The sun blazed high overhead.
It seemed a little larger than the one he remembered from ordinary life.
Scorching sunlight pierced the dense layers of the canopy.
The air was thick with damp, oppressive heat.
This was a green cage made of towering ancient trees.
Every tree was astonishingly thick, as if it had grown for thousands of years.
A thick layer of fallen leaves covered the ground, crunching beneath his feet.
In this sweltering jungle, heavy with the scent of the primeval world, a figure struggled to move forward.
He was a boy who looked no more than eleven or twelve.
His upper body was bare, his skin a healthy wheat-brown.
Sweat ran down his youthful yet sharply defined face, gathered at his chin, and dripped into the dirt beneath his feet.
Though small in stature, what he was doing would have left anyone who saw him speechless.
Behind him, he dragged an enormous creature.
It was a monstrous fish several times larger than he was.
The fish was at least five meters long, its body covered in iron-blue scales. Each scale was as large as a palm, gleaming with a metallic chill in the dappled sunlight.
Stranger still, a pair of broad, fleshy wings grew from its back. They now hung limply against the ground, carving two deep furrows through the humus as the boy dragged it along.
Lu Chongwei stopped.
He raised the dusty back of his hand and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
His breathing was a little ragged, his chest heaving.
Even with strength beyond anything an ordinary person could imagine, dragging a mountain of flesh for several kilometers through rugged woodland had left him a little tired.
He turned around and kicked the stiff carcass.
His eyes held a maturity and confusion that didn't fit his age.
"Can this thing... even be eaten?"
Lu Chongwei muttered under his breath.
His brow furrowed as he circled the fish, studying its hard scales and strange wings.
He had never seen a fish like this before.
In fact, many things in this forest were completely unfamiliar to him.
Everything here was absurdly huge and bizarre.
It was like a doodle made by a creator who'd had too much to drink.
Lu Chongwei sighed and grabbed the fish by its tail fin again.
The fin was rough as sandpaper, scraping painfully against his palm.
"Whatever. I've already dragged it all the way back. I can't just throw it away."
He muttered to himself, his voice tinged with resignation.
His arms suddenly strained, and the massive carcass lurched into motion again.
With a dull scraping sound, Lu Chongwei dragged his prize step by step toward the cave up ahead.
The cave lay beneath a cliff, its entrance half hidden by thick vines.
This was his home for now.
It was also his only shelter in this dangerous world.
As he entered the cave, a cool breeze washed over him, instantly dispelling the heat clinging to his body.
Lu Chongwei tossed the fish onto the relatively flat stone floor in the center of the cave.
It landed with a dull thud.
The ground seemed to tremble faintly.
He plopped down on a round stone nearby and panted heavily.
His thoughts drifted back, despite himself, to a month ago.
It had been a turning point that felt like a nightmare.
Back then, his name had also been Lu Chongwei, but he hadn't looked like this.
He had been twenty-one.
In the prime of his youth, his life had been uneventful but stable.
That day had been his twenty-first birthday.
There had been no grand party, just a few close friends, several cases of beer, and an inexpensive barbecue.
Everyone had gotten drunk.
He, too, had drunk himself unconscious. His last memory was of his friends noisily wishing him well and the ceiling spinning overhead.
But when he opened his eyes again—
The world had changed.
There was no soft bed, no familiar ceiling, and no splitting headache from a hangover.
Instead, there was a primeval forest that blotted out the sky, and the deafening roars of beasts in his ears.
Before he could figure out what was happening, before he could even get up off the ground—
A foul, rank wind rushed toward him.
He looked up in terror.
A giant beast like a Tyrannosaurus rex filled his vision.
It stood as tall as a three-story building, its mouth full of dagger-sharp fangs. Its yellow, slit-pupiled eyes fixed on him as if he were a tiny ant.
Fear.
In that instant, Lu Chongwei's mind went blank.
Only his most primitive instinct to survive took control of his body.
The beast opened its gaping jaws and lunged at him, drool stinking as it dripped from its mouth.
With death staring him in the face, Lu Chongwei had no time to think.
He simply threw a punch on instinct.
It was a desperate counterattack, a struggle at the edge of death.
And yet, that seemingly ordinary punch—
Boom!
A thunderous blast rang out through the forest.
Time seemed to freeze in that moment.
Lu Chongwei stared wide-eyed as the several-ton beast was sent flying by his punch.
Its massive body traced an arc through the air.
Then it slammed into a towering ancient tree a hundred meters away.
Crack!
It was the sound of bones shattering and the tree trunk breaking with a mournful groan.
A huge crater caved into the beast's chest, and blood gushed out like a fountain.
It didn't even have time to let out one last cry before it died on the spot, sliding to the ground like a heap of mud.
Lu Chongwei stared blankly at what had happened.
He looked at the corpse in the distance, then at his fist.
Only then did he notice something even more horrifying.
His hand had gotten smaller.
His hands, once large and slightly rough from years of working odd jobs, were now youthful and delicate. They still bore calluses, but they clearly belonged to a child.
He hurried to a nearby river.
The water was crystal clear, reflecting his face.
It was a young, innocent-looking face.
He looked about eleven or twelve, and his features faintly resembled his own as a child.
In that moment, Lu Chongwei finally understood what had happened.
He had transmigrated.
The word, found only in novels and TV dramas, had somehow become his reality.
Not only had he arrived in an unfamiliar world, he had also grown young again, returning to childhood.
More importantly, he seemed to have gained a supernatural strength that defied explanation.
The Tyrannosaurus he had killed with one punch was proof enough.
Over the past month, he had gone from initial panic, to cautious wariness, and then to accepting it as normal.
He had grown used to all kinds of strange things.
Giant pythons with three heads, flowers that sprayed poison, and turtles the size of hills that moved around.
So when he saw the strange fish before him, with enormous wings that let it fly through the sky instead of swim through the water, he wasn't particularly surprised.
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