Chapter 1

"Unscientific! Not magic either!"

Yang Fengyun stared wide-eyed at the mirror, and in it, a petite and adorable girl of about fourteen or fifteen years old stared back with wide eyes, her expression one of shock as if she had seen a ghost, as if she had seen the most terrifying thing in the world.

Taking a deep breath, Yang Fengyun instinctively reached down to touch, and the result made him look as if the world had ended: "Gone, really gone..."

The companion who had been with him for over twenty years was gone. Although he was unwilling to believe it, the harsh reality told him that 'he' had become 'she'.

"Calm down! Yang Fengyun! Don't panic, you might be dreaming, yes, dreaming! Ow, that hurts!" Thinking he was dreaming, Yang Fengyun pinched his thigh hard, and the intense pain almost made him cry. The tender thigh immediately turned bruised.

"Ouch, does the skin have to be so sensitive? A slight pinch and it turns blue." Yang Fengyun rubbed his bruised leg, his expression growing more and more grim, because reality told him he wasn't dreaming.

"Calm down, Yang Fengyun, you need to calm down and think about what happened." Yang Fengyun sternly warned himself, forcing himself to calm down, and the memories in his mind began to surface.

Yang Fengyun was originally a 27-year-old otaku, an ordinary office worker, working as a concept artist at a game company. His daily task was to draw character and background images, a job that was common in the gaming industry.

But this otaku, who was almost middle-aged, one day, for some reason, whether it was a momentary lapse in judgment or something else, saw a little girl run into the middle of the road while picking up something, and a speeding car was coming straight at her.

Without much thought, Yang Fengyun rushed out and pushed the little girl away at the critical moment. Unfortunately, he was tragically hit by the speeding car and died on the spot.

When Yang Fengyun woke up again, he had already become a teenage girl.

After sorting out his memories, Yang Fengyun couldn't help but take a deep breath: "This... a car accident that also changes gender? Unscientific! Not magic either! Could someone have performed a gender reassignment surgery on me while I was unconscious? But even if it was a gender reassignment surgery, it shouldn't have been so thorough! Even my age changed!"

Yang Fengyun instinctively looked around, finding himself in a standard girl's room, clean, tidy, with some cute pillows, but no posters. The room gave off a simple and beautiful comfort, and a faint, indescribable fragrance that made one feel very comfortable.

This was the first time Yang Fengyun had entered a beautiful girl's room. Normally, he would have been very happy, but now he had no such mood. He just wanted to know what was going on.

Soon, Yang Fengyun found a pile of things on the girl's soft bed: a letter, a student ID, and an empty capsule shell, which seemed to have been placed there not long ago.

Yang Fengyun immediately picked up the student ID and saw that the photo on it matched his current body. The name was...

"Willow Yingzi." Yang Fengyun softly read the name, vaguely understanding that he had not undergone a gender change but had been reborn after death.

To confirm his guess, Yang Fengyun picked up the letter and read it. After finishing, he was completely convinced. The letter was a suicide note written by Willow Yingzi, filled with her despair, resentment, and fear of the world, and a request for whoever found her body to bury her next to her parents.

From this, it was clear that Willow Yingzi was most likely an orphan who had lost both parents and had suffered some tragic treatment in life, leading to her despair and ultimate decision to end her life. The empty capsule shell was the euthanasia drug she had obtained.

"It seems that after I died, for some unknown reason, my soul attached to the recently deceased Willow Yingzi, thus gaining a second life." Yang Fengyun frowned, his mind piecing together his situation with a high degree of accuracy.

However, knowing and accepting were two different things. Yang Fengyun still had living parents and had just started dating a girlfriend. Although he was just a small office worker, his life was relatively good, and he was in the prime of his life. Suddenly becoming someone else, and a girl at that, was something he could never accept.

Yang Fengyun remained in a daze for a long time, then went into a hysterical fit, hitting and screaming like a madman. It took a long time for him to calm down and start thinking about the future.

At this moment, Yang Fengyun suddenly noticed Willow Yingzi's diary. After some consideration, he opened it to see what kind of person the original owner of this body was.

As a result, Yang Fengyun discovered that Willow Yingzi was truly tragic. At fifteen, she had lost both parents in an accident three years ago. Her relatives were quite disdainful of her, and she had even narrowly escaped being raped by a perverted uncle.

Although the perverted uncle failed, Willow Yingzi developed autism as a result, cutting off all contact with her family, not trusting anyone, and not wanting to get close to others, instinctively resisting everything from the outside world. Her behavior led to her being isolated and bullied at school, even having her head pushed into a toilet sink.

Although he only saw some content from the text without detailed records, the pain revealed between the lines and the tear stains on the pages clearly showed the tragic treatment Willow Yingzi had endured. Even as a bystander, Yang Fengyun felt sympathy for the girl and anger towards those who bullied her.

After enduring this for a few years, the girl suffered the biggest blow when she was deceived by a male classmate she liked. The boy was a scoundrel who enjoyed playing with girls, and he initiated a relationship with her, using fake kindness to deceive her and warm her heart.

Unfortunately, Willow Yingzi eventually saw through the scoundrel's true nature due to an accident, suffering a huge blow. Although she wasn't physically violated, the emotional trauma was unbearable, and this blow almost made her collapse. Later, she was pushed into a toilet sink again, and in despair and pain, she chose the most extreme means to end everything.

One could say that Willow Yingzi's life was a tragedy, evoking both pity and resentment. Pity for her suffering, and resentment for her weakness. If she had been stronger, the outcome would have been different.

"But if she had been strong, perhaps I wouldn't have had the chance to be reborn?" Yang Fengyun muttered, finally shaking his head in self-mockery.

However, Yang Fengyun also found some inexplicable things in the diary, such as superpowers and magic, and Willow Yingzi's desire to enter a superpower academy and a magic academy, making him suspect that she might have had a middle school syndrome.

But for some reason, Yang Fengyun felt a strong sense of unease, which led him to Willow Yingzi's computer. He turned it on to check the internet.

However, before he could go online, the operating system on the computer made him pause. It was called Tianji 10, which was very different from Microsoft's Windows.

"Could this be an operating system that Willow Yingzi created herself? Could she be a computer expert?" Yang Fengyun thought, but he knew this was a very unreliable guess.

After familiarizing himself with the operating system and checking some information online, Yang Fengyun realized that he not only had a rebirth and gender change but had also traveled to a parallel Earth.

In this parallel world, most of the history was the same as the original Earth, but there was a significant difference during the late Ming Dynasty. The Southern Ming, which should have quickly perished, did not perish. The昏君 (emperor who should have become the emperor in history), Emperor Hongguang, did not become the emperor, but instead, Emperor Longwu, Zhu Yujian, ascended the throne just before the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

This capable last emperor, after ascending the throne, worked hard to reform and turned the dire situation around. Not only did he repel the Qing army's fierce attacks, but he also revitalized the Ming Dynasty, creating a powerful army. He eventually defeated the Qing in three northern campaigns and re-established a unified Central Plains dynasty. Because of his great achievements in reviving the Ming Dynasty, he is historically known as Emperor Longwu.

After that, Emperor Longwu opened up trade, and the huge profits from maritime trade led many Ming people to venture into the sea, making the once arrogant Central Plains dynasty begin to open its eyes to the world. The immense power of the Ming Dynasty put enormous pressure on Europe, which could not be as dominant as on the other Earth. The Ming Dynasty, due to the accumulation of capital, eventually underwent a capitalist revolution, transitioning from a feudal monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, thus establishing its position as the world's leading superpower.

This continued until the early 20th century, when the Ming Dynasty, ruling over most of Asia, and Western countries engaged in a world war. The Ming Dynasty, with its strength, dominated the Western countries. In the face of various unfavorable situations, the Europeans began to study the legendary alchemy technology, accidentally opening a portal to another dimension.

After the portal to the other dimension was opened, an unprecedented crisis descended upon Earth. The intelligent races from the other world discovered this beautiful and weak Earth and launched an invasion.

As a result, the world war that Earth was already fighting turned into a super world war between Earth and the other dimension.

At that time, although Earth had developed battleships, cannons, and aircraft, the otherworldly beings were even more terrifying, capable of using superpowers and magic, causing Earth's countries to suffer repeated defeats. First, Africa, Australia, and South America fell, followed by Europe, the Ming Dynasty, and the newly emerging United States.

At this point, the Earth people finally realized that continued division would lead to their destruction. They put aside all prejudices and began comprehensive cooperation, sharing technology and resources, and forming a war alliance. They barely managed to repel the attacks from the other world.

For unknown reasons, the Earth people did not develop nuclear weapons. They engaged in a decade-long war with the otherworldly beings, eventually breaking through their magic and superpower technology and creating their own magicians and superpowered beings, driving the otherworldly beings back to their world.

However, after the war, almost all of Earth's civilized cities were reduced to ruins, and the population plummeted from 2 billion to 400 million. More critically, the other world still possessed the technology to open the dimensional portal, posing a constant threat of a counterattack.

To avoid destruction, the post-war countries did not turn on each other. Under the immense external pressure, the Earth people unified early, abolishing all national names and establishing the Earth United Nations, making Earth a single entity. By 2014, the population had grown nearly tenfold to 3 billion, though not as much as on the other Earth, it was still significant.

The place where Yang Fengyun was located was the Chinese region of another world, but in this world, there was no China, only the Great Huaxia Region.