Chen Yu's eyes snapped open to unfamiliar darkness.
Rough wood stretched above him, old and cracked, with gaps between the planks letting morning light filter through in thin streams. Dust hung in the air, and outside birds he'd never heard before sang their morning songs. He blinked several times, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
The last thing he remembered was a truck horn blaring, the glow of his phone screen with the latest chapter of "Immortal Emperor's Ascension" still open, and that sickening moment when he realized he'd walked into the crosswalk without looking up. There should've been pain, then darkness, maybe nothing at all.
This wasn't nothing. A cramped wooden shack reeking of dirt and old straw, with walls so thin he could hear every rustle of leaves outside.
Chen Yu tried sitting up and his arms didn't look right.
Too thin, lacking the muscle mass he'd built over years, though there were calluses on his palms he didn't recognize. Panic seized his chest as he scrambled to his feet and the world tilted sideways. He grabbed the wall to steady himself. The shack held almost nothing, a sleeping mat worn thin, a wooden table with one chair, and a clay pot in the corner that somehow he knew held water.
A piece of polished bronze hung on the wall, the only reflective surface in this place. Chen Yu stumbled toward it on shaky legs.
The face in the bronze wasn't his.
Some kid stared back at him, maybe sixteen years old with wide startled eyes, sharper cheekbones, and a stronger jaw than he remembered having. Black hair fell past his shoulders in an unkempt tangle that looked like nobody'd combed it in weeks.
"What the hell is happening to me?"
The voice that came out cracked and pitched wrong, not his voice at all.
Something moved in his head, started small like water seeping through cracks, then became a flood. Memories that weren't his poured into his mind and he gasped, his hands shooting out to grip the table's edge as images and sensations crashed into him. It felt like someone was cramming his skull full of information that didn't belong there.
The body's original owner had been called Chen Yu too.
This Chen Yu had lived here with his parents until last year when everything went wrong. His mother and father were hunters, good ones, skilled enough to brave the dangerous forests around their isolated home in search of game and valuable herbs. They'd sell what they found in the nearby town and it earned them just enough copper coins to scrape by, enough to eat and survive the changing seasons.
The forest didn't forgive mistakes.
One morning his parents left for a hunt and they never came back. Young Chen Yu searched for days, calling their names until his throat was raw and his voice died, but he found nothing. At sixteen, without the strength of a grown man, he'd had no choice but to accept it and survive alone. The walks to town started after that, two hours each way, several times a week, taking any work offered. Hauling buckets of water for households, sweeping floors in shops and inns, loading merchant wagons with whatever goods needed moving.
Backbreaking work and the pay was terrible.
Just a few copper coins each time that he spent carefully on rice, salt, and whatever basics would get him through another week.
The memories kept coming and they brought with them the crushing loneliness and quiet desperation of the past year.
Just last night, as the original Chen Yu had been walking back from town along the narrow forest path, exhausted after a particularly long day at the docks, he'd heard something unusual echoing through the trees. The distinct clash of metal on metal, strange whooshing sounds like something sharp cutting through wind, and guttural cries that didn't sound human at all. He'd frozen completely on the path with every instinct screaming at him to run.
He didn't run though. Curiosity held him there, and maybe hope too, the stupid kind, that whatever was happening might mean treasure or something valuable.
The sounds went on for what felt like forever, getting louder and more violent before they suddenly cut off into a silence that felt worse than all the noise. Chen Yu waited a full hour, pressed against a tree trunk and barely breathing, before he finally convinced himself it was over. He crept toward where the sounds had been, moving carefully because he knew the forest was deadly at night when predators came out to hunt, staying close to the main path.
What he found in a small clearing bathed in pale moonlight was a corpse.
A man lay sprawled on the ground wearing robes of fine material that looked far too expensive for anyone from these parts, his face pale and his eyes staring up at nothing. Chen Yu approached with his heart pounding so hard he thought it might break through his ribs, checking for breathing but finding nothing, no pulse at his neck and the skin already cold to the touch.
Something hung from the man's belt, a small leather pouch half-hidden in the robe's folds.
Chen Yu hesitated but not for long, his hands shaking as he took it, his fingers fumbling with the worn strap.
As he turned to leave with his questionable find clutched tight, something moved in the bushes and pain exploded in his ankle before he could react. Fangs buried deep in his flesh and he caught only a glimpse, a serpent with dark sleek scales and eyes glowing with something wrong, something malevolent, before his body took over on pure survival instinct.
He ran, crashing through the underbrush without caring about the noise or the branches whipping his face. The venom was already working and he could feel his leg going heavy and numb, his vision blurring at the edges.
Adrenaline pushed him forward and somehow he made it back to his shack.
The moment he stumbled through the doorway into familiar space, his strength gave out completely. The venom had spread through his bloodstream and he collapsed heavily in the center of the small room, the rough floorboards scraping his cheek as he went down, his consciousness slipping away as his body convulsed from the poison burning through his veins.
That should've been the end of the original Chen Yu's short, difficult life.
And yet the present Chen Yu stood here now in the shack, absorbing these foreign memories and realizing the body had survived the night somehow. Maybe the act of transmigration itself had purged the poison from his system or maybe it was something else entirely. His ankle still bore the clear marks of the bite, two puncture wounds already scabbed over with dried blood crusted around them, but there was no lingering pain, no burning sensation, no trace of venom he could feel.
Chen Yu took a long, deep breath.
The world shifted around him then, everything shimmering and fading at the edges as though someone had pulled aside an invisible curtain. He felt a strange pulling sensation centered right behind his navel, insistent and growing stronger, and then suddenly his perspective lurched in a way that made no sense.
He was looking down at his shack from high above, seeing clearly through the walls and roof as though they were made of transparent glass.
His consciousness had separated from his physical body somehow, giving him what could only be described as a god's-eye view. The sensation disoriented him deeply but thrilled him too, and as his awareness continued to expand outward in ripples, he sensed something else calling to him, a space that existed within him or maybe beyond him, accessible only to his consciousness.
Chen Yu's awareness rushed eagerly toward this mysterious space and it felt natural doing it, like water flowing downhill.
He found himself standing in a small void that was completely empty in every direction, or maybe he was floating, it was hard to tell which. There was nothing but darkness stretching out endlessly except for one single thing.
There, suspended in the emptiness as though floating peacefully in perfectly still water, was a body that looked exactly like him.
His body. His original body from Earth.
It lay there peaceful and still with eyes gently closed, looking exactly as he must've looked at the precise moment of death back in his original world when that truck hit him, except without any injuries or damage. He was even dressed in the same casual clothes he'd been wearing while crossing that street, his favorite worn jeans and the graphic tee with the Avengers logo, faded from too many washes.
Chen Yu cautiously controlled himself to float closer to his body.