Chapter 1

Thick smoke billowed, and with each breath, a rasping sound like a broken bellows echoed, as if searing his throat and lungs. Xiaofeng’s consciousness quickly became hazy.

“No, I can’t fall asleep, I’ll die.”

“I must stay awake, I must stay awake!”

...

The boundless crimson suddenly dimmed, and the deepest, darkest blackness emerged. Xiaofeng felt like a drowning person, struggling to grab onto anything to help him change his helpless drifting state and escape the indescribable darkness.

Suddenly, a red glow appeared ahead, like the sun rising at dawn.

Under its illumination, Xiaofeng felt a bit of strength return, and he struggled to move toward the red light.

When Xiaofeng, with the help of the light, took a real step forward, the light grew brighter, turning from crimson to pure white, shattering the darkness and instantly dissipating it.

“Huff.” Xiaofeng sat up abruptly, gasping for breath. He had just dreamed of a terrible fire, and before the flames reached him, he had fallen into a coma from inhaling too much smoke, waiting helplessly and despairingly for the flames to spread, just like the few times he had experienced sleep paralysis. He knew he was dreaming but couldn’t muster the strength to break free, unable to control himself.

The dream was abnormally real, leaving Xiaofeng with lingering fear. Since he didn’t feel the presence of the fire, he sat there in a daze for a long time, unable to come to his senses.

As his rapidly beating heart gradually steadied, Xiaofeng’s mind focused. He remembered that he was working on his graduation thesis in the all-night reading room of the school’s comprehensive library. He mocked himself, “No wonder I had such a realistic nightmare after these few days of irregular all-nighters.”

But when Xiaofeng looked around to gather his reference books and return to his dorm, a scene that was both unfamiliar and beyond imagination hit him like a hammer, leaving him stunned and blank.

In front of him, there was no longer the library’s beautiful wooden desk, no messy pile of reference books, no draft of his thesis ready to be typed into the computer. Instead, there was only a black, tattered blanket covering him, and he was sitting on a narrow wooden bed, not a library chair.

“Where am I?!”

Xiaofeng, though somewhat introverted and slow to react, immediately noticed something was wrong: even if he had been rescued from a real fire and taken to a hospital, this place didn’t look like a hospital at all!

His heart tightened, and he hurriedly looked around, reflexively standing up.

As soon as he stepped on the ground, Xiaofeng felt an extreme weakness and dizziness, and his legs buckled, nearly causing him to fall.

Xiaofeng quickly reached out to steady himself on the bed, his face pale and his mind uneasy. In that brief moment, he had already taken in his surroundings completely.

A dilapidated, narrow room, with only a wooden bed beside him, a rickety wooden table, two relatively intact stools, a broken wooden crate, and on the other side of the wobbly wooden door, an unrecognizable stove and a pot hanging over it. The wood under the stove had been extinguished for a long time, emitting no heat.

Everything was so unfamiliar that Xiaofeng couldn’t determine where he was, and the constant weakness made his mind chaotic:

“Where am I?!”

“My body feels like it just recovered from a serious illness, similar to when I had pneumonia in high school.”

...

Countless thoughts raced through his mind, but Xiaofeng had never encountered such an extremely strange situation. His introverted nature left him at a loss for what to do next, and his panic rapidly intensified.

The only thing to be grateful for was that there were no unpleasant things around, allowing Xiaofeng to take several deep breaths, gradually calming his panic. At that moment, a distant shout came from outside the small room:

“They’re burning the witch! The church is burning the witch!”

“Everyone, hurry up!”

“Burn that damned, evil witch!”

The fear and excitement in the strange accents were clearly evident. Xiaofeng’s panic was interrupted, and his curiosity piqued. He muttered to himself, “A witch? What kind of world is this?”

As an adult who enjoyed novels, a bad premonition began to form in Xiaofeng’s mind, but before he could think deeply, a loud bang echoed as the poor, rickety wooden door was kicked open, and a boy around twelve or thirteen rushed in.

“Big Brother Lucien...” The boy, with short brown hair and a knee-length linen shirt, looked at Xiaofeng standing by the bed with surprise and joy. “You’re awake?”

Xiaofeng, seeing the clothes that were different from modern styles, nodded numbly, a ridiculous thought forming in his chaotic mind: “Lucien, witch, church, burning. Could it be that I really traveled through time, and to the dark ages of medieval Europe when witches were hunted?”

Things always seemed to go in the worst direction, and Murphy’s Law cruelly reminded Xiaofeng. The boy’s hair color and dirty, old linen clothes confirmed this. As for the language the boy spoke, Xiaofeng’s body instinctively understood it and seemed to be able to use it, though he couldn’t determine which language it was, as he was far from being a linguist.

Seeing Xiaofeng’s dazed expression, the small boy, with a few smudges of dirt on his face, was not surprised: “Mom never believed me, crying secretly at night until her eyes were swollen, always muttering about poor little Evans, as if Big Brother Lucien had already been buried in the cemetery.”

“Dad, unable to sleep, sent a message to Sir Wayne’s estate early this morning through Simon’s bad boy, asking Brother to come back. He’s already a squire, and the doctor at the almshouse wouldn’t dare insist on that ridiculous, laughable price in front of him.”

Speaking of his brother, who was a squire, the boy’s chin lifted slightly, a genuine sense of pride in his voice.

“But now, it’s all over. They were wrong, and I was right. Big Brother Lucien, how could anything happen to you!”

As he spoke, he grabbed Xiaofeng’s arm: “Come, Big Brother Lucien, let’s go to the church square to watch the witch burning. It’s the evil witch who got you interrogated by the church guards all night!”

Faced with such a sudden change, Xiaofeng, who wanted to think quietly about his life, didn’t want to follow the boy to the commotion. Directly burning a living person was something Xiaofeng, who considered himself relatively kind, couldn’t accept. Since he couldn’t stop it, it was better not to witness it. But the boy’s last words made Xiaofeng freeze: “This witch is connected to me?”

Xiaofeng’s thoughts changed. He suppressed his surprise, allowing the boy to pull him, stumbling toward the church of Adelange.

On the way, Xiaofeng took the opportunity to observe the people heading to the church of Adelange.

The weather was relatively warm, and the men mostly wore short-sleeved linen shirts, matching long pants, and slip-on shoes. The women wore dull, single-colored long dresses, often with a large pocket sewn on. The common feature was their simplicity and shabbiness.

Most of them had brown hair and brown eyes, with a mix of blonde, red, and black hair, and blue, green, and red eyes. Their features were sharp and well-defined.

“Could this really be the Middle Ages?” Xiaofeng looked at himself, wearing the same short linen shirt, long pants, and slip-on shoes.

After leaving the dilapidated, low-rise slum area, they soon saw a small but grand church with a semi-circular dome, a large white cross nailed on top, and very narrow windows below.

The square was already crowded with people. The boy, pulling Xiaofeng, weaved through the crowd, causing many to look at them angrily, but they didn’t dare to hit the two troublemakers because it was the church square.

After a short while, Xiaofeng’s view opened up, and he realized they had reached the front row.

In the center of the square was a wooden cross, with a pale, beautiful woman in her twenties, dressed in a black robe, bound to it.

The surrounding crowd occasionally threw stones, wood, and spit at the black-robed woman, their curses mixing into a chaotic din:

“Smash you, you damned witch.”

“You evil witch, hiding in our Adelange district, you must be trying to kill us!”

“My poor Trishy died a few months ago, it must have been you, you evil witch! Oh, my poor Trishy...”

...

Occasionally hit, the black-robed woman kept her thin, pale lips tightly closed, not making a sound, but stared at the people standing on the church steps like a statue.

At the front was a middle-aged man in a wide white robe with golden edges, wearing a white soft cap and holding a round badge with a white cross, watching quietly without speaking, solemn and dignified. Behind him stood several men and women in white robes, clean and well-groomed, in stark contrast to the poor and dirty people in the square.

Behind these white-robed people stood a row of guards in silver-gray chainmail, looking formidable.

The middle-aged man took out a pocket watch, checked the time, and seeing it was almost time, stepped forward, raising the round badge high.

Instantly, the angry, hateful, and noisy crowd fell silent, all at once.

The only sound in the square was the wind rustling through the clothes.

Xiaofeng was very surprised. Even in modern times, achieving such a level of obedience and reflex would take months of training, yet these ordinary-looking poor people could do it. What power made them do it?

Holding the badge, the middle-aged man’s voice, though not loud, echoed throughout the square: “Poor sinner, you have been deceived by the devil, seeking evil power, your body and soul are filled with filth. Only the holy light can purify you. This is both the Lord’s punishment and the Lord’s grace, the Lord’s tolerance for the lost sheep.”

“Burn her, burn her!” The poor people first shouted sparsely, then in unison.

The chaotic, frenzied scene made Xiaofeng shudder. If anyone knew he was from another time, the next one on the stake would be Lucien, whose soul was possessed by an evil devil.

“Before your purification, the merciful and kind Lord asks you one more time: Will you repent? Sincere repentance will purify your soul and allow you to enter the Lord’s heaven.” The middle-aged man asked gently and compassionately.

The black-robed woman suddenly burst into maniacal laughter, her voice sharp and piercing: “I seek the truth of magic, not the truth of a god. Burn me, and I will watch the wicked heaven crumble in the flames, watch the magnificent church collapse.”

“Madwoman!”

“So evil!”

“The bishop’s kindness is met with curses, these witches blinded by the devil truly deserve to die!”

“Burn her!”

The bishop said nothing, but the poor people around him fell into a frenzy of shouting.

Xiaofeng, for the first time in his life, was in a fanatical and irrational atmosphere. Shocked, he thought, “Medieval Europe is truly dangerous!”

“But, without a pile of wood, how will they burn her?”

Though he felt pity and reluctance for the black-robed woman, Xiaofeng didn’t dare to make any moves, knowing that a single stone from each person could kill him.

The bishop prayed a few times, his voice growing louder and devoid of emotion: “Sinner, you will go to hell in the purification of the holy light.”

The cross on the bishop’s badge suddenly burst into a bright light, blinding and dazzling, making everything Xiaofeng saw a white blur.

The bishop held the badge like a small sun, solemn, majestic, and holy. Everyone, including the boy beside Xiaofeng, bowed their heads in silent prayer and praise.

The light gathered and shot toward the blue sky. When it reached the height of the dome, it reflected back down, hitting the stake.

Red flames erupted, rising more than a person’s height, engulfing the black-robed woman.

She laughed maniacally, cursing wildly:

“I will watch the wicked heaven crumble in the flames.”

“I will watch the magnificent church collapse in the flames.”

“I will watch you all fall into eternal damnation in the flames.”

...

Her shrill voice echoed as the black-robed woman and the stake burned to ashes.

Xiaofeng had been in a daze since the badge burst into blinding light:

“This isn’t medieval Europe…”

“This is a world with true divine magic!”

“My name is Lucien…”