Arrival

Ding Yu opened his eyes amid waves of headache. The first thing he saw was a dilapidated roof supported by thick beams. A heavily patched, yellowish-black quilt covered him, and a faint musty smell filled his nostrils. His mouth was parched, and his entire body ached terribly, as though even the slightest movement would be difficult.

He grimaced, barely managed to turn his head, and looked around.

He was in a small wooden hut. Its walls had been patched over and over, yet a little wind still seeped through. Apart from the crude bed beneath him, piled with dry rice straw, there was nothing else inside.

Where was this?

Ding Yu remained bewildered for quite some time before finally remembering something. Ignoring his discomfort, he struggled upright and raised one arm.

It was a dark, scrawny arm, somewhat unfamiliar, yet vaguely recognizable.

"No way."

Ding Yu groaned.

Just then, someone pushed open the door. A woman in a coarse gray dress and a patterned headscarf walked in. The moment she saw Ding Yu awake, she cried, "Zhu'er!" and rushed over, clasping him tightly in her arms as she began to weep.

Ding Yu stiffened involuntarily in her embrace. When he felt two hot tears fall against his neck, he instinctively called out, "Mother." Then he tore himself from her arms, clutched his head with both hands, and began convulsing on the bed, looking as though the pain was worse than death.

"Zhu'er, what's wrong?" the woman cried out again and again.

Before his vision went black and he passed out, Ding Yu dimly saw two more familiar figures rush through the doorway. Then he lost consciousness once more.

This time, he had another long dream. In it, he experienced scattered fragments of a boy's life, from birth until the age of twelve or thirteen. The memories ended with him helping his father and elder brother clear a patch of wasteland, getting caught in heavy rain, then missing his footing and losing consciousness.

An unknown amount of time later, Ding Yu woke on the bed again, breathing heavily. His mouth was filled with the bitter taste of medicinal broth. After moving his mouth a couple of times, he could even feel a few dregs of herbs.

"Little brother, you're awake! How do you feel? Are you any better after taking the medicine Physician Wang prescribed?" The tall, thin young man keeping watch beside the bed was overjoyed to see Ding Yu awake.

"B-big brother, I'm fine. I just don't have much strength." Looking at the tall young man's delighted face, Ding Yu murmured his reply.

"Good. Rest a little longer. I'll go get Father." The young man rushed out of the hut in delight.

Ding Yu raised both hands as he lay on the bed and stared at them for a long time.

Was he "Ding Yu" now? Or a boy from another world named "Wang Tiezhu"?

The two seemed to have fused together, but the new memories were fragmented and incomplete. It seemed he had absorbed only part of Wang Tiezhu's memories, so he was still Ding Yu. His mind had simply, inexplicably acquired some of another person's memories.

After analyzing his situation, Ding Yu felt a little relieved. But what was going on now?

Hadn't he been told he would enter another world through dreams and possess someone there? How had he turned directly into a person from another world? And clearly, the person he had replaced was the very boy whose body he had possessed during his previous dream.

During their training, Dr. Chen and the other instructors had never mentioned anything like this happening.

After a moment's thought, Ding Yu tilted his head, tapped it with his hand, and called softly, "Taiyuan." But a little while passed, and nothing happened.

Now he was really in deep trouble. The method taught in training for activating the Taiyuan Auxiliary System seemed to have failed as well.

Ding Yu's expression shifted uncertainly.

Clatter!

A dark-skinned, middle-aged man pushed open the door and rushed inside. Seeing Ding Yu sitting on the bed, he immediately sat down beside him in delight and asked with concern:

"Zhuzi, you really are awake! Hu Laosan said you'd sleep for two or three days and might even die. What nonsense. Still, though his medical skills aren't much, that bowl of herbal broth really did save your little life. That half sack of beans wasn't wasted."

"Father, I'm fine now. My head just hurts a little." Ding Yu looked at the man before him, both strange and familiar. Under the man's concerned gaze, he twitched the corners of his mouth twice and answered quietly.

This man was the biological father of this body, Wang Kui.

"Zhuzi, you passed out in the field this time because you're too frail. It was my fault too. I shouldn't have made you work in the rain. You're lucky to have woken up. Your mother has already gone to your grandfather's house to ask for some cured meat to build up your strength." Wang Kui reached out and felt his forehead. Only after finding his temperature normal did he truly relax.

"Mother went back to Grandfather's house?" Ding Yu was a little taken aback. An image of a tall old man with a thick beard involuntarily surfaced in his mind.

In his memories, this grandfather had only one daughter, his mother, and dearly loved "him," the youngest child in the family.

"Yes. Your grandfather is a famous hunter for dozens of miles around. He may be old now, but when it comes to catching wild rabbits and pheasants in the hills, nobody in the nearby villages can match him. Once you have some meat broth, you'll recover quickly." Wang Kui smiled.

"Meat broth."

Ding Yu discovered that hearing those words made him instinctively smack his lips, and a little saliva even dribbled out. Embarrassed, he raised his sleeve and wiped the corner of his mouth.

"Haha, look how hungry that's made you! Oh, right, I picked you a fruit on the way back. Make do with it to fill your belly for now. Your brother and I still have work to do, so stay here and get some proper rest." Wang Kui laughed, took a small green-and-red fruit from inside his clothes, and pressed it into Ding Yu's hand. After a few more words of reassurance, he hurried away.

Ding Yu looked at the fuzzy wild fruit in his hand, then at the doorway through which Wang Kui had left, a hundred tangled feelings filling his heart.

He clearly still had a "father" in his memories on Blue Star, yet the innate warmth he felt toward this man unmistakably revealed the blood bond between the man and this body.

No, I can't let myself be confused. During training, the instructors said that possessing someone from another world through dreams could create an illusion of identification. One careless moment, and I could easily lose myself. This isn't possession now-I've truly replaced him, which makes losing myself even easier. What I need to do now is gather information about this world and complete the mission first. Ding Yu pondered silently. After taking another bite of the sour, astringent fruit, he began carefully searching through the additional memories in his mind.

In these memories, he had grown up in a village called Wang Family Village. The entire village had only a little over a hundred households, most of them surnamed Wang. He had visited only a few other villages within twenty or thirty miles, most about the same size as Wang Family Village. Far away, however, stood a large city called Yellowstone City, home to hundreds of thousands of people. All the surrounding villages and larger towns fell under its jurisdiction, but Wang Tiezhu himself had never visited it.

The daily life of Wang Tiezhu's family revolved almost entirely around a single word: poverty.

In his memories, going hungry was commonplace. The whole family lived off the few mu of land allotted to them by the village, planting a kind of black pea. Their usual two meals a day consisted of porridge made from these peas, apart from the occasional small bowl of pickled-vegetable soup on the table. The pea porridge smelled delicious but tasted somewhat bitter and astringent. Yet even with a staple like this, he, still a minor, could have only two small bowls a day. Any extra porridge had to go first to his father and his elder brother, Wang Dagang, the family's main laborers.

Foods such as white rice and white steamed buns did exist in this world, but the Wang family saw only a small bowlful on holidays and festive occasions. Fortunately, he had a grandfather who hunted. Whenever the old man visited Wang Family Village, he always brought some preserved game, letting him enjoy a little fat in his food. Unfortunately, his grandfather lived rather far away and could visit only a handful of times each year.

As for farming tools, salt, lamp oil, and other everyday supplies, Wang Family Village regularly sent someone to Yellowstone City to buy them together.

Ding Yu found no memories of which country this region belonged to, or whether an imperial court or emperor existed above it. For the people of Wang Family Village, the city lord's residence in Yellowstone City seemed to be the government, and the city lord was the highest official they knew.

Nor did Ding Yu find anything in Wang Tiezhu's memories about the supernatural powers Dr. Chen and the others had mentioned. Wang Family Village was the very image of an impoverished, backward village in ancient Huaguo. Everyone there seemed to live solely to fill their bellies.

It looks like I'll have to find another way to obtain any valuable information, Ding Yu thought.

By evening, the sky along the horizon had grown dark.

In a slightly more spacious room, Ding Yu sat at a crude wooden table, staring blankly at the wooden bowl before him, filled to the brim with a blackish-green, porridge-like food.

"Zhuzi, you haven't recovered yet. You can eat a little more." Sitting opposite him, Wang Kui mistook his youngest son's expression for overwhelming delight and spoke kindly.

"Y-yes, little brother, e-eat as much as you like. Don't worry about the work in the fields either-slurp-we'll take care of it, Father and I." The tall, thin young man sitting on another side of the table shoveled food into his mouth with a wooden spoon, swallowing without letting it interrupt his speech.

"Father, I'm just a little worried about Mother. It's so late. Why hasn't she come back from Grandfather's yet?" Ding Yu gave a vague reply. Afraid they might notice something amiss, he hastily picked up his wooden bowl and took a large mouthful of black pea porridge. Bitterness filled his mouth. Had he not prepared himself mentally, he would almost have spat it out on the spot.

This stuff counted as food?

Ding Yu grumbled inwardly. Fortunately, after he chewed the half-soft black peas a few more times, they finally developed a slightly starchy fragrance, allowing him to force them down.

"That's true. Mother went to Grandfather's first thing this morning. Judging by the distance, she should be back by now. Could something have happened on the road?" The tall young man emptied his wooden bowl in just a few mouthfuls, habitually wiped his mouth with his worn sleeve, and asked with some puzzlement.

"Perhaps your mother stayed a little longer at your grandfather's. What could happen on such a short journey?" Wang Kui shook his head and answered unconcernedly, then served himself a bowl of black pea porridge from a nearby iron pot.

Ding Yu stared at the porridge in his bowl, wondering whether he could find an excuse to eat less. Suddenly, two knocks came from outside. Then the front door was pushed open, and the woman in the coarse dress walked straight in with a thick-bearded old man carrying a bundle on his back.

"Father-in-law!"

Greatly surprised to see the old man, Wang Kui hurried forward to greet him, still holding his bowl and chopsticks.

Ding Yu and the tall young man also stood up from the table and called, "Grandfather."

In Wang Tiezhu's memories, this "grandfather" dearly loved his young grandson. Not only did he often bring meat to improve the Wang family's meals, he had once specifically traded half a wild boar to have a literate old scholar in the village teach Wang Tiezhu reading and writing intermittently for more than half a year. As a result, this body knew some simple characters and had barely escaped "illiteracy."

At the sight of his two "grandsons," a faint smile appeared on the old man's square face, and he asked with concern how Ding Yu's recovery was coming along.

But before the old man could exchange more than a few words with them, the troubled-looking woman beside him could no longer hold back. She interrupted with startling news: "Husband, my father heard that Yellowstone City is about to call up spirit labor."

"Spirit labor? Father-in-law, is that true?" Wang Kui shuddered at her words, not even noticing his chopsticks fall to the floor.

"The news should be reliable. An old friend told me in secret. His son serves in Yellowstone City's garrison. Once spirit labor is called up, all males over ten must serve. The younger boy has already turned ten. To help him avoid this round of spirit labor, I intend to send him to a nearby Daoist abbey." The old man looked at Ding Yu and answered with a frown.

"A Daoist abbey? Which one do you mean? Could you get Zhuzi taken in as an acolyte?" Wang Kui was delighted.

Hearing this, Ding Yu froze somewhat, a string of questions rising in his mind.

What was spirit labor? Going to a Daoist abbey to become an acolyte? Did they mean the same kind of Daoist abbey as on Blue Star? Was becoming an acolyte actually a wonderful thing in this world?

"Naturally, I mean the most famous one nearby, White Cloud Abbey. Normally, it would be nearly impossible, but I've obtained something the abbey urgently needs. The younger boy is just the right age too, so there probably won't be much trouble." The old man patted the bundle on his back and spoke with considerable confidence.

"A Daoist abbey is a good place. I hear they provide all your food and drink, and you even get white rice and white flour. Grandfather, I want to go too." After hearing the old man's words, the tall young man looked down at the black pea porridge on the table, his eyes lighting up.

"Dagang, you can't. You're too old. The abbey only accepts children under fifteen." The old man sighed and spoke helplessly to his other grandson.

Smack!

"What would you go for? Do you think the abbey belongs to our family? We should be thanking heaven and earth if we can send Zhuzi alone. Besides, spirit labor in Yellowstone City may be hard, and you might even fall ill after coming back, but the pay is substantial. This time, I'll go serve with you. When we return, we'll be able to get you a wife." After hearing the young man's words, Wang Kui swung his hand back and slapped his eldest son on the head, speaking angrily.

"I just wonder whether Zhuzi will be able to settle into life at the abbey," the woman said, looking at her youngest son with worry written all over her face.

Ding Yu blinked, unable to say a word.