Rebirth

Something was wrong. There was something wrong with this world!

In 2009, at Sunflower Children's Welfare Institute, eight-year-old Shen Yuanyi stared with his childish face at the orphanage shrouded in darkness. This familiar place now felt strangely unfamiliar.

All the children and adults in the orphanage had vanished. Beneath that eerie gloom, the buildings of the orphanage seemed to have... changed into something strange in his eyes.

Shen Yuanyi recalled the simple yet not-so-simple experiences of this life. In his previous life, he had merely been an ordinary person on Blue Star, but he had been stricken with a terminal illness at a young age and ultimately died without a cure.

By the time he regained consciousness, he had already become a young child in this island nation. There was barely any trace of his parents in his memories. Ever since he could remember, he had lived in this orphanage.

Perhaps because of his rebirth, everything from his previous life felt more like an incredibly vivid dream—very real, yet separated by a boundary between reality and illusion. Through the channels available to him, he had also learned some information about this world and discovered that it was completely different from his previous one! Although there were many similarities, they were thoroughly two different worlds. Was this what people called a parallel world?

The most crucial evidence was that Shen Yuanyi had discovered he possessed a "superpower"! He called it Psychic Power, though any name would do. At present, its main use was strengthening his body, allowing him, despite being a small child, to accomplish many incredible things.

Normally, Shen Yuanyi did not use his "superpower" too much, worried that excessive use might cause some accident to his still-developing body. After all, he was only a child, and his body had not even finished growing.

What if this superpower had not fully developed either, and overusing it harmed his body? Of course, that was mostly just his wild imagination. No one was around to teach him about such things.

Life at the orphanage was peaceful and tranquil, with no situations that required him to use his superpower. So, he generally only used it slightly from time to time. Even so, it had made him the leader among the orphanage children. This Psychic Power usually appeared light blue. Besides that, Shen Yuanyi could occasionally move at a nearly teleport-like speed. Unfortunately, every use of that ability left him feeling slightly off afterward, so he had not dared use it recklessly again.

Whenever he moved in those moments, everything around him seemed to freeze. It reminded him of the various Godspeed superpowers he had seen before, and at first, it had excited him for quite a while.

The second piece of evidence was that this world had "ghosts"!

Honestly, Shen Yuanyi had considered that his superpower might not be unique, that this world might have other superpowered people unknown to ordinary people, just like the strange things in movies and novels. But he truly had never expected this world to contain things like ghosts and monsters.

Over the past few years, Shen Yuanyi had seen ghosts at least five or six times. However, unlike the ghosts he knew from his previous life, the ones he saw were all bizarrely grotesque, not anything like Miss Sadako or Aunt Kayako.

They also seemed very weak, and no one else appeared able to see them. For example, there had once been a married couple who came to the orphanage to adopt a child. A strange creature resembling an enlarged mosquito had hidden beside them. Of course, Shen Yuanyi had only given it the name "mosquito" because of its palm-like wings, needle-sharp mouthparts, and roughly mosquito-like form.

Back then, Shen Yuanyi saw the creature from afar. Shocked, he realized that none of the nearby children or adults could see it. Could it be that only people with superpowers could see them?

And now, Shen Yuanyi realized he might have finally encountered a relatively powerful ghost. After all, even the environment had been altered by it. Annoyance, fear, anger, and countless other emotions surged into his heart all at once.

"Why did this have to happen when I'm still weak? I haven't grown up yet! No, I can't give up! I finally got the chance to be reborn, and I even have superpowers. I absolutely can't die like this!"

Shen Yuanyi desperately drove the Psychic Power within him, allowing his body to unleash astonishing abilities beyond common sense. Whether in speed, strength, or durability, Shen Yuanyi could now easily defeat several adult men. In this unknown environment, he had to bring out every ounce of caution and all his strength to find a way to survive.

"Mm-hm, got it. Don't forget the promised payment. This is a confirmed Grade 1, possibly Special Grade Cursed Fetus. I'll let you know if anything comes up, Gojo Satoru. That's all."

A beautiful white-haired woman with a lovely figure stood not far from Sunflower Orphanage. In her eyes, dense Cursed Energy and an ominous aura twisted and coiled together. Yet the white-haired beauty showed not the slightest fear or any other negative emotion. Instead, she looked as though she had found something she dearly loved.

"From darkness, born. Darker than darkness. Purify all filth and defilement."

As the woman recited the incantation, a gray-black layer resembling rippling water or a curtain rapidly expanded from a single point in the sky, enveloping the entire orphanage. Then the white-haired beauty gracefully walked inside and disappeared from view.

This was bad.

Shen Yuanyi stared at the small, grotesque corpse gradually dissolving on the ground, and those two words could not help surfacing in his mind. Five minutes earlier, he had encountered the first "ghost" he had seen here—a combination of a dog and a young child, which had charged at him while wailing.

After his initial panic passed, he tried attacking the ghost with his body enhanced by Psychic Power. The results had been unexpectedly good. A few punches had killed the little thing. Thus, the scene had become a child beating up a deformed little monster...

The path leading outside had already vanished. Shen Yuanyi had tried to find an exit, but no matter how he walked, he could not leave the drastically changed orphanage. Like being trapped in a ghostly maze, he always ended up back where he started. He could only try heading deeper inside, hoping to eliminate the ghost or find another way out.

Then came the encounter with that little thing. After destroying the first one, Shen Yuanyi encountered several more along the way. They all looked different, but they had one thing in common: each possessed some features of a young child.

Shen Yuanyi guessed that perhaps resentment related to children had given birth to these ghosts. Wasn't that how films and novels always wrote it? Although these little monsters still looked bizarre, they were at least somewhat closer to the ghosts he remembered. He had been frightened upon first seeing them, but after easily dealing with them, Shen Yuanyi gradually lost his fear. After all, when you possessed a superpower that could destroy ghosts, they did not seem quite so terrifying anymore.

"Waaah..."

As Shen Yuanyi walked through the corridor of the orphanage staff dormitory, he suddenly heard the weak crying of a child. Ever vigilant, his first reaction was that he had encountered another ghost, but before long, he realized he had been wrong.

In front of a cabinet, Shen Yuanyi confirmed that the intermittent sobbing was coming from inside. This sound seemed somewhat different from those ghosts. Could there be survivors?

With that thought, Shen Yuanyi prepared himself to strike and carefully opened the cabinet door. A scream immediately rang out. Two tiny figures inside were huddled together, trembling. In other words, the ones hiding in the cabinet were not ghosts, but two unlucky people trapped here just like him.

"Hey! Stop screaming! Do you want to draw the ghosts over?"

Hearing Shen Yuanyi's words, the two little ones realized that the person who had found them was not one of those terrifying things. His voice also sounded familiar, so they stopped crying.

"Yu... Yuanyi?"

Shen Yuanyi looked over the two little ones. One was a boy and the other a girl. He had little impression of the boy, but he somewhat remembered the girl. Her name should have been Kumiko. She had been the one the couple had intended to adopt last time, but because she had a birthmark on her left cheek, the adoption had ultimately fallen through.

It was only natural that they both knew Shen Yuanyi. Although this orphanage was fairly good—at least, in his view, the staff here were quite caring—there were still many children, and there were plenty of things the staff could not manage.

Because of his superpower, Shen Yuanyi had once thoroughly beaten up a group of children who had formed a little clique and acted like tyrants. After that, he became the one child in the orphanage no one dared provoke, naturally becoming famous among the children.

As for why he had not been adopted, that was due to Shen Yuanyi's own wishes. After all, how could an adorable and intelligent child, whose outstanding looks were apparent even at such a young age, have no one willing to adopt him? He simply felt unable to fit into another unfamiliar family.

Originally, the director, a kind and gentle woman, had planned to adopt Shen Yuanyi herself or have one of her family members do so, then send him to school. The orphanage could only teach children through elementary school graduation. In fact, there had been children like that before. Some had entered society with the support of the orphanage and its director, and many later returned to repay the orphanage. Some had even come back to work here.

Of course, that was another matter. After calming the two children down, Shen Yuanyi tried asking them for information, but both of them were utterly confused. Their fear and panic made their words incoherent.

After sorting through what they said, Shen Yuanyi found nothing useful. They knew nothing about how they had ended up here. After seeing those wandering monsters from afar, they had hidden in this cabinet.

Not long after they finished talking, a burst of hurried noise suddenly came from nearby. Shen Yuanyi's expression changed, and he quickly told the anxious pair to hide back inside the cabinet.

Since they had hidden in the cabinet all this time without being discovered, staying here would at least be safer than following Shen Yuanyi.

After all, although he could eliminate those little monsters, protecting two weak children at the same time would still be difficult for Shen Yuanyi.

Once they had hidden themselves, Shen Yuanyi listened as the noise drew closer. He quickly got up and ran toward the other end, his footsteps standing out sharply in the empty corridor.

Before long, eerie cries and the sound of limbs scuttling across the floor came chasing after him. This place was rather narrow, and judging from the sounds, there were probably quite a few coming. Shen Yuanyi needed to find an open area to fight them.