Chapter 1: Resurrecting From a Nightmare
The first ray of sunlight from the east penetrated the thick clouds, but it did not bring much vitality to this land.
Apart from making the dust drifting in the air clearer to the naked eye, the so-called sunrise, for the people living here, its greatest significance was merely to make them, in their numbness, realize one thing…… they had lived through another day.
This lifeless land had an official name, Chu Sheng City Outer City District Number Three Resettlement Area.
It was also the location of Chu Sheng City's largest slum.
If not for the outer city walls bringing this area under protection, it would be hard to imagine that this place was one of the constituent areas of the Chu Sheng City Human Base.
Precarious ruined walls, various shacks and tents standing amidst the ruins, and sewage ditches emitting a foul stench were the most common sights here.
The population, accounting for ninety percent, over thirteen thousand poor people, eked out a meager existence here day after day.
Most of the people here made a living by “scavenging”.
Their daily work consisted of going outside the city walls, venturing into the perilous outside world, searching for and picking up items of a certain value, and then exchanging them at the recycling station for resources needed for life.
If they were lucky and found good things, they could exchange them for a day's or even several days' worth of food rations and daily necessities.
If their luck was bad, for them, the only outcome was death.
There was also a portion of people who were fortunate enough to be noticed by factory owners who occasionally came here to recruit temporary workers, allowing them to enter the industrial zone to do some odd jobs.
Although the work was extremely arduous and the pay pitifully low, it was, after all, much better than scavenging, which involved risking their lives without a guarantee of reward……
The minimum requirement of “staying alive” was enough to make them feel satisfied.
In short, the lowest stratum of Chu Sheng City's residents lived here.
It was a gathering place for drug dealers, pros*titutes, thugs, mercenaries, and so on, people from all walks of life, mostly illicit.
Black was the main color tone of the Outer City District Number Three Resettlement Area.
A gentle breeze carrying moisture and a fishy smell blew open a corner of the black plastic sheet hanging in front of the window, serving as a curtain, allowing sunlight to penetrate into this small room that exuded a faint musty odor.
Surprisingly, the interior of the small hut, built upon a few remaining low walls of a structure and patched up with rusty corrugated iron sheets, was unexpectedly clean and tidy.
There weren't many pieces of furniture or household items in the hut, and they were arranged neatly.
There wasn't even much accumulated dust on the floor.
From a simple, homemade broom and dustpan placed in the corner of the wall, it could be seen: the owner of this house possessed a sense of hygiene that most people in the slums lacked.
By the window of the small hut, a simple but clean small bed was situated under the sunlight, and the person on the bed was also bathed in the gentle morning light.
In stark contrast to the rudimentary environment was the extreme exquisiteness of the lovely person on the bed.
The half-wrapped quilt could not completely cover all the fairness and smoothness.
With the rise and fall of the chest, the steady breathing sounds filled the small hut with a sense of quiet and tranquil beauty.
No one would have thought that in this filthy slum, there would be such a breathtaking existence.
Abrupt yet harmonious, but not contradictory.
The first thing to break this tranquility was an unconscious soft moan.
The tender and soft syllables emitted from deep within the throat were a prelude to awakening.
Due to the direct sunlight, the eyes, pried open to a slit, revealed a peculiar luster.
The moment the pupils refocused and thoughts returned to the brain, a bone-deep stabbing pain pierced through Zhong Jing's entire body in an instant.
One second, the drifting consciousness was still hazily floating upwards; the next second, it was as if filled with lead, plummeting rapidly into a bottomless abyss.
The intense feeling of weightlessness made him involuntarily sit up abruptly from the bed.
The large bodily movement caused the bed beneath, pieced together from discarded wood, to emit a sharp creak.
The quilt on his body also slipped from the bed to the floor as a result, stirring up a flurry of cotton wadding dancing in the air, making one's nose feel a bit itchy.
This is…… home?
The next second after waking up, Zhong Jing immediately turned his head to survey his surroundings.
Because of the sudden movement, he even tweaked something a little, but he paid no attention to it.
His bewildered and uncertain gaze refused to miss any corner.
The familiar environment completely matched the residence in Chu Sheng City from his memories, including the shape of every rust spot on the corrugated panels used to build the roof.
After a few seconds, Zhong Jing finally realized his current situation: “he was in his residence”.
However, Zhong Jing was still skeptical about the current situation.
It was so real that it didn't seem like an illusion, but it was also hard to believe.
Shouldn't I have already…… died?
Or was that just a simple nightmare?
Zhong Jing clearly remembered: he should have been in the ruined city nuclear wasteland area of JD City and then destroyed along with it as a pawn.
The last fragment of his memory was frozen on the scene of himself being torn apart by the artillery fire aimed at besieging the Witch.
That kind of unforgettable, deeply ingrained memory could by no means be explained away as a nightmare.
But if all that was real, why did I wake up startled at home?
Zhong Jing's mind was a bit muddled.
He sat dazedly on the bed.
The chaotic memories left him not knowing where to begin to sort them out.
“Hiss……”
He had just broken out in a cold sweat from a fright, added to which he was stark naked, without a stitch of clothing.
When the wind from outside the window blew stronger, the sudden chill made him involuntarily shiver.
It also made him suddenly realize: sitting on the bed just thinking was meaningless.
It was better to get up first.
His identity as a mercenary did not allow him to waste time in bed.
Just as Zhong Jing gave up on continuing to dwell on that realistic nightmare and was about to reach out to pick up the quilt that had slipped to the floor, he finally discovered: something seemed not quite right.
Is this my hand?
The arm that entered his field of vision from the lower left corner immediately caught his attention.
That was not the left hand he was familiar with.
It lacked the firmness of muscle, had no tanned skin, no scars left from injuries, no calluses from years of using weapons……
In its place was skin as fair and smooth as a newborn baby's, seemingly having never experienced the struggle for survival, delicate and boneless, without muscle, even to the point of being frail, making him seriously doubt whether this hand could pull the trigger of a gun.
This unfamiliar arm definitely did not belong to him.
But was it only his arm that was unfamiliar?
As Zhong Jing's gaze extended from his fingertips towards his own body, he looked down, his dilated pupils staring with incredulous eyes at the two tender curves abruptly present before his chest, with pink adorning their tips.
All of this had replaced the position of his originally firm muscles.
Wait! This, could it be…… it can't be…… you're kidding me!!!
A brief sense of shame was immediately swept away by a surging fear after realizing the seriousness of the situation,
An unfamiliar hand touched unfamiliar body parts.
The realistic fleshy sensation transmitted from the hand was not a false illusion, nor did it lack softness and elasticity.
And the strange sensation of the unfamiliar parts being gently touched was also clearly transmitted to his brain.
And his hair, those long strands of hair finally caught his attention:
It was true that my hair had grown very long because I hadn't managed it for a long time.
I also often tied it into a small ponytail for convenience, but…… it shouldn't have grown to this extent overnight, right?
Or perhaps this was a continuation of the previous nightmare?!
My real self is still in a dream!
He deliberately increased the force in his hand.
The intense pain, aside from causing tears to well up uncontrollably in the corners of his eyes, did not make him “wake up” from this nightmare as he had imagined.
If this really is that, then down there too……
The empty feeling between his legs made Zhong Jing unwilling to accept such a fact from the bottom of his heart.
When he actually used his hand to verify that the empty feeling was not an illusion, the pressure that had been building up in his heart finally erupted uncontrollably.
No! This is impossible! It was clearly still here last night!
He futilely lowered his head to search for what he once had, but there was only a hairless and smooth mound.
When he tried to reach out and touch it, the equally unfamiliar sensation made his face flush red, and also made his heart grow cold.
A chill climbed up his spine.
These things originally did not belong to him, but…… why?!
Zhong Jing was not ignorant of the new changes to his body.
In the slums, there was no shortage of professional women who used their bodies as capital for survival.
During the process of returning to his residence from outside the city, he could always see those scantily clad women rubbing these organs against the soldiers or mercenaries who had just returned from outside.
This included him.
But I am clearly male, a healthy fifteen-year-old male.
How could these women's things grow on my body?!
After several confirmations, Zhong Jing's mind felt like a tangled mess.
He quickly scrambled off the bed, not even having time to put on shoes, completely unconcerned that he was stepping barefoot on the cold floor, and ran straight towards a half-length mirror hanging on the wall inside the hut.
The moment his gaze touched the reflection in the mirror, his mind immediately fell into a brief daze.
This…… is me?
The tender and cute face was extremely exquisite.
Although traces of his former boyish appearance could still be seen, especially those deep eyes with a hint of wine-red which had not changed, the other parts beyond that had already completely transformed into the appearance of a lovely young girl.
The delicate face showed no signs of roughness, as if it had never been eroded by dust and sandstorms.
The fair complexion exuded a healthy rosy glow.
The facial features were as exquisite and cute as a doll's.
In terms of appearance, she was far better than the women in this slum.
No, she was even more outstanding than the sexy stunners accompanying those important figures in the inner city district.
But the appearance of such a lovely person in his own home did not make him happy at all.
The reason was only because this young girl in the mirror…… was him!!!
At this moment, the young girl was staring at herself in the mirror with a comical, dazed expression.
When Zhong Jing came back to his senses, he seemed as if his soul had been drained.
The mental blow was difficult for him to accept.
Dejectedly, he took two steps back.
Finally, as if he had lost all strength in his body, his feet could no longer support his body, and he sat down backwards on the floor.
Then he hugged his head and curled up his body.
Everything that had happened was too difficult for him to accept.
What on earth happened to my body?
Why did I turn into a…… a girl?
He could be absolutely certain: he had struggled in this world as a male for fifteen years prior to this.
How could the changes to my body be explained?
Could it be that my body was infected with some kind of gender-altering virus?
Or was I secretly subjected to a human experiment by those lunatics from the Research Institute?
“This is…… my necklace?”
Just then, Zhong Jing, who was in a state of utter confusion, suddenly discovered an anomaly he had overlooked earlier due to excessive panic.
Though he was completely naked from head to toe, there was a single pendant hanging on his chest.
This was his younger sister's keepsake: a coin-sized circular piece of glass with an unknown flower carved on it.
Ever since he lost contact with his sister, this item had always been kept with him.
Although it was just a worthless piece of glassware, this, as Zhong Jing's sole memento and a treasure carrying his past memories, was priceless to him.
He usually cherished it greatly.
Before sleep, he would invariably place it carefully by his pillow, never forgetting it.
However, this morning it appeared on his neck.
Zhong Jing couldn't believe he would have such an oversight.
And the necklace had also undergone an unbelievable change: the originally transparent glass pendant had actually turned dark red……
Suddenly, it was as if a gash had been forcibly torn open inside his chaotic brain.
In an instant, the stabbing pain descended again.
Zhong Jing, who had fallen to the ground, hugged his violently aching head and curled up his body.
He clenched his jaw tightly, but the pain still made his body tremble uncontrollably.
The next second, a fragment of memory was forcibly dredged up from his mind, appearing in his thoughts:
Dying, he lay in a pool of blood.
The pendant that had fallen before his eyes was gradually being soaked by the blood.
The pendant, clearly a glass product, behaved like a sponge, absorbing the surrounding blood bit by bit into its interior.
At the edge of his vision, a figure both strange and familiar was approaching him step by step……
That person was…… the Witch?!