"Hey, wake up, wake up?"
Lu Sheng slapped the boy's cheeks a few times. The boy's head swayed back and forth, but he simply would not wake up.
He tried several little tricks for waking someone, but none of them worked.
"What a hassle."
Supporting the boy, Lu Sheng looked around.
There was not a single sound in the space before the elevator or in the empty stairwell beside it.
The wind howled faintly, making soft noises. It only made the silence and desolation feel all the more pronounced.
It was as though, apart from himself and this little fellow beside him, there was no one else here at all.
Lu Sheng turned to glance at the elevator, then dragged the boy into the stairwell with both hands. He headed out through the stairway exit.
Outside, the sunlight was dim and gray, filtering faintly through the clouds without the slightest warmth.
In the empty residential complex, scraps of garbage were blown wildly about by the wind.
"This place..." Lu Sheng found it somewhat anomalous. But he had visited plenty of strange worlds, so he did not care much about such a minor abnormality.
"Let me take a look at this body's memories."
He found a shaded corner, set the boy down against the wall, and sat cross-legged himself.
"Let me see..."
Lu Sheng slowly spread his consciousness into the depths of his mind, digging out fragments of the memories belonging to this body.
'Thomas Jenny.'
That was the original owner's name. But unlike the other worlds, this body was not one of Lu Sheng's avatars in this world.
It was an ordinary individual completely unrelated to him.
He had merely descended into this young man's body by chance.
That was all.
'Let's see. Thomas Jenny, twenty-one years old, a university