The carriage exploded with a bone-rattling sneeze, and the creature’s head flung back inside.

“Come on! Work, damn it!”

The flames danced mockingly, licking the carriage without effect. The creature’s thrashing reached a mad crescendo, and the splintering cracks of wood hammered Yu Han’s heart like a ticking time bomb.

The carriage wasn’t meant to imprison monstrous dogs with endless stamina. The thing would break out, and when it did, Yu Han was going to be its second dinner. He could feed it for ages, with his large flabs of—

“Fat!”

He ran to the front of the carriage. There, the ceramic jar! It was under the driver’s bench, affixed to the carriage with rope. It had the animal fat they used for cooking and lighting the torches!

He took off his shirt and filled it with lard, creating a dangling bundle.

The carriage shook like there was a hurricane inside. Yu Han was lucky the dog hadn’t flung itself out the window by random chance.

Yu Han lit a corner of the cloth bundle, then threw it through the window into the carriage. The creature perked up, then bit the bundle like a rottweiler. Animal fat spilled onto its face, which then touched the fire on the cloth’s edge. A blaze rose, like the wrath of an angry volcano.

Yu Han scooped up more fat from the ceramic jar and threw it into the carriage, aiming at the dog. He couldn’t see its full body, but the flames acted as a guide.

“Fish oil. We had some.” There was a supply in his father’s cart. Yu Han sprinted to it, then rummaged through the cart’s contents. He found three oil jars and one tung oil-filled hemp-cloth bag. He darted back to the carriage and threw the oil jars and the hemp cloth inside one after another.

The creature bellowed like a berserker, its cries growing louder and louder. Soon, lines of red glowed in the space between the wooden boards of the carriage wall. Black smoke, thick and dense, swirled into the sky. It faded slightly to a heavy grey.

The heat singed Yu Han’s eyebrows. Before he knew it, his skin was covered in soot. He coughed, backing up far enough to escape the smoke and the aroma of burning lacquers and treated textiles.

The fire raged. It consumed the carriage. The beast. His sister-in-law and niece. For an hour, then two. And then there was no more.

Yu Han wiped the tears off his face, collapsing on his back like a falling statue.

A cloud of smoke blocked the sky. As it thinned, the stars were revealed. He searched for Ursa Major and Orion, but the heavens were foreign.

Strange characters appeared in front of Yu Han’s eyes.

Demonic Taint Purified.

Pure Qi Acquired: +100

Pure Qi: 100/110

Tribulation Overcome (Preemptive): [Purify Tainted Entities: 1/1.]

Yu Han reached through the vanishing characters with his pudgy, blistering hand.

“This has to be virtual reality,” he said, yawning. He wanted to sleep and never wake up.

Out in the open, a wild beast might get him. Maybe another “Tainted Entity” would appear. The hooded man had commanded many of these mutts, after all.

Did he have enough strength to fight back?

A clopping sound from the distance attracted his attention. Yu Han clambered to his feet.

Far away, a line of riders galloped his way on horses. They carried flags and were armoured. The flags looked familiar. Guards from the nearby Riversong Commandery City, his home in this life. Was he saved?

Yu Han collapsed again, his body failing him. Soon, a shadow covered the sky. The thin eyes of a city guard peered at Yu Han through an ornate helmet.

“By the Lotus King’s mercy, what happened here?” asked the man.

“T-There was a man in a hood, he had these beasts, and they—”

“Bi Suo Tou?” The guard’s brow furrowed. “What’s he babbling about?” he asked another guard.

“Maybe he’s in shock,” was the reply.

“Can you not speak proper words, wretch? We can’t understand you.” The first guard sounded annoyed.

“What do you mean?” Yu Han asked, taken aback by the unprompted insult. He heaved his entire weight against the ground and finally sat up. “A strange text appeared, and it said that the dog was a demonic—”

“The hell is a Dou Gu? Poor bloke’s gone crazy,” the second guard interrupted. “These bodies, they’re your family, kid?” he asked as he hopped down from the horse and kicked Yu Han’s mother’s corpse. He clicked his tongue. “Tsk, cruel bandits. Didn’t even take the loot.”

“More for us. Hey, I recognise this lady.” A third, bushy-bearded guard said. “She’s that proprietress from the—the—”

“Yu Family’s River Diner. Damn, they had good Writher and Clam Soup. Check if she’s got any jewellery. I’ll check over there.” The second guard walked over to the cart.

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Bushy Beard took out a knife and started stripping Yu Han’s mother.

“What are you doing?” Yu Han couldn’t believe his eyes. What the hell were these guards doing? “You filthy NPC! Get your dirty hands off her!” With a sudden burst of strength, Yu Han shot up. He dashed to Bushy Beard and grabbed him by his collar. “You disrespec—ugh!”

“Stay down, lard-bucket.” Bushy Beard punched Yu Han in the gut. He fell to his knees, clutching his abdomen and coughing out blood as his vision swam.

“Commander, what do we do with him?” Bushy Beard asked the first guy. “He’s blabbering shit. The shock must’ve messed him up.”

“Take him. The City Lord might have use for him. The gangs were eyeing the river banks for a while; the Lord wants part of it,” the commander ordered. “Fifth, report back.”

“Aye!” said a voice. A guard galloped off the way they came.

Yu Han opened his mouth, just as Bushy Beard’s fist crashed into the side of his head.

***

He woke up amidst the stripped corpses of his family. He was in the cart, now tied to one of the rider’s horses. It was being used as a vehicle to bring the cadavers back.

His father slept eternally on his left, and his mother pillowed his head on her lap, just like she used to when he was a kid.

Objects were strewn around, “loot” they had deemed trash. His father’s lucky charm, a green booklet—a family heirloom written in unreadable words, like the shellfish clam pendant the hooded man had stolen.

The cart rocked. Yu Han put the booklet in his pocket.

“The fatty’s awake,” a gruff voice said. There was a chorus of laughter.

“A silver’s on me, he mumbles crap again.” More laughter followed.

With guards like these, who needs bandits? Yu Han lay helpless, with no physical agency. So he worked his brain, the only thing he could do.

I can understand these NPCs perfectly, but why can’t they understand me? He closed his eyes and listened, trying to ignore the pain all over his body.

“The old wench from Plum Garden kicked the bucket. Which of the flowers do you think is gonna take over?”

“Maybe An Rong. She’s currying favour with the City Lord’s son, if you know what I mean.”

“Damn, the bastard?”

“No, the second proper one. But with how different he looks compared to the City Lord, some say he could also be a—”

“If the Madam hears that, you can say goodbye to that promotion.”

They gossiped like housewives. Plum Garden was the brothel near Yu Family’s River Diner, and was also a riverside establishment.

Yu Han had a bad feeling about this.

“Mind your language. The city’s in sight,” the guard commander said.

Language. Yu Han got it. He spoke English. The NPC dialogue was in Chinese, or some language that resembled it. A memory automatically surfaced. Yellow Tongue, it was called by the locals

“Bird,” Yu Han said as a swallow flew above. First in English. Then in Yellow Tongue. “Bird.” He closed his eyes.

“Cat, dog, horse, man.” He switched back and forth between English and Yellow Tongue. “The sky is blue. The wind is green. Dad, if you were in this world, would you still say humans are born kind? I couldn’t live like you back on Earth. It cost me all my friends, my girlfriend, and your other sons and daughters. I didn’t want that anymore. Being alone sucks ass, but I can’t live like you here either. Not with these kinds of—”

“Here’s your silver,” a guard said, tossing a coin at Bushy Beard, who was sitting on the cart’s bench.

They reached the city an hour after sunrise. It was a bustling settlement enclosed by sturdy stone walls, shadowed by watchtowers at regular intervals. Merchants went in and out. Thatched roofs peered over the wall. That was the outer area where the common folks lived, a maze of narrow, winding alleys that snaked between tightly packed clay and timber houses.

The outer market square thrummed with activity, vendors shouting over the din as they hawked fish, herbs, and vibrant textiles to the early morning crowd. Smoke curled from street food stalls, mingling with the earthy scent of rain on cobblestones and the sharp tang of livestock. They passed by a small temple, hymns eachoing from inside accompanied by the smoke of incense.

Everyone made way for the imposing guards, whispering to each other. The reactions were so lifelike.

“Evil technology,” Yu Han muttered. No way they were NPCs. AI wasn’t this advanced yet. He had really crossed over or something, like in the novels. That green meteor or the shrine had to be the culprit. Or was it the clam necklace?

The cart stopped by Yu Family’s River Diner. There was an ink painting on the sign board alongside the text. A man stirring a pot of seafood in a bamboo grove, mountains in the background.

Yu Han had drawn it himself. Despite their obvious differences, Johan and Yu Han had one thing in common—art. Johan used to draw manga on his iPad in secret when he was a teenager, and Yu Han’s parents had hoped he would be a learned man in the three Chinese scholarly perfections— calligraphy, poetry, and painting.

Yu Han couldn’t do the first two. Too stiff, too dull, too many words on paper. But with painting, he could let his imagination fly. When he painted that signboard, his old man cried. With a wobbly hand, Old Man Yu had managed to ink the name of the diner, scared he would ruin Yu Han’s masterpiece.

But the words ‘Yu Family’ were now covered up.

The guards dragged him inside the house and his bad feeling came true.

“Oh my, young master,” someone said. “To have gone mad from such a tragedy. We can’t leave your family’s legacy in a madman’s hand, can we? City Lord, please, save this restaurant and all the people who work here.” It was the gods-damned head chef, the weaselly-eyed bastard. He kowtowed to a grey-eyed, well-dressed man in tiger robes and a gold pin through his topknot.

They had given Yu Han a clean shirt, and nothing else. “I’m not crazy,” he said. “This is my house—”

“Shut your trap, fatass.” Bushy Beard kicked him in the guts.

A waiter helped him up, a street lad that Elder Brother had once saved from drowning. At Yu Han’s insistence, his family gave him a job, and they had been friends ever since. He was a full head taller than Yu Han, who was only about 5’7”. Long black hair, sharp eyes, a killer face. The only one here who didn’t look at Yu Han like he should have died with his family.

Something warmed in Yu Han’s heart. Not everyone was an asshole. Maybe Dad was right.

“Thanks, Jie Tong.”

“We are a generous lord. Give the poor boy an allowance every month,” the City Lord said.

A wiry man whispered to the City Lord, “Do we bring the boy to the central square? The Lord Cultivator said that all under twenty-one must be gathered for the talent testing.”

“Surely he meant only children of nobility,” the City Lord said, beckoning the guards and the entourage to leave with him.

“Welcome to the real world, chunky.” Bushy Beard smirked. “Keep your head low.”

Less than ten minutes later, the head chef kicked Yu Han out of his own house.

“Take this coin. Eating and eating and eating. Shouldn’t have come back.”

“We gave you a job. My father—”

He slapped Yu Han across the face. “Get out before I kick you out.” The other waiters rolled their sleeves in anticipation. They were all in this together.

“You all…” Yu Han fumed. Never in his two lives had he been stabbed in the back like this. Until now, he had been the one doing the backstabbing.

“Y-Young master, let’s go,” Jie Tong said. “You’ll stay with me tonight. We can… we can think from there.”

“Your sister won’t mind?”

Jie Tong shook his head. “Jie Hua won’t care.” They walked into the slums, past the streets, and reached Old Wang’s Daughter’s Cape by the river. According to legend, she had been the greatest beauty in the city. But she had drowned herself here in grief after her man died in a war. The cape was named in her memory.

The path was narrow, less than ten meters away from the water. The waves crashed on the beach, the sand uneven under Yu Han’s feet. Nearby, leaves rustled on a lone poplar tree. A small shrine dedicated to the river god stood underneath. It was surrounded by weeds. Perhaps nobody had taken care of it in years.

“Do you know how to swim?” Yu Han asked. He didn’t expect Jie Tong to live so close to the river.

No answer came. The other boy halted, and Yu Han nearly stumbled into him.

“Jie Tong?” Yu Han said. Jie Tong was silent as he reached for his belt.

Then he pulled out a dagger.