The pitch-black night was sliced open by a crescent moon shaped like a sickle, its deathly pale light spreading evenly across thousands of miles of scorched earth.
Across the wilderness, emaciated figures lay scattered about, their breathing so faint it was nearly imperceptible. They looked like skeletons wrapped in human skin. The earth resembled a graveyard.
Dead trees, stripped of their bark, perished in the night alongside those resting beneath them. The survivors staggered to their feet at dawn, moving forward like walking corpses, crudely stuffing anything that could satisfy their hunger into stomachs that burned with emptiness.
Some fell; others kept going.
Some joined along the way; others left.
They passed through one deserted, desolate village after another until they no longer had the strength to proceed. They could only collapse, swaying, at the entrances of abandoned villages or beside ravines. A wildfire of hunger ignited in their eyes whenever they looked at another of their kind.
Reason teetered on the brink of collapse. The “plague” of hunger transformed everything in sight into food.
From grass roots, tree bark, and clumps of soil, to humans themselves.
From the dead to the living.
The elderly had already fallen halfway, leaving not even bones behind. The young, once seen as the continuation of life, now began to contribute to the survival of others.
In the height of summer, no insects chirped in the grass. A young couple lay with their heads together. The woman cried out in heart-wrenching agony, “This is flesh from my own body…”
“Do you think it doesn’t hurt me to give him up?” The man gritted his teeth in hatred. “But… but if we don’t give him up, none of us will survive. All three of us will starve to death…”
He glanced at the filthy swaddling clothes beside him and the dirty, skinny infant within. He was met by a pair of bright eyes that had just opened, reflecting the moonlight.
The rest of the man’s words caught in his throat.
He buried his face in his palms and wept aloud.
The infant in the swaddle trembled from the torment of hunger, yet he did not cry or fuss. His bright eyes were no longer filled with his former ignorance.
…Swapping children for food?
Those four terrifying words flashed through his mind like lightning.
Before the young infant could even lament the tragic fate that had befallen him, he was struck by a sudden turn of events.
He blinked hard.
The subtitles before his eyes did not dissipate. They remained suspended arrogantly in mid-air, emitting a soft, non-intrusive white light.
[True Name: Yue Shu]
[Soul Energy: 7]
[Lifespan: 1]
[Note: A dying person, why bother struggling?]
“?”
A question mark slowly formed in Yue Shu’s mind.
Upon waking, the memories of his past life had fully resurfaced. He recalled the pain of fading away in a hospital bed and his infinite longing for the world. Subconsciously, a spark of joy at being reborn ignited in his heart.
And this strange light screen had arrived at that exact moment.
‘True Name, Soul Energy, Lifespan… it looks like a game account’s attributes… Wait, I remember now.’
A strange sense of familiarity and déjà vu struck Yue Shu. ‘Isn’t this the text-based game that little girl in the next bed recommended?’
…The name was something like Samsara Simulator?
Regrettably, he had never played it. He had only opened it because he couldn’t refuse her enthusiasm and had briefly skimmed the introduction.
He knew it was a text-based game about reincarnating into another world. The game character would encounter different random events through continuous reincarnations, starting different lives and reaching different endings.
The character panel was nearly identical to the light screen before him.
Referring to that game’s settings, [Lifespan] was measured in years; anything less than a year was still displayed as one.
For him, who was barely nine months old, this clear “1” for lifespan meant his time was almost up. He wouldn’t live past one year.
…No, looking at the current situation, it was hard to say if he would even live until tomorrow. Death was closing in rapidly.
At this thought, Yue Shu—the transmigrator who had just regained his memories—felt an instinctive sense of surreal displacement.
…Is this a dream? Or is it real?
Is the reincarnation real, or is this a hallucination before death?
He couldn’t help but look up. The moonlight fell, vaguely resembling the eerie white lights of the operating room.
His body, scorched by the fire of hunger, told him everything was real. He truly felt that he was alive.
In the next moment, much of the joy of being reborn was dispelled by the chilling approach of death, leaving him unsure whether to be happy or grieved.
After staring at the floating screen for a long while, Yue Shu’s turbulent thoughts gradually calmed. With a thought, the screen vanished.
This screen seemed miraculous, but after some exploration, he found it had no special powers—at least none that could help his current predicament.
He didn’t have much time left… Since this accidentally obtained life was about to reach its end again, he might as well cherish the time he had. Wasn’t it a stroke of luck to have another chance to see the world?
The infant in the swaddle quietly gazed at the night sky. When he had entered the operating room, he thought he would never see such a sight again.
It was mid-month, and the full moon was like the clear, transparent eye of a deity, looking down at the calamity, pain, and despair burning across the human realm. All living beings were turned into kindling in these flames.
Moonlight fell on the infant’s dirty little face. He kept his eyes open in the night woven of moonlight, breathing the fresh air and feeling the vivid world. He watched until the dawn light broke through the layers of clouds and reflected in his clear pupils.
…It feels so good to be alive.
…Even if the countdown to death has begun.
In the light of dawn, a pair of withered but warm palms picked him up. Damp droplets fell onto his face.
“My son, it’s all the fault of your heartless mother…” He heard the woman’s hoarse, sobbing voice. “Blame this godforsaken world! Blame the Heavens for putting you in my womb! If I knew you’d suffer like this, why come to this world at all!”
“…”
The infant’s lips moved soundlessly.
He wanted to say, it’s not your fault.
To him, being born into the world was already a great fortune. To have a second life was a luck worth being grateful for.
…Since this skin and bone were given by his parents in this life, what would be the harm in giving it back if it could help them live one more day?
At the moment the swaddle was handed over, a pure, innocent smile reflected in the mother’s eyes. The infant seemed unaware of his impending death, smiling with such naive innocence.
The woman’s heart was suddenly torn in two.
“No—!”
She let out a wretched wail.
Like a dying mother wolf watching its cub being snatched away, she finally couldn’t help but pounce forward.
“No—!”
It wasn’t until she knocked the trader to the ground and snatched back the swaddle, clutching it tightly to her chest, that the suddenly crazed woman seemed to snap back to her senses. She held him like a lost treasure regained. “I won’t trade! I won’t trade! My son…”
“Hey!”
The trader, feeling cheated, scrambled up from the ground. Just as he was about to lash out, the father regained his senses and stepped in to block him. “I’m sorry, we’re not trading. We’re not trading anymore…”
The man looked at the woman who was clutching the swaddle as if she would fight anyone who touched it, and then at the man standing guard before his wife and child with a wary expression…
In the end, the trader didn’t want to waste his limited strength. He cursed and left in frustration.
Only the couple was left, collapsing to the ground in relief.
The woman, who had squeezed out her last bit of strength, still refused to let go of the child. Beside her, the man lay dazed on the ground for a long time, cursing the heavens with a string of crude profanities.
By the end, all he had left was a miserable smile.
“…Fine. The three of us together. At worst, we’ll stay together in the afterlife. In this godforsaken world, dying early just means an earlier reincarnation!”
Yue Shu wanted to do something, but he was powerless. His young, weak body wasn’t enough to sustain deep thought.
With just a little more thinking, his mind grew heavy.
Death was gradually closing in.
Silence spread through the crowd unconsciously.
More and more sounds of breathing turned into dead silence.
In the end, they could not survive the new day.
In a corner.
The family of three, drained of strength, huddled together. Their shared body heat seemed to flare up from the friction. This faint flame of life flickered for an instant before being extinguished like a candle in the wind.
Hunger, illness, and death took them away.
Yet the sun rose as usual.
Crackle…
A small fire lit up the broken temple.
Yue Shu opened his eyes.
The burning fire reflected in his pupils. In the center of the light was a strange figure. His Taoist robe was tattered, his hair bun was messy, and his beautiful peach blossom eyes possessed a natural, roguish charm.
Behind the Taoist was a statue of the Dragon King with a missing corner. There were cracks beneath each of the statue’s eyes, making it look as though it were weeping for the common people.
However, Yue Shu could tell this was man-made.
When a clay and wood puppet could no longer fulfill humanity’s wish for survival, it was no longer a noble deity but merely a punching bag for the refugees.
‘This is the Dragon King Temple in the village.’
‘…I’m still alive?’
Yue Shu realized belatedly.
He felt a warm current moving in his previously empty stomach; clearly, he had been fed some liquid food while he was unconscious.
He stuck out his tongue and could still lick the residue of soup from the corner of his mouth. It had no flavor—likely rice water or some kind of flour paste.
The person who fed him seemed to have some knowledge of raising a child, but not much.
“Ah, little guy, you’re awake?”
The Taoist under the statue noticed the movement from the prayer mat nearby. He reached out and picked up the small swaddle. His pleasantly surprised face grew larger in the infant’s curiously wide eyes.
The Taoist carefully checked the infant’s body. Finding that although he was weak, there was no immediate danger to his life, he breathed a complete sigh of relief.
When he had passed by, the village was already devoid of life. He had intended to bury the deceased out of compassion and to prevent plague, but he had unexpectedly found an infant with a breath of life remaining.
He was the sole survivor in the pile of corpses.
When the Taoist found him, there seemed to be an incredibly tough will within this tiny frame, instinctively governing his struggle on the line between life and death. Such tenacious vitality was staggering.
“…So I say, you’re truly lucky. If I had come a step later, little guy, you’d be gone.”
The young Taoist, who looked like a distinguished master from his appearance alone, shattered that impression the moment he spoke. He kept muttering to the infant in his arms, which quickly allowed Yue Shu to understand the situation.
Only I survived?
The final images of his parents in this life surfaced in his mind. He could still feel the warmth of being held tightly in their arms.
…Was our fate together destined to be so short?
Even though he was used to seeing birth, aging, illness, and death, he still couldn’t view it as ordinary. This was likely the helplessness of being a mortal. Yue Shu sighed inwardly.
At that moment, the strange light screen popped up again.
[True Name: Yue Shu]
[Soul Energy: 7]
[Lifespan: 1]
[Note: Death is still lurking in the shadows, so don’t be happy too soon. Do you see this sucker? Grab him and don’t let go. This is your only way to live.]
Yue Shu: “…”
Calling him a sucker… where are your manners?
He had noticed it before but hadn’t had time to think: in the Samsara Simulator he saw in his previous life, the game panel was similar to this light screen, but it didn’t seem to have such personalized “Notes”?
…It couldn’t be that some bored deity created a cheat based on a game, secretly added a ton of personal touches, and then randomly dropped it, hitting a lucky guy like him, right?
Well, it seemed that wasn’t entirely impossible…
Yue Shu was thoughtful.
His lifespan was still 1, meaning he hadn’t escaped the crisis of death; he had only escaped one disaster temporarily. Not having time to think too much, Yue Shu decided to follow the cheat’s guidance.
The infant in the swaddle reached out his two small hands. His soft, weak fingers lightly grabbed the slightly open lapel of the Taoist’s outer robe. Well, how could this not be considered grabbing the sucker?
The light screen before him didn’t change, and the note section didn’t update in real-time to mock his ridiculous action.
‘System? Panel? Spirit?’
He called out several times in his mind, but there was no response.
Yue Shu’s inner curiosity surged.
He was about to withdraw his hands when they were gently caught by a large hand. The owner of the hand shook them happily twice.
“Does the little guy like me that much?”
The “sucker,” who had completely misunderstood, smiled beautifully. He held up the infant’s hands and announced loudly, “Excellent, excellent! You and I share a destiny. From now on, you are the first disciple of this Temple Head!”