Deep in a dense forest, beneath the shade of a tree.
An exceptionally handsome, black-haired youth leaned against the trunk with his eyes closed, seemingly fast asleep. He wore ornate clothes that were far too large for his frame.
"Chirp, chirp!"
Just then, a little bird swooped down from the canopy. As though drawn to the youth, it flew up to him and studied him curiously.
The bird's chirping seemed to wake him, and his brows furrowed for a moment.
Then he slowly opened his sleepy eyes.
Seeing him wake, the little bird flew away in fright.
"Ugh..."
The youth held his head. For some reason, everything around him looked terribly blurry, and it took him quite a while to recover before his vision returned to normal.
"Wh... where am I?"
He stared blankly at the towering trees and bushes around him, with no idea why he was here.
He struggled to get up, only to discover that he felt utterly drained. He did not even have the strength to stand.
Giving up for the moment, he examined his surroundings before looking down at himself.
"These clothes... they look so familiar."
As he looked down at the clothes he wore, an inexplicable sense of familiarity filled him.
Just as he tried his hardest to remember why his clothes seemed so familiar, a splitting pain suddenly tore through his head.
Bzzzt!
With a buzzing sound, a jumble of fragmented memories suddenly flashed through his mind.
"Aaaargh!!"
He clutched his head and howled in agony.
In that instant, countless memories, both strange and somewhat familiar, kept flashing before his eyes.
"Gu Shun, another world, death..."
He kept murmuring to himself.
After quite some time, his headache seemed to ease.
He was drenched in sweat, as though he had endured a round of torture.
"So my name is Gu Shun?"
Looking at his hands, the youth began sorting through the memories he had just received, one by one.
From those memories, he learned that his name was Gu Shun and that he had died, though he did not know why.
He also learned from the fragmented memories that the world he was in now seemed to be a different, unfamiliar world, rather than his old one.
"So I already died once, then came back to life in an unfamiliar world?"
Gu Shun kept trying to process his newfound memories and glean more information, only to discover that, apart from knowing his name was Gu Shun and that he came from another world...
He knew nothing else: who had killed him, for what reason, or even what he had done in his original world.
He did not know why he had died. The gaps in his memory left him unable to uncover the truth.
"Awooo!"
A sudden howl interrupted Gu Shun's thoughts.
A wild wolf emerged from the bushes ahead.
Its eyes were fixed on Gu Shun as he sat against the tree trunk.
"Is that... a wolf!"
At the sight of the wolf before him, memories about wolves immediately surfaced.
Watching the wolf eye him hungrily, Gu Shun broke into a cold sweat. His memories told him how dangerous these creatures were.
He also learned that wolves ate meat, and in this wolf's eyes, he was nothing more than a lump of flesh.
Gu Shun struggled to rise, instinct urging him to either fight back or flee.
But no matter how hard he tried, he could not lift himself up.
Seeing that Gu Shun could not even stand, the wolf's eyes lit up. It still harbored some fear of two-legged creatures that could walk upright.
But seeing how helpless Gu Shun was now brought out its savage instincts.
Besides, the wolf had been hungry for a long time. Finding a feast that could not fight back made it all the more excited.
Saliva dripped steadily from its jaws.
"I'm done for. Am I going to die again?"
Gu Shun stared tensely at the wolf before him. He was little more than meat on a chopping block, helpless and waiting to be slaughtered.
"Someone, please save me... I don't want to die!"
The terror of death brought Gu Shun to tears. He was utterly helpless.
The wolf approached him at a leisurely pace and soon stood right in front of him.
Gu Shun could already feel its breath and smell the powerful stench of blood and filth on its body.
"Get away!!"
The threat of death made Gu Shun erupt.
He shouted at the top of his lungs.
His roar did seem to startle the wolf into taking a few steps back, but once it realized that he could only shout and could not move, it relaxed.
To the wolf, this was merely its prey's final, mournful cry.
It moved toward Gu Shun's throat, opening its gaping jaws to bite straight through it.
By now, Gu Shun's face was ashen.
"Heh... I only just came back to life, and now I'm going to end up in a wolf's belly..." Gu Shun said with bitter self-mockery.
Bang!
At that life-or-death moment, a deafening report rang out.
The wolf's head exploded just as it was about to bite through Gu Shun's throat, scattering red and white matter everywhere.
Being so close, Gu Shun could not avoid getting splashed with its blood.
"?!!"
Gu Shun had already closed his eyes to await death when hot wolf blood sprayed across his face.
He opened his eyes in bewilderment. The wolf that had been about to tear out his throat was now a headless corpse lying beside him.
"Huh??"
Gu Shun was thoroughly confused.
"Kid, are you all right?!" A burly, blond man with rugged features appeared a short distance away.
The man held a long, pitch-black object in his hands. Gu Shun recognized it as a gun.
It seemed that the blond man before him had saved him.
"Uh..."
Gu Shun tried to answer, only to find that he could not speak. Between the mental strain of his brush with death and his physical exhaustion, he could no longer hold on and passed out.
In the last instant before he lost consciousness, he saw only the man rushing anxiously toward him.
Then he knew nothing more.