Ten minutes.
The boy stood in front of the mirror, staring blankly at the reflection of himself, blood and cake crumbs still clinging to the corner of his mouth, for a full ten minutes.
Only then was he finally forced to accept reality.
Not only had he transmigrated.
He had traveled from twenty-first-century Earth to a world that had never existed in history, becoming a seventeen-year-old boy named Wen Xiancheng.
And he had also gained a second body.
That was right.
At that very moment, a small gray mouse stood perfectly still in the palm of his left hand.
It was a little pet the original owner of this body had raised.
As for the reason he had transmigrated-
Wen Xiancheng pulled a tissue from his pants pocket and wiped the blood and cake crumbs from the corner of his mouth.
Poisoning.
Twenty minutes ago, the original owner of this body and his pet Little Gray Mouse had eaten a cake they had just bought from a shop outside. Then they had died.
Then he, who had been asleep, had inexplicably ended up in this body.
And there was no way to go back!
He took his toothbrush from the cup, squeezed toothpaste onto it, brushed his teeth, and washed his face.
Then he filled a cup with water again and set it on the washstand.
He squeezed toothpaste onto the toothbrush and set it beside the cup.
Wen Xiancheng stood motionless in front of the mirror, as if frozen in place.
At the same time, the gray mouse that had been perfectly still in his left palm climbed down his body, then scurried with startling speed up onto the washstand.
With its mouth open, the gray mouse rubbed back and forth against the toothbrush with toothpaste on it. Then it climbed onto the cup, repeatedly taking water into its mouth and spitting it out, before climbing down to rub against the toothbrush again.
It went back and forth more than ten times before finally climbing into Wen Xiancheng's left palm.
In truth, all these actions were being performed by Wen Xiancheng.
For now, although the gray mouse was his second body,
he could only control one body at a time.
The gray mouse rinsed its mouth too, then climbed into the pocket on the left side of Wen Xiancheng's clothes.
Wen Xiancheng's motionless body returned to normal.
He quickly surveyed the room.
A jumble of memories flooded his mind.
Wen Xiancheng ignored them.
He left the washroom and went into the living room. He put the remaining half of the cake on the dining table into a plastic bag, then headed to the shop where he had bought it.
The cake was highly poisonous.
Perhaps because of the effects of transmigration, the poison had no effect on him now.
But he had to find out who had wanted him dead.
He couldn't transmigrate back.
This body was his life!
If someone wanted to kill him, he had to find out who it was.
He didn't want to be killed a second time.
It was now dusk, and the people who worked outside had all come home.
When they saw Wen Xiancheng, they looked at him with hostility.
The memories in his mind made him understand that the original owner of this body had a poor reputation in the neighborhood.
Gluttonous, lazy, a shut-in, cowardly, living off others, spending all day playing games, with no talent for cultivation.
He had every flaw in the book.
People often used words like "Why don't you just hurry up and die," "social parasite," and "waste" to describe him.
Wen Xiancheng kept his eyes straight ahead and went on his way.
That wasn't him.
Following the memories, he went to the shop where he had bought the cake.
The lights were still on inside.
But no one was visible outside.
Noisy voices came from within.
Wen Xiancheng walked through the open door.
Inside the shop, dozens of people had gathered.
In the middle of them, a man lay on a wooden board on the floor.
He was the shopkeeper who had sold him the cake.
He was dead.
Two members of the Guard Force were examining his body.
In this world, the Guard Force served a role similar to the police of the twenty-first century, though there were some differences.
Some members of the Guard Force had also learned forensic skills through their cultivation methods.
Wen Xiancheng took one look, then turned and left.
The shopkeeper had been silenced.
The owner of the cake shop had been alone.
Now that he had been killed, every lead was gone.
Wen Xiancheng lowered his head and hurried home.
After locking the door, he took a kitchen knife from the kitchen and sat down beside the computer desk in his room.
He didn't turn on the computer.
He carefully went over all the memories in his mind.
Who had he offended?
Who would insist on killing him?
Why poison him instead of killing him outright?
And why kill the shopkeeper?
In other words, after poisoning him, the culprit hadn't wanted anyone who cared about him to investigate the truth behind his death.
Someone who cared about him-
Wen Xiancheng stood up and looked at a large photograph on the wall beside his bed.
The photograph showed him with a young woman around his age, their faces pressed together.
The young woman was exceptionally beautiful, tall, and striking.
Her hair was tied up in a high ponytail.
Even in an ordinary shirt, her stunning figure was impossible to conceal.
She had her right arm around "his" shoulders, her cheek pressed against "his," and an exuberant expression on her face.
Xue Ruigao, the original owner's fiancée.
No, more precisely, his child bride.
Eleven years ago, when Wen Xiancheng and Xue Ruigao were six years old, a severe drought struck Yue Kingdom-the country where Wen Xiancheng now lived. The harvest failed, and many people died.
Xue Ruigao's parents fled with her all the way to Yecheng, the city where Wen Xiancheng now stood.
In the end, Xue Ruigao's parents both died of a terrible illness, leaving her alone.
Wen Xiancheng's parents took pity on her, buried her parents, and brought her home. They told her that one day she would marry their son, Wen Xiancheng.
For the next eleven years, Wen Xiancheng's parents treated Xue Ruigao so well that at times they seemed to favor her even more than their own son.
Xue Ruigao was deeply grateful to Wen Xiancheng's parents as well.
So although Wen Xiancheng's parents later passed away one after the other, Xue Ruigao never forgot what they had done for her.
No matter what happened, she would always step forward immediately to protect Wen Xiancheng.
At one point, Xue Ruigao and Wen Xiancheng had taken a test to determine their cultivation aptitude.
Wen Xiancheng had been assessed as having the lowest, ninth-grade talent.
Xue Ruigao had been assessed as having top-tier, third-grade talent, then accepted into the Yue Kingdom Royal Academy.
But Xue Ruigao still didn't look down on Wen Xiancheng's family.
Even three years ago, after Wen Xiancheng's parents had passed away one after the other, many people had urged Xue Ruigao to end her engagement to him.
Xue Ruigao hadn't done so.
She still sent him ninety percent of the benefits provided by the academy each month.
On the last day of every month, she took the day off, rode a flying mount for half a day to get home, all so she could have dinner with Wen Xiancheng.
In contrast to Xue Ruigao's behavior, Wen Xiancheng stayed home all day, doing nothing but eating, sleeping, and playing games.
As a result, his reputation grew worse and worse.
Many people thought he was holding Xue Ruigao back and even cursed him to die.
Wen Xiancheng looked at the "himself" in the photograph with a trace of sympathy.
The surging memories told him just how utterly ashamed of himself "he" was.
No one knew the deep-seated inferiority in his heart, nor how desperately he wanted to strive for success.
He had once worked very hard to change himself and catch up to Xue Ruigao's pace.
Yet the naked reality left him utterly powerless, making him realize the gap between the two of them all the more the harder he tried.
In the end, he chose to give up on himself in despair.
To him, death was actually a form of liberation.
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