Life’s tough. The cat sighs.

After reading a whole pile of transmigration novels, Fenmu once made a very modest wish.

I want an innocent childhood, and a grand adventure that starts out rough but ends with a bunch of beautiful girls doting on me!

Then Fenmu discovered his wish had come true. He’d transmigrated into the body of a baby boy! A baby boy abandoned in the wilderness, no less!

I’m broken...

A childhood’s a childhood, but isn’t this a little too innocent?!

An adventure’s an adventure, but who starts one like this?

Fortunately, a group of people found the poor baby. The men among them were bare-chested, with strange tattoos across their bodies and rusted axes slung over their backs. The salty scent of the sea breeze clung to them.

“Why are there so many wolf tracks around this baby?”

“Could she-wolves have been nursing him?”

A young woman picked the baby up from the ground. Her murky gaze met Fenmu’s, and deep regret flickered in her eyes.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m Lise, from a settlement nearby. Were you protected by the wolves? What a strong little one. It would’ve been wonderful if you’d been a girl. Then the Goddess would’ve blessed you...”

Hey! What did I do wrong by being a boy? Why do you immediately wish I were a little girl?!

If some middle-aged guy had said that, Fenmu would’ve called the police.

Unfortunately, Fenmu was just a baby at the time. He couldn’t curse her out, so he let out a wail instead—and his pitiful cry brought wolves pouring in from every direction!

The men nearby showed no fear. They took up their weapons, ready to fight, but the woman holding the baby stopped them.

“Idiots! Put down your weapons!”

Lise looked far smaller and weaker than the men, yet those burly fellows all sheepishly lowered their axes and hatchets without daring to make a sound.

Lise set down the axe from her back and raised Fenmu in her arms. Then she bowed to the wolves. “Wolves, we mean this poor child no harm. Do you want us to take him away with us?”

In the dark woods, pairs of eerie, forest-green eyes fixed on the humans. A heavy silence spread, along with the rank stench of saliva between the wolves’ teeth. After a long moment, the wolves turned and left one by one, making their answer clear.

The men in the group said nothing, but their expressions gave away their astonishment.

In this world, where women held the power and the True Gods blessed only women, there was a baby boy protected by a pack of forest wolves!

The same astonishment showed in Lise’s eyes. Her dark pupils were full of disbelief.

Could this be the first boy in the settlement to be blessed by a True God?!

She scolded the men for their slowness, then shot them a fierce, rough look. The men got the message and hurriedly brought out a stone.

Fenmu saw it all and guessed more or less what was going on. He thought, “The men in this group sure have it rough. Tsk, tsk, tsk.” His schadenfreude made him forget that he was a man too.

The night was still. In the dim light, Fenmu saw the woman press a stone against his stomach. Its icy touch gave him such a shock that he almost peed himself.

Lise paid no attention to the baby’s unease. She murmured an incantation, her eyes fixed on the stone, but it didn’t react at all...

The men were dumbfounded. It had nothing to do with them, yet they all sighed in disappointment.

“Could it have just been a coincidence?”

“I told you. Why would the True Gods bless a man...”

“Silence! Have you become so bold that you dare resent the True Gods?” Lise roared. Her gaze swept over them like a sword, and every man it touched lowered his head.

The test was over. The True Gods hadn’t granted the child any exceptional blessing, but Lise still honored her promise to the forest’s creatures and took him back with her.

The settlement where Lise and the others lived was quite large, with a population of over a thousand. Fenmu’s arrival drew plenty of attention at first, but things soon went back to normal.

Fenmu was miserable. Life in this world wasn’t going well for him. This was a truly awful transmigration experience, because the women here really weren’t very friendly toward men.

Relations within the settlement were fairly harmonious. Someone as hot-tempered as Lise was the exception; most people got along peacefully. But one crucial factor kept men’s status just below women’s: the blessing of the True Gods.

Both men and women could become cultivators. But without the True Gods’ blessing, men quickly hit a bottleneck in their cultivation. Their natural level cap was far lower than women’s. That was a fatal disadvantage.

That was more or less what Fenmu had learned about the settlement. He didn’t know much about the outside world, and hoped it was only like this here.

Apart from that, Fenmu thought the women here were really stingy. He was just a weak, pitiful, helpless baby who happened to have a big appetite, yet they wouldn’t even let him eat his fill!

“You little wolf-child, what’s with you? You’ve nearly sucked me dry, and you still aren’t full...”

See? So stingy. She won’t even let me drink my fill!

She did complain, but the wet nurse still seemed to enjoy feeding Fenmu. Maybe she thought it was a way to get closer to some True God. Before long, for some reason, the mothers in the settlement grew generous, each one clamoring to feed him. Fenmu held no grudges and graciously accepted every offer.

The settlement was pretty open-minded. A lot of the pretty older girls wore clothes that left very little to the imagination. As they watched Fenmu grow, a dangerous, almost hungry look would sometimes surface in their eyes. There were even several “sleepy tea” incidents, but fortunately, Lise chased them all off.

By the time he was nine, Fenmu still hadn’t gained the protection of a single True God. Instead, a mass of mysterious knowledge had appeared in his mind. It contained all sorts of things, but for now, only the art of forging had unlocked.

【Swordsmith: For every peerless weapon you forge, you gain its etymological trait.】

Fenmu had secretly tried it out in the smithy at night. It wasn’t his imagination—his forging skill really had reached an astonishing level!

But he didn’t dare tell anyone in the settlement. Without the protection of a True God, suddenly gaining mysterious knowledge could easily get him branded a follower of a false god.

While he was trying to figure out how to weave a convincing lie, Lise came to see him one day. By then, she’d been promoted to elder and held a position of considerable standing.

She told Fenmu that he might die in a few years.

“Huh? I’ve always eaten and drunk plenty. How am I going to die? Elder Lise, that’s not a funny joke.” Fenmu thought she was kidding, but the serious look on her face wiped the smile right off his.

Lise had long since shed the impatience of her younger days. She gently flicked the little troublemaker on the forehead, recalling just how much he’d eaten as a baby. “You really did eat a lot back then... But, ah, I’m not joking about this.”

“Then what’s going on?”

“After you came to the settlement, we asked gifted diviners from far and wide to read your fortune. Every one of them said that before you reach adulthood, your death star will rise—and a blood star wrapped in writhing tentacles will rise alongside it.” Elder Lise stroked his head, trying to soothe the unease the news had stirred in him.

A death star and a blood star. The reading probably meant death and the approach of an evil false god. To put it simply, Fenmu would die very peacefully.

Just kidding.

He’d die horribly.

Fenmu swallowed and asked timidly, “You’re not just sick of how much I eat and looking for an excuse to get rid of me, are you?”

“Such a sharp-tongued child.” The woman poked him in the forehead and said, exasperated, “We made a promise to the creatures of the forest to raise you. Over the years, the wolves have saved our people many times when our hunts went wrong. You shouldn’t doubt the devotion of a group of believers.”

Fenmu believed her. The people in the settlement were devout followers of the True Gods. They’d never betray their faith.

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Fenmu felt a little desperate. He’d finally thought his transmigration had gotten on track—so why had a guaranteed-death scenario suddenly dropped into his lap?!

“Don’t worry. We’ve prepared for this already.”

That’s what I’m talking about. If you’ve prepared something, why not bring it out sooner?!

Lise clapped her hands and told the others they could come out.

Then two men dragged a Coffin up in front of him.

“?”

Fenmu was completely dumbfounded.

So this really was what they’d prepared for me...