1 Death and Transmigration
Death and Transmigration
Life was a fragile thing. It didn't matter whether someone was the smartest being alive or a random beggar on the street. Everything was equally worthless in the face of the indifferent universe. No matter how precious or dear someone's life was to you, in front of the cruel and unforgiving world, the universe could take it away without any warning, and that was what happened to Xue Bai on the eve of his 10th birthday.
"I'm sorry to say this, Mr. and Mrs. Xue, but your son has ALS and may not walk again." And with those words, Xue Bai's childhood life ended.
He was once a sickly but joyful kid, but from that day onward, Xue Bai never left his hospital room on his own legs. At first, this was great in his mind. After all, he was only 10 when he first heard it. So the first thought that came to mind was, "No more school," However, the novelty quickly wore out.
Boredom quickly set in as he was in his bed all day, every day. Even on the days he would leave his bed in a wheelchair, he couldn't go very far. At most, someone would push him around in the garden behind his resident hospital. Other than that, though, Xue Bai spent his days in his room surrounded by four white walls.
So, to sate his boredom, Xue Bai asked his parents to buy him different electronics.
The world he was born in was cruel to him, so he tried to find an escape from others, and after getting his first tablet, Xue Bai started his deep dive into the world of fantasy.
Once Xue Bai got his first fantasy game, he became hooked. He would soon spend almost the rest of his time delving into different fantasy works. It didn't matter what they were either, as he soaked up anything. The genres didn't even matter, either. He would relish the magic, supernatural, eastern fantasy, or whatever Xue Bai could get his hands on.
Soon enough, even games couldn't sate his love for the genre, and he moved on to different types of entertainment. Novels, TV shows, and other forms were another world that Xue Bai explored with glee.
Anything else that was full of unrealistic feats performed by superhuman characters brought enjoyment to his boring life.
And for the next three years, Xue Bai spent the rest of his life doing just that. He read every book his parents bought him and watched every new show that piqued his interest.
Alongside his growing interest in fantasy, Xue Bai's room began to gain some color beyond the white walls. Over the years, he had brought in a few posters, figurines, and other goodies he had collected. Now, it had gained more liveliness than when he first was admitted, as there were books, manga, and CDs of his favorite fantasy works throughout the room.
It was in this peaceful but ever-changing manner that time passed. But on one random Monday, something in the air changed.
And on this random Monday morning that was no different than any other day, his parents barged into his room with confusingly broad smiles.
Of his two parents, his dad walked in carrying a box while his mother stood beside him, seemingly giddy with excitement.
While confused, Xue Bai's ALS had developed just as much as his room over the years, and sitting up was almost impossible. So he waited for his parents to explain what was in the box without moving.
Thankfully, this didn't take long, as before his curiosity took over and Xue Bai asked first, his mother came to his side and explained what Mr. Xue was carrying.
Mrs. Xue Bai explained that In the box was something called a VR(Virtual Reality) helmet, which the doctors had recommended. Apparently, the doctors had said while the chances were slim, it could theoretically help him walk again.
Though neither of his parents knew the science behind it, the VR helmet would allow Xue Bai to experience walking in augmented reality, and the doctors theorized that by being able to "walk" again, even if it was in virtual reality, Xue Bai could regain feeling in his lower body.
And since Xue Bai was his parent's entire world, it went without question that they wanted any opportunity for their son to walk again, so while the chance was slim, they still bought a VR helmet and an accompanying game for Xue Bai to play.
The Xue couple was rather rich, and one measly VR helmet wouldn't hurt them financially, so even if it didn't do as advertised, the couple knew their son would enjoy the games nonetheless.
It was a win-win scenario, so they bought the helmet without any qualms. And since they knew their son well, the game his parents bought was of his favorite genre, Eastern Fantasy.
The mentions of immortality, flying, and fighting blood-boiling battles gave the young ALS patient enjoyment like no other.
The game his parents bought him was the most recent popular Eastern Fantasy game called "Children of the Plane," which, as advertised, had a new take on the over-saturated cultivation game genre.
Like many others in the genre, this game required you to create a character and choose a starting point before fully jumping into a well-choreographed and beautiful cultivation world where your dreams could come true.
However, unlike in most cultivation genre games, where you were the only protagonist, this game was much different.
In "Children of the Plane," besides the character you create, there were five other 'protagonists.' However, to separate you and your five competitors from the rest of the world, you were all given a blessing from the plane itself and were given the title "Child of the Plane."
This would be a blessing that affected every aspect of your life in an extremely beneficial way.
The title meant the heavens blessed you with great fortune and a heavenly fate. During your playthrough, you would have extremely good luck, allowing you to find treasures anywhere or have great charisma that would make creating allies easier. There were also many other inclusive traits, but they all boiled down to what the main character of a standard cultivation novel would have.
Whether they were good or bad.
Another new concept in the game was that, depending on how you played the game, the other 5 Children of the Plane could be your sworn brothers, spouses, or mortal enemies.
This meant that there were no set ways to play the game. The world was your sandbox, and every time you wanted to start a new world, you could even choose different allies or enemies to make your journey fresh every time.
On top of all of this, though, there was a code in the game that kept it challenging, even if you were the best player ever to grace the game's history.
In "Children of the Plane," no matter how fast you cultivated, the other Children of the Plane had a feature that allowed them to keep up with your cultivation base and cultivation speed, raising the difficulty by giving you constant pressure.
This way, no matter how good you were at the game or how well you used 'online references,' you'd always have people on your heels.
Finally, and most importantly, every single Child of the Plane, besides you, was based on a standard cultivation novel troupe.
Ring Grandma, Regression, Reincarnation, the top 5 most oversaturated and overused cultivation novel troupes, were being used in the game.
Enticed by the description, Xue Bai didn't even wait for his parents to leave before he put on the helmet and started his first playthrough of the game.
Instantly, he quickly fell in love with the game. Over the next two years, Xue Bai would spend most of his time playing "Children of the Plane,"
It was that good of a game to the young Xue Bai. No matter how much he played or how overpowered he became, it was still fun to simply fly around the game's lush terrain, exploring unknown lands and battling superhuman-like opponents.
Even when he practically completed everything, Xue Bai was still playing it with the same amount of excitement he had on day one.
Xue Bai had finished the main story long ago and reached the maximum possible level in the game. But his father told him there was a sequel on the way, so he decided to explore fully everything the first game had to offer.
With undiscovered treasures, hidden bosses, and cool techs to discover, Xue Bai continued to play "Children of the Plane," wanting to milk everything out of this masterpiece before he moved on to its successor.
Also, since the game was so realistic, Xue Bai constantly felt like he was doing all these heaven-defying acts himself, making him never want to remove the helmet.
But, soon enough, the successor came, and after waiting for a month, Xue Bai finally received the next game, "Children of the Heavens."
Xue Bai quickly learned a few things about the sequel after reading the description.
The game, "Children of the Plane," takes place in a flat mortal plane called the Baishen Plane. But the second game didn't. So, first of all, to start playing the second game, Xue Bai had to ascend to the Immortal World, a higher plane filled with more treasures, mystery, and fun.
The only problem was that in order to ascend, Xue Bai had to meet two prerequisites.
The first of the two prerequisites was to have a cultivation base that was at least in the Immortal Origin Realm, while the other was to pass a final Heavenly Tribulation.
Thankfully, across his two years of playing, Xue Bai had long cultivated to the peak of the mortal plane, the 13th stage of the Immortal Ascension Realm. As for the Heavenly Tribulation, Xue Bai had also gone through his fair share of those during his playthrough of the first game, so he was confident in himself.
Now came the final step.
As Xue Bai's in-game character stood in the middle of a desolate and dead plain, he waited for the Heavenly Tribulation to come upon him.
"To bring about the ascension tribulation, all I need to do is unleash my cultivation base at the skies, right?" Thinking about what the instructions had told him, Xue Bai was about to start his final test.
However, just before he could start his ascension tribulation, Xue Bai suddenly felt short of breath.
At first, he thought that it was a sneak attack. After all, even though Xue Bai was at the top of the Baishen Plane's power hierarchy, he wasn't alone in this boat.
During his playthrough, Xue Bai killed two of the five Children of the Plane while befriending another two. The final one died at the hands of another Child of the Plane, leaving his world with two capable people who could rival him.
However, he quickly shook that notion away. Xue Bai came prepared and already had someone to watch over him. Thinking a bit deeper, Xue Bai tried to ignore the pain in his chest and calm himself.
Heavenly Tribulations were no joke, and even the slightest change in composure could result in his death. And death in "Children of the Plane" was permanent. No respawning.
If he died in the ascension tribulation, Xue Bai would lose everything. He wouldn't even have a place to cry if that happened.
But minutes quickly passed, and the feeling only got worse. Soon, Xue Bai couldn't even breathe. Now scared out of his mind, Xue Bai thought that someone had killed off his companion and the attackers were poisoning him to weaken him before finishing him off.
Panicked, he hurriedly checked his surroundings using the vast and sharp senses that came with being at the 13th stage of the Immortal Ascension Realm.
However, even after he used his spiritual sense, Xue Bai sensed nothing around him for miles.
Even his companion was perfectly fine a few miles away, lazily lying down on a rock with her white wings spread out.
After he saw her so nonchalant, Xue Bai realized something. The feeling wasn't coming from inside the game but was instead coming from his actual body.
While he'd had attacks like these before, this one felt different, and almost instantly, Xue Bai knew it was severe. So before he inevitably passed out, Xue Bai paused the game, took off his VR helmet, and pressed the help button.
But even as he was waiting for help to reach him, Xue Bai could feel himself hyperventilating harder than ever.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe, and his vision was blanking.
Feeling an ominous feeling building up inside him, Xue Bai quickly became scared. But what could he really do? He couldn't do anything to help himself, so as he worried about death, he could only stay in his bed and wait for help.
The help arrived quickly, and it only took just over 20 seconds for the door to swing open, and doctors stormed inside.
But even as he saw the doctors barge in, something in Xue Bai made him know that they were too late. And just before passing out, Xue Bai got one more good look at the panicked looks on the doctors' faces.
'They look so worried.'
Xue Bai's vision blacked out for good as the last bit of air left his lungs. He died unjustly in that bed at the premature age of 15.
It was a horrible death for an innocent child who dreamt of immortality.
—
Death was cold and black. Nothing came after that. Xue Bai knew that firsthand. But something, or maybe even someone else, didn't want that for him. And after an unknown amount of time, the darkness left him.
Xue Bai's senses returned, and life surged into his body. He woke up once again.
But as he groggily opened his eyes, the memories of why he passed out and his unjust death ran through his mind like a stampede of gazelles.
On instinct alone, without a bit of thought, Xue Bai sprung up from his bed like a rocket to look around his room. Yet the second after his back moved, shock filled his face, and he realized what he had just done.
He had moved!
Xue Bai hadn't been able to sit up for almost a year, so doing it now with practically no effort and so much movement shocked him.
Still, his shock wasn't over, as what surprised Xue Bai more than his body listening to him was his 'hospital room.'
Gone were the magic and Eastern fantasy posters, and even the white walls had disappeared.
Now, not only had his tiny hospital bed transformed into an ancient Chinese bed that was big enough to fit an entire small family, but there were even cliche thin curtains that blocked the view from the outside.
It was a bonafide bed, fit for a feudal era nobleman. Xue Bai's brain was doing somersaults in confusion.
With his mind still reeling from the current situation, Xue Bai knew he had to investigate his surroundings.
Not only did he find himself in an archaic room, but he also suddenly regained his mobility. Something was definitely off about his current situation, and he needed to find out before something bad happened.
Climbing out of bed was simple, but as he went to move the curtains, he noticed the last anomaly: his body.
When Xue Bai went to grab the curtains, he saw his hands were too small for a 15-year-old. Xue Bai was definitely sickly and had stunted growth. Xue Bai couldn't avoid this at all. He had been diagnosed with ALS at nine and lost all lower mobility at ten, so he was bound to be smaller than other kids his age.
But no matter how small or sickly his body was, his current appearance was too small.
Horrified, Xue Bai looked at the rest of his body, only to see that he was only a child, maybe 6 or 7 years old.
Seeing his shrunken body, Xue Bai tried to think about what had happened to get here. It certainly wasn't a kidnapping because no matter how good the kidnappers were, they wouldn't be able to swap his body. That was some mystical ability he had only seen in fantasy works.
No amount of money or skill could do that.
With the natural out of the equation, Xue Bai began to think about the supernatural.
Very soon, Xue Bai thought up more than a dozen solutions, but deep down, he knew there were only two plausible scenarios. He had either transmigrated or reincarnated. The more petite body and foreign bed were too much evidence to think otherwise.
However, as he thought a little deeper, he remembered that for either to happen, Xue Bai had to die.
'I died?' Xue Bai thought the worst.
Instantly, he remembered everything in his life. His parents' sweet smiles, the kind doctors who were always helping him, and even the novels that he hadn't finished reading, everything that made his life enjoyable came to memory.
All the good nostalgic memories and the contradicting fact that they were all gone now made Xue Bai suddenly feel sick to his stomach. He had died. No matter how bad his life was, there were still many good things, and even if there weren't, it was still his. So, finding out that he had died made him feel nauseous.
Holding his mouth and trying to suppress his vomit for a few seconds, Xue Bai jumped out of bed to puke whatever meal the previous host had eaten. Quickly scanning the room in hopes of finding a nearby bin to use, he spotted something resembling a trash can.
Without checking to see what it actually was, Xue Bai ran over to it and vomited into it until his stomach felt empty, and he started dry heaving. Gag after gag left Xue Bai's mouth as he dry heaved until his vomiting left nothing in his stomach.
After vomiting everything out, Xue Bai slowly began to calm himself down by taking a few deep breaths. The vomiting was a coping mechanism, but now that he couldn't do that anymore, he had to think about his current situation more.
Seconds quickly passed, and after taking in a few huge breaths, he soon regained his composure.
Though he still didn't accept his new situation, Xue Bai knew that his opinion did not matter much in the grand scheme of things.
Something had happened, and now he was in a new environment.
So, now filled with curiosity, Xue Bai stood up from the bin and finally started looking around his new room.
And seeing it for the first time, he had very few complaints. While it was an ancient time-themed room, everything looked rich and fancy to the point where he, a future-era person, could tell.
From the gold-clothed linings on the blanket or the cicada wing thin curtain around his bed, not a single thing in the room looked cheap. Hell, even the trash can he threw up into was created from what looked like shiny silver metal.
As he finished evaluating his room, Xue Bai spotted a mirror next to a desk and decided to take a look at his new body. However, as he walked to the mirror, he soon found out he was too short to look at it standing normally, so after getting a stool that he found nearby, Xue Bai stood on it to see his new appearance.
But like everything else that happened in the last two minutes, once he looked in the mirror, he was shocked.
Looking back at him from inside the mirror was a Chinese toddler.
This wasn't very odd since Xue Bai was Chinese before transmigration, but he was captivated once he looked at his face.
The skin of the toddler was fair and white. His skin looked softer than a piece of snow, while his cheeks were so rosy that it looked like he was about to bleed and to top it all off was a face that seemed so delicate, pale, and beautiful that it looked almost like a porcelain doll.
Stunned, to say the least, at his new appearance, Xue Bai was at a loss for words. But he quickly continued analyzing his new body.
Giving his face another, much closer look, Xue Bai had his attention caught on the oddly colored eyes, which were an odd purple and black hue, almost like the color of a ripe eggplant. And while the color scheme was certainly quirky, it still matched the obsidian-colored hair cascading down his neck and back.
However, while Xue Bai was certainly shocked at his new cute appearance, after a quick glance over, he lost interest. Now, the only thing he could think about was one phrase that he yelled out.
"FUCK AM I A GIRL?"
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