Qi Jun touched his forehead and sucked in a sharp breath from the pain. He looked around the room he was in and found nothing like a mirror, but fortunately the window glass reflected an image, even if it was not very clear.
The sky outside was a dusky yellow. The clock on the wall read 4:50. Unless this world was determined to overturn yet another basic fact of reality, it did indeed seem to be around sunset.
A young man’s face appeared in the window glass. It looked exactly like his old face. Even so, he knew this was not his original body. Though the features and build were identical, this youth was much younger than he had been and somehow looked more refined. The body seemed only fifteen or sixteen. After looking a little longer, Qi Jun thought it was probably slightly thinner than his original self too. Beyond that, he could not make out much more.
The wound on his forehead had not been bandaged, but ointment had been smeared over it, leaving a white layer. There was no blood on his face, so apparently this family was not cold-blooded enough to simply leave a corpse lying around. In truth, the wound looked frightening but was not too serious. As long as he did not touch it, it did not hurt at all. The size, however, exceeded his expectations. It was genuinely conspicuous, right in the middle of his forehead. His looks really had been damaged.
If that scar had saved his backside, though, Qi Jun considered it entirely worthwhile. His coworker Zhao Jia was a fujoshi, and under her “persecution” he had been made to read boys’ love novels several times. He actually thought the stories were pretty good and did not feel any particular aversion to them. It was just that whenever he reached the sex scenes, his butt inexplicably started to ache in sympathy. Fortunately, Zhao Jia was a decent girl; once she saw he was not especially interested, she stopped “harassing” him.
The moment he thought of that, another piece of Qi Jun’s inherited memory surfaced. In this era, males could marry other males, and if they were lucky, they could even have children naturally.
Wait! What kind of situation was this? Male and male? What was with that terminology?
The memories began functioning like a question-answering machine, gradually supplying all kinds of information Qi Jun did not know.
Broadly speaking, there were several kinds of people in this world.
At the top were powerful beastmen. They could transform completely into animals and thus possessed tremendous combat strength. They were the nation’s protectors and also its leaders.
Next came ordinary beastmen. Normally they appeared human, but they could transform parts of their bodies into animal traits. Beastmen, whether male or female, were born warriors, so most served in the military.
The most common were sub-beastmen. They could not transform, but their bodies carried more or less some animal characteristics. Qi Jun’s closest younger sister, Qi Tian, for example, had an adorable pair of cat ears. In every other respect, they were just like ordinary people from Qi Jun’s era, except somewhat stronger and physically tougher. These people performed most everyday occupations.
Then there were pure humans like Qi Jun. They were a branch of humanity that still retained the most ancient, completely human form. Aside from what he already knew—that pure humans were few in number and many possessed extremely high intelligence—most pure humans, male or female, married into other families rather than taking spouses into their own. In the beast world, the completeness of one’s beast form determined strength and social standing. The genes of pure-human males were not as dominant as beastman genes, meaning they could not produce offspring as well adapted to survive in this world. As a result, the marital role of pure humans had gradually become an unwritten rule.
Beyond those groups was the most tragic category, beings who could still be called people because they possessed human intelligence and could speak human language, yet were permanently trapped in animal form. Such cases were extremely rare; among several hundred thousand people, there might not even be a single pure beast. Pure beasts had very short lives, reaching only about fifty years, unlike beastmen and pure humans, who could live two hundred years or even more than three hundred. Yet pure beasts also possessed a brief, glorious twenty-year prime during which their combat power was no weaker than the transformed animal form of a powerful beastman. So although everyone regarded them as the most pitiable beings in existence, they were not despised. Unfortunately, they were born infertile.
In the beast world, every human category used “male” and “female” to distinguish sex. “Man” and “woman” were terms found only in history classes, used to describe the sexes of ancient humans.
After learning all this, Qi Jun remained outwardly calm. Of course, that was only on the surface. Inside, his thoughts had already been blown into complete chaosUsually meaning: being stunned, speechless, or mentally scrambled; the Chinese internet phrase literally means “messy in the wind.”. He had the distinct feeling that the world he had transmigrated into was not particularly safe. Marrying into someone else’s family and all that… sounded terribly troublesome!
Ever since his mother died, Qi Jun had always wanted a home of his own, and a child carrying his blood. But in his previous life, he had never had the ability—or perhaps the courage—to shoulder the pressure that came with a family. To him, family was sacred, a responsibility one had to bear for life. At his previous age and with his financial foundation, he had not yet been capable of achieving that dream. But in this life… did he really have no choice but to marry into someone else’s family? This was completely outside anything he had ever imagined.
At a little after six, someone knocked on the door. Without waiting for Qi Jun to answer, the door was pushed open. A pretty young girl came in, a pair of white cat ears on her head that made her look extremely cute. Qi Jun knew this was Qi Jun’s younger sister, Qi Tian. “Tiantian?”
Seeing that her second brother was awake, Qi Tian beamed. She lifted the plate and bags in her hands and hurried to Qi Jun’s bedside. “Second Brother, this is your dinner. The ointment is on your bedside cabinet—you saw it, right? Remember to change the medicine after you eat. For now, you’d better not leave your room. Dad, Mom, and Eldest Brother all look furious, and if they see you they’ll just yell at you again. Oh, and I secretly saved this meat for you. Teacher said injured people need to eat more natural food to recover faster, so you have to finish all of it!”
Seeing the little girl’s secretive expression, Qi Jun suddenly felt warmth spread through his chest. How long had it been since anyone cared about him like this? Granted, the person she cared about was not truly him. But he had already occupied this body, even taken over its memories. “All right. Second Brother will remember. I’ll definitely eat it. But Tiantian is still growing too, so you need to eat more natural food yourself.” Heaven knew what “natural food” actually meant. The original Qi Jun had very few memories related to food. All he had managed to understand was that food here fell into three categories.
Natural food was food obtained directly from nature, including meat and vegetables. Among natural foods, plants were the most expensive, because the overwhelming majority of plants now growing naturally in the wild were poisonous. Edible, nontoxic plants were exceedingly rare, so it was no surprise they cost so much. Meat prices varied according to species.
Cultivated food consisted only of vegetable-like foods and occupied the middle price range. Even those were divided into five grades, depending entirely on the cultivator’s skill and luck.
The most ordinary kind was nutritional food, something like a drink or rice paste. It could be flavored sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, or salty according to preference. Factories produced it cheaply from cultivated ingredients, and it was what ordinary households ate most often. Of course, it served as their staple. In the Hua Nation, essentially every household could eat cultivated food every day; those cultivated vegetables were the dishes eaten alongside nutritional food.
Seeing an actual smile on her second brother’s face today, Qi Tian looked delighted and curious. “Second Brother, you look really handsome when you smile!”
Qi Jun smiled even more. “Tiantian looks better when she smiles.”
The little girl blushed faintly. “Here, hurry and eat. Don’t let yourself go hungry. I’m leaving now, or Eldest Brother will get mad again.” With that, she bounced out. Before closing the door, she flashed Qi Jun an enormous grin, as though showing off just how pretty her smile was.
In this family, the only person the original Qi Jun had truly been reluctant to leave was probably this younger sister.
Sure enough, the bag contained two pouches of nutritional food. Looking at the long list of ingredients he did not understand, Qi Jun felt his balls acheUsually meaning: feeling annoyed, frustrated, or helpless; the Chinese slang “balls hurt” is usually figurative here, not literal pain.. Thank goodness the written language had not changed, or he would have been completely illiterate. But even though he could read… none of the ingredients looked like anything familiar!
Wait a minute! This Qi Jun was going to start university in two months. With his own “intelligence,” would he even be able to manage? That was genuinely worth worrying about. But since he had already come back to life, he had to keep struggling on somehow—even in this utterly ridiculous world.
Qi Jun twisted open the plastic drinking spout on the nutritional-food pouch. Its shape resembled those XX-branded jelly pouches from his old world, so it was easy enough to understand. But the instant he took one sip, he coughed it right back out. “Holy crap, what—what is this stuff?!” Did they really need to torture his stomach like this? Even if the original Qi Jun had been discriminated against ten thousand times over, surely nobody had to be vicious enough to use a weapon of mass destruction like this as food for a “seriously injured” youth?
Huh? No, something was off. The memory of this flavor surfaced again. Apparently, the original Qi Jun had actually thought it tasted pretty good. Could it be… that food here simply tasted like this? Qi Jun subconsciously glanced at the lump of meat, about the size of a baby’s fist. He felt as if his hands were trembling when he lifted it beneath his nose. He sniffed. Very fishy. Licked it. Quite salty. Finally, he took a bite…
“Peh, peh, peh, peh!!” What the hell was this salty, astringent, fishy thing?! Was Qi Tian playing a prank on him?? Impossible! Then more of the original Qi Jun’s memories appeared. They made Qi Jun feel downright immoral for despising the taste. The old Qi Jun had felt happy whenever he got to eat something like this.
“Fuck…” Qi Jun, who had always been mild-mannered and honest, could not stop himself from swearing. This thing really, truly was ordinary food here. This damned lump of meat had even been a luxury to the original Qi Jun! Only now did he realize how foolish and excessive he had been when he complained about his old school cafeteria!
In the end, he could not defeat the tremendous matter of an empty stomach. Qi Jun alternated bites of meat with swallows of nutritional food until he had forced everything down. Calling up the original Qi Jun’s fond memories of these flavors improved the horrifying experience by perhaps 0.1 percent. In reality, it was still almost unbearable. He could not control the nausea in his mind, but to avoid starving to death—and more importantly, to avoid being cursed by this family for wasting food—he had to eliminate every last bit. At least it supplied all the nutrients his body required. That was what the memories told him.
Fortunately, after finishing, he did not experience any physical nausea. That left him feeling somewhat helpless. What could he do? This was someone else’s body, after all.
He shook his head and found he was not too dizzy. He decided to explore “his” room first. At the very least, he needed to know what necessities he had for surviving here—for example, identity documents and whether he had any money.
Huh? Another memory surfaced. He immediately raised his left hand and rubbed his wrist. It looked no different. This pale skin was nothing like the slightly yellowish complexion of his previous life. Could his unique identity-and-finance chip really be hidden beneath the skin?
That memory made his wrist start to ache, though of course it was purely psychological. But the moment he thought about how much money he had, an uncomfortable feeling rose inside him—not his own discomfort, but something carried in the memories. Qi Jun did not know how much 24,300 points were worth, but he did know that this represented every bit of pocket money the original Qi Jun had received in eighteen years. The youth in the memories almost never bought anything. Even with clothes, anything wearable was good enough. No matter how badly his parents treated him, if his clothes no longer fit, they would still buy replacements. Yet in Qi Jun’s memory, Eldest Brother and his younger brother could buy whatever they wanted. Qi Tian, on the other hand, had never liked spending recklessly even as a child.
Qi Jun took a deep breath and pushed away some of the sadness left behind by the original Qi Jun. Actually… there really was no reason to remain in this household. The real Qi Jun had probably already died after smashing his head, unless he had somehow exchanged bodies with Qi Jun in another spacetime. Either way, since he was no longer truly a member of this family, and nobody except Tiantian thought much of the original Qi Jun, he might as well take the opportunity of starting university to move out of this house!
