones*, having just reached Season 2…
The architectural styles, the clothing, the hair colors, the complexions, that iconic castle in the distance…
Every single detail screamed the exact same answer.
This was most likely Planet Martin—the world of *A Song of Ice and Fire*!
There was no ecstasy, no romantic yearning for a fantasy realm, and certainly no delusion of being a “Chosen One.”
A cold, palpable dread, far more biting than this otherworld’s chilly air, instantly seeped into every bone and fiber of his body.
He, Luke, a newly unemployed, penniless twenty-five-year-old Dragon Country youth who had accomplished nothing beyond slacking through college and playing video games, had transmigrated?!
Transmigrated into the filthiest, most wretched slum of a medieval fantasy world—where he couldn’t speak the tongue, knew nothing of the currency, sanitation was nonexistent, and law and order rested solely on the edge of a sword.
No chime of a system prompt, no Starter Gift Pack, no status panel, not even the baseline language skill of this world!
What did he have?
A cheap summer short-sleeved T-shirt, shorts, an empty pocket, and a body wracked by chronic late nights, sub-health, and worn-out kidneys!
His stomach gave an untimely, rumbling groan, and his throat felt parched to the point of smoking.
Half a day had passed since he woke up.
He was exhausted, starving, parched, freezing, and terrified.
Curling into himself, he backed into the corner of a relatively quiet dead end, where the stench was slightly fainter and the ground reasonably dry.
Leaning against the cold wall, he slid down to the ground, burying his head deep between his knees.
*What kind of bullshit transmigration is this!*
*What Westeros continent!*
*To hell with the Game of Thrones!*
*Game of Thrones?
More like a bloody joke…*
If it were a noble start, a system start, or even a fluent language start…
that would be manageable!
But what the hell was dropping his actual body in here out of nowhere?!
Isn’t this literal Hell Difficulty!
He missed his rental room—cramped, yes, but cozier than home.
He missed the suggestive Douyin clips, missed the dirt-cheap group-buy meal deliveries…
He even missed that mind-numbing job he’d just lost, which at least paid a modest wage.
He longed for Blue Star, familiar and secure, where no matter how miserable things got, basic rules and order still existed.
Grief and despair crashed over him like a tangible tidal wave, swallowing him whole.
Clinging as if to a final lifeline, he roared silently in his heart, focusing every ounce of his Spirit to *visualize*!
Picturing the chipped green iron door, picturing the cramped space behind it that belonged to him, picturing the hardboard bed, picturing the glass of leftover, ice-cold boiled water sitting on his desk from last night.
*Go back!*
*Let me go back!*
*Even going back to being a corporate wage slave is fine!*
*Whoever wants to transmigrate can have it, because I’m done…*
The moment the thought landed, a strange, mildly dizzying sensation of weightlessness seized him violently.
The filthy alley, the foul air, and the distant silhouette of the castle blurred like oil paint wiped away by an invisible hand, instantly twisting, smearing, and stretching into multicolored ribbons of light before giving way to a familiar darkness.
*Thud!*
With a dull thud, his backside slammed firmly onto a hard surface.
The anticipated hardness of stone never came; instead, it was a slightly thin yet intimately familiar texture.
Luke snapped his head up.
Dim light filtered through the aged curtains drawn across the window, illuminating specks of dust drifting lazily in the air.
Beneath him was the hardboard bed covered in a cheap blue-checkered sheet.
On the wall opposite hung portraits of the God of Wealth and Chairman Mao, bought on a whim but never once offered incense.
On the desk, last night’s cup of boiled water was still there, a small chip on its rim.
He was back.
Back to May 2025, in his 1,000-yuan-a-month rental room located in an urban village of Pengcheng.
Outside the window came the distant, muffled backdrop of urban noise—honking cars, a crying child next door, the loudspeaker of a scrap collector.
Luke sat blankly at the edge of the bed, frozen in the exact posture from before his sudden departure.
For a solid half-minute, he didn’t move.
Then, with an almost reverent hesitation, he slowly raised a hand, touching his own face, then feeling the bedsheet beneath him.
Soft.
Real.
Not a dream.
Picking up his Redmi K50 Ultra, the face unlock engaged automatically.
*White Lives Matter* resumed playing!
The Chinese subtitles loaded automatically…
Everything just now—the stench, the cold, the despair—wasn’t a fucking dream either!
His heart pounded wildly once more, but this time, it wasn’t panic.
It was a fierce rush of profound shock, disbelief, and…
an unspeakable, blossoming surge of unbridled ecstasy.
He looked down at his hands, then jerked his head up to survey this shabby, austere little room.
His gaze swept across the peeling desk, the humming old refrigerator, the trash bin overflowing with instant noodle cups, and the half-dead pothos plant in the corner…
A realization so sharp it made his scalp tingle ripped through the chaos and despair like a bolt of lightning.
Free two-way travel.
He could travel freely between Blue Star and that damned otherworld—most likely the continent of Westeros!
No system prompts, no instruction manuals, no energy constraints—at least none he could feel.
Merely by focusing a strong thought, he had crossed over and returned.
System quests?
“Ding, ding, ding” notifications?
Screw all of that!
An irrepressible grin spread slowly across Luke’s face, stretching almost from ear to ear.
While lingering terror and exhaustion from Flea Bottom still clouded his eyes, deep within them two tiny sparks had been ignited by this staggering discovery, burning brighter and hotter with every second.
He sprang up from the bed.
Rising too quickly made his vision darken for an instant, but he couldn’t care less.
He paced back and forth in the cramped space, rubbing his hands together, his breathing heavy.
A cross-world smuggler!
He knew this trope by heart.
As a decade-long web novel veteran, how could he not?
“Two worlds!”
The phrase branded itself into his mind like red-hot iron.
What did that world have?
Gold?
Gems?
Spices?
Antiques?
What did this world have?
Glass?
Mirrors?
Stainless steel wares?
Lighters?
Refined sugar?
Table salt?
Antibiotics?
The great equalizers!
Guns, lots of guns!
Or in the simplest, most brutish terms—food!
Clean food!
Vast quantities of food!
The bottom-feeders of that world were gnawing on black bread and rotten leaves in Flea Bottom, whereas here, he could spend a few dozen yuan on a huge carton of compressed ration biscuits or whole sacks of rice and flour!
And the cost?
Incredibly low, practically zero!
What about the risks?
There were risks.
Because wherever there are people, danger follows!
The language barrier was the greatest hurdle.
But…
what if he could find a way to communicate, or start with basic bartering that required no complex dialogue?
Luke stopped in his tracks, standing in the center of the room.
Outside, neon lights peeked through the gap in the curtains, casting a narrow, bright sliver across the floor.
Dust motes danced within the beam.
The grin on his face gradually settled, morphing into a cold composure blended with intense excitement, frantic calculation, and desperate resolve.
He walked over to the desk, grabbed the cup of overnight boiled water, and downed it in one gulp.
The cold liquid washed down his parched throat, carrying a near-painful sense of reality.
Setting down the cup, he drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Focus his Spirit.
Visualize.
Flea Bottom.
That relatively clean, deserted wall corner.
The weightlessness struck again, accompanied by mild dizziness.
Open eyes.
Chilly dampness and a pungent stench instantly enveloped him.
Leaden skies, filthy alleyways, and the dark shadow of the Red Keep in the distance.
He was back.
Just a few seconds.
Visualize again.
Warm, stuffy, the familiar rental room.
He stood steadily by his bed.
Once