After all those tedious and downright boring experiences in the underworld I looked forward to waking up and finding myself surrounded by beautiful nature. Perhaps the body of the guy I just transmigrated into had just been fished out of a lake after drowning. Or maybe I would wake up in a wooden house after being poisoned. Or probably I would wake up in the middle of nowhere, after having been beaten to death by the Emperor"s soldiers once my cultivation and talents were stolen by his daughter. Most likely I would have just woken up in a n.o.ble"s manor after my previous incarnation died from an overdose of spirit medicine. I sure as h.e.l.l hoped I didn"t die stupidly by falling off a horse and hitting my head against a boulder.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"…"

I frowned as I vaguely made those sounds out. That certainly didn"t sound like anything I would expect from a fantasy cultivation world. I could still feel dull pain throbbing throughout my body, and ma.s.sive discomfort, but that could be explained by the numerous scenarios of death that my previous incarnation had been through before I was transmigrated here. d.a.m.n it, it felt like I had been bludgeoned to death.

That must be the scenario for this particular story.

With great reluctance, I forced my eyes open.

"…you"ve got to be kidding me."

I was greatly disappointed to see that I was not in any fantasy world but a hospital room instead. Linked to my left arm was some medical machine that displayed my vitals, which included my heartbeat and blood pressure. My legs were hoisted into the air and wrapped in cast, as was my right arm. My body was encased in bandages and bound in white covers and the usual green hospital gown.

Looked like I was very much alive and stuck in this dull, normal world.

When Grandma Meng said everything was a mistake and I would be compensated, I a.s.sumed she meant I would be reincarnated in a fantasy world, just like all those fantasy web novels. I never thought she meant I would be simply sent back to my broken, comatose body and forced to live through sheer agony, crippled and wasted. This was, in a lot of ways, much worse than death.

Oh, well…it wasn"t as if I wanted to die anyway.

Obviously all those stories about people dying and being transported into another fantasy world were just fiction. It was too good to be true. Otherwise we would have uncountable numbers of people committing suicide everyday just to escape into other cultivation worlds.

Unfortunately, it seemed that I was pretty much screwed. Three of my four limbs were broken, which would make my everyday life highly inconvenient. Not to mention the red-hot agony that I had to endure after surviving the accident. It appeared that I had been hooked up to drips of painkillers, otherwise I suspected the pain would be much worse.

The consequences of my actions…huh…speaking of which, is that old man all right? I hope he didn"t get hit by another vehicle.

I had pushed him out of the truck"s way, but I wasn"t in any condition to ensure that there wasn"t another vehicle barreling along the road to hit him. It would suck if I went through all this trouble and pain, only for him to get killed in such an ignominious manner. It would also make my sacrifice completely meaningless.

d.a.m.n…right now I should worry about myself more…

Like how I was supposed to go to the bathroom when I needed to? d.a.m.n it…why did I have to break both my legs!?

Right now I supposed there were plenty of edge lord readers who would be heavily criticizing me for saving the old man. I could literally see the comments now… "Stupid MC, should just let the old man die." You know, the type of readers who complain about the protagonist not being ruthless enough and wanting him to kill every character in the story. Never mind that such behavior was downright juvenile and psychotic, and no person in his right mind would indulge in meaningless slaughter. But what else would you expect from the Internet?

Suddenly I remembered Xiang Si. If I would be honest, that guy should be the one surviving his suicide attempt. Then he would know what real suffering was. I had no doubt he would be mocking me for being so n.o.ble if he hadn"t lost his memories after being force-fed the soup. Hah, with that sort of att.i.tude, it was better that he lost all his memories and personality. I really hoped that the edge lord lost his edge after drinking the soup.

Speaking of losing one"s edge…

"…eh?"

The room was blurry, and I realized it was because I wasn"t wearing my gla.s.ses. Reaching out with my left hand, I fumbled for my gla.s.ses on the bedside desk and put them on, and my vision became clear again.

"That"s better."

After adjusting my gla.s.ses, I reached for the gla.s.s of water and downed it. My throat was parched after such a long while. It seemed I had been relying on IV drips to get the necessary nutrients and fluids into my body.

"What should I do?"

I scratched my head. Grandma Meng said they would give something as a token of their apology. They couldn"t mean give me my life back, could they? That wasn"t compensation or a token of apology. It was like an insurance company s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up by forgetting to give my family money for the hospital bills, then compensated or offered a token of apology by paying the hospital bills that they should have footed in the very first place.

That reminded me…I hope the insurance company didn"t make things too difficult for my family, or they wouldn"t be able to afford my hospitalization bills…

My family wasn"t very rich, after all.

"Wui"er! You"re awake!"

My attention was jolted away from financial concerns and toward the screen as my father called out to me. Tilting my head slightly, I saw my family standing on the opposite side of a gla.s.s wall. There was a soft whir and the doors slid open for my family to pour in.

"You"ve finally woken up!"

My mother was sobbing, but she was careful not to hug me. I was grateful that she retained her senses. It would have hurt a lot if she had ignored my injuries and tried to embrace me.

"I"m glad you"re all right, bro."

My younger brother, Ji, was smiling in relief as he stood beside my father, whose usually stern visage was cracked by a similar smile.

I took a deep breath and slowly c.o.c.ked my head as an odd sort of nod.

"Yeah. I"m glad to be back."

I meant it. Even though it hurt like h.e.l.l, and I had literally been through h.e.l.l and back, returning to see my family again was worth it. Totally worth it.

"…?"

Then I suddenly realized something when I stared at my family. Was it my imagination, or did my parents look younger than before? My father was missing his wrinkles and a few graying hairs, and my mother"s hairstyle as a bit shorter than I remembered it to be when I last saw her a few days ago online. Speaking of which, I was attending university in Cheng Shi City, which meant that they had to fly all the way here from Jia Xiang town to visit me in hospital. I hoped I wasn"t costing them too much in terms of money…

But the biggest change was my brother, Ji. I wasn"t sure if I was seeing things, but he looked a lot smaller and a lot shorter in terms of height. He looked as if he was…twelve.

That couldn"t be right. Ji was only one year younger than I was. He should be twenty-nine this year. I knew many people told us that we looked pretty young, but surely it wasn"t to the extent that he looked like a kid.

"Wu"er? Are you all right?"

My father noticed that something was amiss when I glanced across the three of them, bordering on panic. My mouth dry, I slowly nodded and forced out a question.

"Um…what year is it?"

My parents exchanged a strange look, but my brother seemed to understand. He chuckled.

"Don"t worry, you"ve only been unconscious for three days. You didn"t miss much. It wasn"t as if you were in a coma for years."

"That"s great," I replied dryly, but despite Ji"s good intentions, he hadn"t exactly answered my question. "So it"s not the year 2019, right?"

My parents and brother gave me a strange look.

"No, you weren"t out for that long." Ji laughed. "It"s still 2002. Don"t worry, you will be back in school before you know it."

"Yeah," my father agreed, getting in on the joke. "If you were hoping to skip school just because of an accident, you"re fresh out of luck."

"Don"t worry too much about school and cla.s.ses, okay?" my mother a.s.sured me, concerned. "Just focus on recovering for now."

My jaw dropped when I realized they weren"t joking. And it dropped even further when I realized that they were telling the truth and that my body was a lot smaller than it used to be.

*

So the gift was returning me back to my thirteen-year-old self? This was my compensation? The underworld"s token of apology?

What the f.u.c.k?

This felt more like a punishment, a curse. I was a lot happier staying thirty. I remembered my 13-year-old self as a cringe-worthy, ill-behaved social outcast who was partially bullied by others. Not that I could blame them – I did a lot of stupid things when I was thirteen – things that I was ashamed to remember even when I was thirty. I had thought it funny to provoke my cla.s.smates, kick their chairs or pull all sorts of pranks. No wonder they ended up ganging up on me. Fortunately, my rebellious phase ended when I was fifteen and I returned to the well-disciplined, mild-mannered and diligent guy I was in elementary school.

Perhaps Grandma Meng and the underworld had saw this as a chance for me to relive my teenage years and right all my wrongs. That was why this was my compensation – it was for me to behave myself and make a better impression on my teachers and cla.s.smates during that period, for me to clear any lingering regrets I had over this dark period of my life. Oh, and probably to stop myself from indulging in chuunibyou moments.

Oh, gosh…just remembering those made me want to kill myself. Now I understood why Xiang Si was so obsessed with killing himself.

In other words, the compensation is a second chance for me to relive my life.

The funny thing was that I didn"t remember ever getting into an accident major enough for me to get hospitalized like this. I had been a pretty active and healthy, albeit mischievous and bratty socially awkward idiot, but I had never been involved in an accident and gotten this hurt. It would be difficult to make use of this second chance to relive my life if I spent most of my dark period lying on a hospital bed, unable to move because of my broken limbs…

Fortunately, after I regained consciousness, I was moved out of the intensive care unit and into the normal rooms, which I shared with a couple of older patients. Since my family wasn"t rich, they couldn"t afford to put me in a private room, and I didn"t want to be in one anyway since it would be too expensive.

Since I couldn"t do anything except wait to recover, I spent most of the next day sleeping.

When I woke up, I almost screamed when I saw an old, wizened face peering down on me.

"Holy s…!!!!!"

"Whoa! Calm down, young man. You"ll wake the other patients." The old guy gestured to the other three patients in the room. Fortunately, they were all sound asleep, snoring as loudly as ever. I had since learned to sleep through noise a few days ago, or maybe I was just too exhausted that I could sleep through the din of a battle. "It"s me."

"Huh? Who are you?"

Blinking, I stared at the old man standing by my bedside, baffled by his sudden appearance. I didn"t recognize him at all.

"Have you forgotten who I am already?"

…ah. Those sungla.s.ses and old-fashioned clothes that looked right at home in a historical drama. He was the old man I saved from the truck the other day. Why the h.e.l.l was he wearing sungla.s.ses inside a dark hospital room that had its lights off, though? And it was night too!

Those shades made him seem really shady.

"Glad to see you weren"t hurt."

"Yes, thanks to you." the old man bowed deeply. "I"m very sorry for all the trouble I caused you. And I"m very grateful to you for saving my life."

I waved his thanks away. "As long as you"re all right."

The old man smiled, shaking his wrinkled head. "I see you"re not just a brave person, but also a very kind person as well. In a world as cruel as this, it"s very rare to find nice young people such as you, young lad."

"Nah, I"m sure there"s a lot of other people who would have done the same thing." I truly believed what I was saying. It was impossible that I was the only nice guy in this world.

"Actually, there"s a lot of people who would push me in front of the truck to deliberately murder me."

I found that hard to believe, but I wasn"t in a mood to argue. Being stuck in bed with your arm and legs suspended in the air and completely unable to move would do that to you. So I decided to humor the guy.

"Who? Sounds like you"re being chased by a bunch of killers."

The old man grinned ironically. "Oh, you have no idea how right you are."

…okay…I wasn"t sure what he was trying to get at, but maybe he was one of those paranoid conspiracy theorists who thought the world was out to get him or something. Even though he was in good physical health, I wondered if he was somewhat mentally ill. It was normal for someone of his age to suffer from dementia.

"But since it"s my fault that you"ve ended up in such a condition, I"ve come to take responsibility."

"…take responsibility? How?"

"Well…" the old man scratched his head. "By giving you a reward, I suppose."

I immediately tensed at that. The last time someone offered to give me compensation for mistakenly dragging me to the underworld, I ended up being reverted to my thirteen-year-old self. Even if this was supposed to be my second chance at correcting my life, I didn"t like it.

Honestly, I wasn"t looking forward to reliving my entire life and going through all the trials I did before reaching thirty for the second time. All that cramming and studying again. The annoying obstacles that life threw at me. Bureaucratic bulls.h.i.t and administrative nightmares that plagued me when I was a student. One might think it would be great because I probably already knew what would come out for the exams, but no. Unlike a certain Nie Li, I didn"t have a perfect memory. I couldn"t remember every single event, moment or instant in my life. I couldn"t remember every single question on every single exam. I couldn"t recall every disaster or misfortune I had been through in order to avoid it, but I did recall vividly a few – falling sick to dengue fever was something I was not looking forward to suffering through again, as was other diseases here and there.

The worst thing was that I couldn"t remember when I fell sick or how to avoid those. d.a.m.n it.

"So what kind of reward are we talking about here?" I asked with a sigh. "Are you going to help my parents pay for my hospital fees?"

The old man merely smiled mysteriously

"No. I"m afraid I do not possess the money necessary for that."

"Right."

Resisting the temptation to roll my eyes, I maintained a polite tone despite thinking that there was nothing the old man could offer that would serve as an adequate reward. Probably another token of appreciation, but…

"Hey, wait a second…"

I suddenly frowned. Something wasn"t right here.

"This can"t be possible. I saved you when I was thirty…I saved you seventeen years in the future. I"m thirteen right now, right? So how did you…did you travel back in time or something?"

"Very astute. Something like that." the old man reared to his full height as he smiled, impressed. "To be more precise, I merely followed the alternate timeline to which you were sent back from the underworld, and traced you here."

My jaw dropped as I stared at him, not believing what I had just heard. "You can do that?"

"Indeed." The old man nodded. I continued to scrutinize him, not knowing if he was insane. Then again, even if he was some crazy old man, it wouldn"t explain how I got sent back in time and reverted to my thirteen-year-old self.

I had no choice but to believe him for now.

"I"m an immortal, after all." (The word he uses here is xian, which is usually translated as immortal, but as most Chinese speakers would tell you, has a completely different connotation and meaning from the Anglo or Western conception of immortal)

"Uh, right." Sure, that explained a lot. Not.

"Still…I didn"t expect you to be pulled into our world in such a manner. Such a pity. Such a pity."

The old man was shaking his head. He then straightened up and then took something out of his pocket, placing it on my bedside table.

"I"m sorry, but this is the only thing I have of value. I hope you"ll be satisfied with it."

"That"s…?"

It was a golden medallion with the emblem of a dragon carved into its surface. He slid it across the tabletop and positioned it as close to me as possible.

"I hope you like it."

"Well, it"s shiny…"

Not to mention, there was a lot of yellow currents of energy billowing out from it. I had no idea what that was supposed to be. Initially I wondered if the old man was performing some sort of special effects, but why the heck would be bother to trick me? It wasn"t as if he was selling the medallion to me.

No, wait…it"s not a trick.

Frowning, I noticed that there was something beyond natural about the energy. I could detect a vitality that surpa.s.sed normal human understanding, a kind of energy that throbbed with all sorts of arcane potential. It wasn"t something I could tap into, but it maintained a mysterious signature that set it apart from any other sort of energies that I normally sensed.

I was about to open my mouth and ask about the mystical energy, but as if he sensed my question, he quickly shook his head.

"I"m sorry. It was never my intention to drag you into this world. To protect you, it"s best that I keep you ignorant."

"This world? Keep me ignorant?"

There was nothing I hated more than being ignorant. And I was sure there was nothing more frustrating for readers than being kept in the dark because of some dubious plotline later or whatever. I wanted to know, and I wanted to know now.

But the old man was having none of it. He didn"t pay me any attention and was stepping away. He then bowed deeply.

"Once again, I thank you for saving my life. I"m very sorry that I wasn"t able to offer up a more appropriate reward, but this will do."

He patted the medallion on my bedside table.

"Keep this close to you. It"s a lot more valuable than you think it is."

I suspected I knew just how valuable this shiny little trinket was. After all, I was planning to p.a.w.n it off at the nearest p.a.w.nshop the moment I was discharged and make a lot of money off it. Right now my family needed money more than any sentimental items.

As if he had read my mind, the old man"s expression turned severe.

"Please promise me that you"ll never sell it."

d.a.m.n. Busted.

"Fine, fine. Then what am I supposed to do with it?"

"You"ll know when the time comes."

f.u.c.k. I absolutely hate it when someone gets all cryptic and vague with me. 90% of stories could be resolved if the characters actually manned up and communicated clearly and properly instead of going through this roundabout bulls.h.i.t.

"Well then…this is farewell. I doubt we"ll meet again." the old man"s expression turned sad. "It"s probably rude to say this to someone who just risked his life to save mine, but I don"t have much time left. Please take care."

The h.e.l.l?! Did he just raise a death flag? Right after I rescued his life at the cost of breaking three of my limbs? f.u.c.k you!

Or at least that was what I wanted to shout, but the old man was gone as suddenly as he appeared, the only evidence that he was present being the gold, shiny medallion on my tabletop.