Chapter One: Unfathomable

A ray of sunlight filtered through the dense foliage and spilled across his face. He opened his eyes just a sliver and was greeted by a world of shimmering leaves, all painted with sunlight’s brilliance—a world of green, dazzling and beautiful. His whole body ached with a dull soreness, his mind was hazy, as if something had happened. He closed his eyes again, searching his memory, and only then let out a slight breath.

He wasn’t beaten to death, after all.

Propping himself up with both hands, he struggled to sit up. Lowering his gaze to the different shapes of shoe prints stamped all over his clothes, he let out a self-mocking laugh.

Chen Hongxu—just an ordinary person, only eighteen years old, a junior at an average high school in HJ City, with middling grades. With someone as unremarkable as he, it was only natural to drift quietly through class, perhaps lucky enough to make one or two close friends, then graduate without fanfare. Years later, should they meet by chance, they’d point at each other’s noses and, with forced smiles, lampoon the embarrassing episodes of their high school days.

That was the life goal Chen Hongxu had set for himself, the path he believed he ought to follow—never reaching too high, never aiming too far, just living with honesty and stability, getting by as long as he could, hoping for a peaceful, uneventful life, with no wish for another in the next world.

But a sudden event threw all of Chen Hongxu’s plans into disarray.

It happened one noon after school, when Chen Hongxu was getting lunch at the school cafeteria. As he turned to leave with his tray, someone behind him—whether by accident or design—gave him a hard shove.

Off balance, he not only spilled the entire tray of food, but in his startled panic, his hands flailed out, grabbing desperately for support to keep from falling. In that wild grasp, his hand landed squarely on the bottom of a girl standing just ahead of him.

Already splashed with food down her back, the girl turned in confusion—only to find a not-so-large hand planted right on her rear, and, by the force of inertia, tugging her trousers downward.

The girl was quick-witted. As the incident occurred, she let out a scream and clung to her waistband, denying the sudden, inexplicable pervert any satisfaction.

Her shriek drew the attention of the entire cafeteria. Ordinarily, this might have been a minor incident—a simple apology and replacing her clothes would have sufficed. But, as fate would have it, the girl’s name was Xiao Fei.

Xiao Fei was the universally acknowledged beauty of Chen Hongxu’s school—renowned not only for her looks, but for her academic excellence as well. At that age, anyone who could win the favor of such a talented flower would be the envy of all, even without romance—just being seen with her would be a source of pride.

Seeing Xiao Fei’s face, flushed with anger yet feigning wounded innocence, Chen Hongxu’s heart sank.

Sure enough, the righteous “good Samaritans” of the cafeteria, after hearing only Xiao Fei’s side of the story, immediately seized the apologetic, forced-smile-wearing Chen Hongxu and dragged him away.

Perhaps the nightmare began that very day.

From that moment, Chen Hongxu became a notorious villain. Every boy in school who fancied himself a contender for Xiao Fei’s affections seized any excuse to make trouble for him, all to win a smile from their beloved.

It started with verbal abuse, but soon escalated to outright violence.

Chen Hongxu didn’t give up without a fight. After the fourth time he was “taught a lesson” by a group of classmates, he quietly found Xiao Fei, who was on the phone, and pleaded with her from the bottom of his heart for forgiveness.

But Xiao Fei merely batted her eyes and replied with a shrill, warbling “Pervert…”

The outcome was predictable: classmates naturally believed the tearful Xiao Fei, and teachers judged the matter through the lens of academic performance, deciding right and wrong, good and evil, accordingly.

Shunned by all, Chen Hongxu became like a rat scurrying across the street—any student in a bad mood could take a swing at him. He thought about transferring, but after inquiring at many schools, found none willing to accept him.

So he began to give up on himself. His grades, once average, plummeted to the very bottom of the class, and the teachers looked at him with eyes that seemed to say, “So it was true after all,” perhaps now suspecting his previous grades had been copied.

…

“Only a little more than a year left—just endure it and you’ll graduate…”

Brushing away the shoe prints on his clothes, Chen Hongxu leaned against a tree and slowly got to his feet, making his way toward where he lived.

His house wasn’t far from the back hill of the school—about a ten-minute walk. He didn’t call it “home,” for he lived there alone.

Five years ago, his parents died in a strange car accident, and since then, Chen Hongxu had been on his own.

He was still young then, and watched as relatives argued over his house and belongings at the funeral, red-faced and clownish.

During his parents’ funeral, those same relatives, after seizing the inheritance, squeezed out crocodile tears. Chen Hongxu did not cry. He didn’t know why he should—if tears could solve anything, he would have learned to cry in earnest, not with a smile on his face.

The house he now lived in had been placed under his name long before. After refusing his so-called guardians’ “kind” invitations to move elsewhere and sell the house, his relatives seemed to have decided to cut ties forever.

He hadn’t seen any of them for almost five years now.

With heavy steps, Chen Hongxu walked on.

Ten minutes later—

“Wait, what’s going on?” Staring at the same tree he’d just leaned against, Chen Hongxu was baffled. Somehow, after walking for a while, he’d ended up right back where he started.

As he stood there, lost in thought, a hand as withered as a dead branch settled on his shoulder.

“Lost, young man?” The hoarse voice of an old man sounded behind him.

A shiver ran through Chen Hongxu; startled like a rabbit, he leapt forward, spun around, and stared at the old man who had appeared out of nowhere. His first thought was that he’d seen a ghost.

After being beaten so often, he’d grown especially sensitive to every rustle in his surroundings. For someone to appear so silently behind him—what else could it be but a ghost? And the old man’s appearance only added to the impression: a tattered, ancient one-piece robe of uncertain era, a gaunt, fleshless frame—he looked every bit like a centuries-old corpse, miraculously preserved.

The old man, for his part, was unaware of Chen Hongxu’s thoughts. Nor did he need to know. Seeing Chen Hongxu unresponsive, he smiled and opened his mouth to ask again.

“Ghost!” With a glance at the old man’s nearly peeling face and forced, sinister grin, Chen Hongxu gave him no chance to speak. He shouted and turned to run for his life.

“Ghost?” The old man looked around in confusion, then, seeming to understand, muttered to himself, “Interesting.”

After running until he was utterly spent, Chen Hongxu finally collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. He thought to himself, If I must die, let it be at the hands of a ghost, not from exhaustion.

A moment passed—

Once his breath returned, Chen Hongxu stood up, glanced around, and wailed, “Damn it, not again—it brought me right back here!”

Indeed, after all his frantic running, he had wound up in the exact same place. But this time, the ghostly old man was gone, and in his place stood a little girl, delicate as porcelain.

The girl looked no more than five or six years old, with two impossibly adorable pigtails sticking up, dressed in a bright red jacket. Noticing Chen Hongxu’s gaze, she blinked her large eyes, pressed her left index finger to her lips, and said in a childish voice, “Big brother, are you lost?”

“Cut it out…” Chen Hongxu scowled and shouted, “Don’t think I won’t recognize you just because you changed your disguise!”

Facing the dainty little girl, Chen Hongxu seemed to find his courage again; had the old man reappeared, he’d probably have used his last bit of strength to run once more.

The little girl didn’t seem to notice his mood. In the blink of an eye, she appeared at his feet, wrapped her arms around his leg, and buzzed, “Hug me, I want a hug…”

Maybe it was because she was just too cute, or maybe because she didn’t seem intent on harming him—either way, Chen Hongxu gave a helpless, bitter smile, bent down, picked her up, and asked warily, “What are you?”

“A person,” the girl answered readily.

But as she spoke, a streak of bright red stuck to her perfectly shaped teeth, catching Chen Hongxu’s eye.

Did she just eat something? The thought sent a shudder through him.

“Big brother, I have to go…” After a long silence, seeing Chen Hongxu’s legs trembling again from exhaustion, the little girl pinched his cheek before he set her carefully on the ground. Perhaps he really was too shaken, for as he did so, he failed to notice her slip something into his mouth.

Watching the little girl skip away into the grove, Chen Hongxu managed a bitter smile. “Am I so unlucky even ghosts don’t want me?”

Just as he watched her go, the little girl perched on a branch of a nearby tree, quietly gazing after Chen Hongxu’s disappearing figure, watching until he vanished from sight.

“A world of identical prodigies, all with exceptional talent—I refuse to be one of them. Why must there be so many shackles, so many burdens…” she thought to herself. But her lips, pressed tightly together, could no longer hold back the torrent of blood welling up from the depths of her throat.

“My world is ending…”

The blood sprayed from her mouth, blooming desolately on the sun-dappled branches before dissipating with the wind, as if it had never existed at all.