“Young Master, Young Master?”
“Young Master, wake up.”
“Young Maaaaster—”
……
Who the hell are you calling Young Master?!
Ning Heyue’s eyes flew open, and he abruptly sat up in bed.
Standing beside the bed was an elderly man with graying hair and a beard. He wore a long indigo robe and held a porcelain bowl filled with pitch-black medicinal soup.
Ning Heyue was just about to speak when a strange, bitter stench rose from the back of his throat.
“Cough, cough… Cough—urgh…”
Did someone take a dump in my mouth?!
The old man hurried to the bedside and patted Ning Heyue’s back to help him catch his breath. At the same time, he asked, “Young Master, do you remember what happened before you lost consciousness?”
Lost consciousness?
Ning Heyue clutched his head and shook it, vaguely recalling that he’d been working in the office for over forty hours straight. A colleague had mentioned that his lips were turning a little purple, so he’d laid his head on his desk to catch a quick nap. The next thing he knew, he’d woken up here.
“Who are you…?”
“I’m Old Hu, your butler. Here, drink some medicine first to help you recover. Do you still remember your own name?”
Seeing the bewildered look on Ning Heyue’s face, the old butler brought the bowl to his lips and practically forced a mouthful of the bitter medicine down his throat.
The foul, bitter taste nearly made Ning Heyue pass out on the spot.
“It’s all right if you don’t remember. The physician said you might lose quite a few of your memories after waking up. This is Jilang Manor, and you are Zhou Yi, the eldest young master of our manor. Seven days ago, at Chunyu Pavilion, you gallantly stepped in to defend Miss Ziye. Unfortunately, someone struck you on the head, and you’ve been unconscious ever since. You’ve only just woken up today.”
“…You’re saying I’m Zhou Yi???”
Ning Heyue swallowed the medicine and frowned at the old butler. The man’s expression certainly didn’t suggest he was joking.
He looked around the room once more. There was a rosewood writing desk and windows with straight wooden latticework. Then he glanced down at what he was wearing—a loose sleeping robe made of yellow silk.
Had he transmigrated?
“Hiss…”
“If your head still hurts, Young Master, have another couple of mouthfuls of the Mind-Clearing Elixir. It should help.”
“Hey, wait—”
The bitter, fishy taste of the previous mouthful still lingered in his mouth. Ning Heyue was just about to refuse when the door suddenly swung open. A guard with a saber hanging at his waist entered the room, his expression grim. After casting a surprised glance at Ning Heyue, he hurried over to the old man.
“Butler Hu, outside, they’ve already—”
“Hold it!”
Old Hu frowned and shook his head, then pulled the guard aside. As he did so, he casually set the bowl of medicine on the nearby rosewood writing desk.
After whispering to each other for a while out of Ning Heyue’s earshot, Old Hu’s expression turned grim as well. He turned back and cupped his hands respectfully. “Young Master, it’s good that you’re awake. Please rest and focus on recovering. This old servant must attend to a few matters.”
With that, the two hurriedly left the room, leaving Ning Heyue alone.
Ning Heyue stared at the door for a long moment before letting out a deep sigh. “…Haah.”
To be fair, he could accept the whole transmigration thing.
After working overtime for more than forty hours straight, it wasn’t exactly surprising that he kicked the bucket.
What Ning Heyue couldn’t quite accept, however, was the fact that he’d transmigrated into someone like Zhou Yi.
Yes, Ning Heyue recognized that name.
Especially when it appeared alongside Chunyu Pavilion and Miss Ziye. There was no chance this was just someone with the same name.
He had most likely transmigrated into the world of the martial arts “MMO Swordbound Jianghu 2”.
And Zhou Yi was nothing more than an insignificant background character who received only a few passing mentions in the game’s lore:
To return to the Central Plains, the Crimson-Robed Zoroastrian Sect dispatched its second-generation Holy Maiden to infiltrate Chunyu Pavilion under the alias “Miss Ziye”. Using a secret drug known as the “Soul-Ensnaring Elixir,” she took control of Zhou Yi, the young master of Jilang Manor, forcing him to squander his family’s fortune and hand the entire estate over to the sect. Thus, this prestigious Jiangnan manor became the sect’s first foothold in its campaign to return to the Central Plains.
No, even calling him an insignificant background character was giving him too much credit. He was nothing more than a disposable plot device.
It was like transmigrating into the Three Kingdoms era and becoming the inspector who got whipped by Zhang Fei, or entering the world of Water Margin as Niu Er, the thug who tried to buy Yang Zhi’s saber, or ending up in Journey to the West as the little novice monk whose head Sun Wukong shaved completely bald during the magical contest in the Kingdom of Chechi.
What a terrible starting point.
If Ning Heyue hadn’t been the lead designer of Swordbound Jianghu 2, ordinary players probably wouldn’t even remember this character existed.
Ning Heyue got out of bed, put on his shoes, and walked toward the door, intending to get some fresh air and sort out his thoughts.
He placed his hand against the door and gave it a gentle push. There was a clicking sound, but the door didn’t budge.
Locked?
He shook it forcefully a couple more times, and the rattling of metal chains came from outside. Apparently, someone had locked it from the other side.
It was probably because, as the old butler had mentioned, Zhou Yi had gotten his head bashed in after fighting over a woman at a brothel. The people of Jilang Manor must have been worried he’d run off and cause trouble again.
Fuck, what a pathetic loser.
With another sigh, Ning Heyue returned to the rosewood writing desk and sat down. He stretched out his hand and waved it near the candle flame.
According to the storyline he’d designed, Zhou Yi had already died before Swordbound Jianghu 2 officially launched.
That meant he’d transmigrated into the thirty-year gap between the first and second games.
This was actually good news. He was a veteran who had played the first game for ten years, and he was also the main writer responsible for the second game’s storyline.
From a certain perspective, he was practically the god of this world. Turning Zhou Yi’s miserable fate around would be a piece of cake.
The only thing he needed to watch out for was drinking the “Soul-Ensnaring Elixir” that would change his fate.
It was a black medicinal concoction developed by the Crimson-Robed Zoroastrian Sect in the first game to spread their teachings throughout the Central Plains. Once consumed, it would muddle the drinker’s memories and rob them of their ability to make independent judgments, leaving them completely obedient to whoever administered the drug.
…….
At that thought, Ning Heyue’s gaze fell upon the half-filled bowl of black medicine sitting in front of him, and his expression turned rather peculiar.
No… Surely it couldn’t be that much of a coincidence, right?
As he stared at the face reflected on the surface of the medicine, Ning Heyue suddenly froze.
Zhou Yi had never been given a character model, so even Ning Heyue had no idea what he was supposed to look like.
But the face reflected in the medicine was unmistakably his own.
Could Zhou Yi really look that much like me?
No. Swordbound Jianghu 2 was set in a fictional version of the Tang Dynasty, where people still followed the belief that one’s body, hair, and skin were gifts from one’s parents and should not be altered. Even if their faces looked alike, their hairstyles shouldn’t be identical.
A growing sense of doubt prompted Ning Heyue to slip a hand inside the collar of his silk robe and feel around his upper left arm.
“Hiss…”
The uneven texture beneath his fingertips made Ning Heyue draw a sharp breath. He had found exactly what he was looking for… the scar left by the BCG vaccination administered during childhood, something more than eighty percent of Chinese people had.
“Physical transmigration?”
When he’d first woken up, Old Hu had treated him with such warmth and concern that he’d clearly mistaken Ning Heyue for his own young master.
But if Ning Heyue had transmigrated with his original body, how could an old butler who had served Jilang Manor for so many years fail to notice that he looked different from the real young master?
Could it be that he hadn’t transmigrated at all? Maybe his coworkers had arranged some elaborate live-action murder mystery game to celebrate the game’s upcoming open beta next week?
The more he thought about it, the more unnatural Old Hu’s earlier behavior seemed. Everything the old man had said after he woke up sounded exactly like a game master introducing a player’s character and backstory in a tabletop game.
For fuck’s sake, then why the hell did they give me the character card of some pathetic simp?
Ning Heyue couldn’t sit still any longer. He quickly got to his feet, hurried to the door, and tried to leave the room again.
“Hey! Is anyone—”
Before he could finish calling out, the door, which had clearly been locked just moments ago, creaked open with barely any effort.
Bright, silvery moonlight instantly flooded the room like a basin of cold water thrown straight at his face. Its shimmering glow spilled across the threshold, washed over the square floor tiles, and stretched all the way to his feet.
Ning Heyue’s eyes widened involuntarily as he stared at the scene outside.
Bodies lay scattered everywhere.
So many dead people.
On either side of the steps outside, numerous burly men dressed as manor guards lay sprawled on the ground. Some lay on their backs with their faces turned toward the moonlight, while others were curled up in the flowerbeds. Their eyes were vacant, their expressions twisted in agony, and their eyes remained open even in death.
Amid the bodies, a single trail of bloody footprints stretched toward him from the distance.
The footprints climbed the steps one by one, finally stopping less than half a meter in front of Ning Heyue.
A chill crept up his spine and spread across his back. Ning Heyue opened his mouth and began gulping down air.
The bloody footprints in front of him were fresh. The blood hadn’t even dried yet.
Just moments ago, someone had been standing outside his door. After killing all those manor guards, that person had simply stood there, silently staring at him.
“Holy… fuck…”
The chain that had originally been wrapped around the door was broken, which meant the owner of those bloody footprints hadn’t been stopped by it.
That person could have pushed the door open at any moment.
Steeling himself, Ning Heyue carefully stepped around the bloody footprints, approached the nearest body, and crouched down to feel its neck.
The body was cold, but the skin was still soft. There was no way anyone in China could create something this realistic as a prop for an escape room.
He really had transmigrated.
Ning Heyue covered his mouth, fighting back the urge to retch as he looked around.
Whatever the case, the fact that the killer hadn’t entered the room and cut him down meant that, at least for now, Ning Heyue wasn’t their highest-priority target.
Should he go back inside and hide? That would be gambling his life on the assumption that the killer had absolutely no intention of killing him.
Running away was his only option.
That person had been standing right outside his door just moments ago before suddenly disappearing. They must have been drawn away by a more important target and gone off to kill someone else.
Although Ning Heyue didn’t know his way around Jilang Manor, logic told him that if the killer was still carrying out the massacre, he could avoid running into them by following the bloody footprints in reverse, retracing the path the killer had taken.
Having made up his mind, Ning Heyue gritted his teeth, bent down, and pulled the saber from the waist of a fallen guard who hadn’t even managed to draw it before dying. Gripping the weapon tightly, he pressed his back against the wall and began following the bloody footprints toward their source as carefully as possible.
There was nothing in the game’s script about Zhou Yi’s Jilang Manor being wiped out in a massacre!
Keeping close to the wall and staying in the shadows as much as possible, Ning Heyue cautiously followed the footprints for about fifteen minutes. Eventually, he discovered a large pool of blood in the middle of the path, with Old Hu lying at its center, still breathing faintly.
The man who had been perfectly fine just a short while ago now had a gaping wound in his abdomen nearly the size of a soccer ball. Blood and internal organs had spilled onto the ground, and the trail of bloody footprints began directly beneath his body.
Compared to the other corpses Ning Heyue had encountered along the way, Old Hu seemed to have received some extra attention from whoever was slaughtering everyone in the manor.
Seriously, you’re still breathing after all that? You’re one tough old bastard.
As though sensing Ning Heyue’s gaze, the dying Old Hu raised his head. His cloudy eyes widened as he struggled to force out words in a voice that sounded like a battered drum.
“Young Master… Quick… Run… That… scapegoat… should be able to… buy you… some time… Run outside… Run!”
Scapegoat?
Ning Heyue was startled. Then it suddenly dawned on him why Old Hu had insisted on calling him Zhou Yi and kept forcing medicine down his throat, despite the fact that Ning Heyue had transmigrated with his original body.
Old Hu’s voice was quite loud. As his cries rang out, a figure came stumbling out of a dark, moon-shaped gateway up ahead on the right. Wailing hysterically, the person threw himself toward Butler Hu, who lay on the ground.
“Grandpa Hu, save me!! You can’t die! You can’t die!!!!”
The moonlight illuminated the man’s face, revealing that he looked almost exactly like Ning Heyue.
This must be Zhou Yi. The real young master of Jilang Manor.
Before Ning Heyue had time to make sense of it all, footsteps sounded not far away. Tap, tap. The sound made every hair on his body stand on end. He immediately pressed himself against the wall and bolted back the way he had come.
Just before fleeing, he caught a glimpse of a blurry, ghostly figure glowing with an eerie blue light.
He had barely taken four or five steps when a bloodcurdling scream, like that of a pig being slaughtered, suddenly erupted behind him.
Zhou Yi had been caught.
So that’s how it is. The murderer must have realized I was just a scapegoat who happened to look like the real young master. That’s why they didn’t enter the room.
But that didn’t mean the killer would simply let him go.
He hadn’t seen a single living person on his way here. If he were the murderer responsible for wiping out the entire household, there would be no reason to spare a mere scapegoat after killing the real target.
Damn it, Zhou Yi, my dear brother who looks exactly like me, you’d better keep that bastard occupied for as long as possible!
As long as I can reach that place, as long as I can just make it there—
Ning Heyue gritted his teeth and ran for his life, covering in less than two or three minutes the same distance he had spent over fifteen minutes cautiously traversing earlier.
A metallic sweetness rose in his throat, accompanied by an irritating itch.
“Hah…”
Finally, Ning Heyue summoned every last ounce of strength and sprinted back to the room where he had awakened. Bracing himself against a pillar, he lowered his head and gasped desperately for air, sweat dripping steadily from his chin.
Although he had no idea why he was still perfectly fine, the half-bowl of medicinal soup left inside the room was his only chance of fighting back against the killer, assuming it really was Soul-Ensnaring Soup.
Gritting his teeth, Ning Heyue raised his head, intending to enter the room and retrieve the medicine.
A handkerchief suddenly appeared before him, gently wiping the sweat from his face.
A girl wearing a calico cat mask stood on the steps in front of him and softly asked, “You saw everything that just happened, didn’t you?”
…
…
Fuck!
How the hell did I not outrun you???
Ning Heyue’s eyes widened as he stared at the girl who had somehow appeared right in front of him.
She wore a dark blue outfit with an unevenly cut hem, its edges adorned with tiny, reflective pieces of metal that swayed gently with each breath she took.
Below, she wore a knee-length dark gray skirt, revealing a pair of legs wrapped in black cloth bindings.
Her feet were almost exactly the same size as the bloody footprints outside the door.
Clearly, this was the culprit behind the massacre of the entire manor… a young girl who couldn’t have been very old.
Despair welled up in Ning Heyue’s throat, making him feel as though he might vomit. His expression twisted into a grimace as he stared fixedly at the girl before him.
He recognized that outfit.
“You’re from the Tang Sect…?”
The Tang Sect of Sichuan, a renowned clan of assassins.
When the hell had Jilang Manor ever offended the Tang Sect? He certainly hadn’t written anything like this into the plot…
The girl froze for a moment, seemingly surprised that Ning Heyue had recognized her origins.
Even the hand she was using to wipe away his sweat stiffened briefly.
Then she asked a rather strange question. “Do you… still remember your own name?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that today?”
Ning Heyue let out a helpless, incredulous laugh. “Fine, fine! Whatever you say my name is, that’s what I’ll go by, alright?”
“Ning Heyue.”
The girl lowered her head slightly and tucked the handkerchief into Ning Heyue’s clothes before gently straightening his collar.
“Your name is Ning Heyue… Don’t forget it.”
?
A sudden buzzing erupted in his mind, as though a burst of static had exploded inside his head before dissolving into a persistent ringing in his ears.
Ning Heyue stared at her in utter disbelief.
How?
How the hell did someone from a game world manage to dig up his real name from back on Earth??
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