Chapter 1

The blood-red sky is the eternal theme of the western wilderness. The sun, hidden behind the clouds, radiates a scorching heat, and the earth, baked by the high temperature, distorts the air in layers, like the currents above a furnace. The barren land and the sky share the same color, making it hard to distinguish which is the sky and which is the earth.

Muscular men, dressed in small shorts like bodybuilding coaches, surrounded a ten-meter square pit. Deep within the pit, a brutal fight was about to begin, with the combatants surprising everyone.

On one side was a twelve-year-old boy, and on the other, a wild beast with its body bristling and fangs bared. Both were in an extremely tense standoff. Above the pit, the bodies of previous combatants—both beasts and boys—were laid out, their fates decided by the bodies above. Only one could survive.

The young boy's face was still childish. Compared to the bulging muscles of the indifferent onlookers above, his arms were as thin as reeds. He gritted his teeth, trying to look fierce, but his trembling legs betrayed his extreme fear.

The sand wolf's bristling fur was stained with blood. Its cold, triangular eyes fixed on the boy's throat, and its open mouth revealed sharp, white fangs. Saliva dripped from its mouth, and it was eager to enjoy this sumptuous meal. Finally, the sand wolf could no longer hold back and lunged forward as the boy's eyes widened in terror.

"Ah!!!" Gao Feng suddenly opened his eyes, gasping for breath as he stared at the beam of light piercing through the hole in the ceiling. The dark room was filled with millions of dust particles dancing in the bright light, creating a complex yet silent scene.

Staring at the dancing dust, Gao Feng was still immersed in the moment when the sand wolf pounced, like a nightmare, yet so real. The sand wolf's breath, the blood, and the cold, indifferent eyes of the hundreds of men all made him question whether the world in his dream was real or if the real world was just an illusion. Or perhaps, none of it was real.

The dark, oppressive room was vastly different from the small, cluttered, yet cozy room in his memory. Gao Feng quickly closed his eyes, trying to escape the environment of this room. After a long while, he heard his own heartbeat, his own breathing, and the faint noise from outside. He once again weakly realized that he was no longer in the place of his memories but in a strange room, in a strange world.

He hoped it was all an illusion, but everything appeared real before his eyes. He couldn't help but sit up from the thick fur, staring at the cracked and damaged mirror on the opposite wall. Suddenly, he remembered something and looked down at his shoulder.

In the last moment of his dream, the terrifying sand wolf was biting his shoulder, and the sharp, white fangs piercing his flesh had woken him up in pain. Sure enough, there was a circle of old scars on his tense shoulder, deep and shallow, irregularly round. Seeing these scars, he could recall the excruciating pain from his dream.

This was not a dream; it was something that had truly happened to him. However, Gao Feng had not experienced it. His mind was not the original consciousness of this body but had merged with it a month ago. He had merged with the body but not with the world.

"Phew..." He exhaled heavily, unwilling to think about it. Over the past month, he had constantly tried to recover his lost memories. Each time he tried to recall anything beyond his name, his head would feel like it was splitting. The pain made him wish he were dead, but once he began to doubt, he would naturally try to remember again, and the pain would return, like a vicious cycle, making him avoid the pain and everything from his past.

He didn't know who he was. Occasionally, fragments of memory would flash through his mind, but they were completely different from the world he was in. It was as if a modern person with lost memory had been transported to a primitive era. Even though he looked like a primitive person, his inner self was still modern. Even without his memories, he still felt out of place.

He got out of bed, stood in front of the mirror, and picked up a cloth to gently wipe it. The mirror, originally a novel decoration, had not been well cared for and was covered in dirt and dust. Gao Feng couldn't explain why he wanted to clean it, perhaps to find his former self in the mirror, to no longer feel lost.

The boy in the mirror was very handsome, with a fierce, fearless expression, and long, wavy hair that was rebellious like a lion's. However, he was not familiar, even after a month of looking at himself. He still felt a sense of strangeness and distance, though not as shocking as the first day, it still made him uncomfortable, as if he were looking at a familiar stranger in the mirror.

If he couldn't remember his past, he couldn't find himself. Without finding himself, he didn't know the meaning of his existence. He ate rough, coarse sand jujube cakes, stayed in this dark room, and searched for any clues that could prove his identity. After countless futile attempts, he would lie on his bed, staring at the black ceiling, and slowly sink into the cruel world of his dreams, or perhaps, the original memories of this body.

The small, cramped room was not empty. Under the bed, there was a pile of indescribable things, which seemed to be the previous owner's collection of toys, animal skulls, strangely shaped and hard branches, glass-like stones, and some things he was familiar with but couldn't remember, such as broken glassware, mineral water bottles without labels, covered in dirt and grime, but still recognizable as plastic. He could only recognize the plastic, but nothing else.

What touched him the most was the metal box used as a pillow on the bed. During the day, it was hot, and at night, it was cold. The box, full of head oil and emitting a smell, provided a bit of coolness during the day, making it one of the most valuable items in the room. However, what moved him was not the box itself but the faded red cross beneath it. He felt the cross was familiar but couldn't remember why, as if it was a clue from the fleeting memory fragments, the only clue to his past.

The box felt greasy, and Gao Feng was already in despair. He didn't have much time left.

The owner of the body was about to face the biggest challenge of his life, a test that would determine his fate, a test between heaven and hell, much like the test in his dream.

The test in his dream was as different from the one he was about to face as a child's game is from an adult's war, leaving him feeling helpless and worried about his fate...

Even if he didn't want to, he couldn't hide in the room forever. Each time he pushed open the door, it was a test of his resolve, a sign of his formal contact with the world.

"Regardless of who I was before, now I am Sanzhua, Sanzhua of the western wilderness. No matter what secrets I had before, now, I must first survive..." Gao Feng kept repeating to himself.

When he pushed open the door, the blood-red sky, just like in his dream, spread before his eyes. A wave of heat rushed in through the small door, blowing his long, wavy hair and making it flutter...