On the outskirts of a university district in a city in northeastern China, five ill-tempered students sat inside an internet cafe on a back street.
Dawn was fast approaching. A fat student, looking unconvinced, said, "Can you support me and follow my calls for once?"
"It's not that. They have Cleanse. I'll die if I hook them!"
Seeing the two who were usually friendly and amicable start arguing again, one of their teammates chimed in, "Come on, it's not that bad. Let's play one more!"
Matthews said, "No, I'm getting sleepy. I'm heading back to get some rest."
"Fine, we'll play a couple more. We can't log off in disgrace!"
Matthews stood up and slipped into his right pocket the glass lotus wind chime he'd bought yesterday for forty-nine yuan after a bald man had talked him into it before his overnight gaming session. He also took along the instant-noodle cup he'd just finished.
After leaving the internet cafe, he looked up at the sky. It should have been bright by now, but rainclouds made it seem as if the sky were about to fall. Matthews reached through a gap in the iron fence around the campus wall, intending to squeeze through. It was the shortcut everyone used to get back to their dorms after gaming.
"Ah—"
A spike sliced open Matthews's right hand. He reached into his right pocket for some tissue, and accidentally smeared blood onto one of the little glass lotuses on the wind chime.
After giving the wound a quick bandage, Matthews cursed under his breath as he headed toward campus.
"Thump—"
It was pitch-black, and he didn't see the banana peel underfoot. He was about to slam his head into a utility pole when a thunderclap ripped through the sky. And so, in a stroke of bad luck, Matthews passed out.
When he woke, he was adrift in a Spatial Turbulence, resting on a lotus that carried him along, much like the Merit Golden Lotus from Buddhist lore.
"Whoosh—"
A blue crystal suddenly shot into the Golden Lotus beneath Matthews and settled firmly into the lotus root. He tried to pry it loose, but it seemed to have grown right into the lotus. There was no getting it out.
Matthews remembered a legend that the dead rode a lotus boat to Naihe Bridge. He wanted to try getting off the lotus and going back. He didn't want to die such a miserable death.
After struggling for a while, Matthews slumped down on the lotus, exhausted. Just then, a Death Scythe floated by. He sat up and pulled it onto the lotus.
Bored in that dead, silent space, he reached out with the scythe and poked around. Suddenly, an unidentified corpse drifted over from not far away. What caught his eye was the Golden Crown gleaming on its head. He figured money could make even ghosts cooperate.
Matthews immediately used the scythe to haul the corpse onto the lotus, though it took a great deal of effort. But while he was hooking the corpse, he failed to notice a huge plane closing in behind him. As the Merit Golden Lotus rocked, he lost his footing.
"Ah—"
Shrill cries echoed through a cave as Matthews tumbled out of a Spatial Rift, clutching the Death Scythe. Once he got up, he felt himself all over and found that he wasn't hurt.
But the Golden Merit Lotus beneath him was gone, along with the strange corpse he'd just hauled up. The Golden Crown he hadn't had a chance to take off was gone, too. Matthews looked at the Death Scythe in his right hand and muttered in bewilderment, "Could this be reincarnation?"
But who was reincarnated carrying a Death Scythe? Jia Baoyu had once been born carrying a jade stone, and earned a fated match with a golden-haired beauty. Surely carrying a Golden Crown wouldn't bode any worse for him, Matthews. But what was this supposed to be?
Matthews followed the light out of the cave, but he hadn't been reborn as a baby as he'd expected. Instead, he found himself surrounded by trees as tall as buildings. Standing halfway up a mountainside, he stared in stunned disbelief.
These trees were nothing like anything on the familiar Earth. Not even the tropical rainforests, the lungs of the planet, had trees this thick.
"I'm getting hungry. I'd better find something to eat before I do anything else!"
Leaning on the Death Scythe as he walked, he finally found a river after half an hour. He didn't care that the water hadn't been boiled or that it might contain parasites. After a few gulps, Matthews sat down and ate the fruit he'd just picked.
"Bang—"
"Roar—"
As he sat eating, he heard roars and explosions coming from the opposite bank. The noise was as loud as the blasting at the mine behind his school, while the beast's roar sounded like a plane taking off.
"Something's definitely fighting over there. Just my luck. I can't even get a proper rest!"
Matthews had no choice but to get up and head off in a direction along the riverbank.
What he didn't know was that, not far away on the opposite bank, two Saint-level magical beasts were fighting over a fruit that was nearly ripe. The fruit could greatly strengthen a magical beast's body, and a Saint-level Purple-Striped Black Bear had guarded it for a long time. Now it was being challenged by a Saint-level Tyrannosaurus Rex.
After walking for ten minutes or so, Matthews began to feel strange. His head was swimming, like he was getting drunk.
"Seriously? Are the parasites in this world really that bad?"
Leaning on the Death Scythe, he stood at the edge of a cliff and panted heavily.
"My stomach hurts, too. Am I going to die here?"
He looked around and spotted a cave on one side of the cliff. He went straight inside and saw a fruit hanging from a small tree, glowing with a soft light and brimming with gentle vitality.
He could clearly feel its warm, gentle aura washing over him. "Should I eat it?"
Matthews thought it over. He'd already upset his stomach, so he decided against it.
Lots of novels had their protagonists find some rare treasure in a cave and suddenly grow powerful, going on to crush one villain after another. But he couldn't imagine himself as a protagonist that lucky. First he'd been struck by lightning, and now he seemed to have eaten something bad.
He found a flat boulder and planned to lie down and rest. Once he got through this bout of discomfort, he'd leave this damn forest.
As he lay there and fell asleep, something began to happen. He'd drunk the first mouthful of water in the Coiling Dragon World and eaten its first mouthful of fruit. Just like Sun Wukong, who sprang from a crack in a rock, eating fruit from the mortal world had imbued him with its aura and changed him into something like a monkey.
He, too, had eaten things from the Coiling Dragon World. These things began to collide inside him with the substances from his original world. They drew his body toward harmony with the Laws of the Coiling Dragon World and began to transform it.
At that moment, his Merit Golden Lotus released a bit of energy and began repairing his damaged body.
Before you continue