Most readers yearn to inhabit adventure tales - Ji Yuan was no exception. Yet now, facing genuine transmigration, he embodied the proverbial Lord Ye who claimed dragon-love yet fled the beast.

Panic gnawed his psyche. Fiction's thrills paled before real interdimensional peril - no authorial safety net against plagues, beasts, or worse.

This primitive world's lawless voids and medical voids terrified him. Worse, his paralyzed form couldn't swat a rat.

Only tactile awareness offered solace: full-body numbness would signal paralysis. This wasn't that.

Will these strangers abandon me? His frenzied mind pleaded. Even hale, wilderness survival daunted him. This wasn't 2019's tamed China.

Folklore's man-eating demons likely prowled here - no anime mascots, but fanged horrors.

...

Zhang Shilin studied the twitching beggar. "Too frail to move."

The unspoken verdict chilled Ji Yuan's soul.

Rain drummed as merchants swapped tales - gossip, bawdy jokes, village beauties. Their trade emerged through anecdotes: foot-carried peddlers trafficking goods between remote settlements.

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Ji Yuan's tears mingled with grime. Did my soul possess this wretch? Is my original body decomposing on Ox-Head Mountain?

No hunger pangs surprised him. Paralysis conserved energy cruelly.

"Shilin-ge! Rain stopped!" Wang Dong's voice rang.

Zhang assessed gloom-draped peaks. "Night treks kill. We stay."

Relief flooded Ji Yuan. Reprieve!

Damp firewood stockpiled, the group ignored their dying charge. No cloth changed, no water offered. Twenty-first-century rescue fantasies taunted him.

**"Ho! Company in this desolation!"**

The newcomers' cry startled all. A scholar-boy stood dripping at the threshold.

"Lost companions! Dreadful storm! Saw your fire - bandits or saints, I'll pay passage!"

Merchants guffawed. "Warm yourself, bookworm!"

"Any imperial exams passed?"

"None, none! Mere dilettante..."

Their mirth drowned Ji Yuan's silent scream.

Gooseflesh erupted across his body. No footsteps. No crunching leaves.

The scholar had materialized like fog.