The continuous drizzle lingered on and on, drenching the steel-and-concrete city into a cold, damp chill. The dense forest of high-rise buildings stood faintly visible in the rain and mist, while among them, the tallest “White Corporation Joint Office Building” stood like a blade piercing the sky. The 40th floor at its peak appeared even more solitary under the gray, overcast heavens.
Suddenly, a black figure plummeted straight down from the edge of the rooftop —— that silhouette cut through the rain curtain in a sharp arc, carrying a howling wind as it fell, and in an instant smashed into the ground.
“BOOM——!”
A thunderous impact shook the air, as if even the earth itself trembled. The plaza pool beside the building exploded instantly, water mixed with debris shooting into the air before crashing back down, splashing up mist over half a person’s height. The hard ground was smashed into a grotesque crater, cracks spreading like a spiderweb, dust mingling with rainwater and filling the air into a chaotic fog.
The people originally taking shelter under the arcade of the plaza were so frightened by this sudden explosion that they panicked. Screams, cries, and chaotic footsteps intertwined as people scattered like startled birds and beasts. Some even fell on the slippery ground, scrambling up again just to escape the horrifying scene.
Several hunters dressed in black combat uniforms were patrolling nearby. Upon hearing the sound, they immediately accelerated, running over through the puddles. When they rushed into the rain mist and saw what was inside the crater, every one of them turned deathly pale in an instant, pupils contracting, even their breathing nearly stopping.
At the bottom of the crater, a woman lay in an extremely twisted posture. Her limbs were clearly shattered and crushed, her body bent unnaturally. Dark clothing was soaked through with blood, sticking to broken flesh. Especially striking was a gaping wound on her chest and back, still continuously spilling warm blood, dripping along the torn hem and spreading into large patches of dark red in the water.
The woman’s eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Her vision, like ink dissolving into water, gradually blurred. The surrounding noise—the shouting, the rain dripping sound, the hunters’ exclamations—all slowly faded away. Even the gray sky above finally closed along with her dissolving consciousness, sinking into endless darkness.
[Great Brahma Nation, Heaven Rift Year 91, late summer, first day of the lunar month, You hour.]
The dusk spread across the sky like ink, and the foothills of White Mist Mountain were immersed in dense rain threads. Vegetation was wrapped in mountain mist, damp and heavy. Nourished by the anomalous energy released from the White Mist rift back then, all plants here grew unusually robust —— wild grass as tall as a person swayed in the wind, ancient trees with twisted branches flourished with dense foliage, their shadows blocking the sky and refusing even a trace of twilight to enter.
At the foot of the mountain, in a shadowed hollow, a boy lay in the mud.
His coarse cloth clothes were soaked with dark red blood, sticking to his thin body. Blood beads mixed with rainwater slowly seeped into the soil, spreading a small dark stain around him. His face was as pale as paper, his eyes tightly closed, and his chest rose and fell weakly, almost in sync with breathing. If not for that faint trace of life, anyone would have thought this was already a cold corpse.
“Gasp—— you motherfucker! Damn it!”
A sudden sharp gasp broke the silence of the forest. The boy suddenly opened his eyes. His unfocused pupils struggled to focus in the dim light. The tearing pain in his chest made him instinctively curl up. When his fingers brushed the wound, they touched sticky blood and torn flesh.
“Pain… fuck!”
He gritted his teeth and tried to push himself up, but the wound on his forehead suddenly split open. Warm blood flowed down his brow and blurred his vision. The world instantly became distorted and hazy. A wave of weakness swept over his entire body, and the arm he just lifted went limp again, crashing back into the mud.
“Feels like my whole body is falling apart… where is this? I… damn… my head hurts.”
Broken fragments of memory collided and pieced together in his mind. He remembered clearly that he had been smoking on the 40th floor rooftop of his company, the night wind blowing his shirt. Suddenly, a sharp pain came from behind him —— he had been stabbed in the back by something. Then came the sensation of weightlessness, his body tilting forward uncontrollably, and he fell from the towering building.
“You damn bastard… dared to backstab me!” the boy cursed.
His voice was hoarse, like it had been ground by sandpaper. “Trying to kill me and you pick such a cheap trick? This kind of injury, for an A-rank hunter like me, heals in thirty minutes… when I recover, I’ll tear that bastard apart! I, Li Xuan, am not someone easy to mess with!”
Fueled by anger, he tried to stand again. This time, he used the rough mountain wall beside him to steady himself. His neck made a faint “click” sound when he turned. He looked around.
What entered his vision were towering ancient trees and waist-high grass. The damp air carried the smell of soil, the fragrance of vegetation, and… the thick scent of his own blood.
This was not any place he recognized.
He looked down at his clothes, and his pupils suddenly contracted —— it was a set of gray coarse ancient garments, rough stitching, fabric scraping against his skin, completely different from the tailored shirt he had worn before falling.
While he was still stunned, several sharp bird calls came from above. He looked up and saw three large birds circling low in the sky, their sharp eyes locked onto him. They were clearly attracted by the smell of blood, waiting for their prey to lose resistance completely before swooping down.
The rain gradually stopped, and a cold mountain wind blew past, making him shiver. The dizziness from blood loss still lingered, but his mind had become much clearer.
He instinctively reached for his wrist —— “no watch.” Then his pocket —— empty. Phone, keys, everything familiar was gone.
His fingers slid down along his collar, and a strange sense of unease gradually rose in his heart.
This body… was too thin.
No, not just thin.
His fingers paused at his chest. The touch was flat, astonishingly so, without any familiar softness. Li Xuan’s heart sank sharply. His entire body tensed, even his breathing stopping for half a second. He trembled as he looked down. His vision passed through the bloodstained collar, landing on his body, then slowly reached down, shaking, pulling apart the lower garment.
“Fuck!”
A short cry was stuck in his throat. His eyes widened in disbelief. His hands immediately covered his face, fingertips cold.
“I… I became a man?”
The absurd thought exploded in his mind like thunder. He, Li Xuan, had lived twenty-eight years as a woman, a woman with a C-cup body who liked reading fantasy novels. No matter how much she fantasized, she never expected this kind of plot —— female lead turning into male lead? What kind of ridiculous development was this?
To confirm it was not a dying hallucination, he gritted his teeth and reached down again. His fingers touched something hard and hot. He instinctively squeezed.
“Ah! Pain——! Pain!”
A clear sensation of pain came through, making him gasp sharply.
It was real.
Not an illusion. Not a dream. She had truly become him, a heavily injured, ragged, unknown boy trapped in a wilderness.
Li Xuan pressed his throbbing temples, remained silent for a full half minute, then suddenly laughed out loud. The laughter grew louder and louder until it echoed freely through the empty forest:
“Ha… hahaha! Interesting! I actually became a man! This plot is more exciting than anything I’ve ever read!”
“Rebirth? Transmigration? Soul swap? Or… another world?”
Things that only existed in books had actually happened to him. He had imagined such encounters countless times, but when fantasy became reality, the sense of unreality still made his heart race wildly.
“Calm down. Calm down.” He took a deep breath.
Forcing down his emotions, he pressed a hand against his beating heart. “Not the time to be excited. I need to figure out the situation first.”
He closed his eyes and cleared his dry throat, cautiously calling out to the sky: “System? System, come out?”
Only the sound of wind rustling through leaves answered him. Silence.
“Alright, seems like it’s not a cheat-system protagonist story.” He sighed, somewhat disappointed.
“It would’ve been nice to have a system or interface at least… at least tell me who this body belonged to, what era this is, and where this place is…”
He looked down at his wounded and miserable body, brows slightly furrowed.
“Not even an identity token… and already looking like I’m about to be eaten by wild beasts. This start is a bit bad.”
“Still, I am an A-rank healer from the number-one guild in the country, and the guild master’s personal S-rank Guide…”
He rubbed his aching forehead. “And now I’ve turned into a weak boy who can’t even defend himself…”
Even so, instincts honed from years of field missions were already engraved into his bones. Li Xuan steadied himself, following the faint sound of flowing water to determine direction, slowly moving through waist-high grass.
The coarse cloth kept snagging on branches, tearing further, and scratches appeared on his skin, but he didn’t care. Compared to rainforests, snowfields, and life-and-death missions, this was nothing.
Soon, a clear stream appeared.
“Finally can wash my face…”
He quickly approached, scooped water, and washed his face repeatedly. The cold water made him shiver but cleared his mind. He crouched and looked into the water.
“Whoa——”
The moment he saw the reflection, he couldn’t help but exclaim.
In the water, a boy reflected back.
His face was pale, almost translucent under the moonlight. Silver-white layered hair draped wetly over his neck and forehead like scattered snow, glistening with water.
A dried blood scab sat at his temple, with traces of mud still unwashed. A faint cut lay on his left cheek, giving a broken, fragile beauty.
He looked like someone who had crawled out of hell, soaked in blood and smoke, yet his bone structure carried a breathtaking beauty, like a lone crane reborn from slaughter.
“So white… silver hair… is it natural? Or premature graying? Did I really mess this body up that badly?”
He traced the water surface with his finger.
“Probably got chased here after being hunted.”
He tore part of his clothing, dipped it in water, and carefully cleaned his body.
As the blood washed away, the body became clearer —— lean but not weak, shoulders and back smooth, arms and waist with thin but firm muscle.
After finishing, he looked again.
The boy was extremely handsome: sharp brows, long narrow eyes, deep emerald-green pupils, slightly misty due to blood loss. Straight nose, defined lips, pale color. Yet between his brows lingered a faint timid and melancholic aura.
“Not bad face,” he smiled at the reflection.
The reflection smiled back.
He placed a hand on his chest wound and activated a weak healing energy —— his A-rank recovery ability.
The energy slowly entered the wound, and pain began to fade as flesh started to close at a barely visible speed.
“My healing ability is still here, but weaker.”
Li Xuan’s eyes showed concern, then familiar strength surged through him —— enhanced senses, environmental judgment, faint mental perception.
“Not completely gone… at least both abilities are still here, just weakened.”
“Interesting.”
He laughed softly, eyes bright with excitement like a child discovering a new toy.
“I had no attachments in my previous life anyway…”
He looked up at the moon.
“Even if I died, at most a few people would mourn me. A memorial plaque, a few words of honor… that’s probably it.”
The wind passed through the forest.
“Since I’ve been given another chance… and even switched to a male body…”
He smiled wider.
“Then let’s treat it like a real-life fantasy game. I’m going to enjoy this other world properly.”
He jumped into the stream and washed himself fully.
After drying his clothes, he checked his surroundings again with mental perception —— no large beasts within a hundred meters. Safe for now.
Half an hour later, he put his clothes back on.
He looked into the water one last time. The boy’s eyes were now calm and sharp, replacing the original timidness with the cold clarity of an S-rank Guide.
“Let’s go.”
He turned and walked toward the downstream direction of the stream.
That was where terrain lowered and where human settlement was more likely.
All answers about this world… were likely ahead.