The rain had been falling relentlessly, and the sky above was heavy and gray. But when Mo Xuan opened her eyes, it was not the sky she was used to seeing.
Instead, there was a worn wooden ceiling carrying the faint scent of dried herbs, and outside, the indistinct laughter of children floated through the air.
She slowly lifted her hand and touched her body....
" Small...so small."
" This isn't my body ..." she whispered, a wave of disbelief washing over her.
She didn't know if she was hallucinating or if this was truly reality.
The room was tiny, steeped in the scent of gloom. Books lay scattered across the floor, and an open wardrobe revealed some mysterious black objects.
"Well… I've escaped reality, after all,"
She murmured internally.
But what use was escape, when one opens their eyes in a world unknown, in a fragile, delicate body? The question remained unanswered.
Mo Xuan stepped out of the room, descending the stairs without showing a single emotion. At the bottom, a strange woman met her gaze, her eyes unreadable.
"Mo Xuan, you've finally awakened."
"What… my name is… Mo Xuan, as I expected?"
It was the name she had given herself, a replacement for her real name from her past life… but how?
She smiled faintly and tilted her head. "Looking at my current form, I haven't changed much."
Mo Xuan was now a small girl of eight, frail and cloaked in an air of melancholy. Her hair was short, dark honey-colored, her eyes like drops of amber soaked in the abyss, her pale face devoid of any sign of life.
At that moment, a man entered the wooden house:
"Soo Yi, I've brought you what you asked for."
Soo Yi smiled. "Dong Fang, my dear… welcome back."
Mo Xuan realized then that these people were supposed to be her parents.
But her mind remained unaffected. They… what? They're not my parents.
"Mo Xuan, go outside for a while… you spend all your time locked in your room," Soo Yi said with a hint of sorrow.
Mo Xuan nodded and stepped out. The storm had eased, and the earthy scent of the soil reached her nose with every step.
She wandered aimlessly, trying to understand where she was. But the reality hardly mattered to her. What if she had been placed in another world—or even another galaxy? It was irrelevant.
" Tssk… I've been placed in this world. It doesn't matter who I am. What matters is seeing what I can do and gaining the most from it."
Her body was still that of a small child, but would that stop her? Certainly not.
"I was seventeen… one could say I had lived thousands of years. Everything was dull, mundane. To humans, I was a cold beast; all they saw was cruelty and indifference. huh.... People are nothing but tools, fools and naive, animals driven by instinct, easy to manipulate."
Being in this world didn't confuse her. It was exactly what she had always wanted: escape, confrontation, and exploration without limits.
Mo Xuan continued walking among the trees, her steps calm and deliberate as she moved across the rain-soaked ground. She observed the small details: wet leaves glistening under the droplets, strands of light sneaking through the branches, and the earthy scent of the damp soil filling her nose.
She still didn't know whether everything around her was real or just a trick of her imagination, but she didn't care. What mattered was exploring this world and understanding it, one step at a time.
With each step she took, one thing became clear: this was only the beginning, and the world around her had yet to reveal its secrets.
Quietly, without rush, Mo Xuan kept walking… toward what could very well be the start of an unending journey.