CHAPTER 1 Emergency Landing Crossing

"Sao Nian, do you want to understand the meaning of life? Do you truly... want to live?"

"Yes" or "No"!

Early in the morning, Chen Xiaoyan, who had just booted up his computer and was about to dive into a game, found this overly dramatic sentence staring back at him on the League of Legends login screen.

"Damn it, is this some sort of joke? Who wrote this? Have you never read Infinite Horror? This tired old trope is so outdated—it's been years since Qidian's novels used stuff like this! And you're still recycling it?"

As a self-proclaimed pseudo-otaku, Chen Xiaoyan had three main hobbies: movies, anime, and novels. Being an old bookworm who had devoured thousands of stories, he knew every cliche in the book. He could feel his IQ being insulted by Tencent's attempt to use such an ancient routine in their advertising.

"Come on, Brother Ma, seriously? A little more effort, please. That line straight out of Infinite Stream is just embarrassing at this point."

Fuming in frustration, Chen Xiaoyan was about to click to exit the login screen and skip the whole thing.

"I'm done... what the hell is this?"

But just as he was about to shut it down, his right hand, almost as if it had a mind of its own, moved back toward the "Yes" button, just slightly nudging it.

"Wait, what? No way!"

His eyes went wide with disbelief. Before he could process what was happening, his body was yanked toward the screen. In an instant, a dark vortex appeared, pulling him in with force.

"No! This can't be real!"

He screamed, but his voice was drowned out by the overwhelming sensation of being sucked into the computer.

There was no transition to unconsciousness, no slow fading into blackness. Instead, Chen Xiaoyan found himself hurtling through a chaotic and disordered flow of time and space.

"This... this is crazy! If Brother Ma isn't careful with his details, this main system is going to be the death of me!"

Caught in the turbulent rush of endless time and shifting dimensions, Chen Xiaoyan could only watch in helpless frustration. Countless fractured images of different realities flashed by him, colliding and distorting, some passing through him as though he didn't even exist.

Having never experienced this before, Chen Xiaoyan had no idea just how terrifying this situation truly was.

But now, Chen Xiaoyan found himself right in the middle of it.

His hands clutched his head, trembling uncontrollably. The pain was unbearable, and for the first time, he understood that death seemed almost like a mercy.

Couldn't it hurt a little less?

He tried to imagine it: countless shattered fragments of collapsing worlds piercing through his body, each one sending sharp, electrifying waves of agony. It was the worst kind of pain—sharp, raw, and endless.

"Urgent notice, urgent notice…"

"The space of the Lord God is undergoing a large-scale collapse due to unknown reasons. Reincarnation No. 000001 is required to make an emergency landing…"

"Damn it, you're a fake master god!"

Chen Xiaoyan cursed furiously in his mind, flipping the bird to this so-called 'Master God,' but before he could finish his rant, his vision went dark. The next moment, he was tossed by the chaotic turbulence, his body fading into nothingness.

…

"Due to the malfunction of the Lord God's system, resulting in the loss of the reincarnation's body during the transition, and following a consensus among the administrators of the Lord God Space chat group, it has been decided to compensate the reincarnation with a soul transmigration…"

"Descend into the world, please fasten your seat belts to avoid any further complications…"

"World identification in progress… please wait…"

"Urgent notice, urgent notice…"

"Detection complete: This world is categorized as high-intensity. The Lord God's space is being disturbed by unknown dimensional energy, resulting in some services being temporarily suspended…"

"Good luck, kid."

The administrators of the Lord God Space chat group sent their brief condolences to Chen Xiaoyan, mourning his fate for a whole three minutes.

Meanwhile, Chen Xiaoyan remained unaware, his consciousness slipping in and out of reality. The only thing that echoed in his mind were the notifications from the Lord God's space—yet he was already unconscious, unable to register a single word of them.

If he could have heard it, Chen Xiaoyan would have probably cursed the heavens, yelling at this cheating, utterly useless god for the pain he was enduring.

But at this moment, he had no body, no autonomy, only a fragile, transparent soul. The final remnants of the Lord God's power guided him into an unfamiliar world, where he was cast aside into the middle of an abandoned street.

By a twist of fate, an old nun happened to walk by, finding the newborn soul abandoned there. She took the baby into her arms and brought him to the orphanage she ran through her church.

Fifteen years passed slowly. And when the time came for him to begin his new life, Chen Xiaoyan no longer held that name. The old nun, who had found him, had given him a new name: Patch Meiwes.

Meiwes is the surname of the old nun, and as for the name "Patch," I fear only God and the old man know what Sister Meiwes really thinks about it.

It's a pity that time travel turned into soul possession, and Patch was powerless to resist Sister Meiwes' decision when he was just a baby.

However, every time someone calls him by this name, Patch can't shake an inexplicable feeling of disobedience.

"Patch?" Isn't that just a reversal of the word "wonderful"?

Tears streamed down his face as he stared at the sky, speechless. Patch had no choice but to accept the name. After all, it had been used for over ten years, and it was too late to change it now.

When he first arrived in this world, Patch was extremely uncomfortable.

He was now in the United States, and everyone spoke English. So when the priests and nuns in the orphanage spoke to him, he was left confused and lost in translation.

"I'm Chinese—why bother with foreign languages? I should just be focusing on my future," Patch thought. But his idealism didn't fare well; not only did he fail in his pursuit of communism, but he also found himself as an American... and an illiterate one at that.

After studying English for three years, Patch finally shed the label of being illiterate.

But then, the label of "dementia" seemed to find him again.

After all, other children were able to say simple words when they were just a year old.

It took Patch three whole years to give up his resistance and speak his first sentence in English to Sister Meiwes.

Patch still remembers the day he called out "Grandma" to the old nun while she was drying his hair, and how overjoyed she was.

"Master Magellan, Ms. Moss, come and see! Patch can speak! This child isn't mentally retarded after all!" Sister Meiwes exclaimed in excitement.

Mental retardation?! Ahhhhhh... Patch thought, his mind and hair a tangled mess under the hair dryer.

Please, I'm a time traveler who grew up under the red flag for more than twenty years! It really takes time for me to adjust—especially when I'm a traveler who only spoke Chinese before, trying to learn a completely new language like English.

At Sister Meiwes' shout, most of the people in the orphanage rushed over to watch Patch.

"This child can speak! Little Patch can finally call me 'Grandma'!" Sister Meiwes said with tears of joy.

"Oh my God, really?!" Many exclamations filled the room.

"Little Patch, hurry, call Grandpa now!" Priest Magellan, with his big white beard, pinched Patch's little face and smiled.

"Such a cute little one, here's some chocolate for you." Ms. Moss, a woman in her forties, shamelessly pulled out a piece of chocolate and offered it to Patch.

"Hello, Grandpa Magellan," Patch finally managed to say, his voice a little hesitant but full of effort.

"Hello, Aunt Moss."

Truthfully, he was supposed to call Priest Magellan Grandpa, but since Ms. Moss's face was about to twist into an expression of sheer displeasure, Patch decided to change how he addressed her.

With his head held high in pride, Patch remained unmoved by Ms. Moss's darkening expression.

"Just because a piece of chocolate wants me to call you 'sister' doesn't mean I have to. It's impossible. Bring me a box of chocolates... that's just impossible."

In reality, Patch had spent three years learning English, and he felt he had progressed quickly. But now, after offending Ms. Moss, the nickname "mentally handicapped child" had spread across the orphanage.

Every morning during class, Patch could hear Reverend Magellan lamenting under his breath.

When heading to the cafeteria at noon, Patch could hear the cafeteria aunt sighing deeply.

And at night, as he lay in bed, Patch could hear his fellow orphans whispering.

"Honestly, Patch is actually quite handsome."

"It's a shame he's mentally handicapped."

Fifteen years had passed, and Patch had become powerless to respond to such remarks, left only with a sense of helplessness and confusion.

Hadn't I just started talking at three years old?

Didn't I just have a tendency to space out once in a while?

Didn't I just sleep a bit longer than others?

You say I'm handsome—I admit it! But I'm really not mentally disabled!

Patch was handsome, and that was no exaggeration.

Compared to others, Patch's features were far more striking—his face was chiseled, almost sculptural, like a masterpiece crafted by a European artist from the Middle Ages.

And his physique was equally impressive. At fifteen, Patch stood nearly 1.8 meters tall, his body perfectly proportioned with muscle and definition—perhaps his most recent source of pride.

With his brown, short, curly hair and sapphire-blue eyes as clear as the ocean, Patch certainly caught people's attention. He still remembered when he went to buy wine for Grandpa Magellan at the store—the sales clerk had even slipped him an extra bottle of vodka that was nearing its expiration date!

It's a shame they thought he was mentally handicapped!

The truth was, Patch didn't fully understand what was wrong with him. Since arriving in this world, his mental state had never quite been right.

Sometimes, spacing out was just an inconvenience, but the worst part was his unpredictable sleepiness—he could nod off at any moment.

From the moment Patch "woke up" in this world, he felt like something important was missing. There were memories he couldn't quite recall, no matter how hard he tried.

Losing memories wasn't the end of the world for him, though. Patch could accept that.

What really bothered him was that, unlike most time travelers, Patch didn't have any golden fingers—the special powers or tools that were supposed to come with his reincarnation.

After living in this world for fifteen years, Patch hadn't noticed any extraordinary abilities. Aside from his good looks, he was just an ordinary guy.

When he first arrived in this world, all he had was a swaddle wrapped around him, no hair, and a burning desire for some sort of powerful system or latent talent to awaken. He imagined himself following in the footsteps of legends like Long Aotian or Zhao Ritian, aiming to carve out a story of conquering new worlds and becoming unstoppable.

Fifteen years later, Patch had come to the disappointing realization that he was nothing special at all.

He gazed at the sunset with hazy eyes. Beneath its golden glow, running had once been his dream—the dream he could never return to.

He had thought his life would be ordinary...

Until this day, when a strange voice suddenly echoed in his mind.