Lucky Break

"Dad, what's wrong? Don't scare me! What happened?"

"Chairman! Something's happened to the chairman! Quick... call an ambulance!"

"Don't move! Nobody move! The chairman's condition is serious! Quick... call the police!"

With light, brisk steps, Wang Zhen walked out of the hotel. His expression was calm, and there was even a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.

"Heh, a lavish, top-tier wedding? Looks like it's turned into a funeral." Wang Zhen glanced at the red paper bearing the words "A Happy Union," pasted across the colorful arch towering over the hotel entrance, and laughed to himself.

Wang Zhen was an assassin, a professional killer. The drugs had never ravaged his body; he'd lived a healthy life into adulthood. And today was the day!

Today was Wang Zhen's eighteenth birthday, and this mission was his coming-of-age gift. The bizarre requirement—to kill the target at a wedding, in full view of everyone—had kept him preparing for a whole month. After hundreds of simulated practice runs, he'd finally arranged for the target to drink a highly concentrated cardiac glycoside extracted from oleander during the newlyweds' tea ceremony, in front of every guest. The target had then died of what appeared to be a sudden heart attack.

As Wang Zhen headed for the airport, he was crossing at a pedestrian crossing when a Dayun Truck came speeding toward him. With the systematic assassin training he'd received since childhood, he avoided it with nothing more than a casual pause. Then another Dayun Truck came roaring toward him. He dodged again, and then another...

Wang Zhen dodged eleven Dayun Trucks in a row. Just as he pulled off a stylish, handsome cartwheel to evade the eleventh, a twelfth Dayun Truck arrived without warning and sent him flying like a scattering of flowers!

"Detection... successfully evaded eleven consecutive Dayun Truck collisions..."

"Confirmed... Dayun Truck collision point is correct!"

"Confirmed... Good Luck Cheat activated!"

"Warning... supernatural powers are sealed by the world's rules... Warning... supernatural powers are sealed by the world's rules... Warning... supernatural powers are sealed by the world's rules..."

"Detected Infinite Space charging in Subspace... Detected Infinite Space charging in Subspace... Detected Infinite Space charging in Subspace..."

"Initiating spatial jump!"

"Spatial jump complete!"

"Initiating possession and rebirth!"

"Possession and rebirth complete!"

Wang Zhen opened his eyes and came to. He blinked hard. Sure enough, he wasn't in a hospital room. Instead, he was beneath a vast—an unimaginably vast—dome high above him. A gigantic sphere of light floated at its center, radiating a soft, milky-white glow. In its light, the intricate, beautiful patterns on the impossibly high ceiling were just barely visible, hazy and indistinct, like flowers seen through mist.

"A giant ball of light... the Main God?"

"Is this the Original Infinite Space?"

Though Wang Zhen was a veteran assassin with nine years on the job, he spent his downtime between missions browsing the internet, reading novels, watching movies, and chatting on forums to pass the time. So he knew of the Original Infinite Space, the setting unique to the founder of infinite-flow novels, the great master who had pioneered the genre. He'd just never imagined that he, too, would have his shining moment of getting hit by a Dayun Truck and transmigrating!

What he absolutely hadn't expected was that after completing an assassination mission with special requirements, someone would send twelve Dayun Trucks to see him off!

This made no sense!

This was unreasonable!

"What the hell? I wasn't hit by a Dayun Truck to transmigrate? My cheat is called Good Luck, so I had to get hit by one to activate it? And since the laws of the world forbid supernatural powers in the real world, while Infinite Space happened to be charging in nearby Subspace, you brought me here to possess someone and be reborn?"

"Fuck—what the hell!" Wang Zhen was speechless. His cheat's progress bar had been stuck at 100% ever since his first birthday, but it had taken an intimate encounter with a Dayun Truck to activate!

You should've told me!

If you'd said something, and a Dayun Truck didn't come looking for me, couldn't I have found one myself and given it a hug?

Now look at me—I got kissed, hugged, and knocked sky-high by a Dayun Truck. Then, because supernatural powers were sealed by the world's rules, this cheat with its flexible standards had sent me to Infinite Space—and not just any Infinite Space, but the Original Infinite Space! From the looks of it, it had even arranged for me to possess someone and be reborn. I just had no idea whether the person I'd possessed was dead or alive.

"Just do what you want and have the Main God create a person for you. That service is free! We'll discuss everything else in detail at tomorrow's meeting. Remember... don't do anything except have the Main God make you a person!"

"Th-that line... why does it sound so familiar? Original Infinite Space... free body creation... Oh, shit... Is that old crook Zhang Jie, half-man and half-guide, shouting?" Anxious, Wang Zhen jumped to his feet.

He was panicking!

He really was panicking!

Although Infinite Space and the Original Infinite Space were both based on settings resembling a multiverse, their difficulty levels were completely different!

In Infinite Space, he'd be the protagonist!

In the Original Infinite Space, he'd be just a nobody!

How could those possibly be the same?

"Wait... I've got a cheat!"

"Oh. Then we're fine!"

Thinking of the Good Luck Cheat that had brought him here, Wang Zhen had a whole bellyful of complaints to unleash. But he needed to use it right away to become a cheat-powered badass. After all, only an incredibly powerful cheat could withstand the intense radiation of the protagonist's halo. So he had to swallow all his complaints.

"Cheat Grandpa? Cheat Dad? Cheat Bro? Golden Finger? Dayun? Good... Luck?" Wang Zhen braced his hands on his hips and called out to the cheat in his mind, earnestly and amiably trying one name after another!

"Password correct!"

"Good Luck Cheat booting up!"

"Good Luck Cheat... fresh and unconventional, extraordinary and distinctive, carving its own path and forming its own school! Please note: the Good Luck Cheat does not offer the vulgar, commonplace stat-allocation function! It only gives the host one blind box at a specified interval. Opening a blind box randomly grants a supernatural ability or an item! Please set the interval... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Host has forfeited the choice. The Good Luck Cheat's default interval is one story world."

"Shit! I haven't even chosen yet!" Wang Zhen thought this cheat had a screw loose. He'd only wondered about it for a second, and it had already decided he'd forfeited!

"The host successfully evaded eleven enthusiastic embraces from Dayun Trucks, setting a Gilbus Record! Eleven guaranteed Golden Blind Boxes awarded! Sending the first guaranteed Golden Blind Box now!"

"Open it!" The moment he heard "guaranteed," Wang Zhen was wide awake.

Earlier, when the cheat had mentioned blind boxes, he'd thought the stupid thing was screwing him over. He'd never gotten anything from a blind box before—not even a pack of tissues!

Blind box opened!

"Congratulations! The host is blessed with the greatest fortune! You randomly obtained a silver pocket watch bearing a silver lion and a hexagram (the Alchemist symbol from Fullmetal Alchemist)! You may use this item to change careers and become a State Alchemist. (All basic knowledge of Alchemy is automatically acquired after changing careers.)"

"Fullmetal Alchemist? Wang Zhen had actually seen that fairly old classic anime. But the capabilities of the State Alchemists in the show varied wildly, and their restrictions were severe. For example, they had to draw a Transmutation Circle in advance to use Alchemy. So choosing this profession would mean taking on quite a risk." Wang Zhen hesitated. It was great that the cheat had given him something useful, but a career with wildly varying limits and such severe restrictions wasn't exactly a good thing!

"Should I change careers or not?"

"Of course I should!" Wang Zhen's indecisive expression vanished, replaced by firm resolve!

The cheat's products weren't necessarily useful, but the first thing a cheat gave you was always useful!

If it wasn't, the novel might as well be sent to the palace!

Besides, although Fullmetal Alchemist was an old anime, it was a classic, so Wang Zhen still vaguely remembered some of its plot. One thing he remembered was how Alchemy could be freed from the requirement of using a Transmutation Circle!

So Wang Zhen gripped the pocket watch, engraved with a hexagram on one side and a silver lion on the other.

"Change careers... State Alchemist!" he silently repeated to himself.

An ancient, primitive door stood silently in the endless void and suddenly appeared in Wang Zhen's mind. The Tree of Life from the Kabbalah was engraved on its two tightly shut doors.

Then the door slowly opened a crack, revealing an eye that turned with a hexagram Transmutation Circle. At the same time, all kinds of Alchemy knowledge flowed from the crack into Wang Zhen's brain, like a gently running stream that moved far faster than it seemed!

Just as the eye in the crack struggled to force the door wider, the door... shut!

As the door closed, the flow of Alchemy knowledge stopped completely. The majestic, imposing Gate of Truth quietly disappeared, leaving behind only a blurry mark in Wang Zhen's mind.

"The Mark of the Gate of Truth? Looks like I successfully changed careers and became a State Alchemist!" Wang Zhen murmured happily.

After all, until now he'd only been a newly adult veteran assassin. However skilled he might be, he was still just a mortal, and nowhere near a match for the strongest among mortals.

But now things were different!

A State Alchemist had plenty of limitations and shortcomings, but he was still a War Machine who could be deployed on the battlefield—a true supernatural power! What's more, Wang Zhen had once come across an infinite-flow webnovel online that showed how an Alchemist could exploit a loophole in the Main God's space and take off from there!

That had only been some author's wild imagination, of course, but the Main God's nearly omnipotent power was undeniably the foundation of the idea!

"Main God, how many reward points does it take to repair a body?" Wang Zhen silently asked, gazing at the Main God.