At noon, the sun blazed overhead.
The southern outskirts of Huanyang City.
The lake shimmered, its surface rippling with flecks of gold. It was so tranquil that it looked like a landscape painting frozen in time.
—Chirp!
Suddenly, a sharp cry pierced the silence!
High above, a gray bird tucked in its wings and plunged downward, fast as an arrow loosed from a bow. It dove headfirst into the lake.
Splash!
Its talons cut precisely through the water, sending up a fleeting spray.
When it beat its wings and rose into the air again, a small white fish was writhing desperately in its grasp.
Its silvery scales reflected the harsh sunlight with a dazzling, icy gleam, while its tiny body thrashed violently.
It tried to escape the bird's talons and return to the water.
But that hope was destined to remain just that—a hope.
The talons gripping it were like cold iron shackles, rendering all its resistance futile and feeble.
At the same time,
the gray bird wasted no time. Its wings beat with a muffled rush of air as it carried its prey skyward.
As it climbed and moved at great speed, its tiny shadow, cast by the sunlight,
briefly swept across the only cluster of gray-white buildings on the island in the middle of the lake below.
On the roof of one building, several bold red characters stood out.
—Morning Light Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center.
Of course, the locals were more accustomed to calling it Morning Light Psychiatric Hospital.
It was reflected in the mirrorlike lake, its gray-white walls exuding a solemn air that clashed with the surrounding picturesque scenery.
At that moment, inside one of the inpatient buildings,
the metal railings around every balcony had been designed as a dense grid. Seen from the outside, the building looked like a giant birdcage, trapping the people inside.
Psychiatric patients in hospital gowns wandered through it, making strange gestures or stopping to mutter to themselves.
Just then,
inside a private room on the third floor, the air was thick with the distinctive, pungent chemical smell of disinfectant.
The midday sunlight was pale and scorching. It passed through the gridded bars and glass of a window, casting shattered patches of light with sharp edges across the white floor.
A gaunt figure sat amid the fragments of alternating light and shadow.
The blue-and-white-striped hospital gown he wore hung loosely on him.
The "301" printed on his chest looked especially glaring beneath the patches of light.
The figure was a young man in his twenties. At that moment, he sat on the bed with his face tilted upward, his neck stretched at a stiff angle that looked almost as if it had been broken, as he gazed at the sky beyond the window.
Beneath his pale skin, blue-gray veins showed clearly.
His cheeks were sunken, and his face was deathly white, as if every last trace of vitality had been drained from him. There wasn't a hint of life in it.
His pale flesh clung tightly to his bones, outlining their gaunt contours.
He looked like a dried-out corpse, drained of every last bit of vitality.
Only the faint rise and fall of his chest proved that he was still alive.
At that moment,
his sunken eyes were vacant as he stared through the glass at the vast expanse of blue sky and water outside, lost in thought.
Time passed. Who knew how long had gone by?
Deep in the young man's vacant, bewildered eyes, something seemed to stir. Little by little, like mist scattered by the wind, it slowly settled and gathered, until at last it became a glimmer of clarity.
Then the young man slowly turned his neck, his gaze sweeping inch by inch across the room.
The room was bare.
Apart from the low iron bed beneath him, there was nothing else.
The walls, the corners of the bed, the ceiling—every edge was wrapped in thick, soft padding, eliminating any sharp corners that might have been there.
Finally, his gaze came to rest in a corner of the ceiling.
A hemispherical security camera was embedded there, pointed at him. A dark red light blinked at regular intervals.
At this sight,
the young man calmly withdrew his gaze and lowered his head, looking down at the faded hospital gown he wore.
The coarse fabric rubbed against his skin. The sensation was real.
After seeing this,
his cracked lips parted slightly, then closed again.
How could... something like this happen?
Hu Long was not the original owner of this body.
He was a soul from another world who, for reasons unknown, had quietly taken possession of this body not long ago.
The situation wasn't unfamiliar to him from the movies and novels he'd read.
It had another, more widely known name:
transmigration.
Transmigration generally fell into two categories: body transmigration and soul transmigration.
Body transmigration meant that a person's entire physical body crossed over and arrived in another world intact.
Soul transmigration, on the other hand, usually meant that the soul crossed over and took the place of another body.
Thinking of this,
he raised his hand and held it before his eyes.
What he saw was a deathly pale hand. In the sunlight, thin skin clung tightly to the bones, while veins showed faintly beneath it. It looked like a pale specimen wrapped in human skin.
This wasn't his own body, the one riddled with tubes.
He had transmigrated into this completely unfamiliar body. Clearly, his soul had crossed over.
If an ordinary person experienced such a sudden change, they would probably already be overwhelmed by fear and confusion.
Even leaving home to work in another city could make someone uneasy, let alone changing worlds and bodies completely.
But Hu Long was different.
There wasn't the slightest trace of confusion or fear in his eyes. Instead, they held a hint of indescribable... elation.
Of course, it wasn't because he had nerves of steel or had nothing left to lose.
The reason was that in his previous life, an accident had left him in a vegetative state.
For ten whole years.
His mind had remained conscious, but all he could do was lie in a hospital bed. He couldn't even lift his eyelids.
Hearing was his only connection to the outside world, but in a way, it had also become the eternal prison in which he was confined.
He couldn't even end his own life. That despair had soaked his soul day and night like icy water.
But now...
He gently curled his fingers.
His dry joints made a faint crackling sound.
This body was alive.
He could move, breathe, and touch the things around him.
Even though the body was terribly weak, and even though it still had some underlying problems,
to Hu Long, this was already an incredible stroke of luck.
At the thought, the faintest curve appeared at the corner of his mouth.
Like someone who had spent too long in the dark finally feeling a sliver of light.
He gently closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of the sunlight falling on him from beyond the window.
It had been far too long since he had felt anything like this.
At the same time,
fragments of this body's memories surfaced in his mind.
The original owner had the same name as him.
That wasn't the important part. What mattered was that the original owner was mentally ill—or, more precisely, suffered from persecutory delusions.
This was a type of delusional disorder.
Depending on its severity, it could be divided into three levels.
Mild: It had little effect on daily life and might manifest only as wariness or avoidance of certain situations.
Moderate: The person suspected that others intended to harm them, cut off all social contact, and frequently called the police or filed complaints.
Severe: The person displayed dangerous behavior, such as attacking others or attempting suicide or self-harm. They could no longer maintain a normal life and required emergency intervention.
The original owner was a severe case of persecutory delusion and was completely incapable of caring for himself.
He had attempted suicide more than ten times.
There were numerous healed wounds on his arms and neck.
Even after receiving medication here, his condition hadn't improved at all. Instead, it had grown increasingly severe.
That was why he had been locked up here and placed under round-the-clock surveillance, to prevent anything from happening to him.
Of course, that was how people outside viewed the original owner.
Having inherited his memories, Hu Long knew that things weren't as they seemed.
The original owner had been perfectly normal and hadn't suffered from any mental illness. There was another reason he had ended up like this.
Thinking of this,
Hu Long opened his eyes.
His gaze moved slowly around the room, finally settling on the reinforced glass of a window to one side.