Rain

For more than twenty years of his life, Yu Sheng had always believed that he was nothing more than an ordinary person, living an ordinary life and doing ordinary things. In the foreseeable future, this ordinariness was destined to continue—until the day his ordinary life came to an ordinary end.

Yes, that was what he had always believed—but those days seemed to have happened a very long time ago.

The sky was dark, and gloomy clouds like thick cotton gradually spread over from the northeast, blanketing the entire city. The air was steeped in dampness, and rain was brewing within it. Perhaps it would start falling in a dozen minutes or so.

Carrying the vegetables and seasonings he had just bought from the supermarket, Yu Sheng hurried through the streets amid the pedestrians, heading home beneath the increasingly dim daylight.

As he passed a shop, he instinctively stopped and looked at the sign above its entrance. He stared at it for several seconds before looking away and hurrying on.

The pedestrians gradually became fewer. The enormous city seemed to be growing quiet in the atmosphere of impending rain. Yu Sheng raised his eyes toward the commercial street illuminated by the lights of the shops below the buildings. Although the scenery was familiar, an indescribable sense of unfamiliarity still rose from the depths of his heart.

Yes, unfamiliarity—he had lived in this city for more than twenty years, but now, the ridiculously huge, seemingly boundless Boundary City was an utterly unfamiliar place to him.

That was because the city did not look the way it did in his memory of the "real" world. Although some places looked very similar, more were only superficially alike—Boundary City, where he had grown up, had never been this huge. He remembered that the tower in the city center should have been called the Boyuan Building, not the current "Council Tower." He remembered that the shop at the intersection of Siyuan Street had originally been a wall, and that his real home had not been the enormous, decrepit old house deep in the old district, which looked ready to collapse at any moment.

More importantly, the city in his memory had never contained so many... "things that weren't quite right." These included, but were not limited to, old-fashioned telephone booths in a style that seemed to belong to the last century, steam locomotive fronts that passed over rooftops in the dead of night, empty classrooms that constantly echoed with the sound of reading, and...

On an evening when rain was about to fall, a pitch-black shadow standing beneath a streetlamp, as tall and thin as a utility pole.

Yu Sheng raised his head and stared fixedly at the streetlamp not far away. A humanoid silhouette as thin as a stick stood there stiffly. At the top of its three- or four-meter-tall body was a pitch-black face whose features could not be made out. The shadow seemed to have noticed him as well, but it merely stood there rigidly, silently meeting Yu Sheng's gaze from afar.

Hurried pedestrians passed beneath the tall, thin shadow as if no one noticed the eerie thing standing beside the streetlamp. Some even walked straight through it without being affected in the slightest.

Only Yu Sheng could see it.

So, after several seconds of pointless eye contact, he looked away, suppressed his slightly pounding heartbeat, took another route, and hurried off.

Yu Sheng had never been certain whether the city had suddenly changed or something had happened to him. But he clearly remembered that the ordinary, normal life in his memories had left him one morning two months ago—

He remembered that, on that sunny morning, he had opened the door of his home and gone to the small supermarket at the intersection to buy a few oranges.

That had been the last time he opened "the door to his own home." After that, he never saw the home from his memories again.

He had analyzed it before. Perhaps this was some kind of "transmigration." When he opened the door, he had stepped into a parallel world that resembled his homeland but was not quite the same. He could no longer find the door that led back to his original world because the passage through space and time had collapsed the moment he crossed the threshold.

Another possibility was that an "abnormal change" had occurred within him. When he stepped out the door—or perhaps at some point afterward—some unknown influence might have caused him to become "different from ordinary people." His eyes had then begun to see certain "things" hidden beneath the surface. He was still living in the familiar place, but he could no longer see the familiar things...

But none of these analyses meant anything.

Regardless, he could no longer return to the "ordinary and normal world" in his memories. This unfamiliar, enormous city was like a boundless forest, imprisoning a bewildered castaway among its sinister, tangled branches and vines. Two short months had not been enough for Yu Sheng to uncover the secrets of this "forest."

In fact, he had only just barely adapted to that familiar yet unfamiliar "new home," and had managed to restore something resembling "daily life" there.

Fortunately, in this Boundary City that was utterly incompatible with his memories, he was still "Yu Sheng." He had normal identification, a legally valid address, a modest amount of savings, and a livelihood that did not look particularly reliable. If this really was some kind of "transmigration," then at least he did not have to face the three great dilemmas most transmigrators encountered: "Who am I? Where am I? And where do I go to get an identity card?"

Considering that this was an orderly modern metropolis, those problems were especially important. After all, modern society had a comprehensive population-management system, and a transmigrator who landed in a city like this would have a hard time escaping the status of an undocumented person.

Of course, looking at it from another angle, transmigrating into a chaotic old society or a lawless otherworld might bring its own minor troubles—such as being mistaken for a spy from an enemy nation and getting chopped up, being mistaken for an invading foreign race and getting chopped up, being mistaken for an evil creature emerging from underground and getting chopped up, or being mistaken by cave-dwelling goblins for convenient rations and chopped up to stew...

With these nonsensical associations appearing from who knew where turning through his mind, Yu Sheng passed through an old alley beside the commercial street and continued toward "home" by another route.

The sky grew increasingly gloomy, and perhaps precisely because of that gloom, those "things that weren't quite right" began to multiply.

At the edge of Yu Sheng's vision, several wavering human figures appeared on the mottled, weathered walls of the buildings beside the road. An agile cat leaped out from a shadow on the wall and lightly climbed onto a beam of light that shone down from who knew where. It meowed twice in Yu Sheng's direction, then melted and fell away together with the raindrops, splashing into patches of water on the ground.

The rain had begun, earlier than expected.

The wind grew somewhat cold. The chill seemed almost tangible as it swirled into the gaps in his clothing.

Yu Sheng clicked his tongue. He could only put the shopping bag over his head and quicken his pace.

If he had not been trying to avoid the black shadow beneath the streetlamp, he could have taken the main road and gotten home faster. Although that house was somewhat strange and unfamiliar, it was at least a place that could shelter him from the wind and rain.

Thinking of the shadow beneath the streetlamp, Yu Sheng felt somewhat annoyed.

Based on experience, he knew that the bizarre things he saw were generally harmless. At least, as long as he did not provoke them, they would ignore him just as ordinary people ignored them. Even so, knowing that in his heart did not stop him from instinctively avoiding things that looked truly sinister—but as it turned out, taking a detour today had not been a good idea.

It was getting colder and colder.

For rain, the cold was absurd.

Yu Sheng realized that the air he exhaled was slowly turning into condensed icy mist. The raindrops falling from the sky struck like sharp nails, hard and freezing cold, hitting him with painful force.

The ground was gradually turning into a smooth mirror beneath the freezing rain.

An immense sense of unease instantly snapped Yu Sheng to attention. He realized that something was wrong—very wrong. Even in this strange city, this was the first time he had ever encountered such a situation.

Unlike the "shadows" he usually saw, which were at most somewhat unpleasant to look at, this time he sensed... malice.

The rain was malicious.

He abruptly raised his head, only to find that the path, which had still held a few scattered pedestrians moments ago, was now completely empty. The not-too-wide street held no one but him.

There was no one in sight. The distant lights had also become hazy and illusory. The intersection at the end of his vision seemed to shift between near and far, as though something were blocking it. All around him were cold, sealed-off buildings—and rain, cold rain.

He felt as though the entire world were raining for him alone.

Yu Sheng sucked in a sharp breath and sprinted toward the nearest house. An old iron door stood there, apparently the back entrance of one of the shops below the buildings. Whatever it was, he had to find someone to help him as quickly as possible.

The droplets in the rain had already begun to take on the sharpness of blades, while the surrounding temperature had fallen so low that every breath sent needle-like pain through his lungs.

It took only a few steps for Yu Sheng to reach the door. He raised a hand and pounded on it. "Is anyone..."

He widened his eyes, and his voice cut off abruptly.

His hand had struck a wall. The door had been painted on the wall.

The nearby windows had been painted on the wall as well.

A rustling sound came from nearby.

Yu Sheng slowly turned his head toward the source of the noise.

Amid the freezing rain falling like blades, a strange-looking thing slowly rose from the mirror-like water. It gained substance from the pitch-black shadow and stared coldly at Yu Sheng.

It was a frog—a nearly one-meter-tall frog whose head was densely covered in eyes, its body reflecting the freezing rain falling from the sky.

The frog opened its mouth, and a sharp tongue shot straight toward its prey's heart.

"F*** you, you piece of—"

Yu Sheng's choice of words was elegant and his reaction swift. Before the expletive had even finished leaving his mouth, his body had already reacted. He suddenly dodged to the side, pulled the collapsible baton he usually carried for self-defense from his pocket, planted his foot, twisted his waist, and lunged forward—

The frog's tongue bent at a sharp angle in midair and pierced through Yu Sheng's heart from behind.

Yu Sheng: "...?"

He blinked and looked at the frog's tongue protruding from his chest. A heart throbbed rapidly at its tip.

"...Damn bastard, that thing is mine..."

He thought about it, then cursed inwardly.

And died.

I'm back~~

First, let me mention something. When our previous book ended, we prepared a reader appreciation event. The alliance leaders of Deep Sea Ember can join the alliance leader group from the work's homepage to register and claim a merchandise gift pack. There are still around a hundred people we haven't been able to contact, so please join the group and send us your mailing address as soon as possible. In addition, the first hundred new alliance leaders of this book will also receive a Deep Sea Ember complete-series gift pack. You can likewise contact us through the alliance leader group. The new-book event will also be giving away plenty of Deep Sea merchandise, so please keep an eye on updates in the reader community.

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