The night was deep and quiet. The campfire had long since gone out, leaving only the occasional chirp of insects and the steady breathing of sleeping people.
Xiao Yan lay on the cooling mat, his eyes wide open as he stared sleeplessly at the pitch-black ceiling. It felt as though a depth charge had been dropped into his mind. Countless pieces of information, familiar yet strange, churned like raging seas inside his head, denying him any peace.
That guy... that bastard! He actually lived for over a hundred and thirty years?! If that isn't a monster, what is? Some ancient freak?!
Xiao Yan rolled over onto a cooler part of the mat and covered his ears, trying to shut out Xiao Yi's infuriatingly matter-of-fact voice echoing in his mind.
As a Transmigrator from the twentieth century, he had assumed he knew at least more about that world than Xiao Yi did. Yet the "what happened afterward" Xiao Yi had described had smashed his pitiful advantage of "foreknowledge" to pieces.
He knew about telephones, but what the hell was a "smartphone"? Everyone had a pane of glass that let them watch movies and chat? He knew about virtual reality from science fiction, but "VR" and "AI" were already in widespread civilian use?
What shattered his entire worldview most was that the Art Student, that unparalleled fiend, had actually seen his reputation... improve because of what Lord You had done afterward?! The Beautiful Moon Landing was fake? The higher-ups really were lizard people? What fucking parallel universe of magical realism was this? In the decades since he had transmigrated, had his old home suffered an alien invasion or become quantum-entangled?
And Conan, whom he had been avidly following back then, was still in elementary school after all these years?! Naruto had become