Where the Hell Had I Ended Up?

Cold!

So cold!

Her whole body was so cold!

Boundless cold spread through her entire body. Cheng Jianxue shivered and curled into a ball, but the chill refused to fade, seeping into her through every opening it could find.

Who cranked the air conditioning up so high...

Biting her lip, Cheng Jianxue opened her eyes and turned to look beside her, hoping to see who had done this. But when she got a clear look at her surroundings, she froze in disbelief.

-Before her lay a world of pure white snow.

There seemed to be nothing in this empty world. Cheng Jianxue looked around blankly. A thick blanket of snow covered the ground, and flakes as large as goose feathers filled the air, except...

Those snowflakes hung motionless in the air, as though frozen in place.

Cheng Jianxue instinctively reached out to touch a suspended snowflake. When her finger made contact, it dissolved into white motes of light and vanished into the pure white world.

Cheng Jianxue withdrew her hand, and the snowflake reappeared, suspended in its original position. She did not touch it again, instead pushing herself up from the ground.

Her body had left an impression in the snow. As she stood up, snowflakes fluttered down to smooth it over. Then the snowflakes froze in place once more.

Cheng Jianxue frowned deeply at this impossible sight.

First, I can rule out someone staging this... This doesn't look like anything that could happen in reality...

I-I haven't transmigrated, have I...?

The frightening possibility surfaced in Cheng Jianxue's mind. She quickly remembered the link she had clicked before transmigrating and lamented:

"I haven't even seen what the Lord of the Mysteries game looks like yet! At least let me finish looking before making me transmigrate!

"...Wait, if I've transmigrated, where did I end up? Hold on..."

A terrifying suspicion arose in Cheng Jianxue's mind. She instinctively looked down to check herself. After finding no strange extra parts on her body, and that even her clothes were still her own, she let out half a sigh of relief-she had not lost control. That was good!

As for the other half...

Cheng Jianxue thought she might have to wait until she escaped this godforsaken place before she could let it out.

Never mind the problem of food. School had started in early autumn, while the late-summer heat still lingered, so Cheng Jianxue had worn short sleeves to school. And now, she was already losing body heat!

If she could not find a solution, she might freeze to death here...

Cheng Jianxue wrapped her arms around herself and began running across the endless snowfield.

The frozen snowflakes began falling as she ran, covering her footprints. Cheng Jianxue did not run for long or move too fast. Conserving energy mattered too; she was only running to warm herself up a little.

But that was not enough. The surrounding whiteness filled Cheng Jianxue with panic. Her feet made no sound as they compressed the snow beneath them. The falling flakes silently covered every trace of her passage, making her feel as though she had been running in place all along.

Stopping again, she watched the snowflakes freeze in midair after restoring the ground. Cheng Jianxue thought she should perhaps try disturbing the snow here to see whether that would bring about some new change.

So she crouched down and began digging with her hands. The snow here was very soft, and she could easily scoop away large amounts of it. The falling snow could not come close to keeping up with her digging, so Cheng Jianxue kept digging, and digging...

She did not get to dig for long, because the snow was surprisingly shallow. Once she had dug down roughly the height of her lower legs, Cheng Jianxue's hands touched the "ground."

It seemed to be a white layer of ice. Cheng Jianxue was not sure, because she only managed a single glance before she... fell through.

Amid the violent shaking, Cheng Jianxue heard a voice whose characteristics were difficult to distinguish before she could even steady herself:

"Two fangs from a Night-Running Corpse-Eater Rat..."

Cheng Jianxue saw two fangs appear as though projected before her. While she was still dazed, the voice spoke again:

"One intact Frost-Passing Flower..."

An icy-blue, six-petaled flower radiating cold appeared as well. Then Cheng Jianxue heard the names of several more ingredients in succession:

"Two Golden Mint leaves, five grams of Obsidian powder, 5 g of Holy Salt Crystals, 100 ml of Tomb Rose juice..."

After the last of the thick, blood-red juice dripped down, the ingredients surged together, turning into a strange-looking mass of deep-blue gel, with gray crystals flickering in and out of view within it.

Cheng Jianxue instinctively reached out to touch it. The gel seemed to have a mind of its own: the instant it touched her skin, it rapidly dissolved and seeped into her body.

Cold invaded her along with the dissolving gel. Cheng Jianxue's vision blurred, but that blurriness meant nothing, because the familiar scene appeared before her eyes again-that frozen world of pure white.

Cheng Jianxue's thoughts rapidly scattered within that pure whiteness. Instinct told her to focus. She thought she should perhaps picture something to concentrate on, and in an instant, an exquisite six-sided snowflake took shape in her mind-the thing most familiar to her right now.

Her consciousness seemed to solidify a little as a result. Cheng Jianxue felt as though she had grown heavier, then suddenly plunged downward, her thoughts falling back into her body.

Then she heard an ethereal murmur from some unknown source:

"World... forget me... World... forget me... World... forget me..."

What the... Did I end up in Genshin Impact?

The familiar, memorable line stunned Cheng Jianxue. She pressed a hand to her head and tried to open her eyes, only to suddenly notice something new in her mind.

What... was that?

...Corpse-Eater: 9 Sequence

Possessed certain characteristics of a corpse: low body temperature, slow heartbeat, pale skin, and night vision...

Possessed some resistance to cold and decay. Spirituality and memory were enhanced, with memory capable of reaching the level of perfect recall...

Could obtain some of the deceased's memories from life by consuming corpses. The specific memories obtained depended on the part consumed...

*?...*

A Sequence Potion? Wait, where exactly am I? Mysteries... No, did Lord of the Mysteries have this Sequence 9?

At a thought from Cheng Jianxue, the names of the Sequence 9s from all twenty-two Pathways in the original work surfaced one by one. She stared blankly for a few seconds, then snapped her eyes open.

-This was an entirely new Pathway!

And she was lying on the ground, with a blank canvas radiating cold beside her. She reached out to touch it. It felt icy, but the chill was now within what she could bear.

As for her current location...

Cheng Jianxue braced herself against the ground and sat up. Before her lay an endless wilderness, and her

Behind her was a barrier formed from frozen gray-white fog.

There was no sun here, no moon, no stars, only darkness that remained unchanged all year round, and...

Cheng Jianxue looked at the lightning streaking across the sky and swore through gritted teeth:

"Shift!"