Rivers reversed their course, and the stars shifted in the heavens.
When Qin Manjiang regained consciousness, he heard shouting...
"Someone's fallen overboard!"
Then he felt a rough hand pull him out of the water.
"Hey, it's the new boy!"
A gruff male voice called out.
Thump-
Qin Manjiang was tossed onto the boat.
He forced his eyes open and saw decorative lanterns.
A ghost?!
He shot upright.
The boatman laughed heartily. "This lad's still plenty alert! Lad, we fished you out of the water. We're not kidnappers."
A lad?
Only then did Qin Manjiang look down at his body. His arms were thin and scrawny, and wet gray cloth clung to his skin. He raised a hand to his face and found it was little more than skin and bones too.
This isn't me...
He looked around. He was still on the river, and there were still decorative lanterns on the boat, but night had fallen. The boatman wore no mask, and the passengers weren't paper figures.
A flag bearing the words "Southern Branch Troupe" flew from the largest boat behind them.
Operatic singing drifted out from within, sounding both eerie and strangely beautiful over the water at night.
The boats moved slowly through the water, light as though they weighed nothing.
Qin Manjiang said nothing. With his head lowered, he looked as though he had lost his soul, but he was actually thinking through his current situation.
He had fallen into the water under strange circumstances earlier. In the river, he had even seen the others' drowned bodies, and he himself had died too.
But what's going on now?
This body isn't mine, but have my consciousness and soul traveled through time and space to when the Southern Branch Troupe still existed...?
He knew it would be best not