This Was Way Too Interesting!

In his previous life, Jing Yang had spent far too much time bored at home, binge-watching shows and catching up on anime. Naturally, he had not missed a heavyweight classic rabbit hole like Hunter x Hunter, so he remembered the relevant settings of this world fairly clearly.

In the Hunter World, everyone possessed life energy within their bodies—what was known as "aura."

Ordinary people could not perceive aura and simply allowed it to leak away. Those who could sense its existence and learn to wield that power were called Nen Users.

A Nen User's ability category differed according to individual differences.

Nen Abilities were divided into six major types.

The identification method known as Water Divination involved placing a leaf on the surface of a cup of water, then bringing one's aura close to the cup. A conclusion could be drawn based on a series of changes in the water or leaf, as follows:

The leaf moved across the surface → Manipulator

The water changed color → Emitter

The amount of water changed → Enhancer

The water's taste changed → Transmuter

Impurities appeared in the water → Conjurer

Any changes other than the above → Specialist

"..."

After briefly reviewing that information, Jing Yang sat upright and extended both hands toward the cup before him and the motionless leaf floating on its surface.

Big Tiger lay nearby with his front legs crossed. Since they were inside the cabin, the glow radiating from the stripes in his fur flickered dimly. The tiger yawned and cocked his head at the human cub, unable to understand what he was doing. Why stare at water instead of drinking it?

Naturally, Jing Yang had no idea what the big tiger beside him was pondering. He was focused on mobilizing his aura. Perhaps because he had already used Nen Abilities several times, even though his fundamentals were practically nonexistent, he quickly sensed his Nen aura and successfully gathered it in his palms, bringing it toward the cup.

Then, the leaf that had been still on the water's surface slowly moved...

Just as expected, he was a Manipulator.

Jing Yang had anticipated that, so he was not particularly surprised.

If the six Nen types were arranged in a connected cycle, they went: Manipulator → Emitter → Enhancer → Transmuter → Conjurer → Specialist → Manipulator.

There was a common rule that was not necessarily accurate, but could roughly distinguish them:

Emitters, Enhancers, and Transmuters generally relied more on conventional combat methods: hand-to-hand fighting, firing blasts, and various changes to the properties of Nen aura.

Meanwhile, among the bizarre variety of Nen Abilities, some were nearly impossible to counter once successfully triggered, as though they were rules themselves. Such abilities appeared more often among Manipulators, Specialists, and Conjurers.

Among them, any sufficiently experienced Nen User in the Hunter World should know this: Manipulator Nen Abilities generally had the effect of "whoever struck first won."

In other words, if a Manipulator enemy successfully used his ability and truly got control over you, you were just screwed!

That was how shamelessly overpowered it was.

Jing Yang's Rose Gold Five-Pointed Star Mark had that very trait. As long as he successfully placed the mark on a target, he could control it however he wished.

"So this ability of mine... Hmm, I'll worry about a grand name later. For now, let's give it a nickname: 'Star Mark.' What exactly are the activation conditions for my Star Mark ability?"

Jing Yang picked up the leaf floating on the water and pondered silently. After gathering aura for only that short while, he was already exhausted. It was clear just how pitiful the Nen quantity of this young body, which had never undergone physical training, was. No wonder using Star Mark once earlier had wiped him out.

Jing Yang shifted his gaze to the Wild Wolf he had already controlled and looked at the tiny Rose Gold Pentagram Mark inside its ear.

"Come to think of it, if I wanted to remove this mark, how would I..."

He reached out and touched the Rose Gold Pentagram inside the wolf's ear with his fingertip. Instantly, the Pentagram scattered apart.

"Woo!"

The Wild Wolf, freed from Jing Yang's control, immediately cried out in panic.

But at once, a deep tiger roar sounded behind Jing Yang. With faint jade-like Shimmer radiating from the stripes over his body, Big Tiger circled around Jing Yang and pounced, pinning the struggling Wild Wolf to the floor.

Even standing on all fours, this Fluorescent Big Tiger was over one and a half meters tall. His massive, heavy body slammed down on the Wild Wolf, which had already been wounded and bleeding because of Jing Yang, making it seem utterly small and helpless.

"Thanks, Brother Tiger." Jing Yang crouched beside the tiger's paw and patted the pinned Wild Wolf's head. "Quit whining. I'm just testing something. It'll be quick."

His Nen quantity was limited. How could he test efficiently?

In other words, what kind of test target was most urgently needed?

After thinking for a moment, Jing Yang took off his loose Black Suit and draped it over the Wild Wolf.

He plucked out one of his hairs, placed it over the wolf through the suit, then held his breath and focused. Using the familiar sensation, he manipulated his aura to twist the hair into a Pentagram and pressed it as tightly as he could against the surface of the clothes—yet the ability activation genuinely failed.

Jing Yang could tell it had not failed because he lacked Nen. The true activation conditions simply had not been met.

He took a few breaths, rested for a while, then pulled off the clothes and tossed them aside. Repeating the process, he used aura to twist the hair into a Pentagram and dropped it onto the fur on the Wild Wolf's back—deliberately letting the hair touch only the wolf fur instead of pressing flush against it. The ability failed again.

"So the 'Pentagram' has to be pressed directly against the target's 'skin' to activate successfully? Or rather, I have to properly make a Pentagram on the target's 'body surface'?" Jing Yang mused. "Then, for now, the ability appears to have three conditions: first, the symbol of a Pentagram; second, the symbol must cling tightly to the target's body surface, and clothing in between won't work; third, while the first two conditions are fulfilled, my Nen aura must also cover it. All three conditions are indispensable..."

Jing Yang wanted to continue testing, but he truly had no strength left. He was thirsty, hungry, and exhausted.

Jing Yang picked up the cup, gulped down some water, and asked Brother Tiger to keep pinning the Wild Wolf.

He wandered around the cabin and found plenty of emergency food: Compressed Biscuits, bread, chocolate, little cakes, and the like.

While he was at it, he found a pair of pants and a shirt, rolled them up to a suitable length, and threw them on haphazardly. He tied the waistband tight with a rope, finally sparing himself from running around bare-assed.

Thinking of the pile of dead gangsters he had seen on shore earlier, Jing Yang naturally was not worried about the food being expired.

"Brother Tiger, want some?"

Jing Yang unwrapped what looked like the most delicious little cake and waved it before the tiger's huge head.

The rare beasts of the Hunter World truly were remarkably intelligent. Big Tiger shook his head, raised a tiger paw, and pushed the little cake back, seeming to urge Jing Yang to hurry up and eat it himself instead of wasting it.

As for the Wild Wolf, with the big tiger sitting on it, it had no room to resist at all.

To be honest, although Jing Yang was grateful that this Fluorescent Big Tiger had helped him, he was also baffled. Why was it so friendly toward him? It was not like he had paid anything!

Jing Yang wolfed down the little cake, chocolate, and biscuits, then drank the little water remaining in the cup.

In the quiet night and empty cabin, aside from the Wild Wolf's low whimpers, only the sounds of Jing Yang eating remained...

While eating and resting, Jing Yang casually found the newspaper from earlier.

Although he still could not read the Hunter World's writing, he could at least look at pictures! There were plenty of photographs in the newspaper.

And there were plenty of numbers too. Were those things universal across the entire universe?

Jing Yang amused himself amid his misery and remained fairly at ease.

Beneath the string of incomprehensible symbols in the front-page headline, he spotted a date written as "1994-11-29." After a moment's recollection, he immediately understood where he was on the timeline—according to Hunter x Hunter's plot, the protagonist Gon Freecss set out to take the Hunter Exam in January 1999 of the Hunter Calendar.

In other words, it was most likely late 1994 of the Hunter Calendar. There were about four full years until "the beginning of the story"...

Jing Yang's gaze stopped on one photograph in the news.

The picture appeared to have been taken by a reporter at some political event. In it, the two sides were meeting cordially, shaking hands for the camera with politician smiles on their faces. More importantly, one of the people shaking hands... was a fat man. He looked somewhat simple-minded, somewhat prosperous, yet carried a hint of shrewdness. More importantly, Jing Yang seemed to recognize him!

Wasn't that the King of Cascadia from the manga?

The guy whose Royal Family surname was bizarrely Hui Guo Rou?

When Jing Yang reread the Hunter x Hunter manga in his previous life, he had gone as far as the Dark Continent, Black Whale, and Kakin Throne Succession War arc. The amount of text in that part of the manga had grown increasingly outrageous, enough to make one dizzy, so he had simply given up on finishing it. Still, he remembered the King of Cascadia, who had been rather important in the plot at the time.

That meant he had transmigrated into the territory of the Kakin Kingdom?

Thinking of the Kakin Kingdom naturally made him think of Kite; thinking of Kite naturally made him think of the Chimera Ant arc; thinking of the Chimera Ant arc...

Forget it. Better not think about it.

What bad luck! Jing Yang tossed away the newspaper. Feeling that he had rested enough, he continued using the Wild Wolf as material to test his ability.

But at that moment, Jing Yang suddenly realized something strange he had overlooked. This oddity had been right under his nose the entire time, yet he had only noticed it now.

This Wild Wolf...

Earlier, it had clearly nearly been beaten to death by the wolf pack, with only its last breath remaining. Why was it now so lively, without even a few obvious wounds on its body?

Was this breed of wolf simply superior, with powerful recovery abilities, or...

Once the thought occurred to him, Jing Yang wanted to verify it on the spot and ran all over the cabin. The head of the Fluorescent Great Tiger pinning the Wild Wolf kept turning to follow him. In the end, Jing Yang could not find a suitable "weapon." The kitchen cleaver had been placed too high for him to reach! Helplessly, he returned before the tiger. "Brother Tiger, I'll have to trouble you to lift your paw and give this guy a swipe." He pointed at the Wild Wolf under the tiger's butt.

Big Tiger did not hesitate in the slightest. His paw rose and fell, and amid the Wild Wolf's miserable cries, he tore a bloody gash across its neck. Warm droplets of blood nearly splashed onto Jing Yang's legs.

With Brother Tiger holding it down, no matter how badly the Wild Wolf hurt, it could not break free, much less harm anyone.

Jing Yang was thus able to safely observe the changes in the Wild Wolf's wound from the side.

Yet even after the torn wound had turned dark red from blood, with the fur clumped together and even congealed, it showed no obvious signs of healing.

Jing Yang fell into thought. He dipped a finger in some wolf blood, parted the fur on the exposed bit of wolf belly, and, pressed against the wolf's skin, barely drew a proper Pentagram in blood.

This time, Jing Yang did not wrap the Pentagram in aura while drawing it.

Only after he finished drawing it did he raise his palm, wipe his finger clean, gather Nen aura, and smack his little palm onto the Pentagram pattern.

Star Mark successfully activated!

A Rose Gold Pentagram Mark appeared on the wolf's belly.

A hidden rule of Star Mark activation: he could prepare a Pentagram symbol on the target in advance, then find an opportunity to apply his Nen aura to it. They did not have to be done at the same time for the ability to activate successfully.

Jing Yang nodded in satisfaction, then turned back to observe the bloody wound on the wolf's neck.

The wound began healing at a visible rate...

It was clearly an ability meant to control opponents and defeat them in a single strike, yet it had an extra side effect like a traitor in its ranks—the person carrying a Star Mark actually gained powerful self-healing!

But Jing Yang was not disappointed or dissatisfied. Instead, he smiled.

With practiced movements, he dipped his finger into the remaining wolf blood again. Before drawing, he thought for a moment, then turned around and, with the aid of Jing Wolf's third-person perspective, accurately drew a Pentagram on the back of his own neck with wolf blood. As he made the final stroke, he gathered Nen aura at his fingertip and poured it into the bloody pattern, instantly covering the Pentagram.

In an instant, a Rose Gold Star Mark formed on the back of Jing Yang's neck.

Perfect!

That meant he now possessed a powerful passive self-healing skill too, didn't he?

And as a Manipulator ability user, he had already achieved "whoever struck first won" by controlling himself first. From now on, if he encountered other Manipulators, they would be unable to control him at all. He was fully protected!

The world of Nen Abilities really was... way too interesting!

Jing Yang was rejoicing when, through the cabin porthole, a gunshot suddenly rang out in the distance.

Bang!...

In the silent, pitch-black night, the gunshot was startlingly loud and abrupt, mingling with the sea wind and echoing for a long time.

Were there other gangsters alive nearby?

Jing Yang shuddered.

At the same time, a bizarre presence, both cold and hot, burrowed deep into his heart!

Jing Yang's vision repeatedly went dark, and he collapsed weakly toward the Fluorescent Great Tiger...