Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Accident
The sky was overcast, and a fine, misty rain was falling.
Leaning beside the mottled iron gate in front of an old house in the city suburbs was a young man wearing wireless earbuds.
The young man held a phone, his eyes glued to the screen as his fingers repeatedly tapped the virtual buttons.
On the screen was a cultivation game.
"This is a real pain..."
The man muttered to himself.
BOOM!
A bolt of lightning snaked through the dark clouds gathering above the old house.
The sound from his earbuds drowned out the clap of thunder from the sky.
At that very moment, a solar flare erupted, and the resulting solar storm, blasting toward Earth, had just reached the planet’s atmosphere.
Although Earth’s magnetic field blocked the vast majority of the solar storm and cosmic rays, a few still slipped through the net.
Under the influence of a small portion of these cosmic rays, the dark clouds above the young man’s head instantly unleashed a violent thunderclap.
Silver serpents of lightning coiled within the dark clouds, and the booming thunder agitated both people and animals nearby.
Suddenly.
A ball of lightning appeared above the old house.
The young man, still engrossed in his game, was completely oblivious. It was as if his phone’s signal acted like a beacon, drawing the ball lightning down.
Just as the ball lightning approached to within three meters of the young man’s head.
The dense stream of neutrinos generated by the solar flare swept over Earth, and some of them passed directly through the ball lightning.
The ball lightning seemed to be stimulated by some special force.
In an instant, the ball lightning vanished above the young man’s head, but the residual current still made his body convulse. The phone in his hand began to smoke.
"Ahhh..."
The fallen young man watched as the phone he had bought just a month ago exploded, and then he lost consciousness.
「The next day.」
In a room at the City’s First People’s Hospital.
Jiang Miao rubbed his eyes and looked around the stark white room, dazed for a moment. Then he saw his mother at his side.
"Mom! Where is this?"
Upon hearing his voice, Huang Qiuyue’s face first lit up with joy, then she immediately started scolding him angrily. "You little brat, trying to get yourself killed! I told you not to play on your phone by the door in the rain! You were almost struck dead by lightning! You’re the only son we have, if something happened to you..."
As she scolded, Huang Qiuyue started to cry.
Jiang Miao was speechless for a moment, his mind a complete muddle.
"Alright, don’t disturb the other patients!" a raspy voice called from the window.
Jiang Miao focused his eyes and saw it was his father, Jiang Dahai. At the same time, he noticed two other beds in the room, occupied by an old man and a middle-aged man, respectively.
Only then did it click. "I’m in the hospital?"
"You’re a lucky young man! Great fortune follows a great disaster," the old man in the next bed chuckled.
After talking with his parents for a while, Jiang Miao finally understood. He had been struck by lightning at their doorstep yesterday afternoon, and his phone had been destroyed. Luckily, their big yellow dog had found him, and his parents had rushed him to the People’s Hospital on their motorized tricycle in the pouring rain.
After an examination, the doctor found no serious injuries but still recommended he stay for forty-eight hours of observation.
「On the afternoon of the third day.」
Jiang Miao completed his discharge paperwork and headed home on his father’s vegetable tricycle.
The sun was shining brightly today.
Sitting in the back, he found the metal flatbed was scorching hot from the sun, so he had to place his medical records under him as a cushion.
The sun was setting, and a gentle evening breeze rustled the camphor trees by the roadside.
The flowering camphor trees emitted a thick fragrance, one so strong it was almost sickening. The smell made Jiang Miao dizzy.
"Ah Miao, your uncle’s shop over by the Xiangjiang River needs..."
"Heh, Dad, what’s so great about working for a relative? You know what my aunt is like. I’d rather work on an assembly line at an electronics factory than go to the Xiangjiang River."
"Then what do you want to do? We never should have let you go to that agricultural university. If you had studied medicine, maybe..."
"Dad, the light’s green!"
"Uh, right..."
His dad quickly sped up, and the tricycle slowly passed through the intersection, heading toward the suburban area of Xinxiang.
「Half an hour later.」
In the light of the setting sun, the tricycle slowly came to a stop in front of their house.
His mom didn’t come out to greet the father and son; she was in the kitchen, stir-frying and making dinner.
Jiang Miao felt a bit awkward again.
The family ate dinner in silence.
In his room on the second floor, he lay quietly on his bed and glanced at the wall clock. It was almost ten at night.
’Sigh, I should just get to sleep. I’ll go to the phone store tomorrow and get a replacement SIM card. Life without a phone is tough.’
Jiang Miao stared boredly at the ceiling, unable to sleep. He reached into his nightstand drawer, casually grabbed a Rubik’s Cube, and started turning it.
As he was playing, his vision suddenly blurred, and a panel appeared before his eyes.
[Common Name: 3x3 Rubik’s Cube]
[Components: Plastic (Expandable)]
[Structure: 1 core, 6 center pieces, 12 edge pieces, 8 corner pieces; Dimensions... (Includes 3D structural diagram)]
[Status: Lightly worn, lightly aged]
[Purpose: Recreational toy]
’What is this?’
Jiang Miao’s eyes widened. He rubbed them, then reached out to touch the panel. His hand passed right through it without any resistance.
’A hallucination?’
’Am I losing my mind?’
Just as his mind was racing, the panel changed again.
[Common Name: Human (Expandable)]
[Components: Carbon-based cells (Expandable)]
[Structure: Multicellular carbon-based organism (Expandable)]
[Status: Bone age 26 solar years; human, mature stage; mild fatigue; mild fatty liver; mild myopia; adrenaline levels rising; rapid fluctuations in neural activity... (Expandable)]
[Purpose: Consumer in Earth’s biosphere; a cornerstone of human civilization; vessel of self-will; carrier of a special spatio-temporal dimensional fragment (Expandable)]
Jiang Miao stared at the panel before him, his gaze filled with disbelief.
’Is this for real?’
He picked up a nearby mirror, but the panel’s reflection didn’t appear in it. It seemed only his eyes could perceive its existence.
When he focused his gaze on an object, the panel with its data would appear after about five seconds.
Jiang Miao hurried downstairs again.
His father, who was watching TV, saw him rush down. "Ah Miao, want a late-night snack? I think there’s a bag of mini wontons in the fridge..."
He shook his head. "Dad, do you see anything in front of me?"
"Huh?" Jiang Dahai was completely baffled. "No? What’s in front of you?"
"Really, nothing? Take a closer look?"
"Hmm? Don’t tell me getting struck by lightning messed up your brain?" Jiang Dahai was suddenly worried.
"Er?" Jiang Miao realized his father had misunderstood. Still, it confirmed that his dad couldn’t see the panel. He quickly changed the subject.
"Haha, maybe I’m just too tired and seeing things. I’m going to bed!"
Watching Jiang Miao hurry back upstairs, Jiang Dahai frowned deeply and muttered to himself, "Did his brain really get fried? Ai! I’ll have Qiuyue go to the Prince’s Palace and the Buddha Temple tomorrow to make an offering. We should toss a few Holy Shells to see what’s going on, too!"
Meanwhile, Jiang Miao, who had gone back upstairs, had no idea his father already suspected something was wrong with his brain and was planning to pray to the gods and Buddha for him.
Back in his room, Jiang Miao spent another half an hour experimenting.
He looked at everything in his room, one item at a time.
Whether it was the ball cactus on the windowsill, the laptop on his desk, or the clothes in his closet, he could see data for all of it.
Lying back on his bed, he suddenly remembered the last entry in his own analysis data...
