Killed by My Thesis

Wang Xingyu died one day before his thesis submission deadline.

He remembered it clearly, because the clock in the bottom-right corner of his computer screen had ticked like a death warrant. His thesis was over thirty thousand words long, but he still had the final chapter of acknowledgments to finish. He had lost count of how many cups of iced black tea he had drunk, and his heart had been pounding so hard it felt ready to leap out of his throat.

"Almost done..."

He typed the last line and prepared to save.

Then everything went black.

His last conscious thought was: Fuck, don't tell me I'm really going to be the guy in one of those news stories: "graduate student at a university dies suddenly in laboratory"?

Pain.

His whole body hurt.

It wasn't the muscle soreness that came from staying up all night. He was hungry.

His stomach felt as if someone had grabbed it and was wringing it into a knot. His mouth was so dry he couldn't even produce saliva. His limbs were limp, as though his bones had been pulled out.

Wang Xingyu struggled for a long time before he managed to open his eyes.

A dull gray thatched roof met his gaze.

He lay on a ridiculously hard wooden bed, covered by a ragged cotton quilt. Cotton bulged through the seams, clumped into hard lumps. The air was thick with the damp smell of mold, mixed with earth and dry grass.

He had transmigrated.

He stared at the thatched roof as countless webnovel scenes flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern. Other people transmigrated after being hit by trucks, struck by lightning, or stabbed while doing a good deed. As for him, he had died suddenly while writing his thesis.

It was embarrassing to even say it.

He braced himself against the bed and sat up, then froze.

There was something in his head.

They weren't his own memories. It was as if someone had stuffed an incomplete picture book into his head, and opening it revealed another person's life.

The original owner was also named Wang Xingyu. He was five years old. His parents had both been villagers of Holy Soul Village.

His memories of his parents were hazy, with only a few images: a tall man carrying him on his shoulders, pointing beyond the mountains and saying, "Xingyu, that's our home"; a woman sewing clothes by lamplight, humming a song whose tune he couldn't make out.

Then one day, Grandpa Old Jack had squatted in front of him, his eyes red, and told him his parents had encountered a Soul Beast in the mountains and weren't coming back.

The original owner believed him. Everyone in the village believed him.

Old Jack took him home and raised him. But the village chief's family wasn't well-off either, and another mouth to feed made life even tighter. When the original owner grew a little older, he moved back into this earthen house his parents had left behind. Every few days, Old Jack brought him something to eat: a handful of wild greens, half a coarse flatbread, a bowl of porridge so thin he could see his reflection in it.

Enough to stay alive. Just barely.

Sometimes Old Jack himself had nothing to put in the pot, and the original owner went hungry. When he was hungry, he drank water. Once he'd drunk his fill, he lay motionless on the bed, waiting for the next knock on the door.

Wang Xingyu digested those memories and fell silent for a while.

Then his stomach growled.

The thunderous rumble even echoed through the empty earthen house.

Never mind that. Find something to eat first.

He pushed open the door.

The June sunlight made him squint. A yellow dirt road, earthen houses with thatched roofs, and in the distance, a chain of mountains so green they looked almost black. An old locust tree stood at the village entrance, its trunk too thick for two adults to encircle with their arms. There was no one beneath it. Old Jack wasn't there.

Wang Xingyu followed the dirt road toward the back of the village. The original owner's memories told him he could find wild greens and fruit on the mountain behind it. After only a few steps, his vision went black. He held on to a tree by the road and closed his eyes until the dizziness passed. His stomach twisted even tighter.

Hungry. So fucking hungry.

He had gone hungry writing his thesis in his previous life too, but that had been the kind of hunger where the cafeteria would open in twenty minutes, not the kind where he didn't know where his next meal would come from.

He gritted his teeth and kept walking.

Behind the village was a gentle slope covered in knee-high weeds. He crouched down and searched through a clump of grayish-green leaves. The original owner's hazy memories told him that sometimes a fist-sized tuber could be dug up beneath these leaves. It tasted a little astringent raw, but it would fill his stomach.

He pushed the leaves aside and was just about to dig-

"You can't eat that."

A voice came from behind him, young and steady.

Wang Xingyu turned around.

A blue-haired child stood three meters away, carrying half a bundle of firewood and looking at him. His coarse clothes had been washed until they were faded, and his face was mostly expressionless, but his eyes were bright.

Blue hair. About five years old. Holy Soul Village.

The "picture book" in Wang Xingyu's head automatically flipped to a certain page.

Tang San. The son of Tang Hao the blacksmith. One of the few children his own age in the village the original owner could exchange a few words with.

Fragments of memory came flooding back: the two children occasionally ran into each other in the mountains, each digging his own wild greens, nodding when they met; once, the original owner had been squatting by the road, starving, when Tang San passed by, stopped to take a look, and said, "There are lots of wild onion bulbs over there," before pointing out the direction and leaving; another time, both had been gathering firewood, and each tied up his own bundle and carried it away, neither waiting for the other.

They weren't friends. They just knew each other. They looked for food on the same mountain and exchanged a few words when they happened to meet.

Wang Xingyu looked down at the clump of grass he had nearly dug up, then back at Tang San.

"This one," Tang San said evenly, pointing at the leaves in his hand, "the root is edible, but the leaves are poisonous. If you touch the leaves first and then touch the root, the sap on your hands will make your mouth swell."

Without waiting for Wang Xingyu to answer, he turned and walked away with his firewood.

After a few steps, he stopped and glanced back.

"There are lots of wild onion bulbs over there."

He tilted his chin toward the other side of the slope, then continued on his way.

Wang Xingyu remained crouched where he was, watching the blue-haired child's back disappear behind the bushes.

Tang San. The things I know best about him are "you already have a way to die" and "double-standard God King." I didn't expect him to warn an ordinary person. Looks like Tang San isn't that bad right now. No, wait, I don't think Tang San ever had a problem with commoners.

Still crouching there, Wang Xingyu pulled back the hand he had stretched out and rubbed it on his pants. Then he stood and headed in the direction Tang San had indicated.

Sure enough, there was a small patch of wild onion bulbs there, each the size of a thumb. Their grayish-green leaves were hidden among the grass, impossible to spot without looking closely. He crouched down and dug up a few, rubbed the dirt off on his clothes, and stuffed them into his mouth. The pungent taste rushed up, stinging his eyes, but at least his stomach stopped twisting so badly.

He chewed the bulbs and looked in the direction Tang San had disappeared, and then tears began to fall. In his original world, he really had fantasized about how he would show off and face-slap people after transmigrating, how he would reach the very pinnacle of the world.

But now that he really had transmigrated, now that he really couldn't go home, Wang Xingyu felt only miserable. He didn't dare think too deeply about it. If he did, he was afraid he would kill himself to see if he could transmigrate back.

Wang Xingyu swallowed the onion bulbs in his mouth. Their pungency burned all the way from his throat to his stomach.

Holding back his tears, he kept digging. After all, even if he killed himself, he might not transmigrate back...

At dusk, Wang Xingyu returned to the village with a few wild onion bulbs and two wild yams as thick as his fingers tucked against his chest. At least tonight's dinner was taken care of.

As he approached the old locust tree at the village entrance, he saw a small figure coming from another direction. The figure carried a bundle of firewood on his back, a little thicker than the one that morning.

Tang San.

The two met beneath the locust tree.

Tang San glanced at him, his gaze pausing for a moment on the bulge against his chest before moving away.

"Did you find any?"

"Mm." Wang Xingyu patted the yams against his chest. "There were plenty of wild onion bulbs in the direction you pointed out."

Tang San nodded without saying anything and walked past on the other side of the locust tree, the firewood on his back.

As they passed each other, Wang Xingyu suddenly spoke.

"Tang San, thank you."

Wang Xingyu meant it from the bottom of his heart.

Tang San didn't stop, only waved a hand.

Wang Xingyu pushed open the door to the dilapidated house. It was pitch-black inside, and moonlight squeezed through the crack in the door, laying a thin silver line across the floor. He put the yams and onion bulbs beside a chipped clay pot and sat back down on the hard bed.

Suddenly, footsteps came from the doorway.

"Xingyu?"

It was Old Jack's voice, a little breathless, as though he had hurried over.

Wang Xingyu stood and pulled open the door. The old man stood there holding a rough earthenware bowl containing half a bowl of thin porridge, still steaming.

"I'm late today." Old Jack pressed the bowl into his hands. "Drink it while it's hot."

Wang Xingyu held the bowl and looked down at the thin layer of rice broth. He remembered the fragments from the original owner's memories: the half bowls of porridge, handfuls of wild greens, and halves of coarse flatbread Old Jack had brought every few days. The old man wasn't well-off himself, but he had never let the original owner run completely out of food.

"Grandpa Jack."

"Hmm?"

"I met Tang San today."

Old Jack smiled, the wrinkles on his face bunching together.

"That boy went up the mountain to gather firewood again?"

"Mm. He told me which grass I couldn't eat."

"Tang San is a good child." Old Jack patted Wang Xingyu's head. "Not like his father. You two are about the same age. It would be good to have company when you go up the mountain from now on."

Wang Xingyu took a sip of porridge and said nothing.

Old Jack patted his head again, then turned and left. Moonlight stretched his shadow long, and his graying hair stirred gently in the night breeze.

Wang Xingyu stood in the doorway with the bowl, watching Old Jack's back disappear at the end of the dirt road.

He finished the remaining porridge and licked even the grains of rice from the bottom of the bowl.

Then he lay back down on the hard bed and stared at the thatched roof.

Before he knew it, tears were falling again. "I'm so useless," he said, and as Wang Xingyu cried, he found himself laughing.