An Accident

The sky was overcast, and a fine drizzle fell.

By the mottled iron gate of an old house in the city suburbs, a young man wearing wireless headphones leaned against the wall.

The young man held his phone, staring intently at the screen while his fingers tapped rhythmically on the virtual buttons.

On the screen was the interface of a cultivation game.

"This is really tricky..."

The man muttered to himself.

BOOM!

Within the dark clouds above the old house, a bolt of lightning snaked wildly.

The sound from his headphones drowned out the thunder in the sky.

At that very moment, a solar flare erupted, and the solar storm it launched toward Earth arrived at the atmosphere.

Although the Earth's magnetic field blocked the vast majority of the solar storm and cosmic rays, a few slipped through the net.

Under the influence of a small fraction of these cosmic rays, the dark clouds above the young man instantly erupted with violent thunder.

Silver snakes coiled within the clouds, and the thunderclaps left nearby people and animals feeling agitated and restless.

Suddenly.

A ball of ball lightning appeared above the old house.

The young man was still playing his game, completely unaware that his phone signal was acting like a beacon, drawing the ball lightning toward him.

Just as the ball lightning closed in to within three meters of the young man's head, the dense stream of neutrinos produced by the solar flare swept across the Earth, some of them passing directly through the ball lightning.

The ball lightning seemed to be triggered by some special excitation.

In an instant, the ball lightning vanished above the young man's head, but the residual current still left him convulsing, and the phone in his hand began to smoke.

"Ahhh..."

The fallen young man watched as the phone he had bought only a month ago exploded, and then he lost consciousness.

The next day.

In a ward at the First People's Hospital of the City.

Jiang Miao rubbed his eyes and looked at the stark white room, dazed for a moment, before he saw his mother nearby.

"Mom! Where is this?"

Upon hearing his voice, Huang Qiuyue looked surprised, then immediately scolded him, "You half-dead brat, I told you not to play on your phone in the doorway during the rain! You were almost struck dead by lightning. You're the only sprout in this family; if you were gone..."

As she scolded him, Huang Qiuyue began to cry.

Jiang Miao was speechless, his brain feeling like a bowl of mush.

"Alright, don't disturb the other patients!" a hoarse voice came from the window.

Jiang Miao looked closely and saw his father, Jiang Dahai. He also noticed two other beds nearby, occupied by an old man and a middle-aged man respectively.

Only then did he realize, "This is the hospital?"

"The young man has a blessing in disguise!" the old man in the next bed chuckled.

After talking with his parents for a while, Jiang Miao learned that he had been struck by lightning at his doorway yesterday afternoon, and his phone had exploded. Fortunately, their dog, Dahuang, had discovered him, and his parents had driven their tricycle through the rain to rush him to the First People's Hospital for emergency treatment.

After examining him, the doctor found nothing serious, but still recommended he stay for forty-eight hours of observation.

The afternoon of the third day.

Jiang Miao completed his discharge procedures and sat in his father's vegetable-hauling tricycle to head home.

The sun was bright today.

Sitting in the back, the metal bed of the tricycle was scorched by the sun, forcing him to place his medical records underneath him as a cushion.

As the sun set, the evening breeze gently brushed against the camphor trees along the road.

The camphor trees were in bloom, emitting a thick, cloying fragrance—a scent so strong it was almost foul—making Jiang Miao feel dizzy.

"A Miao, your Little Uncle needs help at his shop over in Xiangjiang..."

"Heh, Dad, what's the point of working for relatives? You know what Little Aunt is like. I'd rather work on an assembly line at an electronics factory than go to Xiangjiang."

"Then what do you want to do? I shouldn't have let you study at that agricultural college. If you had studied medicine, maybe..."

"Dad, the light is green!"

"Uh, right..."

His father hurriedly accelerated, and the tricycle slowly passed through the intersection, heading toward Xinxiang in the suburbs.

Half an hour later.

In the light of the setting sun.

The tricycle slowly came to a stop in front of their house.

Mom didn't come out to greet the father and son, but was instead in the kitchen stir-frying dishes and cooking.

Jiang Miao felt awkward again.

The family ate dinner in silence.

Inside the room on the second floor, he lay quietly on the bed and glanced at the wall clock; the time had already reached nearly ten o'clock at night.

Sigh, I should sleep early! I'll go to the service center tomorrow to replace my SIM card. Life without a phone is truly unbearable.

Jiang Miao stared boredly at the ceiling, feeling unable to sleep, so he casually grabbed a Rubik's cube from the nightstand drawer and began to rotate it.

As he played with it, his vision suddenly blurred, and a panel appeared before his eyes.

Common Name: 3x3 Rubik's Cube
Composition: Plastic (Expandable)
Structure: 1 central axis, 6 center pieces, 12 edge pieces, 8 corner pieces; Dimensions... (Contains 3D structural diagram)
Status: Lightly worn, lightly aged
Purpose: Entertainment toy

What is this?

Jiang Miao widened his eyes, then rubbed them and reached out to touch the panel, his hand passing through it without any resistance.

A hallucination?

Has my mind snapped?

Just as his thoughts were running wild, the panel changed again.

Common Name: Human (Expandable)
Composition: Carbon-based cells (Expandable)
Structure: Multicellular carbon-based organism (Expandable)
Status: Bone age 26 solar years; Human Maturity Stage; Mild fatigue; Mild fatty liver; Mild myopia; Adrenaline levels rising; Rapid neural fluctuations in the brain... (Expandable)
Purpose: Consumer in the Earth's biological chain; One of the cornerstones of human civilization; Carrier of self-will; Carrier of a Special Spacetime Dimension Fragment (Expandable)

Jiang Miao stared at the panel before him, his gaze filled with disbelief.

Is this for real?

He picked up a mirror from the side, but no panel image appeared within it; it seemed that only his eyes could perceive the existence of the panel.

Whenever he focused his attention on an object, the panel would display that item's data after about five seconds.

Jiang Miao hurried back downstairs.

His dad, who was watching television, saw him rushing down: "A Miao, do you want a late-night snack? I think there's a bag of mini wontons in the fridge..."

He shook his head: "Dad, do you see anything in front of me?"

"What?" Jiang Dahai was confused: "No? What would be in front of you?"

"Really nothing? Look carefully?"

"Hm? Did you get a screw loose in your head from that electric shock?" Jiang Dahai immediately grew worried.

"Uh?" Jiang Miao realized his dad had misunderstood, but he also confirmed that his dad truly couldn't see the panel, so he quickly changed the subject:

"Haha, maybe I'm just too tired and having hallucinations. I'm going to sleep!"

Watching Jiang Miao rush back upstairs, Jiang Dahai frowned deeply and muttered to himself: "Could his brain really have been fried? Sigh! Tomorrow I'll have Qiuyue go to the Prince Temple and the Buddha Temple to pay respects to the gods! I'll cast some Holy Shells to see what's going on!"

Meanwhile, Jiang Miao, having returned to the second floor, was unaware that his old father suspected he had a mental illness and was preparing to pray to the gods and Buddhas.

At this moment, Jiang Miao spent another half hour in his room, testing things out.

He looked at everything in the room, from the cactus on the windowsill to the laptop on the desk and the clothes in the closet, and he could see the data for all of them.

Lying back on the bed, he suddenly remembered the last entry in his own identification data...