The Fruit of the God Tree

Lin Chuan woke with every part of his body aching.

Worse still, it felt as if his head were about to burst. It was filled with a jumble of complicated information, and the deluge did not stop until more than ten minutes later.

"What's going on? What happened?" Lin Chuan tried hard to remember what had happened before he fell unconscious.

He only remembered that he'd been going to a cosplay convention, where he planned to dress as the ultimate villain from Naruto, Kaguya Otsutsuki. He'd bought the costume and props on Taobao, and had already finished his makeup. He'd even put on the two horns on his head.

Lin Chuan remembered that right then, standing in front of the mirror, he'd licked the prop Fruit of the God Tree on a whim—and after that, there was nothing.

When he woke again, Lin Chuan was no longer at home. He was in a completely unfamiliar world.

"Damn, could that knockoff from Taobao have been poisonous? Am I dead now?!"

Lin Chuan wanted to cry but had no tears.

"But that doesn't make sense. Why does my body still hurt so much if I'm dead?" Lin Chuan said in surprise. He felt around his body and found that he was wearing a loose robe, a little like the clothes people wore in ancient times. The moment his hand touched the skin beneath the garment, he sucked in a sharp breath from the pain.

There wasn't a single uninjured spot on his body. Scars of every size covered him, and some places were even festering and oozing pus.

"What happened? Why does my body have so many wounds?" Lin Chuan murmured in shock. "And why is everything in front of me black?"

The next moment, Lin Chuan raised his hands to his eyes and discovered, to his horror, that there were only two empty sockets where they should have been. He didn't have eyeballs at all!

The discovery nearly made Lin Chuan leap out of his skin, but his injuries were so severe that he couldn't even stand.

Lin Chuan immediately stopped checking his injuries and turned his attention to the torrent of complicated information that had just surged through his mind. He only needed to skim it to discover the key to everything!

"I've transmigrated... And this is a cultivation world..."

Lin Chuan muttered blankly, and for a long time, he couldn't recover his wits.

Fine, I've transmigrated. But why is my body so weak? And, even worse, why did I end up in the body of a blind man?

Lin Chuan silently shed tears, even though he didn't have eyeballs.

He was just wondering whether he should strangle himself and see if he could transmigrate again when his hand touched something. Judging by its feel, he recognized it almost at once—the Fruit of the God Tree!

Although it was a knockoff prop he'd bought on Taobao, his transmigration seemed to have happened because of it. After all, the last thing Lin Chuan remembered was the moment his tongue touched the Fruit of the God Tree.

Holding the Fruit of the God Tree in his hand, Lin Chuan hesitated over whether to eat it.

Since it had caused his transmigration, Lin Chuan was almost certain there was something special about it. But the problem was, he wasn't sure it was meant to be eaten! What if it was just a weapon?

After a long while, Lin Chuan tossed the fruit into his mouth and swallowed it. He mumbled indistinctly, "This body's half-dead anyway, and I'm blind. I'm probably not far from dying, so I might as well eat it!"

After gulping it down whole, Lin Chuan waited quietly for a miracle. One minute passed, and nothing happened. Ten minutes passed, and still nothing. Half an hour later, Lin Chuan was in despair.

"Heavens above, earth below, why is this happening? It wasn't easy for me to transmigrate! Why did I have to end up in such a good-for-nothing body? Fine, other people transmigrate into useless bodies and can still make a comeback, but why did I have to end up in a blind man's body?" Lin Chuan lay facedown on the ground, wailing.

"God, can I transmigrate one more time?"

"Just once, ahhh!"

An hour later, Lin Chuan had fallen into utter despair. While lamenting his terrible luck, he began looking through the memories of the body's original owner.

He didn't feel particularly attached to his past life. He'd been an orphan, and before transmigrating, he'd been a loser at a mediocre university with only a few friends. Transmigrating might have been the best gift he could have received—though it seemed he hadn't landed in a very good place! Sob!

Once he'd gone through most of the original owner's memories, Lin Chuan couldn't help sighing. The previous owner of this body had also been called Lin Chuan, and his fate had been even more tragic.

Although he'd been born into a prominent family, he was the illegitimate child of his father and a maid—someone who shouldn't have existed at all. He also had an extremely poor talent for cultivation. In the end, when his half-brother injured his eyes, the family decided to gouge Lin Chuan's out and transplant them. Once the operation was done, they dumped him here to fend for himself.

Along with Lin Chuan's sorrow, an anger he could barely suppress welled up inside him. At this point, he was practically the same person as the original Lin Chuan. The original Lin Chuan's feelings were now his own, and the two could hardly be told apart. Even though he hadn't personally experienced that pain, it felt as if it had happened to him.

Just as Lin Chuan was about to look through the memories concerning this world, clear voices suddenly came from outside the door. They sounded like they belonged to several children.

"Listen, there's a new kid here. He has no connections at all, so he's perfect for training!"

"I practiced my punches and kicks on him last night. It worked surprisingly well!"

"Doesn't he fight back?"

"Why would he? If he dares, I'll kill him. Everyone who lives in a place like this is an orphan with no parents. Even if we beat him to death, no one in the family will care."

"But seriously, that kid's pretty obedient. Whenever we come over, he just curls up in the corner with his arms over his head. He never fights back!"

"Hahaha, that's why he's perfect for practicing punches and kicks! But take it easy today. We hit him too hard yesterday. If we kill him, where are we going to find another tool this good?"

"True. Just hit his arms and legs today. Don't hit his head!"

As they spoke, four children of about seven or eight shoved the door open and barged in.

Hearing their conversation, Lin Chuan finally understood where the wounds on his body had come from—and why the original Lin Chuan had died!

Sometimes, children were far more frighteningly twisted than many adults!

Lin Chuan strained with all his might to stand, or even just move a little, but he couldn't manage so much as that simple motion.

If he hadn't transmigrated into this body, it would already be a cold corpse. That showed just how terrible Lin Chuan's physical condition was.

"Oh, look, he's still alive! Great, we can keep practicing on him for a long time..."

Before the words had even finished, the four began raining punches and kicks down on Lin Chuan.

Violent pain struck him again. Lin Chuan lifted his head, wanting to see what the four of them looked like, then suddenly remembered that he didn't even have eyeballs.

"Huh? Why isn't he curled up in the corner with his arms over his head today?"

"He even dared to roll his eyes at us. Looks like we didn't beat him hard enough!"

As soon as they finished speaking, the four began beating Lin Chuan with all their strength. But Lin Chuan's heart gave a little jolt. I don't even have eyeballs, so how could I roll my eyes? Could you come up with a worse excuse to beat me?

The next moment, however, Lin Chuan suddenly found that everything before him had grown bright. Four children in ornate robes were wildly swinging their fists and feet.

At some point, two eyeballs had grown in Lin Chuan's once-empty eye sockets. But they were completely different from ordinary eyes. They had no black pupils—both the pupils and the irises were white. They were none other than the Byakugan of the Hyuga Clan in Naruto!