Slowly opening his eyes, Li Zhong felt as though every movement drained the last of his strength. The endless exhaustion left him utterly bewildered, and questions arose in his mind on their own.
Where am I?
Wasn't I hospitalized after my stomach cancer had spread to its final stage?
There was none of the usual, pungent smell of disinfectant. Li Zhong struggled to open his eyes and turn his head, looking around with difficulty. All he saw were four bare, gray walls. One was marked with mottled soot stains, and beneath it stood a clay stove...
The room was more than ten square meters, just like a rural home from thirty years ago. Apart from the battered wooden bed beneath him, covered with a worn-out sheet, there was nothing else. The place was completely bare.
"Hideaka, Hideaka. The medicine's ready. Just drink it, and you'll get better..."
Suddenly, a person came through a square opening filled with dazzling white light. Judging from the room's otherwise enclosed state, Li Zhong could guess that the uncurtained opening was a doorway connecting the room to the outside.
The newcomer was a middle-aged man, around thirty. He wore similarly worn clothes, and his messy, yellow hair was stained and clumped together. A trace of concern showed in his murky eyes. His wrinkled, calloused hands held a battered brown bowl filled with a brown herbal decoction.
He wasn't speaking Chinese. His rapid, chattering words sounded like Japanese, but strangely, Li Zhong could understand him. He also felt a little familiar with the man before him.
"Wh-where is this? Who are you...? Hideaka... Who's Hideaka? My name is clearly Li Zhong. And what kind of place is this...? I-I've changed!!"
Li Zhong struggled to sit up, but when he braced himself with his arms, he suddenly realized that his once slender limbs had become short and soft, pale and chubby like a baby's. These were clearly a child's arms!
What was going on? Wasn't he in the hospital, waiting for treatment? His stomach cancer had spread... The chance of a successful operation was less than ten percent, but his parents had still insisted that he go through with it. Then they had given him an anesthetic...
How had he suddenly ended up in a strange, unfamiliar place? More absurdly, how had he become a child?
"Here, Hideaka, drink this. It's the secret recipe of our old village chief, made with four herbs. It'll bring your fever down..."
The middle-aged man put the yellow-brown bowl to Li Zhong's lips. The pungent smell of the medicine reached his nostrils, and only then did Li Zhong notice how hot and heavy his breathing was. He clearly had a high fever!
In a daze, he swallowed the bitter medicine, and a wave of exhaustion swept through his mind. Soon, he drifted back to sleep...
Over the next few days, the middle-aged man brought him food and medicine every now and then. Through his conversations with the man, Li Zhong learned the identity of the body's previous owner.
The former owner of this body was named Sato Hideaka, the son of a farming family in the village. When he was three, his father was robbed and killed by bandits while traveling to trade during the farming off-season. His mother then bore the burden of the household alone, working herself to the bone for a year before falling ill and dying, her frail health unable to withstand the strain.
With both his parents dead, Sato Hideaka became an orphan. Since he was only five, he couldn't work, and no wealthy family or noble had adopted him. The villagers helped him out, and he grew up eating at their tables.
Seven days ago, the five-year-old Sato Hideaka had been fishing by the river when a downpour began. Unable to find shelter in time, he was drenched for an hour and came down with a bad cold and a high fever. Then Li Zhong had entered his body.
As for the man who had brought him medicine, his name was Yoda Eisuke. He had been the neighbor and friend of the body's father, who had entrusted Sato Hideaka to his care before he died. Yoda Eisuke looked after him whenever he could...
And whenever Li Zhong heard Yoda Eisuke talk about the outside world, he often heard words like Land of Fire, Konoha, Land of Earth, and ninja... Combined with the villagers' colorful hair and their language—Japanese—Li Zhong was ninety percent certain that he had arrived in the world of an anime called Naruto.
After spending several days resting in the dilapidated house, Li Zhong's fever gradually subsided, though the weakness left by his illness remained. Taking advantage of the bright sunshine, he stepped outside...
Scattered wooden houses stood outside, their tall chimneys sending up wisps of smoke. As far as the eye could see, beyond rows of towering trees that stood a full ten meters tall, narrow paths ran between patchwork fields.
Fresh air, bright sunshine, birdsong and the chirping of insects, lush grass and blooming flowers...
Far from the noise and pollution of the urban jungle, this place made Li Zhong feel as though he had stepped into the idyllic paradise described in Tao Yuanming's writings—if he hadn't been hungry.
Yoda Eisuke was working in the fields with a straw hat on. Sato Hideaka greeted him. "Good afternoon, Uncle Eisuke..."
"Oh, it's Hideaka. How are you feeling now? Are you better?" Yoda Eisuke straightened up, resting both hands on top of his hoe as he asked with a smile.
"I'm feeling much better. Thank you, Uncle Eisuke."
Sato Hideaka was very grateful to Yoda Eisuke. If the man hadn't looked after him so attentively over the past few days, working tirelessly to prepare herbal medicine for him, his fever wouldn't have gone down so quickly.
"Good. As long as you're better. Once I finish up here, I'll make you a few bowls of hot porridge. After you eat, you'll be full of energy."
As soon as Yoda Eisuke finished speaking, several burly men came running from afar. They clutched hoes, wooden clubs, and rusty kitchen knives, their faces tense and panicked.
"Eisuke, the rogue ninja and bandits from the mountains are back in our village! They seem to be heading for the granary. What do we do?"
"Damn it! This is the third time this year. They've already taken half our food, and now they're back again. Are they trying to leave us with nothing to live on? We're dead either way, so let's fight those bandits..." Yoda Eisuke snarled, gripping his hoe with a look of grim resolve. He turned to Sato Hideaka. "Hideaka, go find somewhere to hide... Don't let those bandits see you."
After that, Yoda Eisuke and the other men went around gathering the village's farmers. They rallied more than twenty young men armed with "weapons" and hurried toward the communal granary in the village, apparently ready to fight to the death...
Bandits, brigands, rogue ninja—how chaotic was this world?
Watching the villagers hurry away, Sato Hideaka felt worried and uneasy. He didn't know what the so-called bandits in this world were like, or whether any of the villagers would be hurt.
He looked around and was just about to find somewhere to hide when he suddenly spotted three people ahead. They were young, muscular men carrying bulging sacks and swords. Their faces were scarred and vicious, and they swung their weapons as they chased down unarmed villagers.
These three bandits were vicious. They cut down anyone who got in their way, whether they were the elderly, women, or children. Their blades drew blood with every strike, and they showed no mercy...
Cries of fear, pleas for help, and wild laughter rang out.
Seeing the three bandits coming toward him, Sato Hideaka turned and ran for the edge of the village. These vicious bandits really would kill people. They were hardly human—they were more like beasts!