January 22, the 317th Day After Transmigration, Safe and Sound

It was as though he were in an endless deep sea, passing through one hollow bubble after another until he finally reached the place he wanted to go.

When that inexplicable sensation of surging faded, Kang De opened his eyes.

A familiar ceiling was above him, a soft bed beneath him, and a sheet of paper in his hand.

He sat up silently. The chandelier, the wardrobe, the bed, the table, the curtains-everything around him was utterly familiar. This was the place where he had lived for more than twenty years. This was his home.

This was Earth.

He opened the bedroom door and headed into the living room. The curtains were drawn, dimming the sunlight to a dusky yellow. The whole house was frighteningly quiet, with a cold, lonely stillness.

Without a word, Kang De started the gasoline generator on the floor.

As it began to hum softly, he turned on the lights. Their brightness dispelled the gloomy yellow, lighting up the house, and the aged, old-fashioned player chirped as it started up.

"Time once gone will never return, the past can only be savored..."

An old song from the last century played gently, a pleasant female voice filling the chilly living room. It was his parents' favorite song. On ordinary days, these retro tunes had always echoed through the house.

Kang De sat down at the table and opened the loose-leaf diary in front of him.

The diary was thick, with perhaps three or four hundred sheets, each one packed with writing. He turned to the end and neatly placed the sheet of paper beside him on the second-to-last page.

He gently stroked the opening lines of the latest diary entry.

"January 22, the 317th day after transmigration. Safe and sound."

"Dad, Mom, I'm back."

Every day, he brought a new diary entry back and put it in the loose-leaf binder.

Every time, he placed it on the second-to-last page.

Because the last page... wasn't a diary entry.

Kang De slowly let out a breath and set the diary aside.

Besides the diary, there was a homemade radio transmitter on the table.

He had built it together with Old Wang next door when he was in middle school. Old Wang liked tinkering with these things.

He picked up the headphones, turned on the radio, and fell silent for a moment.

Then he spoke the words he knew by heart.

"Hello, can anyone hear me?"

"My name is Kang De, a citizen of the People's Republic of China. My ID number is 330100..."

"My father's name is Kang Jinzhu. He works overseas, in Africa. His company is..."

"My mother's name is Li Shaoyuan. She's a teacher. Her workplace is..."

"I live in the Splendid Qianjiang River Residential Community. I'm here right now."

"I can't get out. Surrounding the community is a white fog that has substance but no shape. It's like an invisible wall. I can't break through it or leave. I've tried every method I could think of: ramming it with a car, burning it, digging a tunnel... None of them worked. I'm trapped here."

"There's no electricity, no mobile signal, no internet, nothing."

"I can only send messages out this way, hoping someone will receive them."

"If you're someone who happened to hear this message, please report it to the police immediately. If you work for a government agency, please be aware of this situation. I'm still here, and I want to leave."

"I don't know what happened. I don't know if this is an alien invasion or a god's joke. There are no signs of life left in the community: no bacteria, no insects, no animals, and no people. Please find a way to contact me. Please save me."

"Maybe, even as I speak, the country is already working on the wall of white fog. Maybe all of you are trying every possible way to break through it. I've already tried everything I can. All I can do is wait and pray that everything is all right. If none of you have a better solution for the time being, then at least please tell my family. Tell them not to worry. Everything is fine with me here."

"For now, I have no worries about food or clothing, but I've used a lot of things, and there have also been some losses beyond my control. I'll pay for everything at its full value, so please give me a chance to make compensation."

"So... is anyone listening?"

Kang De whispered softly, then fell silent, holding his breath as he listened and prayed.

But there was only a hiss of static in the headphones, just as before.

The hope he prayed for failed to appear, as it always had.

After a long while, Kang De spoke softly again. "Can anyone hear me?"

There was still no answer.

After a long while, he slowly put down the headphones.

His name was Kang De, a Chinese man, the luckiest man in the world, and a poor wretch.

He was lucky because, at some point, a power beyond humanity had descended upon the community where he lived. Solid white fog that could neither be pierced nor destroyed had surrounded the place, and every living thing had vanished. Kang De would have been among them, except that he had transmigrated at that very moment, arriving in another world.

And he could transmigrate back.

Two-way transmigration.

He was a poor wretch because he had transmigrated to a godforsaken deserted island with not a single person on it, only all kinds of bizarre, ferocious, and uncanny plants and animals from another world. And when he used his ability to travel back to Earth, he found himself trapped within this city of white fog, unable to get out, all alone...

It had been almost a year.

He stood up, walked over to the living room's floor-to-ceiling window, and drew back the curtains.

He looked out at the city.

He had seen everything before him 316 times already, each time exactly the same.

This apartment building stood at the northernmost end of the community. Looking out through the living room window, he could see a bustling main road, with towering commercial buildings across from it. Farther north was another residential community and another shopping street. Farther north still, farther north, was the Qianjiang River, which ran through the entire city.

This was the view he had looked at for more than twenty years.

But that had been a year ago.

What he saw now was a different sight.

The main road, once bustling with people and an endless stream of traffic, was now packed with stationary vehicles. The traffic lights no longer shone, and the traffic no longer moved, as though time had frozen here. North of the road stood the two commercial buildings, with a bank on the ground floor and a hotel above.

Farther north... was a vast expanse of white fog that stretched as far as the eye could see.

There was no residential community, no shopping street, no river view, and no opposite bank.

Everything familiar was shrouded in hazy white fog, and he couldn't see what lay outside.

Nor could he reach it.

The entire residential community, along with an area surrounding it, was enveloped in white fog.

It formed an empty, enclosed city.

That was the reality Kang De faced.

He didn't know what had happened. He knew nothing. He had no one to confide in and no one to ask for help. He couldn't contact anyone, whether his parents, his friends, the government, or the country.

Clearly, during the brief time he had spent transmigrating to the other world, Earth had undergone a dramatic change.

Perhaps aliens had captured every living thing in the community. Perhaps a power beyond human understanding had descended in an instant, carrying off every living creature without resistance. Only a person who had happened to transmigrate to another world at that moment had escaped the disaster, though he too had been trapped here.

He could use his transmigration ability once a day, and he could only come back for a short time each day. For the vast majority of his time, he had to survive on a desolate island in the other world and... fight loneliness.

He looked at the diary on the table.

He wrote in it every day, a habit he had developed after transmigrating. Every day, he brought the new entry back, added it to the binder, and left it here, just in case.

A keepsake... just in case.

The diary recorded what happened each day.

"For breakfast, I had an egg-filled pancake. For lunch, braised eggplant and pork stir-fried with garlic scapes. I reheated them for dinner. My cooking is getting better, and so is my handwriting. I'm eating healthily, and everything is fine."

"I exercise every day, put on clothes when it's cold, and try not to turn on the air conditioner even when it's hot. I don't take cold showers or drink cold water, I don't climb to dangerous heights or swim in the sea, and I go to bed on time and get up early."

"See, Mom? You don't even have to nag me anymore."

"Because I'm going to stay healthy, safe, and well. I'm going to live until the country rescues me, until I'm reunited with you... I understand, I know. I'm doing fine, really, really."

"Your son spent another full and peaceful day on the deserted island in the other world today."

There were traces of water drops on the paper.

Kang De closed the diary.

Then he rubbed his cheeks hard.

"It's actually pretty great, really."

He said to himself, "The air in the other world is good, and so is the scenery. I don't have to go to work, and I can kill black beasts and cut out their crystals to strengthen my body and become a superman. Besides, I can take whatever I want from the community and the shopping center, so I don't have to worry about food or drink. I can generate electricity with solar panels and a gasoline generator, play on a computer, watch movies, and come back to explore every day... What else is there to complain about?"

"Cheer up, cheer up."

He turned off the generator and went to the master bedroom's balcony. The window was open, and a steel cable hung down from it. He unfastened his jacket, revealing the rappelling gear secured underneath, and zipped down.

This was probably an experience most people had never had. An ordinary person would have been sure to scream, but Kang De had done it one or two hundred times already and felt nothing.

Come to think of it, the rappelling gear belonged to his mother, and she had taught him the technique too. But she probably never imagined that the skill would come in handy in a place like this.

He landed and unfastened the clip. With a sigh of relief, Kang De strolled down the steps.

The entire community was silent and deserted.

The walls and ground everywhere were covered in graffiti.

They were like totems, recording growth, recording loneliness, recording madness.

As he walked along, he first stopped in front of a screen wall.

It was a decorative feature facing the community's main gate. A famous work by a Song dynasty poet was carved in sweeping strokes across the tall, curved stone wall, serving as part of the community's frontage. Now, however, a thick canvas covered the inscription. Various chiseling tools and buckets were piled beside it, along with a makeshift stove.

He gazed at the covered stone wall and fell silent for a moment, but did not lift the canvas.

Instead, he slowly walked away.

He headed toward the community's main gate.

Large characters had been spray-painted in sweeping strokes across the walls flanking the steps.

"People passing by, stop here. When you see these words, it means I'm already dead. This is fucking without a doubt the greatest loss to the country, if not to humanity."

"The aliens actually missed me. Bet you didn't see that coming! I had this trick up my sleeve!"

"Day 108 anniversary. Still no one has come to save adorable little me today. Activating taking-without-asking and looting mode. Come arrest me, police."

Things like that.

Some were playful or angry, some gloomy and sad, and some solemn and serious.

"It feels... like such a long time has passed."

Kang De sighed softly, feeling as though a lifetime had passed.

When he had first transmigrated, life had been far less comfortable than it was now.

The changeable weather, the harsh environment, the challenges to both his physical and mental health—it was an unfamiliar, entirely new world. All manner of dangerous creatures inhabited its extremely lush ecosystem: highly aggressive insects and snakes, ferocious predators... He had to face them all alone.

Things had only begun to improve after he met those magical animals.

"Ah, I'm getting more and more sentimental... Honestly."

Kang De patted his head and walked quickly out of the community to shake off the sudden melancholy.

He had transmigrated to a dangerous, deserted island with no one on it. He could travel back to Earth, but he was trapped in this small area like a city under siege. It was a doubly difficult predicament. If there was any good news...

It was the supplies.

The plentiful supplies provided by modern industry and society.

More than a dozen shops lined the bases of the buildings on the community's west and south sides.

Apart from a few nearly useless storefronts such as a real estate agency, a barbershop, a musical instrument store, and a budget hotel, there were also five small restaurants, two pharmacies, a shop, a medium-sized supermarket, an imported-snack shop, a prepared-food shop, three fruit shops... They had all been open for business, and the customers and employees inside had vanished without a trace, leaving behind large quantities of goods, produce, ingredients, medicine, and other supplies.

And those were just the appetizers.

The real feast was west of the community: a shopping center covering more than 300,000 square meters, with seven floors aboveground and one basement level. It was filled with clothing stores, well-known restaurants, electronics brand stores, and furniture stores. The basement also housed a large supermarket of 12,000 square meters. Its fruit, vegetables, meat, and eggs, together with the ingredients stocked by the shopping center's more than one hundred restaurants, were more than enough to feed Kang De alone for a lifetime.

That didn't even count all the packaged food.

Nor did it count the ingredients stocked in every household in the community.

These were the most important factors that allowed Kang De to survive on the deserted island.

He didn't have to brave all sorts of dangers to find food, or risk diarrhea, illness, or even poisoning by eating food with unknown hazards. He didn't have to drink untreated water, nor would he catch a chill or freeze. Otherwise, he would have died on the deserted island from one health problem or another within a month at most.

But even such abundant supplies could not ward off the loneliness and longing that seeped into his bones.

That was the greatest enemy.

He walked out of the community. A large number of vehicles were stopped on the road, and a row of shops stood to his left. One storefront had just opened, with all kinds of flower baskets at its entrance and a row of ceremonial cannons set out. Kang De climbed over the railing and crossed the road.

He entered the shopping center.

He walked down the unpowered escalator to the basement level.

Turning left, he reached the large supermarket. He casually pulled over a shopping cart, switched on the xenon lamp he carried, and strolled through the dark underground space.

When he had first transmigrated, he had always been a little apprehensive when he came to the underground supermarket to gather supplies, afraid that some terrible monster was hiding in the dark.

After all, the strange white fog could not be explained by science, and the sudden disappearance of every living thing in the community was frightening enough. A few Lickers darting out of the darkness would hardly have seemed surprising.

But there were none. Whether in light or darkness, by day or by night, he was the only living creature here, the only occupant, the only resident.

"Today I'll have vinegar-fried shredded potatoes and pork stir-fried with celery."

He took a few potatoes and a small bunch of celery from the vegetable section, then went to the adjacent meat section and picked up a piece of pork.

"Old Dai's snacks... two bags of crispy rice crackers, one cumin-flavored and one five-spice."

"The pigeon and Randy Parrot can have some spicy peanuts."

"A few apples for A Xing..."

"And..."

"Oh, right, ink too."

"I'd better take another notebook as well."

The xenon lamp cast its intense light in every direction. Leaving the other sections aside for now, the stock in the fruit and vegetable section had visibly diminished. It was a problem he needed to pay attention to.

"Luckily, staples like rice and noodles are basically impossible to finish..."

"For the sake of sustainable development," Kang De murmured, "I guess I need to start looking into how to grow vegetables... Hopefully the bookstore on the fourth floor has something on agriculture... I don't think it does."

There was a bookstore on the fourth floor that also functioned as a café. From that secondary function, so full of bourgeois charm, one could tell that the bookstore leaned toward the literary and artsy. It sold either current bestsellers or inspirational books like "Mr. Bi's Art of Speaking." In any case, hard-core farming manuals like "Postpartum Care for Sows" were out of the question.

"Forget it, I'll figure it out myself... I should be able to grow potatoes, and chives are easy to grow too. The others probably won't be too hard either. The main trouble is pesticides..."

"In any case, I have to find a way to grow them," he said to himself. "I don't want to get my vitamins the way Eskimos do..."

"But I'll put it off for a while first. There's no need to rush."

"Maybe... someone will come save me tomorrow."

He pushed the shopping cart silently past the checkout area. This was what he called taking without asking.

At first, he left money for everything he took. Before long, he ran out of cash and began writing IOUs instead. After another month or two, following a memorably drunken and hysterical episode, he had completely let himself go.

"Once I'm rescued, I'll let the country compensate them for these losses. My motherland can clean up my mess. In exchange, I'll give the country the great secret of transmigration."

"Look how patriotic I am."

"So, my great motherland, please, you have to save me..."

He lifted the shopping cart, carried it up the escalator, and left the shopping center.

The sky was clear, with some clouds, everything just as it always was. But the sky was not boundless. Just beyond this small space was the dense white fog, rising and rising to a great height, seemingly without end.

It was as though the area where he could move was nothing more than a well.

And Kang De sat at its bottom, gazing up at the sky.

"What... happened?"

That question had puzzled him for a very, very long time.

It was hard to find an answer.

In the face of such a supernatural phenomenon, how insignificant human strength was, and even civilization itself. Not only was Kang De unable to get out, but the people outside... had never come in either.

He sighed silently.

"Well then... goodbye."

Kang De gazed into the distance at his home, at the besieged city beneath the white fog. He nodded farewell to the everyday life he had once known and prayed silently.

He prayed that all was well, that their reunion was not far off, and that tomorrow would bring something new.

"See you tomorrow."

He closed his eyes and called out silently. A fragmented black halo appeared around his body, like a glitch in the textures of a beautifully rendered game, as portals through space and time overlapped again and again.

The next moment, Kang De left the deathly silent world.

PS1: The new book is out! I told you it was a novel I could show my family! You believe me now, right? (Stares) You must believe me now, right? (Stares) No saying anything weird! (Stares)

PS2: Seriously... well, to be fair, I am a little nervous. My usual approach is to start with interactions, establish the characters, and pile on the jokes. I originally planned to do the same with this book, but as you can see, I chose to try a different path instead. I want to unfold things step by step, unhurried and composed, at my own pace... So I still plan to write it my way. Of course, the lighthearted, upbeat, and funny core won't change, but I can't keep writing the same things all the time, can I?

PS3: The next chapter will be released tomorrow. I can't update too many words while the book is new, and I also need to make some adjustments to the upcoming chapters... That's all, everyone. Enjoy reading, and I hope this will be a satisfying journey too.