Before we carry on with Ye Weibai’s tale, let’s turn back the hands of Time, rewind the clockface, and return to when he raced through the ink-black, death-still Void Tunnel.

His eyes were clamped shut like sealed doors, so he never saw the things drifting around him like twisted ghosts.

They were the Forgotten of the Void, born from the corpses of Deities, beings without will, without form, without mind.

Their very existence was an aberration, a cold thorn in creation, alive for no purpose but to devour the Void and unmake the living.

If not for the fact they survive only inside the Void Tunnel and are maddeningly hard to kill completely, the Deities wouldn’t have let them persist.

Sky-blue radiance braided around Ye Weibai, rising like dawn from under his feet, a giant translucent dial spread beneath him like a clock.

He stood at the center of that clockwork sigil, the power of Time cradling him, ferrying him safe through the frozen maw of the Void Tunnel.

Ye Weibai moved with a comet’s cry; his body blurred away, leaving an azure afterimage stitched across the black emptiness.

Where he passed, the drifting Forgotten of the Void, aimless as dust motes, snapped awake like wind-up Dolls, like sharks scenting blood in deep water.

They roared without sound, mouths like scarlet furnaces, and chased without hesitation, hunger surging after the little sun that was life.

To them, in this dead-still Void Tunnel, Ye Weibai’s living scent burned like a miniature sun, a beacon on a night ocean.

They rushed, and their warped, half-transparent bodies stretched into long ribbons, black streamers with a single gaping maw at the tip, shrieking meaninglessly.

A scene unfurled inside the Void Tunnel: Ye Weibai sped ahead like a meteor, dragging a trail of sky-blue light like a comet’s tail.

Behind him, countless Forgotten of the Void twisted into a tangle, a boil of black noodles of shadow, rolling and knotting as they chased to the death.

All of it happened in absolute silence, a mute play on a soundless stage, which made it more uncanny, more terrifying.

In that hush, a colder voice cut in, sudden as frost on glass—a woman’s voice, edged with the annoyance of sleep broken.

“You’re—so noisy!”

Boom—!

Ice-blue brilliance flared, dazzling like an inverted waterfall; with a single whoosh, it sliced across the entire Void Tunnel and the black flood of the Forgotten.

They call it a tunnel, but its diameter is so vast that, even at Ye Weibai’s speed, you’d fly for years and not finish.

Yet this blue curtain fell like a giant blade, a chef’s clean cut, and split the Void Tunnel in two as if it were a stalk of celery.

If the Void Tunnel could be cleaved so lightly, the Forgotten of the Void stood no chance; the lucky were splashed by blue like scalding oil.

Their bodies flowered with silent holes, bursting like blisters; they rolled where they were, howling without sound, writhing under a rain of frostfire.

The unlucky were chopped in two by that ice-blue arc, cut like straw; the next heartbeat, they couldn’t even scream—their whole bodies vaporized to nothing.

The Forgotten of the Void have no bodies, so no pain; no minds, so no fear; yet her blue light made them feel the threat of death.

It wasn’t emotion; it was root-deep instinct, carved into a place they didn’t know they had, a command to flee that blue.

Bathed under that sky-wide blue curtain, the survivors lost all will to chase; they only wanted to get as far away as possible.

In a breath, the black flood scattered, panic-stricken, and vanished without a trace, like smoke whisked off a cold river.

Only then did the blue screen dim, like evening cooling a furnace, its glare retreating into quiet.

As the brightness thinned, a silhouette stood behind it, a tall, long-limbed woman, curves elegant and dangerous, veiled in blue.

Her legs crossed with idle grace, she lounged in the Void as if on a chaise, bored, unfazed by the hundreds she’d shredded like ants.

Blue light bathed her, blurring her face; only the ripple of her stretch showed lines fierce enough to stir hot blood.

Suddenly, like a deer catching wind, she paused, nostrils flaring at a stray scent in the cold.

“This scent—”

She sprang up; hair down to her waist fluttered like inked ribbons; she turned toward where Ye Weibai had vanished, voice bright with delight.

“It’s my little brother’s scent!”

…

“So what’s wrong, exactly?”

Far off, a red-haired, red-eyed girl watched Ye Weibai, worry bright as a lantern.

By a clear stream, he crouched and stared hard at his reflection, eyes like nails pinning down a butterfly.

Light-gray hair. Light-gray irises. Early twenties by the look. In face and height, he matched his former body like a copied sketch.

Which meant the crossing had worked—soul-transmigration, not flesh—his spirit ferried like a boat through fog.

But that wasn’t the point.

The point was—why was he shaking?

Yes. He was shaking.

From the instant he woke, he trembled for no reason, like leaves in a cold wind no one could feel.

Not just his heart; his toes, fingers, arms, thighs—every inch of skin, every bone, every cell—quaked with nameless fear like drums under ice.

Worse, a black haze clung in his chest, a shadow of Misfortune, as if something brutal and cruel had just happened to him.

Ye Weibai couldn’t grasp it; upon descending to this World, he couldn’t understand why this storm of fear took him, what he was afraid of.

“Two possibilities…” He bit his lip until it tasted of iron, trying to drown the tremors and keep the mind’s lantern lit.

It was hard. The fear wouldn’t lift; even breathing felt like hauling rope through thorns, let alone thinking straight.

“Two possibilities…” he repeated, pinching his thigh for pain to anchor him like a stake.

“Two possibilities—given what I know—one, this body I crossed into has some hidden illness, and the tremor’s a symptom.”

“Two, it’s the result of the Misfortune Time warned me about, a curse clinging like wet cloth.”

“But besides that… besides that—what else could it be?”

He felt he’d forgotten something, a missing piece glinting just out of sight, something very, very important.

But it wouldn’t come. It was like a chunk carved clean out of a whole memory; that emptiness ached like a bad tooth.

Remember. Remember. You must remember.

Because—if you don’t—then—

Then—what?

“What—what is it?” Wrapped by unknown fear, Ye Weibai’s face tightened into a strain he’d never shown, like glass under pressure.

Watching his reflection, he caught himself in that instant; he drew a deep breath, forced the panic down like a lid on boiling water.

At the same time, he finally saw the core of it, the most fatal flaw of this Game, of this crossing, the point that made it truly bad.

“Not good, not good…”

His right hand, shaking, touched his pale cheek; he muttered, voice thin as frost, “I don’t know why, but this time I’m… very fragile.”

“Right now, I’m scared enough that I almost want to cry.”

He’d thought, with his grip on human nature, that getting a maiden’s tears would be a task with bumps but no cliffs.

Reality slapped him hard.

This was only the first round of the Game, and he’d already run headlong into pure bad luck.

A Deity’s game was never going to be simple.