Zhu Shen sat upright upon the straw pallet, the rough fibers crackling softly beneath his shifting weight.
For a long while, he did nothing.
The hut remained as it had been when he first awakened — dim, earthen, quiet except for the distant murmur of village life carried through thin clay walls. Somewhere beyond, a rooster called. Wooden wheels creaked. Voices drifted in dialects his mind understood now with unsettling ease.
Memories — not his, yet undeniably his — had settled into place.
He knew this hut.
He knew the land beyond it.
He knew the people who lived there.
This body had a family.
A father. A mother. Two elder sisters. One younger brother.
They lived on the southern border of Yong'an Prefecture, one of the twelve provinces of the Great Liang Realm — a frontier region where imperial authority thinned into distance and survival depended more upon harvest than decree. Their village lay between scrub hills and wind-bent fields, a scattering of mud-brick homes bound by kinship and hardship.
Zhu Shen — the original — had been born here and had never left.
His father, Zhu Yong, had also been born to this soil. In youth he had been conscripted into war, marched north beneath banners he scarcely understood. He had survived — a rarity — and returned years later with scars, silence, and a small allotment of land granted to discharged soldiers. There he farmed millet and beans, married, and raised children beneath seasons that cared nothing for past battles.
Zhu Shen had grown in those fields.
Hands hardened early. Back bent early. Childhood measured in planting cycles and harvest weights. He had helped drive oxen, haul water, mend fences, gather stalks — the steady rhythm of rural existence etched into muscle memory that still lingered in his limbs.
And yet—
The consciousness now inhabiting that life was not the boy who had lived it.
It was Ray.
He exhaled slowly, steadying himself against the vertigo of layered identity.
I'm in another world, he thought, with a clarity that would have terrified most men.
Instead, he felt… composed.
Not unshaken — the grief of separation from his original life lay like distant thunder within him — but functional. Adaptive. His mind, trained by years of discipline and solitary problem-solving, had already begun to categorize reality instead of denying it.
Situation: irreversible.
Environment: agrarian feudal society.
Identity: Zhu Shen, male, rural villager.
Status: injured, recently unconscious.
Conclusion: survive first. Understand later.
The door curtain rustled.
Zhu Shen's head turned sharply.
A girl stepped inside, bringing with her a wash of pale daylight.
She appeared perhaps sixteen — a year or two younger than the body he wore — slender from labor yet possessing the quiet sturdiness of one raised on farm work. Her hair was bound in a simple braid looped at the nape, strands loosened by haste. Sun-touched skin held the faint bronze of southern fields, and her dark eyes — wide, lively, and unguarded — brightened the instant they found him upright.
She carried the scent of straw and river water.
For a heartbeat, Ray did not know her.
Then memory aligned with sight.
Zhu Lan.
His second sister.
Her face lit with relief. "Brother — you're awake!"
He stared at her half a breath too long.
Recognition came not from familiarity of his own past, but from the implanted certainty of Zhu Shen's memories — shared meals, childhood quarrels, laughter during threshing season, her voice calling across fields.
He forced his expression to soften, shaping it to the demeanor that belonged to this body.
"…Lan'er," he said, the name emerging slightly rough.
The hesitation passed unnoticed. Zhu Lan had already crossed the room, crouching beside the bed, eyes scanning him anxiously.
"You frightened us," she said. "You wouldn't wake since yesterday. Mother thought—" She cut herself off, swallowing. "I'll call her!"
Before he could answer, she had turned and slipped out, feet quick across packed earth.
Silence returned.
Zhu Shen — Ray — remained motionless.
The exchange had lasted seconds.
Yet it had confirmed the most dangerous truth of his situation:
He must become this person convincingly — or be discovered.
Footsteps approached again, slower this time.
The curtain lifted once more.
A woman entered carrying a wooden bowl from which steam curled gently into the hut's dim air.
She was lean from years of labor, shoulders slightly bowed, but her movements retained a careful grace born of habit rather than frailty. Threads of silver had begun to touch her black hair, coiled simply behind her head. Her face bore fine lines carved by sun and worry alike, yet her eyes — dark and steady — held a warmth that struck him unexpectedly.
Madam Zhu. His mother.
Relief flooded her features the moment she saw him conscious.
"Shen'er," she breathed, setting the bowl aside and coming close. Her palm settled against his forehead with instinctive tenderness. "You're awake… thank Heaven."
The touch pierced deeper than he anticipated.
For an instant, guilt stabbed through him — sharp and irrational — because the son she addressed was already gone.
He lowered his gaze to hide the flicker.
"I… am fine, Mother," he said, testing the word.
It fit too easily.
Her shoulders loosened. "Do not move much. Your head struck hard." She glanced toward Zhu Lan, who hovered behind her. "Bring the stool."
Zhu Lan obeyed quickly. Their mother sat, lifting the bowl.
Millet porridge.
Thin, plain, sustaining.
"Eat," she said gently. "Strength returns slowly."
He accepted it, hands steady. The taste was simple, earthy — utterly unlike anything from his former world, yet not unpleasant.
As he ate, she spoke, voice low with lingering fear.
"You remember what happened?"
He paused — calculating.
Fragments surfaced from Zhu Shen's final memories: rope, dust, bellowing panic, hooves.
"…the ox," he said.
She nodded, expression tightening. "It broke loose while you and your father were yoking the plow. Foolish beast ran. You chased it." Her hand trembled faintly. "It kicked when you tried to seize the rope. You fell… struck the stone ridge. You did not rise."
So that was it.
The original Zhu Shen had died in that instant.
And Ray had awakened in the vacancy.
His grip tightened minutely on the bowl.
"Father?" he asked.
"In the fields," she said. "Work cannot wait, even for fear. He will return at dusk." She studied him, searching. "Rest today. No chores. Your body must mend."
He inclined his head.
"Yes, Mother."
Satisfied, she rose. Zhu Lan lingered a moment longer, offering him a relieved smile — the uncomplicated affection of a sister certain her brother had been returned to her — before following their mother out.
The curtain fell.
Silence reclaimed the hut.
Zhu Shen finished the porridge slowly, then set the bowl aside.
He was alone again.
And for the first time since waking, the full horizon of his reality unfolded without interruption.
Another world.
Another life.
Another family who believed him their own.
He leaned back against the straw wall, eyes half-closing.
Grief stirred — for parents and existence lost beyond unreachable distance — yet it did not consume him. Acceptance, strangely, had already taken root. Perhaps his former life had always trained him for displacement: solitude, discipline, inward resilience.
Or perhaps—
Some part of him had always been ready to begin again.
He looked toward the narrow window where southern light filtered across earthen floor.
Beyond lay Yong'an's frontier fields, the Great Liang Realm, and a civilization wholly unknown to modern Earth — a vast stage of clans, struggle, and hidden possibilities that Zhu Shen the villager had never imagined.
But Ray…
Ray had read such worlds.
He understood their logic.
Slowly, a thought formed — tentative yet inevitable:
If I must live here…
…then I will learn it.
The wind stirred the curtain.
Somewhere outside, oxen lowed across distant farmland — the same fields where Zhu Shen had died…
…and where his second life had begun.