Crossing Over, About to Be Used for Human Experiments, I'm Screwed

"Drip..."

A cold drop of water, carrying a moldy stench, fell onto a little boy's lips. His lips moved instinctively, swallowing the drop.

Perhaps the coolness of the water awakened him. He struggled to open his eyes. His black pupils were bloodshot, and his body was little more than skin and bones, clearly malnourished.

"Where... am I?"

"Where's the Maybach?"

The boy struggled to prop himself up. This simple movement nearly drained all his strength. As he raised himself, his surroundings gradually came into view.

It was a damp dungeon, its stench mingling with the smell of mold and turning his stomach. Dim yellow light spilled in from the corridor, creating an oppressive atmosphere.

The patter of footsteps occasionally sounded outside, instinctively making the boy uneasy.

Before he could figure out what was happening, an intense pain shot through his forehead, making him grit his teeth.

The boy instinctively touched his head. Blood looked especially glaring beneath the dim yellow light.

That crimson stain pierced his eyes like a sharp sword, and countless fragmented memories flooded into his mind.

His name was Lin En. He was a twice-over transmigrator. In his previous life, he had been an engineer. The life before that was a little unclear—he seemed to have been a librarian.

He had not harbored any grand ambitions in his last world, and that world had seemed no different from the one before it.

Perhaps because he was a transmigrator, though, he had always felt an intangible barrier between himself and everyone around him.

The loneliness often left his mental state in turmoil, and he liked to mutter incomprehensible words under his breath.

After graduating from university, he had taken advantage of the era's remaining opportunities to start his own factory. Recently, some equipment belonging to a client had malfunctioned, so he had gone to the capital of Hui Province to check on it.

Unable to resist the client boss's enthusiasm, he had been relentlessly plied with alcohol at a drinking party.

He had gotten a little too drunk, his head muddled and heavy. For some reason, he had decided to cosplay Jiahao and walk by the roadside in the pouring rain, then wandered onto an elevated bridge shrouded in thick fog.

His memories from then were somewhat scrambled. He only remembered the heavy rain, the high bridge, the dense fog, the blinding headlights of an out-of-control Maybach, and the crazed smile of the youth in the driver's seat. Everything after that was gone.

After receiving those memories, Lin En tried to stand, but his weak body sent him crashing heavily to the ground.

"Maybach... Did that brat even have a driver's license? He just drove like that? How many moms and dads does he have at home?"

"That brat better pray I never catch him. Insurance won't save him then."

Lin En kept trying to stand. His originally black eyes slowly lit with golden light, like ancient crimson-gold magma beneath the dim yellow lighting.

But those golden eyes did not last long before suddenly going dark. All sorts of incomprehensible languages appeared in his muddled mind, and Lin En merely took them for aftereffects of his head injury.

About five minutes later, the overlapping images of the floor and cell door gradually disappeared. Only then did Lin En begin examining his surroundings.

The prison walls were covered in savage dark brownish-black marks, and he could vaguely smell a bloody stench. Lin En's unease grew stronger. Those were clearly oxidized bloodstains.

The lights outside flickered now and then. Lin En instinctively approached the cell door, gripped the iron bars, exerted a little force, then knocked on one of the bars to judge the metal by its sound.

"Great. Alloy."

"Even Tyson couldn't bend this open. You'd need Taro."

He pressed his face against the bars, trying to inspect the corridor from the corner of his eye. The corridor lights kept flickering, and Lin En found something off about them.

"Is that thing an electric light?"

"What the hell is this place? Hell?"

As a former engineer, he immediately sensed that something was wrong with those lights, though he could not tell what exactly. An inexplicable irritation rose within him.

"Hell?"

"Kid, save your strength. This place is worse than hell."

A hoarse voice came from beside Lin En's cell. Judging by the voice, its owner was probably around thirty.

Lin En took two steps back, his gaze wary. Laughter came from next door again.

"Stop looking. Do you think there could be any weapons in a place like this?"

"Look at that girl who came in with you. She's much calmer. No crying, no fussing."

"Oh, right. You didn't cry either."

"Say, how old are you, kid? You don't look like you have much life force left."

Lin En looked around. Behind him were only damp droplets and the moldy stench rushing up his nose. There was no camera at all.

And the voice really was coming from next door. So what was the other person? Could they observe him through the wall? Was there actually a ghost?

"Look at that expression, kid."

"Sigh, another child who knows nothing about Soul Masters. This damned world has locked away all knowledge.

That's called spiritual power, kid. Your vigilance is pretty good. Keep it up, and you might live longer here."

Hearing the terms Soul Master and spiritual power made Lin En's brow twitch. Those were ancient words from his memories.

Back when he had first left the orphanage in his previous world, he had wanted to use his advantage of knowing the future to try becoming a plagiarist and write Douluo Continent and Battle Through the Heavens.

But later, he realized that remembering the plot and main storyline was one thing; having the ability to actually write it was another.

In the end, he gave up on that path. There were too many ways to make money, and in that era, if you knew the future, even pigs could fly.

Starting a factory and seizing the mid-to-low-end electronics and internet markets early was far more profitable than writing novels.

"Soul Master?"

"Could it be the one I'm thinking of?"

Lin En had a bad feeling. In the life when he had been a librarian, he had indeed finished the Douluo series. Soul Master was not necessarily exclusive to that series, but it was certainly the most famous one.

He held out his hand. It was exceptionally small and tender, with fine scars covering the back. Blood scabs were everywhere, marking just how fragile this body currently was.

His memories were blurry. He truly did not know what was happening. After being sent away by the Maybach, he had indeed glimpsed the terrified face of a black-haired girl in his dim vision.

"Number 1518, where are you?"

A person in a black robe and black mask slowly arrived at Lin En's cell. Their voice buzzed like a broken drum pierced by a steel awl.

This person walked with almost no sound at all.

"So you're here."

"You actually woke up? A three-year-old's recovery ability is this strong? Looks like we picked up a treasure."

"Come with me and prepare to receive baptism."

The door and floor, forged from an unknown alloy, screeched against each other. A large hand clamped tightly around Lin En's neck and forcibly dragged him toward the depths of the corridor.

Lin En tried to struggle, but it felt as though an entire mountain was pressing against his back. The difference in strength was simply too great.

In the corridor, he finally saw what the person who had spoken to him looked like.

A grimy man. Anger simmered in his black eyes, his voice was extremely hoarse, and his wrists and feet were covered in futuristic shackles and chains.

"That's just a child."

The black-robed man paused. His shoulders trembled faintly, as though he were laughing.

"To let the Holy Spirit redeem the world, blood must be used as sacrifice."

"These children would only live to serve nobles as beasts of burden anyway. They might as well offer their strength to our great cause."