Chapter 1 Transmigration and Sudden Death
Wu Muming was awakened by the cold.
One moment he was amidst the flames of the laboratory explosion, the next he was frozen awake.
Like every protagonist in a web novel, he woke up in an orphanage.
But his situation was worse.
He woke up in the orphanage's storeroom.
Besides the muddy floor and dust in the air, only a musty wooden bucket and a mop covered in black fungus kept him company.
Wu Muming stiffly tried to move his fingers, feeling a pain as if he'd been ground into a meat grinder, shooting from the deepest part of his soul throughout his body. The sensation made him shudder, and a large amount of musty, dusty air rushed into his lungs. Wu Muming coughed and greedily inhaled the air, feeling his body slowly warming up.
Accompanying his rapid breathing and violent coughing were countless fragmented memories flooding his brain.
Wu Muming was originally a promising young man from the 21st century, who unfortunately witnessed the explosion in the laboratory upstairs while working on an experiment late into the night.
He didn't die in the explosion, but it collapsed the building, sending a one-ton cryogenic freezer crashing down.
Wu Muming died instantly.
Without a trace of pain.
He died peacefully.
Then he woke up in this storage room.
Interestingly, this body was also named Wu Muming, with the English name Tierra Wu. Like him, she was born on June 28, 1980, and had the same parents and appearance.
The only difference was that this Wu Muming's parents immigrated to Britain during the 1980s wave of immigration, harboring unrealistic dreams of a foreign land.
A week after their plane landed, they were shot dead in a dark alley next to the theater.
Tragic, truly tragic.
This Tierra was also sent directly to an orphanage and died an hour earlier from hypothermia.
Discrimination against Chinese people was still quite severe in the 1980s.
This discrimination manifested in all aspects of life: schools, workplaces, government offices, restaurants, and of course, orphanages were no exception.
And sometimes, this kind of discrimination among children is even worse, more blatant.
Among a group of blond, blue-eyed orphans, you're the only one with black hair and black eyes—who else would they bully if not you?
From the smallest things at the beginning—having your food and toys stolen—to being picked on, pushed, and beaten, and now being pranked by having cold water poured on you and locked in the storage room.
Tiera, whose health was already poor, died of hypothermia at night.
After lying on the ground for a while, Tiera slowly sat up, gently placing her right hand on her left wrist, silently counting to sixty.
"My heartbeat is fine."
In her previous life, Tiera majored in biology and medicine in university. Although not a pure medical student, she still knew some basic medical procedures.
"Hmm?" After taking his pulse, Tiera noticed a ring on his left ring finger that seemed completely out of place with his current status. "This is..."
The storeroom had no windows, the door was tightly shut, and it was already dark (lights out). Tiera had to feel around with his right hand.
The ring felt like it was carved from some kind of bone.
It was a size larger than his ring finger, with an uneven surface, seemingly covered with densely packed patterns.
In the darkness, other senses are amplified.
Tierra touched the patterns back and forth a couple of times before he could barely make out the designs, which he would never normally notice. They seemed to be extremely distorted English words.
"th...mer...el...eas...gol...la...ei...lin..."
Tierra tried to pronounce the words based on the spacing between the patterns and the English pronunciation.
As soon as the last syllable came out, Tierra, who was in the storage room, suddenly disappeared, as if erased by an eraser.
The next moment, Tierra's eyes lit up, and he appeared in a dimly lit library.
"Ugh..."
Although Tierra's stomach was empty, he couldn't help but dry heave. He felt as nauseous as if he had just ridden a roller coaster for five hours.
Tierra lay weakly on the ground like a dead dog. After the feeling subsided a little, he rolled over and lay face up on the ground.
What Tierra saw was a very wide ceiling far away from him. Below the ceiling were neatly constructed stone walls that gradually narrowed, and even at the bottom floor where Tierra was, it was nearly 500 square meters in size. It was an inverted pyramid-shaped building, roughly estimated to have at least a thousand floors, each about half a person's height, and each floor was openwork. Inside, it was haphazardly crammed with all sorts of books and scrolls.
After regaining some strength, Tiera sat up and noticed a very simple wooden table beside him, piled high with scrolls of parchment and a lamp made of strange stones.
Tiera slowly crawled to the table and plopped down on the wooden chair in front of it.
The parchment on the table was piled haphazardly, with several pieces even torn and crumpled into balls.
Tiera randomly picked up a piece of parchment; it was covered with dense, twisted writing, somewhat like English, but not quite. After staring at it for a while, Tiera felt dizzy.
However, when his fingers touched the writing, a chilling information flooded his brain.
"…In all the universes, among all living beings, apart from those gods and their offspring born of the Supreme Mother Goddess, no other being can compare…"
Tiera, startled, quickly withdrew his hand.
Then he reached for another parchment scroll.
"…Manli fruit struck down by a thunderstorm, peeled, dried, crushed, two spoonfuls…"
Tiera stared at the distorted characters.
He was certain he didn't recognize them, but as his fingers touched them, the knowledge they represented automatically flooded his mind.
After looking at several parchments, a bad feeling crept into Tiera's heart, and he walked grimly toward the nearest cave.
Tiera's hand carefully traced the spines of the books, one after another, titles filled with blasphemy and evil intent flowing into his mind.
The largest and thickest one… *The Necronomicon*;
the thinner one, like a regular textbook… *The Nameless Priestly Book*
; tall and thin, bound in an unknown hard cover… *The R'lyeh Text*;
a thin book, like an ancient Chinese book, bound with cotton thread… *The Seven Chapters of the Mysterious Lord*…
*Whoosh!* The ancient book flew off the shelf and landed in front of Tiera. The pages opened automatically without wind, unfolding before him.
At this moment, Tiera had never felt that Chinese characters could be so terrifying and disgusting.
He recognized every single character. The instant his gaze met those two pages of Chinese characters, the hairs on Tiera's body stood on end, as if some incomprehensible knowledge had been forcibly crammed into his soul. Chaotic babbling screams and incomprehensible images filled his mind.
Goosebumps rose all over his body, growing larger and larger, crowding together to form translucent, viscous pustules.
(End of Chapter)