Chapter 1

Pain!

So much pain!

My head... My heart hurts so much!

Jingyang gradually regained consciousness from his state of numbness. He felt as if he were immersed in a weightless mass of water. Despite the warmth and comfort that should have been present, his heart was pounding wildly, as if it were about to burst. Jingyang numbly realized that there seemed to be a strange aura, hot like boiling water yet cold to the bone, trying to penetrate the deepest part of his heart...

Stop! My heart is really going to burst...

After an unknown amount of time, Jingyang suddenly opened his eyes. The feeling of waking from a dream was followed by a sense of disillusionment. Then, he felt something binding him and the suffocating pressure of heavy objects weighing him down... He struggled fiercely, and as dim light filtered through the gaps between the heavy objects, Jingyang's struggle became even more intense. He pushed all the heavy objects off himself, finally freeing himself from the awkward position. Though exhausted, he could now lie down comfortably on his back.

The sky was filled with the glow of the evening sunset, and Jingyang's field of vision was cluttered with tall, wild grass. He slowly realized that he had no idea when or how he ended up in such a desolate place.

If I remember correctly, I was at home due to the pandemic, so bored that I was growing fur, and I had just cooked a bowl of rice, planning to find something to do to pass the time... I didn't provoke anyone or do anything wrong; I was a law-abiding citizen. How did I end up here, lying down, with just a blink of an eye?

Jingyang let out a long, depressed sigh. As he took a deep breath, his eyes slowly changed—how could there be such a strong smell of blood?

He suddenly sat up but slipped and fell flat on his face, his limbs weak and sore.

A dead man in a suit appeared before his eyes, his eyes wide and lifeless, staring directly at Jingyang.

Jingyang's scalp tingled, and a chill ran down his spine to his forehead.

He looked around and saw, amidst the tall, lush wild grass, the vague outlines of bodies scattered everywhere. He had been buried under a pile of corpses! Around these suited corpses, there were also shell casings and pistols... a gang war? Impossible! What era is this, where gangs still dare to be so wild?

Jingyang looked down again and saw a female corpse under the pile of bodies, wearing a plain gray windbreaker, her eyes half-open as if she couldn't rest in peace. He wasn't a forensic expert, but he could see that the dead woman's stiff hand was tightly clutching an empty, disheveled swaddling cloth...

Jingyang's breathing quickened, and he looked at his palm in disbelief, his gaze moving upward...

Just like his palm, his arms and body had become incredibly thin and small, with skin so tender that it didn't seem to belong to a nearly thirty-year-old man but rather to a child of about three or four years old!

Have I traveled through time?

And I just crawled out of that swaddling cloth under the pile of corpses?

Jingyang's mind was in chaos, and he only wanted to escape from the pile of corpses as quickly as possible. He used his hands and feet, slipping several times, his legs weak, pushing through the tall, wild grass, trying to crawl out.

When he pushed aside the wild grass again, he inadvertently saw a high slope not far away. At the top of the slope, a fierce beast was standing with its back to the setting sun, its outline unclear, but its eyes emitted a strange light, meeting Jingyang's gaze from a distance.

Jingyang felt as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over his head, and he became completely清醒.

Damn!

Jingyang felt hopeless and quietly let the tall grass fall back into place, falling weakly to the ground, hoping that the fierce beast on the slope hadn't noticed him...

Then, Jingyang turned his head and saw a gray wolf's tail emerging from the grass, less than half a meter from his face.

Jingyang held his breath and followed the tail with his eyes, his heart sinking. He saw a wild wolf, weighing at least 200 pounds, gnawing on another suited corpse in the grass, making the sound of chewing flesh and bones... Jingyang couldn't believe it; had he been deaf before, not hearing this?

Jingyang carefully moved back, keeping a close eye on the wild wolf's back as it ate.

Suddenly, the wild wolf stopped, and Jingyang dared not move either.

The wild wolf scratched its neck with its hind leg and then continued to tear at the corpse. Jingyang suppressed his breathing and moved back again... Then, he heard the sound he least wanted to hear: the rustling of the wild grass on both sides. Soon, two more wild wolves, their mouths full of blood, appeared, their eyes glowing green as they stared at Jingyang.

Could things get any worse?

The wild wolf that had been eating quietly earlier had also stopped and turned around, licking its sharp teeth, as if grinning at Jingyang.

...They certainly could!

Jingyang suddenly understood. These three wild hunters had known about his existence all along!

Damn, these three bastards, were they toying with their prey, or saving this tender meat for last?

The three wild wolves, in a pincer formation, pushed through the wild grass, their four legs moving slowly, their mouths growling in a threatening manner, approaching Jingyang.

Jingyang kept moving back, but soon he hit the pile of corpses and had nowhere else to go.

As the three fierce, man-eating wild wolves drew closer, Jingyang felt his brain cells dying and regenerating at an unprecedented rate, desperately trying to find a way to survive. No matter how wild his imagination, it all seemed unrealistic. He hadn't even figured out if he had traveled through time, and now he was about to be devoured by wolves, and not just by one but by several...

A soft, child-like strand of hair fell into Jingyang's peripheral vision.

Jingyang gradually calmed down, leaning against a pile of rocks, sitting cross-legged, and staring intently at the three wild wolves approaching him. He could clearly see the meat scraps between their teeth and the nauseating smell of blood...

The soft strand of hair, barely noticeable, moved on its own, slowly drifting toward the middle wild wolf.

At a level invisible to the naked eye, a white ball of life energy wrapped around the strand of hair, gradually bending it into a pentagram shape, and finally quietly landing in the ear of the middle wild wolf.

A flash of white light disappeared, and the strand of hair fell, but a rose-gold pentagram pattern remained on the skin inside the wild wolf's ear.

Jingyang was shocked, looking at "himself"!

He was also shocked to see the middle wild wolf, whose eyes showed a human-like shock—this is also "me"?!

Have I taken over the body of this wild wolf?

A series of questions flashed through his mind, but Jingyang knew he had no time. He immediately took control of the middle wild wolf's body, without hesitation, forcefully pushing the wild wolf on the left, then growling and pouncing on the wild wolf on the right, launching a surprise attack! Jingyang howled, biting down hard on the struggling wild wolf's throat, blood gushing into his mouth.

Jingyang ignored the psychological barrier, as the other wild wolf, which had been pushed aside, pounced from behind, clawing the back of the wild wolf he controlled, the bloody wound soaking the fur, and Jingyang gritted his teeth, the pain was too real!

Jingyang pulled the throat of the wild wolf under his feet and shook his head, splattering blood, then turned to fight the wild wolf that had attacked from behind.

But Jingyang, a novice wild wolf, was no match for a professional wild wolf in a physical fight, especially since he was not familiar with the movement of a four-legged beast. The enemy wolf growled loudly, wrestling, tearing, and pouncing, gradually gaining the upper hand... Jingyang, sitting cross-legged, watched in his mind, feeling anxious. If he lost, the next to be devoured would be his own tender flesh!

The wild wolf with the severed throat gradually stopped struggling, while the other two continued to fight. Jingyang took a deep breath, mixed with the strong smell of blood, enduring the sharp pain in his heart, forcing himself to stay calm. Even if he didn't understand the true situation, he couldn't afford to make a mistake now...

If I remember correctly, when I took control of this wild wolf and successfully killed one, restraining the other, I felt... as if my whole body was immersed in an invisible mass of water, and this mass of water wrapped around one of my hairs, then... yes, it bent into a pentagram shape...

Jingyang thought, a drop of dark red blood from his body slowly left his skin, floating and swaying in front of him. Jingyang's thoughts were chaotic, and the blood almost fell to the ground. He quickly held his breath and focused, controlling the blood to fly toward the two wild wolves rolling and fighting on the ground. In the air, the blood gradually formed a pentagram shape under the control of a white light.

As the pentagram of blood got closer, Jingyang, who was trying to defend and conserve energy, despite the dozens of bloody wounds on his body, roared and burst with all the strength of the wolf's body, pinning the enemy to the ground. The wild wolf struggled, trying not to expose its soft belly, and Jingyang controlled the wolf to pin it down, one front paw pressing the enemy's head, the other claw acting like a pin, waiting for the right moment to tear out the enemy's tongue. At the same time, the thin pentagram of blood controlled by Jingyang's body, under the control of the white light, landed on the enemy's tongue.

A flash of white light, and Jingyang's body suddenly felt weak, his vision blurred.

The wild wolf Jingyang's eyes narrowed, the pentagram of blood quickly dissipated on the enemy's tongue, failing to leave the expected rose-gold pentagram pattern—failure!

Jingyang's body clenched his teeth, this strange ability seemed to consume "mana" only at the moment of activation! With his thin arms and legs, it was already a stroke of luck to control one wild wolf, and he had no strength left to control a second one... As he thought this, the enemy wolf struggled fiercely, and Jingyang, with red eyes, controlled the wild wolf to bite down. The sharp teeth pierced the enemy's throat, and blood gushed out as the enemy convulsed.

It seems that the defensive counterattack strategy was correct... The enemy wolf's struggles grew weaker, and Jingyang secretly sighed in relief. At least he had managed to control one wild wolf for his own use; otherwise, with his small and weak body after traveling through time, he wouldn't have been able to defend or counterattack, let alone solve the puzzle for the forensic experts—reassembling the body!

Soon, the wild wolf stopped struggling. Jingyang felt a strange aura penetrate his heart, cold and hot, his heart convulsing, and he barely managed to stand up before falling back on his butt.

Congenital heart disease? Jingyang's face turned pale, or... He clutched his chest, looking at the wolf's corpse that had stopped moving. Was the strange aura that penetrated his heart due to the death of this wolf?

Recalling the intense heart pain he felt before waking up, which he thought was just a dream, Jingyang looked around at the pile of bodies hidden by the tall wild grass, suddenly understanding the reason.

He paused for a moment, slowly exhaling a breath of stale air.

No matter what, I'm alive!

Jingyang spat out a mouthful of wolf fur, stepping on the wolf's corpse to declare victory, but his face suddenly changed. The reason was that when his body fell back into the pile of bodies, he inadvertently saw the gray windbreaker woman, who had refused to let go of the swaddling cloth until her death... Jingyang had thought this woman was his birth mother after traveling through time, and he had likely been reborn from the swaddling cloth and crawled out...

But this small swaddling cloth was clearly for a newborn baby.

And his current body, though weak and small, was clearly that of a child of at least three or four years old!

The wild wolf controlled by Jingyang walked to his side, turning its head to look at the new, pale-faced version of himself, a small child, shorter than the adult wild wolf. It then looked at the swaddling cloth that the dead woman had refused to let go of... Who was the baby in this swaddling cloth, and where did it go?

"Awoooooo—"

The howls of more and more wild wolves echoed from all around.