Soul of Another World

Lin Yi had been sitting in front of this telescope for six hours.

Located in the desert, this observatory was the driest place on Earth and the most suitable for stargazing.

At an altitude of thirty thousand feet, there was almost no water vapor, and the Milky Way looked like spilled salt grains covering the entire vault of heaven.

Three-seventeen in the morning.

He rubbed his sore eyes and checked the gravitational wave data from LIGO for the fourth time.

The curves dancing on the screen were as quiet as a sleeping cat.

Ever since the detection of the GW190521 black hole merger event two weeks ago, the universe had not given him any more surprises.

"It shouldn't be like this."

He muttered to himself, took off his glasses, and wiped the lenses with the corner of his shirt.

Twenty-seven-year-old Lin Yi was a postdoctoral researcher in the university physics department, specializing in gravitational wave astronomy.

His mentor said he was a genius, but he claimed he was just a lucky gambler.

Gambling that the universe would, at some moment, reveal to him the secrets hidden in the folds of spacetime.

The coffee on the table had long since gone cold.

He stood up and walked to the window, gazing at the desert outside, which was dyed silver-white by the starlight.

The dome of the telescope shimmered faintly in the moonlight, like a seashell lying on the ground.

Then, he saw it.

In the direction of the Orion constellation, a point of light was brightening rapidly.

At first, he thought it was a satellite, but the brightness increase of that light point did not conform to the laws of any known celestial body; it was exponential—no, it was a power law—no, that curve looked like—

"A spacetime curvature singularity."

Lin Yi rushed to the computer almost by instinct.

Data was flooding into the sensors at an astonishing speed, and the readings of the gravitational wave detector began to jump wildly, the frequency soaring from a few dozen hertz, crossing the range of human hearing, entering the ultrasonic region, and then—

The screen went black.

All the lights in the observatory extinguished at the same instant.

Lin Yi froze for a second.

That was not a power outage.

He could feel that the tremor came from somewhere deeper, not the ground, but spacetime itself.

It was as if someone had pulled hard on a massive cloth, and the entire universe was twisting and deforming under that tension.

Then he looked at the sky.

The Milky Way was rotating.

No, not rotating—it was being torn apart.

A massive rift spanned the heavens, extending from Orion all the way to the Big Dipper, as if someone had slashed a painting with a knife.

Within the rift, something was disappearing.

Was that a—city?

No, it was much larger than a city; was that—a continent?

That wasn't right either; the outline of the object was constantly changing, as if it were falling from three dimensions into two, from existence into non-existence.

Lin Yi's knowledge of physics was completely unable to explain anything he was seeing.

But at that moment, an absurd thought suddenly flashed through his mind—

That was a world.

A world that was being swept away.

The rift began to spread.

The readings on the gravitational wave detector had broken through all measurement ranges; those were no longer "ripples," they were a tsunami, the collapse of spacetime itself.

Lin Yi did not run.

For a man who studied gravitational waves, to be scared away by one would be the ultimate irony.

He simply turned around, looked through the glass window, and watched that point of light get closer and larger, until the entire world turned white.

In his final moment, he remembered when he was six years old, the first time his father took him to look at the stars.

"Dad, why do stars shine?"

"Because they are burning."

"Does it hurt them?"

His father did not answer.

It was much like sinking into the deep sea.

This was the first thought that crossed Lin Yi's mind as he regained consciousness.

Surrounded by boundless darkness, there was no up, no down, no light, no sound; he couldn't even feel his own body.

But I am still thinking.

Descartes was right: I think, therefore I am.

He did not know how much time had passed—perhaps a second, perhaps ten thousand years—before the darkness began to recede.

He felt his own existence, felt his limbs, and felt his heart beating.

Then, he felt the light.

His eyelids were heavy, as if glued shut.

It took a great deal of effort to force his eyes open, and then—

A face.

A strange face, looking down at him.

Lin Yi's brain processed the information in 0.1 seconds: female, seemingly in her twenties? A very young and beautiful face.

Dark green hair, dark green eyes, delicate features, a gentle expression, and she was—smiling at him?

No.

Wait.

This isn't right.

He tried to sit up abruptly, only to find that his body refused to obey him.

His limbs were as limp as noodles, his neck unable to support the weight of his head; he could only wave his hands futilely, like a drowning man.

That hand—

That hand was the hand of an infant.

Lin Yi froze.

He stared at that hand for a full three seconds: five short, stubby fingers, pink and tender skin, nails as small as grains of rice.

He tried to make a fist, and the five fingers curled sluggishly, like five clumsy caterpillars.

"...?"

Lin Yi's mind went blank.

"He's awake, he's awake!"

The woman said with pleasant surprise, her voice as soft as a feather. "Brother Ming, come quickly, the child is awake!"

Brother Ming?

Lin Yi struggled to roll his eyes, seeing a tall man approach.

The man wore a deep blue robe, his temperament steady, his gaze profound as he looked down at him.

"He is indeed awake."

The man said, a hint of surprise in his tone. "This little fellow is quite tough; he was abandoned in the woods for an entire night and actually survived."

Woods? Abandoned? Survived?

Lin Yi's brain began to spin wildly.

Where am I?

What happened?

That gravitational wave, that rift, that world that was disappearing...?

"Ya Li," Yun Ming said, "are you sure you want to adopt him? Our identities are special, and this child's origins are unknown. If something were to—"

"There are no 'ifs'."

The woman called Ya Li said softly, pulling the infant in her arms a little tighter. "He was crying there, with no one around him. I couldn't just leave him."

She lowered her head, gently touching her forehead to Lin Yi's, her eyes curving into crescents as she smiled. "Little one, from now on, you shall be called Yun Jingheng, alright?"

Yun Jingheng?

Lin Yi—what should he call himself now?

He opened his mouth, wanting to speak, wanting to ask where this was, wanting to ask who that woman was, wanting to ask what that rift was.

But all that came out of his mouth was the cry of an infant.

"Waa—"

Three days later, Lin Yi finally accepted the absurd possibility.

He had transmigrated.

To be precise, he had transmigrated to a place called "Douluo Continent."

This realization left him unable to recover for an entire day.

Douluo Continent?

That Douluo Continent from the novels?

The Douluo Continent with Martial Souls, Spirit Beasts, and Spirit Masters?

This has to be fake, right?

He stared at the ceiling, repeatedly wondering if he was dreaming.

But everything that had happened over the past three days—being fed, having his diapers changed, being carried around—told him this was no dream.

This was a reality more absurd than any dream.

The woman who saved him was named Ya Li, an Elder of the Sea God Pavilion at Shrek Academy.

The man was named Yun Ming, her husband and the Pavilion Master of the Sea God Pavilion at Shrek Academy.

Lin Yi... well, Yun Jingheng had spent three days piecing together this information from their conversations.

Shrek Academy.

Yun Ming.

Ya Li.

If his memory served him correctly, in Douluo Continent III: Legend of the Dragon King, these two people were—

Wait.

Lin Yi suddenly thought of something.

If this was the Douluo Continent, and if this was the era of the Legend of the Dragon King, then—

That rift.

That world which was disappearing.

In the original work, the Douluo God Realm was swept away by a spatial turbulence.

That catastrophe affected the entire Douluo Planet; Spirit Beasts were driven to the brink of extinction, the Abyss Plane seized the opportunity to invade, and the prologue to the entire story began.

And he, Lin Yi, a physicist who studied gravitational waves, had likely witnessed the very moment the God Realm vanished.

No, not just witnessed.

He had been pulled into it.

That ripple in space-time had brought him from Earth to this place.

Yun Jingming closed his eyes and let out a long sigh.

Absurd.

It was all too absurd.

He recalled his mindset from three days ago: I am a physicist; I believe in objective facts, and I believe in repeatable, verifiable scientific laws.

And now?

Now he was lying in an infant's body, being held and fed by a woman named Ya Li.

Outside the window, two old men were glowing all over, with nine rings following them as they flew around in the sky, cursing and occasionally colliding with each other...

Science?

Science is worth nothing...