Chapter 1: Assimilation

The void cracked open.

Not with sound, but with light, an incandescent fissure splitting the eternal dark like a wound across reality. It spilled no warmth, cast no shadow, yet he saw. Not the space around him, not truly, but through it, as if perception itself had been rewired.

“Where… is this?” His voice was dry, hollow, as though spoken from the bottom of a well.

He stepped forward.

But the moment his foot touched solid ground, he felt it; a violent, irresistible pull. Before he could resist, he was dragged towards a body sprawled in the dirt: a boy, fifteen at most.

Blood pooled beneath him, thick and glistening under the fractured glow. Multiple stab wounds marred his torso; one arm twisted grotesquely behind his back; bones shattered. His legs were complete noodles; slack and broken.

*thwack*

He collided with the corpse.

And then—horror.

Flesh met flesh, and began to melt. Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. His form liquefied into something viscous, pulsating, alive; a crimson slurry that seeped into every opening of the dead boy. Eyes. Mouth. Nostrils. Ears. Pores on the skin.

Even the meatus [opening at the tip of penis] and clenched ring of the anus surrendered, dilating largely as the invading mass wormed its way inside. It gouged everything in its path and rearranged the insides and outsides as it liked.

It was assimilation without consent. Without dignity. A violation so complete it defied comprehension.

Minutes passed. Or hours. Time lost meaning.

Then,

*squelch, squelch*

GASP

The corpse stirred. Eyes snapped open. The body lurched upward from the pool of blood and stumbled, barely maintaining balance.

"What... what is happening?" The voice that emerged was young, confused, and undeniably alive.

He looked down at his hands—small, young, unfamiliar—and ran them over his torso. The wounds were gone. Bones realigned. Bruises vanished. Only exhaustion and the weight of profound blood loss remained. Like waking after donating ten pints.

"Huh?"

His mind raced, piecing together the impossible.

"Wait... did I just assimilate into that kid's body?"

Shock rippled through him. He'd never expected his return—return? Wait, why did he say return? This clearly wasn't Earth; you don’t assimilate with another person on earth.

Transmigration? Whatever it was supposed to be,

To be this much... weird.

If it had been a standard reincarnation—his soul transmigrating into a newborn or even a child's body—that would have been understandable. If he'd simply been thrown into this world in his original body, that too would have made sense. But assimilation? If it could even be called that. It was straight-up violation of a corpse.

No divine light, no celestial judgment, no gods. Just… invasion. A soulless merger between consciousness and cadaver.

And worse-

It hadn’t hurt.

In fact…

A shudder ran through him—not of revulsion, but memory.

It had felt… good. Too good in fact. An ecstasy so intense it bordered on sacrilege—ten thousand times more potent than climax, multiplied by full-body nerve stimulation. Worse still, it had lingered in his nerves like aftershocks of forbidden pleasure-

*Huuuh…*

"Shit. Get rid of the weird thoughts!" he slapped himself.

‘This is the body of a fifteen-year-old boy, goddamnit !!’ he absolutely did not want to remember whatever in the world, had just happened there but the memory was already etched into his mind like a brand. Thankfully, no one saw him, lest he'd be labeled a grotesque deviant (a gay pedophile) in another world.

He forcibly shoved the useless thoughts to the back of his mind.

Inspecting his body more carefully, he was unsurprised to find it in remarkably good condition. The broken bones had mended. The wounds had closed. Even the concussions were healed. Apart from significant blood loss and lingering fatigue, he was fine.

‘Just what you'd expect after transmigrating into a dead boy's body.’

"Now, first things first—I need to know who this boy is."

He examined the tattered clothing clinging to his frame.

Clothing offered clues: loose grey robe, simple fabric, worn sandals—standard fare for some martial sect, perhaps. Murim-style garb. Ancient China aesthetic, but refined. Not historical reenactment. Real.

"Hmm, judging from his clothes, this looks like some kind of murim world. Wait—am I in a cultivation novel?"

He paused,

"Did I get reincarnated? Or isekai'd? But I don't remember being hit by a truck..."

He waited expectantly, half-hoping for the cliché moment where memories of the body's previous owner would flood into his mind.

Nothing happened.

Then a far bigger problem occurred to him.

"Wait... who am I?"

He tried to remember. Nothing came.

"Uh..." He rubbed his temples, forcing his thoughts to focus. Fragments floated—snippets of childhood cartoons, the taste of orange soda, the name of a video game he used to play—but no identity. No face. No name. Not even gender. Just a drifting consciousness wearing stolen skin.

"I remember bits and pieces. I even remember my favorite show from when I was a kid, but... who actually am I? What am I? Man? Woman? Something else entirely?”

He strained. Pushed. Nothing surfaced.

...

*Haah…*

"This is getting nowhere. Forget it." He exhaled slowly, accepting the situation.

“From now on, I am... wait, what is the original owner's name?" He frowned. "Oh. I don't know it."

He shrugged.

‘Well… might as well explore this new world.’ He thought as he scratched the back of his head.

He scanned his surroundings. Dense forest stretched in every direction, but the terrain sloped upward—he was on a mountain, not just in a forest. A forest on a mountain, to be precise.

Trees crowded the path, they clung to rocky ridges and mist-wreathed cliffs. High altitude. Thin air. Dangerous to stay at night.

He observed the area around him, but there were only normal trees and grass in the area, none of the trees had any fruits or any distinctive features that could help him different them from the trees on the earth.

After a few minutes of searching and observing, he found what he was looking for: trails. Shoe prints pressed into the damp earth, forming two distinct paths. One led up the mountain, the other down. Five ascended; only four descended —prints deeper on the return, murderers' always heavier.

Five came. Four left.

One stayed behind. Dead.

And judging by how carelessly they'd left evidence behind, they must have been confident they wouldn't get caught.

From the size and depth of the prints, he estimated they were all around the same age as the youth whose body he now inhabited.

Following them was risky. Stupid, even.

But staying meant freezing, starving, getting lost, or being eaten by whatever prowled these peaks after dark. Although He knew nothing about this world, but even a normal human would know better than to wander a forest alone at night—and it was already getting late.

So he did what he had to do.

He followed them.

And he definitely was not stalking a group of children.

He ran for nearly twenty minutes before he spotted them: four figures moving through the trees ahead. Two boys, two girls. One boy wore red robes and carried a blue crystal sphere that glowed faintly in his hands. They were walking casually, laughing and talking as if they hadn't just brutally murdered one of their peers.

But he knew they had.

Not just from the evidence on the mountain, but because of that crystal sphere. It was roughly the size of a fist, covered in tiny pores like holes in pumice stone. One could argue whether it was made of crystal or clay—it looked crystalline yet 粗糙 (cūcāo - rough), not smooth at all.

And that roughness gave them away.

The sphere was half-soaked with blood. Probably very hard to clean, even with water.

The distance between them was still large enough that he wouldn't be noticed if he moved closer. So he continued to stalk them.

Everything was going smoothly—until the crystal sphere suddenly hummed.

Bright light burst from it, catching everyone's attention.

“Hmm?!” The boy holding it froze. “Who’s there?!”

All four spun around. Their shoulders snapped taut.

And there he stood.

Black long hair matted with blood. Robe stiff and crimson-streaked. Arms limp. Legs unsteady. Eyes—once black—now shot through with red veins, giving them a feral, demonic gleam.

Yes—the moment he was discovered, he'd acted quickly. Though he couldn't do anything about his appearance, he could play the part. He let his arms hang uselessly, his legs tremble as if broken. The blood covering his clothes and face only added to the effect.

He couldn’t clean the blood on his clothes anyway so he hadn't bothered cleaning the blood on his face either. Why? He didn't know. He just felt instinctively that cleaning up before finishing a job was the worst decision one could make. So he'd gone with his gut—and thankfully, it paid off.

"Huh? Liu Zhiheng?! How are you still alive?!" One of the girls—wearing blue robes—exclaimed, her voice edged with wariness.

‘Huh. Seems like I can understand the language, at least.’

"Ha... ha..." He forced his breathing to sound ragged. "Wait, wait—don't attack me!" He raised his hands in surrender, voice breaking. "You can keep everything. Please... don't hurt me. I understand. I won't speak about what happened today. Please don't kill me!"

Tears welled in his eyes as he dropped to his knees.

Initially his plan was to follow the kids stealthily to get out of the forest, but now that they knew he was following them; it was no longer feasible. So he did what he could do in that split second.

Act.

Of course, it was all an act. Before knowing anything about them, he couldn't afford to underestimate them. The best choice was to submit and act pathetic.

He knew he'd need to deal with them eventually. But now wasn't the time. Even though he thought he could probably take them, but one had to remember: this wasn't Earth. The crystal sphere made that abundantly clear.

At least now he knew his name: Liu Zhiheng.

"What's going on? Didn't you say he was dead? How is he still alive?" the blue-robed girl whispered frantically to one of the boys.

"Why are you questioning me?" the boy hissed back. "You were there too! We killed him together. I don't know how he's still breathing. He was clearly dead; what do we do now?"

"We broke all the bones in his limbs, how the fuck is he still standing? walking and talking?" she cursed looking at him.

"What do you mean, 'what do we do'? Go kill him! It's your fault for not confirming it! We're in deep trouble; we can't let him go!" the boy with the crystal sphere urged cautiously, his eyes fixed on Liu Zhiheng.

"He's already at death's door. Why else would the mighty Liu Zhiheng beg for his life? It shouldn't be a problem for you. Just finish it quickly before we leave more evidence," the other girl added coldly.

"Haah… why is it always me?" the second boy grumbled, stepping toward Liu Zhiheng.

"Wait!" Liu Zhiheng's voice cracked with desperation. "We... we're friends, right? We were brothers! You don't have to kill me. Please don't do it!"

Meanwhile, the boy with the crystal sphere frowned, his mind racing.

'Wait. Something's wrong. If Liu Zhiheng is alive, why did he come to us? Why didn't he run away on his own and inform the officials? Did he not have enough energy? Was the blood loss too much, and he thought he'd die halfway? But he wouldn't come to us for help... would he?'

But he didn't get enough time to analyze further.

The other boy and the girl in blue were already closing in on Liu Zhiheng.

The boy exhaled disgust. “Just die properly this time.”

He lunged with a knife. The stroke was petulant, east to west across the throat. But contrary to his expectations, the knife met only air.

Liu Zhiheng had already moved.

He ducked low and to the left, slipping inside the boy's guard. His fist drove forward with brutal precision

A liver shot, delivered with every ounce of strength he could muster.

The boy's eyes widened in shock.

The impact juddered up Liu’s forearm; the boy’s diaphragm spasmed, exhaling a frog-croak. Before the body understood agony, Liu’s right fist rose like a claw moon—floating uppercut connecting beneath chin. The jaw clacked shut.

Then came the third attack; a left hook connected straight to the chin, which finally sealed his fate.

A spin of steel flashed: the boy’s knife gone, arcing lazily into fern cover.

The boy collapsed immediately. His knees hit the ground first, then his torso folded forward, his head drooping like a puppet with its strings cut. He crumpled, folded around his own center of gravity into a Z-shaped heap, unconscious before he even finished falling.