Hellish Start

The sound of splashing water seemed to come from afar, making Li Zexi's eyelids twitch slightly as his consciousness, like a rusted robot, turned with difficulty.

Was the bathroom tap left running? No, I have to get up and issue commands to myself, Li Zexi thought, struggling to concentrate his consciousness as he opened his eyes bit by bit.

Through obscured vision, he vaguely saw a wooden ceiling, seeing a patch of crimson quietly dye the scene.

Li Zexi's mind felt numb, though he did not feel any abnormality as he instinctively sized up his surroundings.

He discovered that this was not a spacious room, furnished with only a bed, a table, and a wardrobe. Hanging on the wooden wall was a bronze mirror, which reflected a night sky with a crimson crescent moon suspended outside the window.

And.

A person sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall!

That person's head drooped, a bullet hole between his brows, and blood stains covered his face, looking exceptionally gruesome in the crimson light spilling in from the window.

A corpse?

Li Zexi gave a start, waking up completely.

Only then did he notice that the colors in the room were exceptionally rich, and the scene in his field of vision was like a vividly colored oil painting.

Right before his eyes, floating dust was frozen, and an unknown flying insect hung motionless in mid-air, as if time had been pressed on the stop button.

Then Li Zexi noticed once more that he was holding a thick tome in his hands.

It was filled with an unspeakable sense of unreality, with micro-lights of various colors drifting at the edges, and on its deeply colored cover was a strange pattern.

It was an eye, with an equilateral triangle pattern in the pupil. Around the eye were distributed seven symbols.

The strange thing was that Li Zexi could not clearly see those seven symbols, as they seemed shrouded in a ball of mist, faint and indistinct.

Beneath this eye pattern, there was also some information: Knowledge Authority-9.

At that moment, the cover opened by itself, revealing slightly yellowish paper inside. On that blank page, at the very top line, were the two characters "Collection", meaning unknown.

In the time it took to blink an eye, this strange tome gradually faded until it disappeared from Li Zexi's sight, as if everything he had just seen was an illusion.

Along with the disappearance of the tome, the light and colors in the room began to return to normal.

Li Zexi remembered the corpse on the bed and abruptly sat up, suddenly feeling a lightness on his shoulder, followed by the sound of a heavy object falling to the floor beside him.

Following the sound, he saw a person dressed in sailor attire collapsed on the ground. A pool of blood flowed silently beneath that sailor's body.

Another corpse!

What on earth was going on here?

He looked around in panic, confirming that this was not his rented apartment. Outside the window, the sound of splashing water rang out from time to time, and coupled with the gentle swaying of the floor, it felt simply like being on a ship.

Inadvertently, Li Zexi glanced past the bronze mirror on the wall, seeing an unfamiliar figure.

Around seventeen or eighteen years of age, with short black choppy hair, ink-cyan pupils, slightly pale skin, and a faint scar below his left eye, resembling a tear track.

He had a slender build, wearing a blood-stained black formal suit, the shirt collar crooked and a button missing, its whereabouts unknown.

Who is this? A crazy thought welled up in Li Zexi's mind.

He tried raising his hand, and the unfamiliar youth in the mirror made the corresponding movement.

Buzz!

Li Zexi backed away in disbelief, and a clear thought gradually surfaced amidst his flustered thoughts: The person in the mirror is me? I have time-traveled?

Suddenly he felt his foot kick against something, and looking down, he saw a exquisitely crafted revolver resting on the floor by his foot, its barrel and frame decorated with patterns like snake scales.

Li Zexi picked up the revolver, swung open the cylinder, and found that two bullets were missing inside. Where they had gone went without saying; clearly, it was these two missing bullets that had created the murder scene in the room.

Who killed these two people?

Could it not be me?

As if stimulated by this thought, suddenly, some images flashed back in his mind.

Li Zexi saw himself wrestling with two people. Those two people, one looked like a passenger on the ship, and the other was a sailor.

They crashed into this room, and he kicked the passenger away with one foot, taking the opportunity to raise the left-hand gun decorated with snake-scale patterns and, with precise shooting, let the other party enter eternal slumber.

The remaining sailor lunged forward frantically, stabbing the dagger in his hand into his own left flank, only to be met in return with a strike from the revolver pressed against his chin!

"Ugh—"

Li Zexi immediately felt a churning in his stomach and retched while supporting himself against the wall, yet nothing came out.

He lifted his clothes again, and sure enough, at his left flank, he saw a wound. However, the flesh at the wound was writhing, and the wound had already closed and was in the process of recovering.

This made Li Zexi breathe a sigh of relief.

However, a recovering wound was a good thing, but the murder in this room...

Sure enough, he was the murderer.

Thinking of this, Li Zexi could not help but smile bitterly.

As a patriotic youth who grew up under the red flag, Li Zexi had never even killed a chicken, let alone a person.

Suddenly discovering that he had killed someone, he could not help but feel inexplicably terrified. Moreover, as these memory fragments flashed back, the memories belonging to the original owner were also presented in his mind bit by bit.

Xifa Disraeli, from Enqi Town, Desi County, Loen Kingdom, in the North Continent.

His father was Baron Baisen Disraeli, who possessed a manor, a logging yard, a textile mill, and large tracts of land in Enqi Town. He was a well-known noble in Enqi Town and made donations to the Church of the Evernight Goddess in the town every year for charitable purposes.

His mother, Enilu, was a gentle woman who always gave her children affirmation and support. In addition, the family members also included a younger sister and a younger brother.

Given such conditions, according to Li Zexi's thoughts, the original owner should have grown into a promising, motivated young noble who sought the well-being of the lower classes.

Unfortunately, the exact opposite was true.

The original owner had a bad reputation in Enqi Town, oppressing the poor, acting domineeringly, running amok, and leading an unchaste lifestyle.

This time, he had ruined his family's personal maid, and under public opinion pressure, his father, Bison, kicked him out of the house to negotiate a few business deals.

He first went to West Balam and stayed there for nearly a month. Then he took the "Clover" to head for Enmat Harbor.

This.

Li Zexi suddenly had the urge to reroll.

Wasn't this original owner practically a template for an evil young noble? People like this were just experience packs for protagonists to farm prestige. What kind of sin had he committed to transmigrate into this kind of trash?

Li Zexi was on the verge of tears, and in his mind, the flashback of memories continued.

Just five days after leaving Caesar Pier, the Clover encountered pirates.

The group led by Nast, known as the "King of the Five Seas," plundered the ship, but fortunately, they only stole money and valuables without killing the captives.

However, misfortunes never come singly.

Shortly after the pirates left, fierce infighting broke out among the passengers and crew of the Clover.

At first, it was just arguments, which quickly escalated into brawls, followed by the clash of revolvers and straight swords.

In the mutual slaughter of those few days, the people on the ship fell one after another, blood stained the deck, and despair spread across the vessel.

Fortunately, the captain led some people who hadn't lost their sanity, including the original owner, to hide in the lower deck.

They had hidden in the lower deck for nearly a week, holding out until those crazy guys on the ship reached their limits, and were preparing to launch an attack tonight to seize the vessel.

And because the original owner was one of the few people who possessed a gun, he was sent out to scout the enemy's situation, only to be discovered by these two dead men before reaching the upper deck, resulting in a fierce but brief battle.

The memory fragments finally faded, and Li Zexi recalled this information, extracting some keywords from it.

"King of the Five Seas" Nast? Never heard of him.

However.

The Church of the Evernight Goddess in Desi County, Loen Kingdom, seemed familiar.

Wait.

Li Zexi hurriedly covered his mouth, preventing the exclamation that had reached his lips from being successfully uttered.

A sudden wave of weakness hit him, and he nearly slumped to a sitting position.

He knew what kind of world he had transmigrated into.

Lord of Mysteries!

It was a world-famous novel that his friends had recommended to him countless times, and he had recently been reading it.

Although he had read less than fifty chapters, Li Zexi knew that the book depicted a bizarre, dangerous, thrilling, and terrifying world!

Gods truly existed here, and evil gods awaited resurrection within the curtain of shadows.

This was a world possessing extraordinary power; a bug crawling past your feet, a cat jumping onto a windowsill, or even the golden retriever you kept at home might possess mysterious powers beyond your imagination!

He actually transmigrated into such a dangerous world?

Li Zexi looked at the revolver in his hand and gave a wry smile.

He really wanted to send one of the bullets into his own head.

Compared to the weird, creepy, and bizarre ways of dying in the book's world, dying by a gunshot could already be considered merciful.

Putting the revolver down, Li Zexi shook his head hard. Even a lowly ant clings to life, let alone a human.

Besides, heaven knows if he could still transmigrate and be reborn after dying; he didn't dare to gamble.

At this moment, a soft cry came from outside, followed by someone calling out, "Xifa, are you alright?"

Li Zexi looked back and saw a young man standing at the doorway, around twenty-7 or twenty-8 years old, with blonde hair and an eagle-beak-like nose.

Li Zexi remembered his name was "Joyce," hailing from Tingen, who had gone to the Southern Continent for a business deal and had taken the Clover not long ago to return to Tingen.

"I'm fine, just—" Li Zexi's gaze shifted back and forth between the two corpses. "I was discovered by them and had only to kill them."

Only then did Joyce notice the two corpses in the room, and the blonde young man turned pale. "We just heard gunshots, and the captain thought something might have happened to you. Mr. Tris also believed we should act in advance."

"After all, gunshots will definitely attract the attention of those lunatics."

"Now everyone has left the lower deck; won't you come along too?"

Li Zexi nodded, took a deep breath, and walked out the door.

I can't go back anymore.

What I can do now is find a way to survive this chaos, and then change the original owner's reputation so that I can gain family support and find a way to touch the mysterious realm and become a Beyonder!

Only by becoming a Beyonder could one have a sliver of self-preservation power in this mad and mysterious world.

So

Li Zexi stepped out the door. As he passed by Joyce, he spoke as if to himself.

"From now on, I am Li Zexi, and also"

"Xifa Disraeli!"