On the rooftop of an apartment building in an open city in a southern coastal province of Huaxia, a young man in his twenties lay half-dead in a chair propped against the railing. He wore a white T-shirt and gray-brown shorts, and weakly fanned himself with a folding fan, stirring the warm air.
"This damn weather! Even the breeze from the fan is hot. When's the power coming back? A blackout at this time of night could kill someone!" Ye Yun gazed up at the starless sky and complained feebly. The heat had left him with barely enough energy to move.
His name was Ye Yun. He was twenty-three years old and a little over 1.7 meters tall—not especially tall, but not short either. He had delicate features and was a bit handsome. He was somewhat shy and poor at socializing, though around his close friends he could really let loose. Because he wasn't good at dealing with people, he'd gone three years at university without getting a girlfriend. This was already his fourth month as an intern, and today, for once, he'd managed to get off work without overtime. He'd hurriedly eaten and rushed back to the dorm, hoping to play a couple of games, only to get a bolt from the blue before he even made it there: the power was out in his area for some reason.
Looking at the dark sky above the city, illuminated by the city lights, Ye Yun thought back to his childhood. He remembered that, although his family had an electric fan back then, his parents often took him up to the rooftop to cool off anyway, just to save electricity. The night sky had been truly beautiful—so beautiful. The stars filled the heavens, so close it felt like he could reach out and pluck them while lying on a mat. Especially when everything around him was pitch-black, it was as if he were lying right beneath the stars. The tranquil, dazzling scene had been utterly intoxicating.
Of course, cooling off on the rooftop had its downsides, such as those ever-present, thoroughly annoying mosquitoes. You generally had to burn mosquito coils up there, and if you slept on the roof, you might well wake in the middle of the night covered in bites. Besides the mosquitoes, sleeping on a rooftop had another major drawback: there was nothing overhead, so you could easily wake in the middle of the night drenched by a torrential downpour.
As he reminisced, Ye Yun couldn't help sighing. "Ah, home really is better. At least when the power goes out, it isn't this hot, and there's still water."
Just then, as Ye Yun lamented his miserable lot, a dazzling light flashed in the corner of his eye. He snapped out of it and turned his head slightly, seeing a brilliant shooting star. He quickly closed his eyes and murmured, "Oh, Meteor God! I wish for a gushing spring... Pah, no, I wish I could find a girlfriend before the Lunar New Year. I've already quit that damn game, anyway."
After making his wish earnestly, he repeated it silently twice before opening his eyes. Then he saw something that left him dumbfounded: the shooting star, which should have vanished into the distance, was flying back toward him, its long tail glowing in seven colors.
"Could my wish have been too hard to grant, and scared the shooting star off?" While he was busy letting his imagination run wild, the dazzling light grew larger and larger in his eyes. Ye Yun only had time to blurt out, "Holy crap!" before losing consciousness.
He had no idea how much time passed before Ye Yun furrowed his brows and slowly opened his eyes. He shook his aching head and staggered to his feet. When he saw the surroundings clearly, a heartfelt "Holy crap!" burst from his lips.
"Where am I? Wasn't I cooling off on the rooftop? How did I end up in this thatched hut in the blink of an eye?" Ye Yun stared at the thatch beneath him and the walls, made of thatch and yellow mud, his eyes wide with shock. He couldn't understand how he'd suddenly changed locations. In his confusion, he failed to notice how childishly young his voice sounded.
"Could it be... Holy crap, I remember! I was cooling off on the rooftop when I saw a shooting star and made a wish. Did that enraged Meteor God smash me to death? Did I get transported to another world? That can't be right! Sure, I sometimes complain that life's unfair, that I work myself to the bone all day and still have no money, that I can barely afford to eat—but I really don't want to end up in another world! I don't want to live without water, electricity, games, novels, or movies! And most importantly, my parents will be devastated when they find out I've gone missing!" Ye Yun's wails rang out from the thatched hut.
"Stop wailing. If you keep it up, I'll leave you here, return to the present, and find another host. You can fend for yourself."
"Who? Who's speaking?" Ye Yun jolted at the voice. He sprang to his feet and warily surveyed his surroundings. If he really had been transported to another world, he didn't want to bite the dust right away and disgrace all the transmigrators who'd come before him.
"Don't bother looking. I'm the shooting star you made a wish to. I'm inside your sea of consciousness. Just think what you want to say, and you can communicate with me. You don't need to say it out loud." The same voice sounded in his mind again.
Hearing this, Ye Yun hurriedly thought, You're the shooting star? Did you bring me here? What exactly are you? Why did you bring me here? Where is this place? Can I still go back? And did I really transmigrate, like in the novels?
"That's a lot of questions. I'll explain them one by one."
"I am indeed the shooting star you saw earlier. That was an unusual phenomenon caused by my breaking through the barriers between planes, and you happened to see it. As for me, I'm not any specific kind of thing. My full name is the Myriad Worlds Auxiliary System. I was created by a powerful being to help my host travel through the myriad worlds. You can think of me as a magical treasure. I happened to hear your wish and felt that we were fated to meet, so I chose you as my host. However, I'd only just broken through the barriers between planes, and my energy was a little out of control. Something went wrong, and I brought you directly to this plane. Although I succeeded in bringing you here, I've nearly exhausted my energy. If you want to return to the present, you'll first have to replenish it."
"Go home? Replenish your energy? What kind of energy do you need? How do I do that? And are you going to be like those systems in novels and erase me if I fail a mission?" Hearing that explanation, Ye Yun's spirits lifted. As long as he could go back, that was all that mattered.
After Ye Yun finished thinking, the voice in his mind didn't respond. About two or three seconds passed. Just as he was losing patience and about to ask again, the voice sounded once more.
"This system can only search for planes and take its host to fantasy worlds. It doesn't issue missions, punish hosts with death, or give rewards. It also won't interfere with the host's choices, and the host chooses which worlds to visit. Whether the host gains anything in those planes depends entirely on their own efforts. The host may bring people or objects from other planes back, but this system cannot control the plot characters the host brings back, so please think carefully before bringing any of them along. The worlds available depend on the host's strength: the stronger the host, the more powerful the planes the system can find. Bringing you to this world was an accident, and the energy used to arrange an identity for you here has already exhausted the energy the system had stored."
"This system was created by a certain supreme ruler and can absorb and use all forms of energy. In theory, it can absorb any energy the host can provide—for example, energy naturally released by the host's body, as well as this world's spiritual energy, magical energy, fire, lightning, and so on. However, since this system has run out of energy, it can only absorb energy from outside if the host comes into direct contact with it. So please be careful."
"Besides those, there are also the protagonists' fate in story worlds, the world power released when the host disrupts the plot, and the world-origin energy absorbed while traveling from the host's world to a story world. This is the boundless energy beyond the worlds, and the main source of energy used to sustain their growth and operation."
"So that's how it works. In other words, once you've collected enough energy, you can take me back? But what happened to this body? Why have I become a child?" While the system was explaining, Li Yun finally noticed that he'd turned into a child. But since he'd already transmigrated, turning into a child wasn't anything worth making a fuss over.
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