Chương 2: Chapter 1

The coarse, jagged slate of Crimson Peak bit deeply into the tender soles of his bare feet. He took another agonizing step forward. A sharp, searing ache immediately flared up in his underdeveloped calves, forcing him to a sudden halt. His small, emaciated chest heaved violently as his fragile lungs desperately tried to filter oxygen from the thin, crisp mountain air. The wind blowing across the elevated trail was entirely too gentle.

The atmosphere felt terrifyingly pristine, completely lacking the heavy, comforting smog and the thick humidity he was accustomed to. He looked down at his hands. They were coated in a fine, powdery layer of gray dust and stained with the sticky green sap of crushed weeds. They were tiny, fragile, and currently trembling from a severe caloric deficit. These were not his hands. They belonged to Ling Tian, a ten-year-old orphan. Just a few days ago, the mind currently piloting this starving vessel belonged to Aditya.

He was a twenty-five-year-old man armed with a university degree and a predictable, comfortable desk job. His greatest daily physical struggle had been managing a caffeine addiction severe enough that it could have powered a small village.

"Today's too damn nice," Ling Tian muttered aloud, his voice cracking slightly. It was genuinely insulting. The birds chirped from the canopy like they had been perfecting their harmonic routines all week. The trees swayed gently in a breeze that felt almost orchestrated, far too clean and peaceful for a world that was actively trying to kill him. The sky unfurled above him in a vast, unbroken canopy of deep blue, a color so dense it felt like staring into an ocean.

If the universe insisted on trapping the mind of a grown man inside the fragile, starving body of a child, the least it could do was provide some thematic weather. A gloomy, miserable rainstorm would have been highly appropriate. Instead, he was being mocked by a picturesque spring morning. Aditya was dead now. The corporate millennial who complained about spreadsheet deadlines had been violently replaced by the dirt-poor gatherer. Ling Tian accepted the name change.

It was a necessary psychological armor for navigating a reality where people soared on flying swords and casually flung energy balls. But accepting the body did not mean he had to enjoy the complete lack of modern amenities. He closed his eyes, leaning heavily against a weathered boulder. The physical exhaustion was so profound it caused his modern mind to dangerously hallucinate. For a fleeting, agonizing second, he did not feel the biting mountain wind.

He felt the frigid, artificial hum of the air conditioning unit in his old office. He could vividly taste the bitter, burnt residue of cheap office coffee coating the back of his throat. He could hear the chaotic, deafening roar of scooters and street vendors that defined Yogyakarta. The memories of his past life were razor-sharp, stabbing into his consciousness. He remembered the comforting smell of his mother frying spices in their cramped family kitchen.

He remembered the heavy, suffocating, yet entirely safe embrace of a city that never slept. Then, a sharp, stubborn thorn from a low-hanging mountain shrub scraped violently across his bare ankle. The phantom hum of the air conditioner instantly shattered. The illusion of safety was replaced by the overwhelming, crushing silence of Crimson Peak. Panic, raw and biological, clawed at the back of his dry throat. It was the primal terror of total isolation.

He had been dumped into a reality filled with apex predators and supernatural violence, and he was currently equipped with the physical stats of a malnourished grade-schooler. Ling Tian ruthlessly crushed the panic. Panic burned precious calories. Panic caused the heart rate to spike, leading to careless footsteps on treacherous, fatal drops. He was a pragmatist. He forced himself to view his current nightmare as a highly complex, high-stakes game.

The environmental variables were brutal, but the core objective remained incredibly simple. He needed to eat. That single, mundane necessity kept him remarkably steady while the rest of his existence spun wildly off its axis. Transmigration, he decided, came with an incredibly terrible human resources department. There was no onboarding process and zero severance pay. He forced his small hands to push off the boulder. He ignored the burning in his lungs and the sharp sting of the thorn scratch on his ankle.

He recalibrated his center of gravity, adjusting to the frustrating shortness of his own limbs, and resumed his slow, methodical march up the winding dirt path. The dirt trail stretched ahead, winding mercilessly through the jagged stone and stubborn vegetation of the Crimson Peak foothills. Ling Tian forced his small legs to keep moving, carefully navigating the loose gravel. Fragmented, patchy memories belonging to the original boy flickered sporadically through his consciousness.

The residual memories were disorganized and hazy, arriving in sudden, disorienting flashes. Yet, they provided the crucial, ground-level intelligence he needed to keep his heart beating. His stomach let out a hollow, agonizing cramp that forced him to briefly double over. He possessed a tiny, pathetic stash of copper coins and a few dried, highly questionable scraps of meat and roots left behind by the boy's deceased parents.

It was barely enough sustenance to maintain the basic biological functions of a growing child, let alone fuel a mountain hike. The lingering ghosts of Ling Tian's parents served as a chilling, constant reminder of the sheer absurdity of this new world. His new mother had slipped away years ago. She had been consumed by a vague, terrifying sickness that systematically gnawed her physical form down to nothing.

His new father had followed her into the grave only a few months prior, claimed by the unforgiving terrain of this very mountain. The man had slipped and fallen to his death while frantically chasing a rare, valuable herb. And not just a hard-to-find plant. He had died chasing an herb that literally possessed the capability to physically run away. Ling Tian found the concept deeply horrifying and personally offensive. It was a profound insult to basic botany. Plants were supposed to stay in the dirt.

An ecology where the flora actively fled from gatherers was a glaring indicator that the environment was fundamentally broken. His predecessor's father had gambled his life for a heavy purse of coins and paid the ultimate price. Ling Tian made a solemn, unbreakable vow to never, under any circumstances, perform cardio for a vegetable. No amount of currency was worth shattered bones at the bottom of a ravine. He currently survived only through the grim charity of a neighbor.

Auntie Mei was a wiry old herbalist with eyes like sharp flint. She had been incredibly tight with the Ling family. She took pity on the orphaned boy, tossing him meager scraps of food and harsh advice whenever his supplies completely ran thin. He owed her a debt he could not currently quantify, but his petty pride and modern logic dictated that he could not remain a beggar indefinitely. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. He slowed his pace.

His eyes scanned the damp soil near a cluster of heavy, moss-covered boulders. Tucked away in the deep shadows, thriving in the cool moisture provided by the mountain mist, was a patch of vibrant green. Ling Tian dropped heavily to his knees. The damp earth immediately soaked into the frayed fabric of his trousers, sending a shiver up his spine. He carefully brushed aside the surrounding weeds to inspect the find.

The plants featured thick green leaves, heavy with morning dew, and some were tipped with tiny, delicate buds. Cloudmint. The scrappy little leaves were a staple ingredient for brewing common cough potions. He reached out, his small, dirt-caked fingers trembling slightly from physical exhaustion. He did not simply rip the plants from the soil. A strict rule drilled into the original Ling Tian by his late father surfaced in his mind. Harvest the mature stalks, leave the rest to grow.

It was basic sustainability designed to keep the mountain giving. The man had been smart enough to protect the local ecosystem, but completely foolish enough to chase sprinting carrots off a cliff. Ling Tian methodically pinched the stems of the mature plants, snapping them with a crisp, satisfying sound. He bundled the Cloudmint carefully, feeling the fibrous, wet texture of the stalks against his palms. This meager harvest was not going to make him wealthy.

It was a pathetic haul that would barely cover the cost of a single meal when traded at market price to Auntie Mei. A profound wave of bitter resentment washed over him, tightening his chest. He calculated the hours of backbreaking labor he traded just to afford a bowl of cheap gruel. The physical effort required was monumentally disproportionate to the financial return. Hours of agonizing sweat were traded for plants barely worth a meal.

He would have traded this entire mystical, sword-flying reality for a mundane clerk gig in a safe environment like Hua City in a heartbeat. He wanted shelves to stack and ledgers to balance. He craved a profession where the biggest daily occupational hazard was a papercut, something that did not leave his ten-year-old body bruised, bleeding, and severely sunburnt. But the socioeconomic realities of this world were a locked fortress.

A kid with no name, no lineage, and no political pull had those doors bolted firmly shut against him. No merchant would hire a starving orphan to manage their books. Herbs were his only currency for now. Ling Tian tied the bundle of Cloudmint securely to his waist using a frayed piece of twine. He forced his aching knees to straighten, standing back up on the treacherous mountain path. He ignored the burning in his lungs and the relentless cramp in his stomach.

He focused entirely on placing one bare foot perfectly in front of the other. He marched forward into the beautiful, terrifying wilderness, internally drafting a lengthy, highly sarcastic complaint letter to whoever was responsible for his reincarnation. — The midday sun beat down mercilessly upon the jagged ridges of Crimson Peak. It cast harsh, unyielding shadows across the dirt trail that seemed specifically designed to trip him. Ling Tian forced his ten-year-old body to maintain a steady, agonizing rhythm.

Place the right foot. Test the loose gravel. Shift the weight. Place the left foot. The bundle of Cloudmint tied to his waist brushed against his thigh with every single step. It was a pathetic, lightweight harvest. Yet, to his starving, underdeveloped muscles, the handful of leaves felt like dragging an iron anchor through the mud. He focused entirely on the mundane mechanics of walking. The wind sweeping down from the upper peaks had been a gentle, constant companion for the last hour.

It was a pleasant breeze that practically begged to be written about in a travel brochure. Ling Tian hated it. It was too soft. It was too clean. Suddenly, the wind stopped. The transition was not a gradual calming of the breeze. The air was violently, instantaneously suffocated. The ambient noise of the mountain insects and the rustling leaves completely died. A heavy, unnatural stillness crashed down upon the trail.

It carried a localized drop in atmospheric pressure so severe that Ling Tian's eardrums audibly popped. The temperature plummeted. The sweat beading on his forehead turned instantly frigid, biting into his skin like microscopic needles. He stopped walking, the breath catching in his throat. He looked up. The vast, unbroken canopy of deep blue sky was gone. It was entirely eclipsed by a colossal, oval-shaped mass cruising silently directly overhead.

It was a cloud, but it behaved with a terrifying, unnatural sentience. The base of the massive formation glinted with a sickening, eerie green shimmer that warped the sunlight. At its towering peak, thick arcs of jagged purple lightning snapped and coiled. The electricity did not strike randomly. It fired with a rhythmic, mechanical precision, cutting through the atmosphere as if the storm had a strict, predetermined schedule to keep. The sheer scale of the phenomenon defied mortal comprehension.

Back in Java, a severe tropical storm over Yogyakarta was a chaotic, sprawling mess of gray vapor. This entity was contained. It was dense. It radiated a localized gravitational presence that made the bedrock of Crimson Peak faintly vibrate beneath his bare feet. Ling Tian did not feel a sense of epic wonder. He did not feel the curiosity of a modern man observing a new meteorological event. He felt a primal, biological terror that completely bypassed his rational mind.

The hair on his arms stood straight up, reacting to the massive static charge bleeding from the purple lightning above. His underdeveloped nervous system was entirely overwhelmed by the sheer, crushing density of the aura radiating from the cloud. His knees violently buckled. The strength was instantly siphoned from his muscles, replaced by a screaming, instinctual mandate to hide. He collapsed onto the dirt trail. He did not try to catch himself.

He threw his small body entirely flat against the earth, pressing his cheek deeply into the coarse gravel and mud. He aggressively minimized his physical profile. He curled his arms over his head, effectively turning himself into a pathetic, trembling lump of dirt. Fragmented, terrifying memories belonging to the original Ling Tian violently surfaced. The boy remembered local villagers whispering hushed, fearful tales of ancient dragons.

They spoke of divine, apocalyptic beasts that veiled their massive, scaled bodies within unnatural storms to dodge the prying eyes of mortals and immortals alike. Before this exact moment, his modern corporate mind would have dismissed the stories as primitive, uneducated folklore. He would have laughed at the peasants. Now, as the ambient pressure threatened to crush his ribcage into the dirt, that modern arrogance was completely, ruthlessly eradicated. He was not the protagonist of a grand adventure.

He was a fragile, level-zero NPC hiding in the mud while an apex predator casually cruised through the heavens. He noted the lightning snapping with its bizarre, punctual rhythm. He sarcastically marveled at the rigid schedule of flying neon death traps. Even the apocalypse had a transit timetable. If whatever was slumbering inside that green and purple storm decided to look down, he would not even have the time to register his own death. He would simply be erased from reality.

Normal had officially packed up and left days ago, and it had not left a forwarding address. He squeezed his eyes shut. He tasted the bitter iron of the mountain dirt on his lips. He weaponized his own cowardice, forcing his breathing into shallow, agonizingly quiet gasps. He begged whatever deity was watching to ignore the insignificant speck bleeding into the soil. He waited in the crushing darkness of his own closed eyelids, entirely at the mercy of a universe that did not care if he existed.

Slowly, agonizingly, the violent static charge in the air began to recede. The rhythmic snapping of the purple lightning grew distant. The ambient atmospheric pressure stabilized. The gentle, natural wind of the mountain finally returned, brushing against his shivering back. The leviathan had passed. Ling Tian lay in the dirt for another full minute. He remained perfectly still, ensuring the shadow was truly gone. Finally, his trembling hands dug into the gravel.

He pushed his small, bruised body off the ground, wiping the thick mud from his face. His heart was hammering wildly against his ribs in a frantic, desperate rhythm of survival. He looked at the sky. The pristine, unbroken blue had returned. The absolute, terrifying scale of this world had just been violently demonstrated to him. The realization crystallized in his mind, cold and sharp. Survival here did not just mean finding food.

It meant acquiring the power to ensure he never had to press his face into the mud in terror ever again. He adjusted the bundle of Cloudmint at his waist. He tightened his jaw, suppressing the lingering tremors in his hands. He resumed his march down the mountain, letting out a long, exhausted sigh.