Welcome to Metamorphosis

Perhaps to escape reality, Jiang Changping flew to Germany on business early the next morning.

He left without the slightest hesitation, not even eating breakfast at home.

Jiang Huaixiao left with him, and the enormous villa suddenly felt more than half empty.

With Jiang Changping gone, the atmosphere at home immediately grew peculiar.

Whether Liu Wanying had learned her lesson or was plotting some big move, she stayed in her room for several days straight and barely showed her face.

As for Jiang Yu, ever since losing his front teeth, he no longer dared come within three meters of Jiang Xun. The moment he spotted his silhouette in the distance, he turned and ran faster than a rabbit.

When Jiang Xun occasionally ran into Jiang Yanchu in the hallway, the man's gaze flickered evasively. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, he left without a word.

A bunch of cowards.

The servants practically wished they could flatten themselves against the walls as they walked, terrified of meeting this hotheaded young master's eyes.

The kitchen kept finding new ways to make him delicious food, serving four dishes and a soup at every meal without repeating anything. Even his fruit came peeled, cut into chunks, and skewered with toothpicks, delivered right to his bedroom door.

Jiang Xun happily enjoyed the peace. Nobody cared how late he slept in or how late he stayed up gaming, and nobody dared make a peep even if he wanted to watch TV while doing a handstand on the living room sofa.

Back at the orphanage, he would never have dared dream of a life like this. It felt so damn good his scalp tingled.

On the third evening, Jiang Xun raided the kitchen fridge for a pile of snacks and carried them back to his room. His steps faltered as he pushed open the door.

A glass of milk sat steaming on the nightstand, exactly like last time.

Jiang Xun tossed the chips and cola in his arms onto the bed, walked over, and picked up the milk.

The warmth of the glass seeped through his fingertips, pleasantly warm.

"Again?" Jiang Xun muttered, but the corners of his mouth curled up despite himself.

That last glass of milk had been the first kindness he had ever received in his life that came with no ulterior purpose.

Although he still had no idea who had left it, he had reserved a soft spot in his heart for that person.

He had spent seventeen years at the orphanage. Even when he had been curled up on a hard plank bed, delirious with a forty-degree fever, nobody had ever brought him so much as half a cup of hot water.

Jiang Xun tipped his head back and drained the milk, his tongue sweeping up the last trace of sweetness at the bottom of the glass. Thoroughly satisfied, he set it back on the nightstand and rolled under the covers.

He closed his eyes, still wondering whether he should get up a little earlier tomorrow and stake out the stairs to see which secret benefactor was bringing milk to his room every day.

The next second, his eyelids grew heavier and heavier.

Jiang Xun's mind snapped to alertness.

But the drowsiness surged over him, sweeping through every inch of his body like an invisible hand dragging his consciousness into an abyss.

He bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, and the taste of rust spread through his mouth.

Something's wrong.

Something's fucking wrong.

Clinging to his last shred of awareness, he abruptly rolled over and tried to sit up, but his arms were as limp as two overcooked noodles. He only managed to push himself halfway up before crashing back onto the bed.

His vision began to blur. The crystal chandelier on the ceiling became a hazy mass of light that crowded his entire field of vision.

"Fuck..."

Jiang Xun forced the word through clenched teeth, his fingers digging into the sheets.

But the drug was too strong.

So strong that even a boy who had grown up taking beatings in an orphanage, whose tolerance for pain far exceeded that of ordinary people, could not withstand the dose.

Darkness swallowed the last sliver of light before his eyes. Jiang Xun's fingers slipped from the sheets, and he lost consciousness completely.

Jiang Xun was woken by a rooster's crow.

Its crow was piercing and agonized, so penetrating that it sounded as if the bird were right beside his ear.

Frowning, Jiang Xun rolled over and reached beneath his pillow for his phone out of habit, only to find a handful of rough fabric.

His eyes snapped open.

An earthen wall met his eyes. A genuine earthen wall, plastered with yellow mud, with several strings of dried chilies and two battered straw hats hanging from it.

The rafters were exposed logs, with a light bulb dangling from them. Coated in years of greasy grime and fly droppings, it gave off a dim yellow glow.

Several sacks of fertilizer were piled in a corner, and the air smelled of earth, firewood, and livestock dung mixed together.

Jiang Xun froze, his mind racing for three seconds.

The orphanage? Impossible. Even the orphanage wasn't this rundown.

A kidnapping? Who the fuck would kidnap someone and dump them somewhere like this?

Before he could come up with a third possibility, someone shoved the door open from outside.

A crowd came pouring in.

Leading them was a young woman with a high ponytail, holding a microphone printed with the Beijing TV logo.

Behind her came two men carrying cameras on their shoulders.

More followed with reflectors and equipment cases, the whole procession crowding into over half the room and packing the already cramped adobe house to the brim.

"Jiang Xun! Welcome to Metamorphosis!" The young woman beamed as she thrust the microphone in front of him.

"You're currently in Shiban Village, Yunling County. Over the next thirty days, you'll be swapping lives with a boy your age from Shiban Village and experiencing a completely different life! Is there anything you'd like to say to the camera right now?"

A dazzling fill light snapped on, aimed straight at Jiang Xun's face.

Jiang Xun squinted against the glare.

He sat on the plank bed, which was hard enough to break a person's spine, his hair a tangled mess from sleep and his face pale after an entire night under the effects of the drug.

His gaze went from bewildered to clear, then from clear to sinister. The entire process took just three seconds.

He recognized the show's name.

Metamorphosis, a reality show that claimed to let rebellious city teenagers and impoverished rural children swap lives.

He had caught a glimpse of it on the television in the Jiang family's living room. At the time, he had thought that these rich people with nothing better to do only knew how to use poor children as props and turn poor people's suffering into scripts. It was utterly disgusting.

He had never imagined that one day he would become part of it himself.

Much less that the old witch Liu Wanying would actually dare go this far.

Jiang Xun raised his eyes, glanced at the dark camera lens, then looked at the female host's expectant face.

He smiled.

It was an especially radiant smile, his eyes curving and his dimples deepening as he revealed two neat rows of white teeth. He looked impossibly sweet and well-behaved.

"I'd like to say something to my stepmother-"

"Liu Wanying, when I get back, I'm going to knock out every one of your teeth, one by one~"