Crossing over

Ever since he obtained the incantation at eighteen, he had been investigating its origins. He had also begun paying attention to supernatural phenomena, hoping to find more things like it. But no matter how he investigated, even visiting his great-uncle with his family heirlooms, he found nothing. Unfortunately, his great-uncle seemed to have only that one book containing an incantation; all the others were ordinary books.

The incantation was too ancient for him to trace its origins, but his investigation had instead helped him understand his family heirlooms. The wooden stick was used for tracking. It could be separated into two pieces, and wherever they were, the two sticks would always point toward each other. The second item, the damaged piece of jade, seemed to lift people's spirits. It appeared to have other functions, but it was too damaged for him to determine what they were. The third item was the glass bead. He had not really figured it out either, knowing only that it allowed people to see things they normally could not. Most importantly, these three items seemed usable only by people who had practiced the incantation as he had. Other people could not use them.

He had been following supernatural incidents for more than ten years when he finally saw a recent news report about a strange ancient tomb unearthed in Sichuan. No one knew whose tomb it was, and they could not even determine what era it belonged to. According to the archaeologists, it contained many objects that seemed to have been used for sacrifices, though the details still required further investigation.

When he saw a strange traditional character carved into one of the excavated artifacts, he recognized it immediately. It had also appeared in that battered book. Back then, he had spent a long time trying to identify it without success, eventually having to infer its meaning from context. He immediately realized that the ancient tomb might well be connected to Li Qing, and could very well be his tomb.

Having found a lead, Wang Lu grew increasingly impatient. He immediately contacted a friend and used his connections to get himself into the research team. Before long, he set off for Sichuan in high spirits. Once there, he made inquiries through various channels, but because the research team had not finished clearing the tomb, his plans were soon delayed.

During those days of waiting, he suddenly felt a trace of unease, though he did not know why. At first, he thought it was merely impatience, so he did not realize anything was wrong. But the feeling grew stronger and stronger, as though something momentous was about to happen. He wanted to leave, but could not bear to. After waiting so long and investigating for so many years, he finally had a lead, yet now he had to leave. Still, he knew he could not wait any longer. The night before his planned departure, an earthquake struck without warning, catching everyone off guard, himself included. He died in his room. After the earthquake began, he did not even have time to react before the collapsing ceiling crushed him to death.

He lost consciousness, but it was not over yet. The strange ancient tomb nearby began to activate. Something invisible to the naked eye was drawing in the souls of those who had died nearby, and he was sucked into it along with many other souls.

He did not know how much time had passed. When he woke again, he had just been born. He seemed to have been reincarnated. His parents were an ordinary couple, and he could tell they were farmers. His newborn body could not yet withstand very much, especially since he still had the memories of his previous life. His mind and soul were still those of his former life, including the incantation he had practiced for more than a decade. Only the shell had changed. This shell was still too young to bear his adult soul, and he also needed to adapt to it and become part of it.

The farming couple were delighted to see their child delivered safely. They held him, playing with him and teasing him, and only laid him gently on the bed after he fell asleep.

Ten years soon passed. During the first five of those years, he spent almost all his time sleeping. His body and soul needed time to merge and adapt, and his body was still small. As a result, he spent very little time awake, only about four or five hours a day, including mealtimes. Fortunately, his strange behavior attracted little attention; they merely thought he had been born with an illness. Thus, he could do practically nothing, nor could he think about what sort of place this was.

Yet he had known from birth that this was not his original world. He had never heard the language his parents spoke in his previous life. Together with their clothing and the room's furnishings, this convinced him that he was no longer in the world of his former life.

This place seemed to be in the Middle Ages. People's clothing was very old-fashioned. The people here resembled Europeans, but had hair of all different colors and blue eyes.

His parents were farmers, at the very bottom of society, only slightly better off than slaves and prisoners of war. Their country did not seem to have driven its farmers to the point where they could no longer survive, but their lives were hardly good. The wheat his family grew each year was only enough to feed them, with a little left over at most. Thanks to this world's backward productivity, the farmers here had not yet learned to fertilize their fields. At most, they understood the need to remove pests.

This body's ancestors had all been farmers, with little changing over the generations. Of course, the same was true of many farmers, and they were accustomed to it. His father was called Jason and had no surname. That was something only nobles possessed. His mother's name was Eva. His father had named him Allen. All three names in the family were thoroughly ordinary and could be found everywhere.

His father was a thoroughly honest farmer, and their family owned a plot of ancestral land. It was not large, but it was enough to feed the three of them. Although they could eat their fill, every meal consisted of coarse bread and wild vegetable soup. Only at the end of the year would they have a piece of meat the size of a biscuit, and even that was the lowest grade. Meat in this world was much more expensive than in his previous life, especially good meat, which came from the fiercest wild beasts in the mountains. Meat from ordinary livestock was rather tough, and even that was not cheap.

His parents had to work in the fields almost every day. During the autumn harvest in particular, they even had to ask the other villagers for help. Fortunately, he was not truly a child. He hardly ever cried or fussed, simply sleeping after eating and eating after sleeping.

This continued until he was five. By then, his body and soul had completely merged, and he no longer needed to sleep for such long periods. He also began to learn about this world, and soon discovered that magic actually existed here. Its professionals wielded supernatural powers, and there were reportedly nonhuman races such as elves, dwarves, and goblins.

What shocked him most was his father telling him that their country was Lordaeron. He could not believe he had actually arrived in World of Warcraft. After accepting this fact, he realized another serious problem: he knew nothing about the history of World of Warcraft. Although he had played the game in his previous life, he had never spent time learning its history. Besides, he never paid attention to the story when playing games.

Once he knew he had arrived in World of Warcraft, all that came to mind were the Orcs Wars and the Undead Scourge. He did not even know their specific times or locations. As for the main characters, he knew only Arthas, Jaina, and Thrall, and that was it. Even those names were things he had heard from his friends who played Warcraft. His only impression of Azeroth was that it was plagued by disasters. In any case, there was war everywhere.

Now he grew anxious. The world of Warcraft was not safe, especially for farmers at the very bottom of society like his family. They would certainly be among the first to die. Most importantly, he did not know when war would break out, and he had made no preparations.

After calming down, he immediately asked the villagers what era it was and what major events had recently occurred in the kingdom. According to them, the great King Terenas Menethil had ascended the throne a few years earlier. That was probably the biggest event of recent years. He had never heard of this king, Terenas Menethil, but after questioning the villagers, he learned that there seemed to have been no wars in recent years, nor had any green-skinned orcs appeared. He thought the Orcs Wars probably had not begun yet, but war might arrive at any moment. He already regretted not learning more of the game's history before playing.

Just as he was planning to do something, he suddenly realized that he was only five years old. Moreover, his family were not nobles, but farmers of the lowest class. They had no money for him to study the knowledge of professionals. Even learning to read cost one or two gold coins, and that only covered three months of instruction, with no guarantee of success. Knowledge in this world was held by the nobles. Commoners were generally illiterate, let alone owners of book collections. Those were privileges only nobles could afford. Commoners already spent their entire lives trying to keep themselves fed and clothed. How could they have any other aspirations?

When he considered the supernatural powers here, which had not existed in his previous life, the idea of commoners resisting nobles seemed utterly far-fetched. Just one or two professionals could deal with these unarmed commoners. Thus, those at the bottom of society never thought about resisting the nobles, only about how to survive under them.

In the history he had studied in his previous life, insatiably greedy nobles, foolish and incompetent rulers, and tyranny would immediately lead to uprisings. Here, however, he seemed never to have heard of a peasant uprising. Perhaps such things did happen, but were quickly suppressed as soon as they began. The nobles were simply too powerful. They controlled almost everything.

Unfortunately, he had not been born a noble, and had no way to obtain great power. In the end, he turned his attention to the incantation. He had studied it for almost twenty years, and had come to understand that its most important function was increasing a person's mental power, something involving the soul. He did not understand the precise principles behind it, but he had no choice. This was his only opportunity to access supernatural power.

Thus, he practiced the incantation almost every day while also trying to find ways to earn some money. Born a farmer, he might have no way to access the knowledge of professionals for the time being, but he understood that other knowledge was important too. His first priority was learning to read. Without literacy, he could do practically nothing. At the very least, he needed enough money for reading lessons. Everything in this world required money, including education, knowledge, resources, and so on. Even if you wanted a job, you had to slip a few silver coins to a middleman.

Money here was worth far more, and was much more important, than in his previous life. Back then, money had mainly consisted of paper notes, whereas here there were gold coins, silver coins, and Copper Nats. One gold coin could be exchanged for 1,000 silver coins, mainly because alchemy could refine gold into an important material called gold essence, while silver could only serve as currency. One silver coin could be exchanged for 100 Copper Nats, and one Copper Nat could buy a loaf of the lowest-grade coarse bread. Many farmers had never seen what a gold coin looked like, including his parents.

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