Chapter Text
— June 18, 1349
Zhou Mingrui's welcome to this new reality was neither warm nor pleasant.
What greeted him instead was the sticky sensation of blood soaking his torso, the dull ache of wounds that throbbed as if they were in the middle of healing—and the smell of anti-septic reaching his nose, and what seemed to be... herbs? He couldn't tell. Before he could properly take stock of his situation, memories surged into his mind like an unrestrained tide, crashing down without mercy.
They did not belong to him; he quickly realized.
They were fragments of another life... of another person. An unnamed man with a wife and three children, a sergeant of the Royal Army. A soldier... who had seemingly intended to sacrifice himself during a colonial conflict between the Northern and Southern Continent. A resident of Tingen City, within the Loen Kingdom...
Zhou Mingrui struggled to process everything as his vision was flooded with a sterile, hospital-white backdrop. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant, making his nose twitch slightly. He had never really liked the scent of hospitals...
Amid the confusion and pain, and foreign memories that truly did not belong to him; a single thought rose above all else.
'Wait... do I also have kids now...?'
He wondered; absurd and incredulous. Yet it clung to him with surprising persistence; more like an instinct etched deep into the body he now occupied. Zhou Mingrui decided to dug deeper, prying at the remnants left behind by the original owner of this identity, and the final emotions revealed themselves to him fully. Regret, a suffocating regret at having to leave them all behind like this. His children...
Not long ago, this man had received a letter; news of his wife's death. Grief, guilt, and helplessness intertwining with each other, forming the last remaining emotions of a man on the brink of death.
'I need to go home,' Zhou Mingrui decided with great sorrow. 'But the children...'
A low grunt escaped his lips as several wounds protested against his restless shifting. This is real then, he concluded silently in his mind. Zhou Mingrui winced. Transmigration. Possession. A dead soldier. Three children.
Then he cursed.
Zhou Mingrui forced himself to calm down and began to think things through, piece by piece.
For reasons unknown, he couldn't recall the original body's full name. No matter how hard he tried to dig, only a single surname surfaced from the depths of fragmented memories—Moretti. The attending doctor had brushed it off as trauma from the incident, a perfectly reasonable explanation. Zhou Mingrui accepted it without protest and went along with it, after all, he truly couldn't remember anything beyond the bare essentials.
The Moretti family's circumstances were... passable.
A household of five. Ordinary, unremarkable, yet stable. The husband had been the head of the family and the primary source of income. The wife supplemented their livelihood by taking on sewing work, earning a modest amount through side jobs. Nothing extravagant really, but it was good for saving in case of emergencies.
Benson, the eldest.
Klein, the middle.
Melissa, the youngest.
As he silently recited their names, an unfamiliar sorrow welled up in Zhou Mingrui's chest, heavy and inexplicable in nature, as though his heart itself remembered something he refused to acknowledge.
That night, in the stillness before dawn, he performed the Luck Enhancement Ritual. The air chilled as the final words left his lips—and when it was over, there was nothing left for him to say except a quiet apology.
"I'm sorry."
He wasn't their father.
How could someone like him—an outsider—pretend to live another person's life? How could he, really? This isn't... home. This could never be home...
...
The faint hope that this ritual might send him back... that all of this was just—an elaborate nightmare, shattered without any mercy. What answered him was an endless gray fog; vast, mysterious...
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
A door of light.
...
When Zhou Mingrui returned to reality, his mind carried things it hadn't before; a knowledge of mysticism, of Beyonders—of cocooned people hidden beneath layers of time time and fog.
Yet none of that brought him relief... nor clarity. Only grief remained, accompanied by an unceasing tide of questions.
Had he... come from those things?
Are those people... from home?
Is this... Earth?
What followed was a calm he did not know he was capable of. It did not descend abruptly, nor did it soothe him with warmth. Instead, it seeped into his bones like ink spreading through water. The grief dulled—like scabs after a bleeding wound—and Zhou Mingrui simply stood there. After that, it was as if he had been erased from existence.
The Evernight Goddess was exactly as described in the Holy Scriptures.
Magnificent.
Fair.
Ruthless.
Her presence was not overwhelming in the way of blazing sunlight, but rather like the silent descent of moonlight. Only then, in Her Divine Kingdom, did Zhou Mingrui learn the truth that left him momentarily speechless. He had transmigrated long before he became aware of it. Today was June, 1349. And according to the Goddess, four years had already passed.
Four years.
And during that time... Zhou Mingrui was stuck within a dreamlike state; digesting the Curtain. The Goddess spoke calmly of matters that could overturn common sense. She had attempted to stop the mergence, but according to Her—She failed. Yet fate, or perhaps something more inscrutable, had intervened.
The Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth's resurrection plan had gone awry. Rather than overwriting Zhou Mingrui's soul, the Characteristics had fused with it—transforming into him instead of replacing him.
The thought was not comforting.
It really wasn't.
...
When Zhou Mingrui asked about the side effects, the Goddess gave an answer he had not expected.
She did not know.
There had never been a precedent; nothing like this had ever occurred before. Even a deity who had lived for so long could not answer the question with certainty.
And within that uncertainty, Zhou Mingrui felt a chill far colder than fear.
It was June 27th, 1349, when Zhou Mingrui finally reached a state stable enough that he no longer feared losing control.
It was also June 27th—just before midnight—that he met one of the Moretti children.
Blood trickled down the boy's temples, warm and vivid against pallid skin, the unmistakable result of a gunshot wound. Apparently, he had already taken his own life.
...
A miracle does not favor a child who lacks the blessing of good fortune.