Rebirth Beneath a Glimmer

Rebirth Under the Faint Light

When death arrived, it was not as grand as people imagined. There was no revolving lantern of memories, no white light of the soul ascending, and no merciful call from a god.

The moment Ryan's consciousness terminated, it felt as though something had forcefully ripped it out from his body. He did not even have time to confirm whether the last line of code in his head was saved before the darkness completely swallowed him. He had no time to think, let alone the strength to struggle. Like a machine losing power, he instantly plunged into silence.

Yet he did not truly "disappear."

Amidst the void after his consciousness detached, he felt an indescribable "sense of existence" still lingering. He could not see or hear, yet he seemed to be floating in some strange middle ground, neither belonging to death nor truly returning to new life.

That light appeared after a stretch of chaos.

It was not blazing, nor could it even be called bright, yet it appeared exceptionally clear in the darkness, like some source of traction slowly pulling him from a floating state in a certain direction. That pulling force was both gentle and irresistible, like the tide deep within amniotic fluid, and like the first pulse before birth.

Following it was a suffocating sense of oppression.

He could feel that he was being wrapped by something soft and heavy. Amniotic fluid, womb, walls of flesh... He remembered these nouns, yet could not control his body, nor even open his eyes. A strong instinct urged him to break free, but he could only passively accept every inch of squeezing, contracting, and pushing. He heard a low, distant voice, a woman shouting, machinery clanging, and crying—it was his own cry, bursting through the air, sharp and helpless.

The moment his consciousness reconnected to his body was an extremely strange experience.

Ryan perceived the touch of his skin—moist, soft, overly sensitive. Air entered his lungs, and he coughed violently like a beginner, yet could not control his vocal organs, nor even know whether he could express the sentence, "I am still alive."

His eyelids were too heavy to open more than a tiny slit. Through a blurry film of tears, he saw a rounded face—tearful at the corners of the eyes, smiling at the corners of the mouth. It was a woman, holding him in her arms. Her embrace was warm, carrying body heat and the scent of milk; another hand was rough and powerful, a man's hand, wiping the blood and amniotic fluid from his face.

He heard voices, the language strange, but miraculously understood:

"It's a boy... We have a son."

"He's crying, that's great, he has a lot of strength."

At that moment, Ryan realized a fact—he had transmigrated.

More accurately, he was "living again," and had arrived in an entirely different world. Not a data world, not a dream, but a real, textured world. The air had temperature, sounds had thickness, the body had weight, and he was re-endowed with time.

This body was extremely fragile. He could not roll over, could not raise his head, and even crying was an uncontrollable reflex. He could only let this young couple wrap him up, place him into swaddling clothes, and coax him softly while gently rocking him. He felt himself pressed against a chest, rising and falling with the breath one beat at a time. Warmth came over him, and a sense of security came with it, but he could not respond.

The next few days were a long chaos.

His sobriety was fragmented, like reflections flashing among broken glass. Every day he could only maintain lucidity for a few minutes; most of the time he felt trapped inside a heavy skull, suppressed by the infant brain structure, and could only make instinctive reactions. He tried to concentrate, tried to drive his muscles, but the nerve signals had not yet fully constructed. He could grasp his mother's finger, yet could not control the strength; he could hear his father conversing with a neighbor, yet could only remember one or two sentences intermittently.

Yet Ryan never gave up.

He regarded this "powerless" infancy as a necessary "shell-forming stage"—his consciousness was like a spark that must first "build a nest" within this frail flesh. In order to adapt, in order to hide, and even more so, in order to grow.

Weeks later, he finally "steadily regained consciousness" for more than ten minutes for the first time, and could completely remember the surrounding structure and daytime rhythm. He began to familiarize himself with that simple living room; in the corner stood an old television with a curled-up frame in the lower right corner; the smell of cooking fumes from the kitchen always drifted into the bedroom after dusk; outside the window occasionally came the low rumble of transport vehicles and the echo of some tower advertisement in the distance.

What truly shocked him, however, was that night.

His father sat on the living room sofa and turned on the television. Amidst the broadcasting commercials, a name familiar enough to make his spine chill appeared at the bottom of the screen:

—Heaven's Arena.

Ryan abruptly opened his eyes.

Not an illusion, not a similar noun, not a homage Easter egg.

It was that world.

That night, the image on the television struck Ryan's brain like a heavy hammer.

The tower rose straight up from the ground, its glass curtain walls reflecting the sunset, the signal tower at the top pointing toward the firmament like a spear; the commentator excitedly introduced the "two hundred and twenty-first challenge match," the figures of two contestants crossing paths in the camera, fists and kicks whistling, the auditorium shaking, the atmosphere boiling yet retaining order.

Heaven's Arena was, without a doubt, the starting point for the strong to make their entrance in that world.

Instead of being speechless with shock on the spot, Ryan was unusually calm. He knew that confirming the world's identity was the first major matter after his awakening. Now that the dust had settled, it actually caused the faintly restless "chaotic anxiety" in his heart to suddenly subside.

He had transmigrated into the world of Hunter x Hunter.

This not only meant he would face a world far more complex and dangerous than reality, but also meant he could not grow up in a "normal way." He knew better than anyone that this place did not belong to the greenhouse-style setting where "anyone can become the protagonist." Hundreds of thousands of people applied for the Hunter Exam every year, and only one in ten thousand truly became "qualified." Not to mention that Nen Ability was not part of basic education, but a threshold of blood and fire.

He had to prepare starting right now.

His body was not yet fully developed, and his brain structure was still restricted, but this did not hinder him from executing a most basic plan:

Disguise himself, observe the world, accumulate conditions, and steadily improve.

For this goal, he deliberately lowered his "level of intelligence." In front of his parents, he no longer stared at the television with an over-aged observation frequency; while eating, he learned to chew a bit slower and smile a bit more foolishly; when his mother coaxed him with baby talk, he also responded ambiguously and dully.

He knew he had to let people think he was "just a normal child."

His parents quickly set their minds at ease regarding his performance. His mother often said, "Ryan isn't that kind of especially mischievous child, he's quite well-behaved." His father would smile and add, "It's just that sometimes he's a bit too quiet, like a little adult."

This evaluation was the greatest praise for Ryan. It showed that his disguise had worked.

In private, he began trying to do some basic training that exceeded the infant stage. He would repeatedly try to roll over by the bed at least fifty times a day, until he could lie on his side, lie on his back, and sit up by himself without outside help. He used his little hands to grab the crib rails, practicing grip strength and the stability of his arm strength little by little; when his mother was not in the room, he would try to walk while leaning against the wall, and even if he could only take two steps, he had to maintain rhythm and the balance of center of gravity distribution.

He understood that this kind of training would not turn him into a powerhouse overnight. But precisely because of that, he valued the significance of every single accumulation even more.

Day after day, he observed the surrounding objects, building the basic structure of the indoor space from the distribution of the tea table, desk lamp, and electrical outlets at home; he listened to the television broadcasts, gradually distinguishing the basic rules of language, and began to "contrast" glyphs and pronunciation rules from images; using his own method, he built up his own cognitive map bit by bit.

Most importantly—he never stopped thinking.

When did "Nen" officially appear in the public eye? Were the upper floors of Heaven's Arena really forbidden to non-ability users as rumors claimed? Was identity registration open to minors in the Hunter Association? Did the basic construction of Nen Ability have "pre-awakening symptoms"? He listed these questions in his mind and planned to verify them gradually over the next few years.

He divided his growth planning into four stages:

Stage One: Physical conditioning and cognitive training (infancy to age 5)

Stage Two: Information gathering and basic tactical construction (ages 5 to 10)

Stage Three: Nen Ability awakening preparation and actual combat testing (age 10 to before the Hunter Exam)

Stage Four: Debut, constructing the Nen technique system, stepping into the combat structure (formally connecting with the original story timeline)

This was not daydreaming.

Ryan was very clear that the world of Hunter x Hunter was far more complex than ordinary shonen manga. Nen Ability was not triggered by "willpower awakening," nor was it a single growth track. He would not count on his "past life experience" to daydream about soaring into the sky. He only planned to grasp every inch of power belonging to himself step by step—starting from infant gripping gestures all the way to throwing materialized weapons in the future.

Every night before coaxing him to sleep, his mother always liked to say one sentence: "Baby grew a little taller today, grow up quickly."

Ryan closed his eyes, breathing softly, and did not respond.

Yet in his heart, his answer had never changed:

—I am already on the way.