Changes

Chapter One: Changes

(PS: It's a new installment, so I need to organize the plot outline. There'll only be two updates today. While I'm at it, please give me your recommendations, monthly votes, subscriptions, and tips. If you enjoy the story, please show your support and help out. A new novel is like a sapling and needs everyone's care.)

"Could it be that I traveled to the Dark Matter World of the future, Year 2028, and it was all just a dream?"

So convenient—read Taiwanese novels on the Taiwan Novel Network!

Lu Yuanming had begun to seriously doubt his experiences fighting in the Dark Matter World.

So far, aside from his memories, Lu Yuanming had no evidence that he had traveled to the Dark Matter World of the future. And those so-called memories...could just as easily have been a dream.

After all, he had been in a vegetative state. Perhaps all his memories from before were nothing but a dream? Maybe he'd dreamed of sinking into darkness, dreamed of traveling to the future, to Year 2028, and then dreamed of dying there and falling into the Dark Matter World. All that fighting monsters and leveling up—maybe it had all been a dream.

It had all been a dream while he was in a vegetative state, and now he had woken up!

If he explained everything as a dream, it actually made sense. It all fit.

A vegetative patient had lain in a hospital bed for nearly a year. During that year, his consciousness had remained trapped in a dream, an unusually vivid one. Then he had woken from the vegetative state and begun to wonder whether the dream he'd had was real.

Should I get tested to see if I'm mentally ill?

At dinner, Lu Yuanming silently picked at the food in his bowl while his parents chatted about family matters. His younger sister was just as quiet as he was. Her Gaokao was only four days away. Today was June 3, and the exams would begin on June 7. Lu Yuanmin was under enormous pressure now and had no interest in talking.

Fortunately, their parents were used to this, so they simply carried on chatting to each other. Lu Yuanming and his sister remained silent. After dinner, Lu Yuanmin buried herself in a sea of practice questions, while Lu Yuanming returned to his room.

"...There's no physical evidence that proves I really traveled through time."

Lu Yuanming sat in his room, lost in thought. He had to determine whether everything that had happened was just a dream.

If it was all fake, then great. He had merely dreamed of being a hero. There was no Dark Matter World in the future, no monsters or indescribable horrors. Human civilization would continue to develop—or fall into decline—and he would be just one insignificant person among countless others. He could return to his ordinary life, everyone going their own way.

But if it hadn't been a dream, if it had all really happened, then perhaps his soul had now fully merged with his body. Unable to leave his body, he could no longer travel to the Dark Matter World. If so, as time passed and Year 2028 arrived, ghosts and curses would appear around the world. Humanity and human civilization would begin to fall into the Dark Matter World. That would be the end of the world.

So the key now was to confirm whether it was all a dream, whether it was only his imagination.

"...One option is to leave my body. My soul has been strengthened several times before. I was already two meters forty tall, and this time it's been strengthened far more than before. Even if there's a limit to how much taller and stronger I can get, I'm probably over two meters seventy now. If I can see my soul, I'll know whether I merely dreamed it all or really traveled to the Dark Matter World of the future."

Lu Yuanming stared at the full-length mirror for a long time, but all he saw was himself. No matter how he tried—sitting cross-legged to meditate or willing his soul to leave his body—he felt nothing. In short, he was just an ordinary person in an ordinary body.

"I can't leave my body, which could explain why I can't travel back. But it could also mean it was all just a dream... So I'll try another way to prove it. The USA. A hidden laboratory beneath New York. According to the history I learned in the future, the only Dark Matter Fragment obtained from Little Sun Country is hidden there, where a team of American scientists is studying it. If I can confirm there really is a laboratory and a scientific team studying the fragment, that'll prove I really traveled through time."

At that thought, Lu Yuanming couldn't help smiling bitterly.

He was just an ordinary recent college graduate who had been hit by a car and left in a vegetative state. Ordinary family, ordinary education, ordinary life. Apart from the extraordinary business of traveling through time, he was just like ninety-nine percent of the people in this world. What chance did he have of investigating a secret American research facility?

At this point, even if he honestly told someone everything, who could he tell?

His parents? They'd only think he was joking.

A doctor? The doctor's first reaction would probably be to send him for a psychiatric evaluation.

The police? The government? But he had no evidence.

So even if he really had only dreamed it and the Dark Matter World didn't exist, or even if it did, there was no way he could uncover the truth.

"Then there's only one last way to verify everything..."

Lu Yuanming went out onto the balcony. His home was on the twenty-seventh floor of Building A. The residential complex had four buildings, A through D, arranged in a triangular formation. From his position, he could see Building C. During the day, he had seen something like a ghost or curse clinging to a man's back. That couldn't have been an illusion, could it?

Now he had to find out whether it really was a ghost or a curse. If it was, that would mean the Dark Matter World's influence had already begun four years before the collapse, not just in Year 2028, as Tang Zhean and the others had said.

Lu Yuanming returned to his room and began thinking about how to investigate.

First, he didn't know the young man's identity. Second, ghosts and curses weren't monsters from the Dark Matter World. According to Tang Zhean, these ghosts and curses probably came from one of two sources: either they were chaotic manifestations of human civilization falling into the Dark Matter World, or they were some kind of phenomenon caused by the indescribable horrors.

In the Material World, curses and ghosts were immortal. They also possessed Supernatural Power, and there was no way to fight them with human technology.

So if he wanted to investigate whether this was real, he first had to protect himself. One careless mistake could kill his physical body in the Material World, immediately nullifying his greatest advantage. If the Dark Matter World really existed, that would be an outcome he absolutely couldn't bear.

As Lu Yuanming struggled to think of a way to investigate, he suddenly heard a long string of police sirens.

The moment he heard them, Lu Yuanming rushed to the balcony and looked down. He saw seven or eight police cars driving through the complex. They soon reached the foot of Building C. Police officers piled out. Some rushed into the building, while the others began setting up a cordon outside.

It all happened incredibly fast. No more than five minutes passed between the first siren and the cordon going up. Lu Yuanming watched closely from the balcony, then suddenly realized he could see everything on the ground with startling clarity. He could even make out the officers' faces.

It was impossible!

Lu Yuanming wasn't severely nearsighted, but years of studying had gradually weakened his eyesight. He didn't wear glasses, but he did have mild myopia. And he was on the twenty-seventh floor. From up here, even someone with perfect vision could at most tell whether a passerby was a man or a woman. There was no way they could make out individual faces the way he could.

This proved he really had traveled through time!

"No, that's not enough. I still need proof that ghosts and curses really exist."

Lu Yuanming stared intently at Building C. It was around eight in the evening. Even though it was June, the sky was beginning to darken. Before the sirens sounded, the residents of Building C had started turning on their lights. It was the kind of glow people meant when they spoke of thousands of homes lit up. But after the sirens sounded, especially once a group of officers rushed into the building, the lights began going out one apartment at a time. In less than a minute, the entire Building C unit was plunged into darkness.

By then, even the residents who knew nothing about what was going on had realized that something serious must have happened in Building C.

More than a hundred residents gathered outside Building C, crowding around the cordon and asking questions. Some lived in Building C. They had probably been out for a walk after dinner, only to find the police had cordoned off their homes and wouldn't let them in. Others lived in the complex's other three buildings and had come over to satisfy their curiosity.

They weren't the only ones. Lu Yuanming saw people coming out of the other two buildings and running toward Building C. Many others watched from their balconies, including his parents, who were looking down from another balcony.

Suddenly, a tremendous uproar rose from below. Lu Yuanming's eyesight was astonishingly sharp now, and he immediately saw two figures climb out through a corridor window on the eleventh floor of Building C, then leap out without hesitation.

The eleventh floor was about forty or fifty meters up. Anyone who jumped from that height had almost no chance of survival.

Sure enough, the two people hit the ground and bounced a short distance. From what Lu Yuanming could see, they were beyond saving. Their bodies had been smashed so badly that every bone was likely shattered.

What happened next made Lu Yuanming tense up at once.

He saw two souls rise from the bodies. With his vision sharp enough to make out their expressions, he could clearly see the terror on their faces. They slowly floated away from their bodies, staring at their own broken corpses below. Both souls looked utterly disbelieving.

"So the Dark Matter World really exists. There really is an afterlife. Then they'll fall down into it..."

Lu Yuanming murmured, but what happened next was completely beyond his expectations. The two souls didn't fall toward the Dark Matter World. Instead, some force dragged them toward Building C. Only then did Lu Yuanming notice a faint thread attached to each soul. The threads were pulling them into the building. The two souls screamed soundlessly and struggled in terror, but they were still dragged into the darkness of Building C. In barely ten seconds, they had both disappeared.

After seeing all that, Lu Yuanming immediately dashed off the balcony and back into his room. He glanced around, grabbed an Ultraman Mask, then turned and ran into the living room. His parents were still on the balcony, looking down, and his younger sister, Lu Yuanmin, was in the study. No one saw him leave his room. Lu Yuanming didn't make a sound. He slipped on his running shoes, left the front door ajar, and darted toward the elevator in the hallway.

He...

Was going to Building C!