For more than twenty years of his life, Yu Sheng had always believed that he was just an ordinary person, living an ordinary life and doing ordinary things. In the foreseeable future, this ordinariness was destined to continue—until his life ended in the same ordinary way.

Yes, that's what he had always thought—but those days now seemed like they were from a long time ago.

The sky was dark, and the thick, heavy clouds gradually spread from the northeast like cotton batting, covering the entire city. The air was saturated with moisture, brewing an imminent rainfall that might begin in a matter of minutes.

Carrying vegetables and condiments he had just bought from the supermarket, Yu Sheng hurried through the streets among other pedestrians, making his way home under the increasingly dim sky.

As he passed by a store, he subconsciously stopped, staring at the shop sign for several seconds before shifting his gaze and continuing to walk hurriedly.

The number of pedestrians on the street dwindled, and the vast city seemed to be quieting down in the prelude to rain. Yu Sheng lifted his gaze to the commercial street ahead, illuminated by the lights from the ground-floor shops. Although the scenery was familiar, an inexplicable sense of unfamiliarity began to rise within him.

Yes, unfamiliarity—despite having lived in this city for over twenty years, this enormous, seemingly boundless "Border Town" now felt like a foreign place to him.

Because the city was no longer the "real" version he remembered. While some parts were similar, many others were off—he recalled the city he grew up in was not this large. He remembered that the building in the city center should have been called Central Source Tower, not the current "Director's Tower." He remembered that the store at the intersection of Siyuan(四元) Street had originally been just a wall, and his original home wasn't that massive, crumbling old house deep in the old district.

More importantly, the city he remembered didn't have so many... out of place happenings. These included, but were not limited to, old-fashioned phone booths randomly appearing at street corners, steam trains passing over rooftops in the middle of the night, classrooms that echoed with out loud reading but were always empty, and...

In the late evening, just before it started to rain, there stood a tall, thin, black shadow under the streetlamp, as slender and towering as a utility pole.

Yu Sheng raised his head, staring intensely at the streetlamp not far away. A figure, as thin as a reed, stood stiffly beneath it, its body towering at three or four meters tall. At the top was a black face, featureless and impossible to discern. That shadow seemed to notice him too, but it simply stood there, rigid, locking eyes with Yu Sheng from a distance.

Pedestrians hurried past, walking right beneath that tall, thin shadow, as if no one else noticed this strange figure standing beside the streetlamp. Some even walked straight through it without any reaction or consequence. Only Yu Sheng could see it.

So, after a few seconds of this meaningless standoff, Yu Sheng shifted his gaze, suppressing his racing heartbeat. He quickly took another path, walking away at a hurried pace.

Yu Sheng was never sure whether it was the city that had suddenly changed, or if something had changed within himself. But he clearly remembered that the normal, ordinary life he knew had drifted away from him one morning two months ago—

He remembered that bright, sunny morning when he opened the front door of his home, intending to go to the small corner store to buy a few oranges.

That was the last time he ever opened “his own front door.” After that, he never saw the home he remembered again.

He had analyzed it before. Perhaps this was some sort of “crossing over”—when he stepped through his front door, he had entered a parallel world that resembled his hometown but wasn’t quite right. He could no longer find the door that led back to his original world because the passage of time and space collapsed the moment he crossed that threshold.

Another possibility was that something within himself had undergone a “mutation.” When he stepped out the door, or perhaps at some point afterward, due to some unknown influence, he had become “different from ordinary people.” As a result, his eyes began to see things hidden beneath the surface of reality. He was still living in the place he knew, but he could no longer perceive the familiar things he once knew so well...

But in the end, none of these analyses mattered.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

No matter what, he could no longer return to the "ordinary and normal world" of his memories. This strange and vast city was like an endless forest, layer upon layer trapping a bewildered drifter within its eerie, intertwined branches and vines. The short span of two months had not been enough for Yu Sheng to uncover the secrets of this "forest."

In fact, he had just barely managed to adapt to his familiar yet foreign "new home," struggling to restore some semblance of "daily life."

In this version of the Border Town, which felt entirely out of sync with his memories, he was still "Yu Sheng." He had valid identification, a legitimate address, some savings, and a somewhat unreliable means of livelihood. If this really was some kind of "crossing over," at least he didn't have to face the three major problems most transmigrators encountered: "Who am I? Where am I? And where do I go to get an ID?"

Considering this was a well-ordered modern metropolis, those problems would be particularly critical. After all, modern societies have sophisticated population management systems, and it wouldn't be easy for a traveler to escape the status of being undocumented in a city like this.

Of course, thinking about it from another perspective, landing in a chaotic old society or a lawless otherworld might come with different problems—for instance, being mistaken for a spy from an enemy country and getting executed, being seen as an invading alien and getting executed, being regarded as an evil creature emerging from underground and getting executed, or being chopped up and cooked as temporary rations by goblins in a cave...

Yu Sheng’s mind wandered with these wild, random thoughts as he passed through an old alley beside the commercial street, heading home via a different route.

The sky grew darker, and it seemed that as the gloom deepened, those "off" things began to increase.

At the edges of Yu Sheng's vision, shaky, indistinct figures reflected on the weathered, crumbling walls of nearby buildings. A nimble cat leaped from the shadows on the wall, effortlessly climbing onto a beam of light shining from an unknown source. It meowed twice in Yu Sheng's direction before dissolving with the falling rain, splashing into puddles on the ground.

The rain started earlier than expected.

The wind grew colder, swirling tangibly as it wormed its way into the gaps in his clothes.

Yu Sheng muttered under his breath, raising the grocery bags over his head, and quickened his pace.

If not for avoiding the black shadow under the streetlamp, he could have taken the main road and gotten home much faster—though that house was also somewhat strange and eerie, at least it was a place that could shelter him from the rain.

Thinking of the shadow under the streetlamp, Yu Sheng felt a twinge of regret.

From experience, he knew that most of the strange things he saw were generally harmless. As long as he didn’t provoke them, they would ignore him just like everyone else ignored them. But even knowing this, Yu Sheng had always instinctively avoided anything that seemed particularly ominous. However, it now seemed that taking the detour today had not been a good idea.

It was getting colder.

For a simple rain, this level of cold was abnormal.

Yu Sheng noticed that his breath was slowly turning into frozen mist, and the raindrops falling from the sky felt like sharp nails, hard and icy, painfully hitting his skin.

The ground, too, was gradually turning into a smooth, reflective mirror beneath the freezing rain.

A wave of intense unease suddenly jolted Yu Sheng awake. He realized something was wrong—very wrong. Even in this strange city, this was the first time he had encountered anything like this.

Unlike the usual “shadows” that were, at worst, unpleasant to look at, this time he sensed... malice.

The rain had malice.

He jerked his head up, only to realize that the small path, which had moments ago still had a few passersby, was now completely empty. The narrow alleyway was deserted, leaving only him.

There wasn’t a single person in sight. The distant streetlights had grown hazy and blurred, and the intersection at the edge of his vision seemed to shift, sometimes close, sometimes far, as though something was obstructing it. All around him were cold, looming buildings and the relentless, icy rain.

It felt as though the entire world was raining just for him.

Yu Sheng took a sharp breath and sprinted toward the nearest building, where an old iron door stood. It looked like the back door of some ground-floor shop—whatever it was, he needed to find someone to help him, and fast.

The raindrops had already begun to feel like blades, and the temperature had dropped to the point where every breath sent a sharp, stabbing pain through his lungs.

In just a few steps, Yu Sheng reached the door and slammed his hand against it. "Is anyone—"

He froze, eyes wide, his voice cut off.

His hand had hit the wall. The door was painted on the wall.

The nearby windows were also painted.

A faint rustling sound came from nearby.

Yu Sheng slowly turned his head toward the source of the noise.

Through the blade-like falling rain, something strange began to rise from the mirror-like surface of the water. It gained a solid form from the pitch-black shadows, staring coldly at Yu Sheng.

It was a frog. A frog nearly a meter tall, its head covered with countless eyes, its body reflecting the freezing rain pouring from the sky.

The frog opened its mouth, and a sharp tongue shot straight towards Yu Sheng’s heart like a spear.

“Holy sh—!”

Yu Sheng's choice of words was elegant, his reflexes swift. Before he could finish his exclamation, his body had already reacted instinctively—he leaped to the side, one hand pulling out the collapsible baton he usually carried for self-defense. With a quick step and twist of his waist, he lunged forward...

But the frog’s tongue sharply changed direction midair, piercing through Yu Sheng’s back, directly into the position of his heart.

Yu Sheng: “...?”

He blinked, staring at the frog’s tongue that protruded from his chest, with his rapidly beating heart impaled on its tip.

“...You son of a... that’s my heart...”

He thought for a moment and cursed silently in his mind.

Then he died.