Nen Abilities

It hurt!

It hurt so much!

His head... his heart hurt so much!

Jing Yang gradually woke from unconsciousness. He felt as though he were soaking in a mass of weightless water. It should have felt warm and comfortable, yet his heart was pounding wildly, as if it were about to burst. Numbly, Jing Yang realized that strange currents of energy seemed to be drilling toward the deepest part of his heart—scalding like boiling water, yet freezing to the bone...

Stop drilling! His heart was really going to explode...

After who knew how long, Jing Yang suddenly opened his eyes. After waking as if from a dream, he felt a sense of disillusionment. Then came the suffocating sensation of being bound and crushed beneath layers of heavy objects... He struggled with all his strength. Dim light filtered through the gaps between the weights above him. Jing Yang struggled even harder, shoving all the heavy objects off himself. At last, he was free of his restraints and no longer forced to maintain that awkward position. Though exhausted, he could finally lie sprawled out comfortably.

The evening glow filled the sky. Tangled, towering weeds flooded Jing Yang's vision. Only then did it occur to him: when had he ended up lying in the middle of nowhere?

If he remembered correctly, he had been stuck at home because of the pandemic, bored out of his mind. He had just fried himself a bowl of rice and was about to find something else to watch to kill time... He had neither offended nor provoked anyone. He was a law-abiding citizen, so how had he ended up here after merely closing and opening his eyes?

Jing Yang let out a long, frustrated breath. As he inhaled again, his expression slowly changed—why was the smell of blood so strong?

He abruptly sat up, only to slip with a hiss and collapse face-first, his limbs weak and sore.

The face of a dead man in a suit appeared before him. The man's dilated, unfocused eyes were staring directly into his.

Jing Yang's scalp went numb, and a chill shot straight up his spine.

He looked around. As far as the eye could see, corpses lay scattered among the lush, towering weeds. He had actually been buried beneath a pile of bodies just now! Shell casings, pistols, and other things were strewn around the corpses in suits... A gang shootout? No way! What era was this? Were gangsters really still this wild?

Jing Yang lowered his gaze again. Beneath the mess of corpses was a woman's body, dressed in an ordinary gray trench coat, her eyes half-open as though she had died with them unclosed. He was no forensic examiner and could not tell how long she or the suited men had been dead, but he could see that her rigid hand was tightly clutching a disheveled, empty swaddling blanket...

Jing Yang's breathing quickened. In disbelief, he looked at his palm, then followed his gaze upward...

Like his hand, his arm and torso had become incredibly thin and small. His skin was so tender that it did not resemble that of a man nearly thirty at all. At most, he looked three or four years old!

Had he transmigrated?

And had he just crawled out of the swaddling blanket beneath those corpses?

Jing Yang's mind was in chaos. All he wanted was to get away from this pile of bodies. Using both hands and feet, slipping several times as his legs went weak beneath him, he forced his way through the tall, tangled weeds and tried to crawl out.

When he pushed aside another clump of weeds, he accidentally caught sight of a high slope in the distance. At its crest stood a beast, its back to the setting sun. Its silhouette was indistinct, but its eyes gave off an eerie light and met his gaze from afar.

It was as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over Jing Yang's head. He was completely awake now.

Damn it!

Despairing, Jing Yang quietly let the tall grass he had pushed aside fall back into place and collapsed helplessly onto the ground. Hopefully, the beast on the slope had not noticed him...

Then Jing Yang turned his head and saw the tail of a gray wolf sticking out from the grass, less than half a meter from his face.

Jing Yang held his breath and looked forward along the tail, his heart sinking little by little. A Wild Wolf weighing at least two hundred pounds was gnawing on the corpse of another man in a black suit amid the grass, the sounds of flesh and bone being chewed echoing one after another... Jing Yang could hardly believe it. Had he been deaf before? How had he not heard that?

Jing Yang cautiously shifted backward, staring fixedly at the Wild Wolf's back as it fed.

Suddenly, the Wild Wolf stopped moving. Jing Yang was so frightened that he did not dare move either.

The Wild Wolf raised a hind leg and scratched its neck, then lowered its head and continued tearing at the corpse. Jing Yang suppressed the sound of his breathing and quietly shifted back again... Then he heard the sound he least wanted to hear: on both sides of him came the rustling of grass being pushed aside. Before long, two blood-mouthed Wild Wolves emerged from the left and right, glaring at Jing Yang with green eyes.

Could things get any worse?

The Wild Wolf that had been silently feeding earlier had stopped at some point. It turned around and licked its sharp teeth, seeming to sneer at Jing Yang.

...Apparently, they could!

Jing Yang suddenly understood. These three wild hunters had known about his existence as a living human all along!

Damn it, were these three mutts playing with the prey they had their eyes on, or were they saving his tender meat for last?

The three Wild Wolves formed a pincer formation, parting the weeds as they advanced on all fours. Low, threatening growls came from their mouths as they slowly paced toward Jing Yang.

Jing Yang kept backing up until he soon bumped into the original pile of corpses. There was nowhere left to retreat.

As he watched the three savage, man-eating Wild Wolves close in, death looming over him, Jing Yang felt his brain cells dying and being reborn at an unprecedented rate. He racked his brains for a way to survive, but no matter how wildly he imagined, nothing seemed realistic. He had not even figured out whether he had truly transmigrated, yet he was about to end up in wolf bellies again—divided between them, at that...

A soft strand of hair unique to a child drifted down in the corner of Jing Yang's vision.

At some point, Jing Yang had gradually calmed down. Leaning against a pile of rocks, he sat with his legs spread and stared fixedly at the three Wild Wolves closing in. The bits of meat between their teeth and the nauseating stench of blood were all clearly visible...

The soft strand of hair moved almost imperceptibly, drifting without wind toward the Wild Wolf in the middle.

On a level invisible to the naked eye, a mass of white life energy wrapped around the strand of hair, gradually bending it into the shape of a Pentagram. It then silently landed inside the middle Wild Wolf's ear.

A flash of white light vanished in an instant. The strand of hair quietly unraveled and fell away, but a Rose Gold Five-Pointed Star pattern remained on the skin inside the Wild Wolf's ear.

Jing Yang stared at "himself" in shock!

He also stared in shock at the middle Wild Wolf across from him. Human-like shock appeared in the wolf's eyes—was this "me" too?!

Had he taken over this Wild Wolf's body?

A string of questions flashed through Jing Yang's mind like electricity, but he knew there was no time left. He immediately controlled the middle Wild Wolf's body, forcefully knocking aside the wolf on the left without hesitation. Then, with a low growl, he pounced on the wolf to the right in a sneak attack! Jing Yang let out a howl and viciously bit down on the struggling wolf's throat. Blood gushed into his mouth.

Jing Yang had no time to worry about the psychological barrier, because the other Wild Wolf he had knocked away was already counterattacking from behind. It swiped a paw across the back of the wolf Jing Yang controlled, leaving a bloody wound that soaked its fur. Jing Yang bared his teeth. The pain was far too real!

Jing Yang jerked his head, tearing at the throat of the Wild Wolf beneath his paws. Amid splattering droplets of blood, he turned and wrestled with the Wild Wolf that had ambushed him from behind.

But Jing Yang, a wolf by halfway conversion, was ultimately no match for a professional wolf in close combat. On top of that, he was completely unfamiliar with the way a four-legged beast moved. The enemy wolf roared loudly as it grappled, bit, and pounced at Jing Yang, gradually gaining the upper hand... Jing Yang's original body, seated nearby, watched anxiously. If he lost this fight, the next one to be bitten to death would be his own few dozen pounds of tender flesh!

One wolf whose throat had been bitten through gradually stopped struggling, while the other two continued wrestling. Jing Yang took a deep breath of air thick with blood, enduring the stabbing pain in his heart as he forced himself to calm down. Even if he still did not understand what was truly happening, he absolutely could not make a mistake now...

If he remembered correctly, before he controlled this Wild Wolf, successfully killed one wolf, and held back the other, he had felt... as though his entire body were soaking in invisible water. Then that mass of water had wrapped around one of his hairs, and then... yes, it had bent into the shape of a Pentagram...

As Jing Yang thought, a drop of dark red blood that had smeared onto his body floated away from his skin and drifted slowly before his eyes. The moment his thoughts wavered, the string of blood nearly fell to the ground. Jing Yang hurriedly held his breath and focused, controlling the blood to fly toward the two Wild Wolves rolling and fighting on the ground. In midair, the blood gradually folded into the shape of a Pentagram under the control of a mass of white light.

As the Pentagram-shaped blood drew closer, the Wild Wolf controlled by Jing Yang, which had deliberately focused on defending and conserving strength, ignored the dozen or so bloody wounds on its body. With a furious roar, it unleashed all the strength within its wolf body and slammed its opponent to the ground instead. The Wild Wolf twisted frantically, desperately trying not to expose its soft belly. Jing Yang controlled his wolf to press down on it, using one front paw to pin the enemy wolf's head and the other like a thumbtack. Seizing the opportunity, he pinned down the wolf's tongue and yanked it out. At the same time, the slender Pentagram-shaped bloodline controlled by Jing Yang's original body landed precisely on the Wild Wolf's exposed tongue under the control of the white mass of light.

A flash of white light passed by, and Jing Yang's original body suddenly saw stars before his eyes. His entire body went weak, as though all strength had drained from him.

The wolf Jing Yang's pupils contracted. The Pentagram-shaped bloodline quickly dispersed across the enemy wolf's tongue, failing to leave behind the anticipated Rose Gold Five-Pointed Star pattern—it had failed!

Jing Yang's original body gritted his teeth inwardly. This strange ability seemed to consume "mana" only at the exact instant it was activated! With his thin arms and legs, being able to endure the consumption and successfully control one wolf had already been an extraordinary stroke of luck. He truly did not have the strength to control a second wolf... As he thought this, the enemy wolf began struggling desperately. Jing Yang had no time to think further. His eyes reddened as well, and he controlled the Wild Wolf to bite down. Sharp teeth pierced the enemy wolf's windpipe, and blood gushed out as it convulsed again and again.

It seemed his earlier strategy of defending and counterattacking had been right after all... The enemy wolf's struggles beneath his fangs and claws grew weaker and weaker. Jing Yang secretly let out a breath of relief. At least he had controlled one Wild Wolf for his own use. Otherwise, with his little arms and legs after transmigrating, forget defending and counterattacking—he would have been nothing but a problem for the forensic examiner. They would not even be able to piece his corpse back together!

Before long, this Wild Wolf stopped struggling as well. Jing Yang felt another strange current drill into his chest, cold and hot at once. His heart convulsed, and just as he barely managed to stand, he fell backward onto his butt again.

A congenital heart condition? Jing Yang's face went pale. Or was it... He clutched his chest and looked at the wolf corpse across from him, torn apart and no longer moving. Had that strange energy that entered his heart come because of the wolf's death?

Remembering the agonizing pain in his heart before he woke, which he had thought was merely a dream, Jing Yang looked around at the scattered corpses hidden among the tall weeds and suddenly understood why.

He stood there in a daze for a moment, then slowly exhaled a breath of foul air.

No matter what, he had survived!

Jing Yang spat out a mouthful of wolf fur and stepped on the wolf corpse to declare victory. Then his face suddenly changed dramatically. After his original body fell back into the pile of corpses, he had accidentally seen the swaddling blanket the woman in the gray trench coat had refused to let go of even in death... Jing Yang had assumed that this woman was probably something like his mother after transmigrating, and that he had most likely come back from the dead inside that swaddling blanket before crawling out...

But this tiny swaddling blanket was clearly meant for a newborn baby.

And though his current body was thin, weak, and small, it was clearly the build of a child at least three or four years old!

The Wild Wolf controlled by Jing Yang paced to his side and, from an observer's perspective, turned its head to look at his new, pale-faced self. The little guy who had only just learned to walk was even shorter than this adult Wild Wolf. Then it looked at the swaddling blanket the long-dead woman still refused to release... Who had the baby originally inside that blanket been, and where had it crawled off to?

"Awoo—"

The howls of more and more Wild Wolves rose and fell all around them.