Chapter 1

On a certain year, month, and day, at a certain hour, minute, and second.

The world below remained as it always was, the observable area clear, windless, with thin clouds.

Gao Wen quietly gazed at the distant land from an absolutely top-down perspective, quietly contemplating life—after all, he had nothing else to do.

He could no longer remember how many years he had been in this state, nor what he looked like now. Although he could roughly estimate the time based on the alternation of day and night, to be honest, after hundreds of thousands of such alternations, he had become too lazy to calculate.

Is this what it means to have "transmigrated"?

To be honest, Gao Wen was quite open-minded about the concept of "transmigration." It wasn't that he had such a broad perspective that he could treat life and death as nothing, but rather, when he fell from an airplane in his previous life, he realized the unpredictability of life and the inevitability of death. After all, in a situation where death was certain, having a chance to transmigrate was better than truly landing and becoming a box. What he couldn't accept was why he ended up floating in the sky after transmigrating...

And he had been floating for who knows how many tens of thousands of years.

Gao Wen didn't know what state he was in now. He couldn't change his perspective or feel the existence of his body. In fact, apart from his vision, he had completely lost his ability to perceive the external environment. So he couldn't determine whether he was a wisp of a soul or a floating corpse in orbit, but one thing was certain: he was definitely not in a normal human state.

Because he was sure that a normal human's mental structure could not remain clear and memory intact after floating in the sky for tens of thousands of years, let alone have the leisure to contemplate life.

A normal person would have gone mad long ago.

But he hadn't gone mad, not only that, but his memory was also extraordinary.

The passage of tens of thousands of years had not affected Gao Wen's memory at all. To this day, he could still clearly recall the events of his last moments in his previous life—the shrill screams, the alarms, the violently shaking cabin, the rolling sky and earth outside the window, the neighbor's breathing mask that wouldn't fit, and the deafening explosion when the plane disintegrated in mid-air.

Everything was as clear as if it had happened yesterday, and he could vividly remember how astonished he was when he opened his eyes and found himself floating above a strange planet.

From the moment he opened his eyes, he knew he was not looking at the land and sea of Earth. He spent a little time deducing and accepting the fact that he had transmigrated to another world, and then spent even more time trying to figure out how to stop floating.

Unfortunately, the second attempt failed.

He found himself "fixed" or, perhaps, his current form had no mobility. He became a "fixed perspective" looking down at the land, firmly restricted to his current position. He could look at the land, but only the land, and even then, only a restricted area—a large, irregular continent surrounded by a ring of ocean. His field of vision could not see beyond this area.

He couldn't turn his gaze left or right, so he couldn't determine if there was any other land beyond the ocean—nor could he see the sky of this world.

He even doubted whether this world had other celestial bodies—maybe if he turned his head, he would see a bearded God holding a spotlight illuminating everything.

Damn, he really wanted to do a backstroke...

Even if the backstroke only showed him a bearded old man holding a spotlight, it would be fine.

But it was all a luxury. The perspective looking down at the land could not change direction.

However, after a long effort, Gao Wen found a small operable part of this perspective—although he couldn't move left or right, he could zoom in and out within this field of vision, or pull closer and push farther away.

After discovering this, he was genuinely happy for a long time, then he tried various zooms. Although the field of vision couldn't extend beyond the ring of ocean, at least he could choose to zoom in and see what was on that continent.

It was lush and full of life, clearly indicating the presence of living beings.

If he could observe the daily lives of the people in this world, it would be good. Although he was still floating, at least watching the customs and culture of the people in this world could alleviate his boredom.

So he zoomed in as close as possible, until he could clearly observe every blade of grass and tree on the land.

On that day, he despaired when he discovered that the mammals on the land...

Hadn't yet learned to walk upright...

But it didn't matter; Gao Wen was very patient—perhaps he had limited patience when he was a human, but after transmigrating into a fixed perspective, he found himself to be incredibly patient.

He waited until the monkeys learned to walk upright.

Then many more years passed, and he witnessed the birth of the first man-made fire.

It was a spark from flint.

The changes began after the birth of that fire.

Gao Wen didn't know what had happened, but after the first fire on the land, everything seemed to "speed up," or perhaps his perception of the passage of time was altered. The events on the land began to evolve rapidly, like a video played at an incredibly fast speed. He saw the human-like races quickly build primitive tribes, which then became early city-states. He saw these human-like races master incredible abilities and use techniques that seemed like magic to expand their territories. But before he could fully understand what was happening on the land, those early kingdoms turned into ruins, and new human-like beings emerged from the ruins and began to thrive again...

Humans and various other races began to compete for survival space on the continent. They established various kingdoms and beliefs, shouting the names of various deities as they waged war against each other, and then quickly disappeared.

The pace continued to accelerate, and Gao Wen gradually found it difficult to process the massive amount of information he was seeing. He saw creatures that looked like dragons suddenly appear in his field of vision, but he didn't know if these "dragons" had evolved on the continent or come from beyond the ocean.

He saw wars break out, almost destroying the entire land, but in the blink of an eye, new civilizations were established.

After a long time, he realized that it wasn't the pace on the land that had accelerated, but that he was "skipping" large amounts of information.

His "observation" had become intermittent, changing from continuous observation to recording only a few scenes every few years or even decades. These scenes, with their large time spans, created the illusion that the pace had accelerated.

He hadn't noticed this before because during the interruptions in his observation, his thoughts were also paused.

When the observation resumed, his thoughts continued seamlessly.

So he didn't realize the problem with himself.

This is bad.

These three words flashed through Gao Wen's mind like lightning, but this lightning-fast thought probably took hundreds of years.

Because he clearly saw the changes on the land—when the three words appeared in his mind, another kingdom had already turned into ruins.

Gao Wen didn't know what was happening, but he knew it wasn't normal. From the rapidly changing scenes, which spanned years, he realized that his thoughts were almost disappearing.

For every hundred years, the time he could think probably didn't add up to a second.

And his "thought interruption periods" were getting longer.

Because he realized that the changes on the land were becoming incomprehensible, the rapidly switching "slides" were almost impossible to understand.

If this continued, perhaps at some point, the mind named "Gao Wen" would completely dissipate in this strange place, and he would fall into eternal sleep, never to wake up again.

For the first time in tens of thousands of years, Gao Wen felt a sense of urgency. He began to frantically stimulate his thoughts, trying to escape this situation. He felt his mind working at an incredible speed (if he still had that organ), and countless thoughts surged like a flood. But looking at the rapidly switching "slides" on the land, he knew his thoughts had slowed to the point of a thousand years per frame.

Of course, this was a bit exaggerated, but the reality wasn't much better.

Escape this situation, escape this situation, escape this situation, escape this situation...

By any means, in any form, he must escape this situation, even if it meant returning to the plane that was about to crash, he couldn't die in this strange place in such a strange way!

Gao Wen felt his thoughts becoming chaotic, his consciousness gradually blurring. The seamless continuation of his thoughts seemed to be failing. He thought furiously, but as a fixed perspective, no matter how furious he was, he couldn't change the situation.

But just as he felt his thoughts about to completely dissipate or stop, a voice suddenly came from nowhere:

"Power failure, main system restart failed.

Escape program initiated."

In the next instant, the fixed perspective disappeared—Gao Wen was plunged into darkness.

But his thoughts did not stop.

For the first time in thousands of years, he continued thinking while "closing his eyes."

He didn't know how long he stayed in this darkness. He felt as if he was rolling, falling, entering a cold and narrow place. Various long-forgotten sensations returned to his limbs, causing his mind to become chaotic. Amidst this chaos, he vaguely heard a young woman's voice, which sounded quite panicked:

"Don't... don't kill me yet! Your ancestor's coffin is about to burst open!"

(Everyone! I'm back!)