Chapter 1

Zuo Qingcang opened his eyes, only to feel a splitting headache. However, years of training still made him want to roll over and get up immediately, alert to his surroundings.

But when he tried to move his waist slightly, he found that his lower body was unusually weak. He couldn't even sit up, let alone roll over.

'Anesthetic? Or a sedative?'

While these thoughts raced through Zuo Qingcang's mind, he began to observe his surroundings by moving his eyes. The wooden ceiling, dim lighting, the smell of sea air at his nose, and the sound of waves in his ears.

'Am I at sea? On a ship?'

Having grown up in a battlefield, Zuo Qingcang was not surprised that someone would target him, but he didn't expect to be transported to the sea on a simple boat. It seemed unnecessary.

'My last memory is of sleeping in a room at the Sheraton Hotel.'

'The alarm I set didn't go off.'

'The food I tested was fine.'

While thinking about how he ended up on the sea, Zuo Qingcang slowly exerted force with his hands, trying to sit up. This action led to two new discoveries.

First, the other party had not used any means to restrain him, just leaving him on the bed. Second, his body felt different.

Leaning against the side of the cabin, Zuo Qingcang looked at his hands, then at his chest, stomach, and thighs under his clothes.

'The scars are gone.'

'The size of my body has changed; my hands and chest are more muscular than before.'

He then carefully touched his face, frowning even more: 'The skin is rough, the cheekbones are higher than before, and the chin is longer.'

Even at this moment, his mind remained calm, trying to judge the situation based on his experience.

'Hallucinogen, or did they perform extensive plastic surgery on me?'

'But what's the point? If they want to interrogate me, tying me up and using fatigue tactics or torture would be more effective.'

Zuo Qingcang gently twirled his hair with his thumb and index finger, continuing to think: 'My hair has become curly, did they perm it? They even made a topknot for me, which, if loosened, would be about shoulder-length.'

The situation seemed to be getting stranger. Zuo Qingcang had been captured before, and he had captured others. In those situations, he had encountered being laid on a surgical table, about to be skinned.

He had also seen others hung from trees, ready to be fed to lions.

And he had seen others immersed in a water dungeon, ready to be thrown in with rats that had eaten humans.

But this was the first time he had woken up to find his body completely transformed.

What he didn't know was that in some places, some entertainment works referred to such an experience as "穿越" (穿越 means "穿越" in Chinese, which can be translated as "time travel" or "dimensional travel").

He was still trying to understand the situation based on his past knowledge and experience.

He tried to stand up but found that his feet were completely unable to exert force. It seemed the drug they gave him was more potent than he imagined.

He could only move on the bed using his hands. Fortunately, his current body seemed to be stronger than before, and he could move himself smoothly with just his hands.

But there was nothing interesting in the room. A wooden bed, a wooden table, a candle holder on the table, the cabin swaying slightly with the waves, and creaking from time to time. All of this gave Zuo Qingcang a sense of backwardness and antiquity.

Zuo Qingcang believed that no one, except for a madman, would do something without meaning. So he observed and began to think.

But as Zuo Qingcang slowly thought, memories that did not belong to him began to surface in his mind.

They were the memories of a man named Liu Zhicheng.

In the memories, Liu Zhicheng was a sergeant in the Northern Army of the Da Qi Dynasty. Six months ago, when he returned home to visit his family, he found that his father had been hastily buried.

After some investigation, he learned that his father had been killed by being run over by a horse on the street. The rider was none other than the youngest son of the current Prince Yu, Cao Sheng.

Prince Yu was the uncle of the current emperor, and his youngest son was far beyond Liu Zhicheng's reach. After a struggle, Cao Sheng was unharmed, while Liu Zhicheng was forced to apologize.

Enraged, Liu Zhicheng attacked Cao Sheng but was defeated in one move. He was then transferred out of the Northern Army, ostensibly promoted but actually demoted, and sent to the colonies in the New World with a distant expedition.

But this was just the beginning. For Prince Yu, Liu Zhicheng was just a negligible ant, but for those below him, Liu Zhicheng was a means to curry favor with Prince Yu.

Zuo Qingcang was all too familiar with such political machinations. Perhaps Prince Yu had no intention of pursuing Liu Zhicheng, but as long as he did not explicitly state otherwise, his silence alone was enough to make countless people under him act like piranhas, trying to connect with Prince Yu, curry favor with him, or avoid offending him, and thus oppress Liu Zhicheng.

In the Da Qi Dynasty, Liu Zhicheng would have no chance of advancement. All his superiors, colleagues, and subordinates would, as if by unspoken agreement, collectively exclude him.

Liu Zhicheng's subsequent memories quickly confirmed Zuo Qingcang's judgment. On the journey to the New World, he not only faced various forms of exclusion but also began to be attacked.

Recalling the persecution Liu Zhicheng had endured, Zuo Qingcang frowned. According to his thinking, Prince Yu would not have ordered his subordinates to do such things. It was more likely that Cao Sheng, Prince Yu's youngest son, had ordered it.

According to Liu Zhicheng's memories, although he was defeated by Cao Sheng in one move, he had spoken insolently. It was probably just a few curses. He knew well that throughout history, there were no shortage of princes and nobles with deep backgrounds who would seek revenge for the slightest offense.

But for Zuo Qingcang, now was not the time to think about the reasons, not the time to wonder why he had come to the Da Qi Dynasty, why he had become a man named Liu Zhicheng, or to complain about the mess Liu Zhicheng had left him.

The most important thing now was to survive. His lower body had completely lost sensation, and the drug they gave him seemed to have a stronger effect the longer it was in his system.

At any moment, the other party could burst in. With his lower body paralyzed and no weapons, he was like a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.

According to Liu Zhicheng's memories, this should be a drug called "Hao Han Dao," used in the military to imprison martial arts experts. The antidote should be in the hands of the other party.

Zuo Qingcang frowned and looked around again. He first looked at the candle holder. After a few seconds, he loosened his topknot, and his long hair fell onto his shoulders.

Next, he began to pull out his hair, one by one, and tied the thirty to forty centimeter-long strands together, forming a fine thread over two meters long.

He moved his body with his hands, tied one end of the thread to the base of the candle holder, and the other end to his little finger.

In the dim light, the fine thread was almost invisible.

Then, he quickly flipped open the bedding and saw the wooden bed frame. As he had expected, the ship was very old, and the bed frame was covered in mold and had several obvious cracks and loose spots.

The creaking sound he had heard earlier came from the bed frame beneath him.

He then pulled out a wooden splinter, about the size of a thumb and the length of a palm, from one of the cracks, and hid it behind his back like a dagger.

This was the only weapon he could find in the room. Then he closed his eyes, leaned against the bed, and lay still, as if he were asleep.

About five minutes later, the door to the room opened, and the sound of footsteps reached Zuo Qingcang's ears.

Listening to the footsteps, Zuo Qingcang kept his eyes closed and silently judged: 'One person... light footsteps.'

The other party stopped about a meter in front of Zuo Qingcang.

Silence fell in the room. The other party seemed surprised by Zuo Qingcang's (or Liu Zhicheng's) calmness and silence. Finally, he couldn't help but speak. It was the voice of a middle-aged man. As soon as he said the word "Liu," Zuo Qingcang moved.

He had been waiting for this moment. The finger tied to his hair pulled sharply, and the candle fell to the ground, extinguishing in mid-air.

The room became pitch black, and the sudden change in light made the intruder unable to see anything.

But Zuo Qingcang, who had kept his eyes closed, opened them at this moment. His eyes could adapt to the darkness faster than the other party's, and his other hand, before opening his eyes, had already grabbed the wooden splinter and stabbed it in the direction of the intruder's voice.

When Zuo Qingcang realized that only one person had come, he had already decided to act. In less than a second after the candle went out, the wooden splinter had deeply pierced the intruder's thigh.

"Ah!" The intruder cried out in pain and fell to the ground. Zuo Qingcang calmly pulled out the splinter and stabbed the other leg.

With a thud, the splinter had penetrated about seven centimeters into the intruder's thigh muscle.

The intruder knelt on the ground, and Zuo Qingcang grabbed his throat, squeezing tightly, making him gasp.

In the darkness, the intruder could see nothing, but Zuo Qingcang could barely make out his outline, a tall, thin man.

He extended his left hand, inserting his fingers into the wound on the intruder's thigh, and began to twist them, causing the man to struggle violently. However, Zuo Qingcang's fingers in the wound made him dare not struggle too much, as each struggle caused excruciating pain.

A devilish voice came from Zuo Qingcang's mouth, reaching the man's ears.

"If I keep touching, I can tear open the blood vessels in your thigh. No one can save you then."

"If you don't want to die, tell me where the antidote is."