Chapter 1: Nen Ability
Pain!
So painful!
Head… my heart hurts so much!
Orson gradually awoke from unconsciousness. He felt as if he were submerged in a weightless mass of water. It should have been a warm and comfortable sensation, yet at this moment, his heart was pounding wildly, as if about to explode. Orson numbly realized that strange auras, feeling scalding like boiling water and then bone-chillingly cold, seemed to be trying to drill into the deepest part of his heart…
Stop drilling! My heart is really going to burst…
After an unknown amount of time, Orson suddenly opened his eyes. Upon waking as if from a dream, there was a sense of disillusionment. Immediately followed by the feeling of being bound by something and suffocated by layers of heavy objects… He struggled with all his might. Dim light filtered down through the gaps in the heavy objects. Orson thrashed more violently, pushing all the heavy things off him. Finally, he was no longer bound, no longer forced to maintain an awkward posture. Although exhausted, he could lie comfortably on his back with limbs spread out.
The sunset glow filled the sky. Messy, tall weeds filled Orson's vision. Belatedly, he wondered when and how he had ended up lying in such a desolate wilderness.
If he remembered correctly, he had been at home due to the pandemic, bored to death, had just stir-fried a bowl of rice, and was about to find something to watch to kill time… He truly hadn't bothered anyone, a law-abiding citizen. How could he just close his eyes and open them to find himself lying here?
Orson let out a long, frustrated sigh. As he took another deep breath, his expression slowly changed—why was there such a strong smell of blood?
He sat up abruptly but slipped, his limbs weak and sore, causing him to fall forward onto his stomach.
The face of a male corpse in a suit and leather shoes appeared before him. The man's unfocused, dilated pupils met his gaze.
Orson's scalp tingled instantly, and a chill shot up his spine to the top of his head.
He looked around. As far as he could see, among the lush, towering weeds, corpses were faintly visible everywhere. And he had just been buried under a pile of dead bodies! Around these suited corpses, shell casings, handguns, and similar items were scattered… A gang war? Impossible! In this day and age, what kind of gangsters would dare to be so brazen?
Orson looked down again. Beneath the jumble of corpses, there was also a female body, dressed in an ordinary gray windbreaker, her eyes half-open as if she couldn't rest in peace. He wasn't a medical examiner, so he couldn't tell how long the woman and the other suited men had been dead, but he could see that the dead woman's stiff hand was tightly clutching a disheveled, empty swaddling cloth…
Orson's breathing quickened. He looked at his own palm in disbelief, his gaze traveling upwards…
Like his palm, his arms and torso had become incredibly slender and small. His skin was so tender it didn't look like that of a young man approaching thirty; at most, he looked three or four years old!
I've transmigrated?
And I just crawled out of this swaddling cloth from under the corpses?
Orson's mind was in turmoil. He just wanted to escape this pile of corpses quickly. He used his hands and feet, slipped several times, his legs weak, pushing aside the tall, messy grass, trying to crawl out.
As he parted the messy grass again, he inadvertently glimpsed a high slope not far away. On top of the slope, a beast stood silhouetted against the setting sun, its outline indistinct, but its eyes emitted a strange light, meeting his gaze from afar.
Orson felt as if a basin of ice water had been poured over his head, waking him up completely.
Screwed!
Despair filled Orson's heart. He quietly let the tall grass fall back into place and slumped weakly to the ground, hoping the beast on the slope hadn't actually seen him…
Then Orson turned his head and saw a gray wolf's tail emerging from the grass, less than half a meter from his face.
Orson held his breath and looked along the tail, his heart sinking bit by bit. He saw a wild wolf, weighing at least two hundred jin (approximately 100 kg or 220 lbs), chewing on another corpse in a black suit in the grass, making sounds of munching flesh and bones… Orson could hardly believe it. Had he been deaf before? How could he not have heard this?
Orson carefully moved backward, staring intently at the back of the feeding wolf.
Suddenly, the wolf stopped moving. Orson was too scared to move either.
The wolf lifted its hind leg to scratch its neck, then lowered its head and continued tearing at the flesh. Orson suppressed his breathing and gently moved back again… Then, he heard the sound he least wanted to hear: to his left and right, the grass rustled as it was parted. Soon after, two blood-mouthed wild wolves emerged, one on each side, staring at Orson with green glints in their eyes.
Could it get any unluckier?
The wolf that had been engrossed in eating earlier had also stopped at some point. It turned its head, licked its sharp teeth, and seemed to be sneering at Orson.
…Apparently, it could!
Orson inexplicably understood. These three wild hunters of nature had known about his living presence all along!
Damn it, these three wretched dogs! Were they trying to toy with their targeted prey, or did they want to save this tender meat of mine for last?
The three wild wolves formed a pincer encirclement, pushing aside the weeds, walking on all fours, letting out threatening low growls from their mouths as they slowly paced towards Orson.
Orson kept retreating until he soon bumped into the initial pile of corpses. There was no way out.
Gazing at the three ferocious, man-eating wolves drawing ever closer, in that instant when the sense of mortal danger enveloped his heart, Orson felt his brain cells dying and regenerating at an unprecedented rate. He racked his brains, desperate to find a way to survive, but no matter how wild his ideas, they all seemed impractical. He hadn't even figured out if he had truly transmigrated, and now he was about to die in the wolves' bellies again, and be shared among them at that…
A soft strand of hair, characteristic of a young child, drifted down in Orson's peripheral vision.
Since when, Orson didn't know, but he gradually calmed down. Leaning his back against a pile of rubble, he sat with his legs spread, staring intently at the three wolves that had closed in. The bits of flesh between their teeth, the nauseating smell of blood, all were clearly perceptible…
The soft strand of hair was hard to notice. It moved without any wind, slowly drifting towards the wolf in the middle.
On a level invisible to the naked eye, a mass of white life energy enveloped the strand of hair, gradually bending it into the shape of a pentagram. Finally, it silently landed inside the ear of the middle wolf.
A white light flashed fleetingly, and the hair strand quietly dispersed and fell away, but a rose-gold pentagram pattern remained on the skin inside the wolf's ear.
Orson looked at "himself" in shock!
He also stared in shock at the middle wolf opposite him. The wolf's eyes showed a human-like shock—this is also "myself"?!
I've possessed this wolf's body?
A series of doubts flashed through his mind like an electric current, but Orson knew there was no time. He immediately controlled the middle wolf's body, unhesitatingly ramming the wolf on the left, then let out a low growl and pounced on the wolf on the right—a sneak attack! Orson let out an "Awooo!" and bit down hard on the struggling wolf's throat. Blood gushed into his mouth.
Orson couldn't afford any psychological hang-ups, because the other wolf that had been knocked away was already counter-attacking from behind. A paw struck the back of the wolf Orson controlled, a bloody wound soaking its fur. Orson winced; this pain felt too real!
Orson, with the throat of the wolf under him in his jaws, jerked his head. Accompanied by splattering blood drops, he turned to fight the wolf that had sneak-attacked him from behind.
But Orson, a novice wolf, was ultimately no match for a professional in a brawl. Moreover, he was completely unfamiliar with how four-legged beasts moved. The enemy wolf howled loudly while grappling, biting, and pouncing at Orson, gradually gaining the upper hand… Meanwhile, Orson's original body, sitting with legs spread, watched with anxiety. If this wolf lost the fight, his own tender flesh, all few dozen pounds of it, would be the next to be torn apart!
One wolf, its throat bitten through, gradually stopped struggling, while the other two wolves continued to fight. Orson took a deep breath of the air, thick with the smell of blood, endured the sharp pain in his heart, and forced himself to calm down. Even if he still didn't understand the real situation, he absolutely couldn't make a mistake now…
If he remembered correctly, before he controlled this wolf, successfully killed one wolf, and engaged the other, he felt… as if his whole body was immersed in invisible water, and then this water enveloped one of his hairs, and then… yes, it bent into the shape of a pentagram…
As Orson was thinking this, a drop of dark red blood that had gotten on him floated off his skin, slowly hovering and swaying before his eyes. When Orson's thoughts wavered, this blood strand almost fell to the ground. Orson quickly held his breath and focused, controlling the blood strand to fly towards the two wolves rolling and fighting on the ground. In mid-air, under the control of a white light, the blood strand gradually folded into the shape of a pentagram.
As the pentagram bloodline drew closer, the wolf controlled by Orson, which had been intentionally defending and conserving energy, disregarded the dozen bloody wounds on its body, let out a mighty howl, and unleashed all the strength within its wolf body, managing to pin its opponent to the ground. The enemy wolf struggled desperately, trying hard not to expose its soft belly. The Orson-controlled wolf used its body to hold it down, one front paw pinning the enemy wolf's head, the other using its claws like a tack, seizing an opportunity to pull out the opponent's tongue. At the same time, the thin pentagram bloodline controlled by Orson's original body, guided by the white light, landed precisely on the pulled-out tongue of the wolf.
A white light flashed. Orson's original body suddenly saw stars and felt limp as if from exhaustion.
The wolf Orson's pupils constricted. The pentagram bloodline quickly dispersed on the enemy wolf's tongue, failing to leave the anticipated rose-gold pentagram pattern—it failed!
Orson's original body gritted its teeth. This strange ability, it seemed, consumed "mana" only at the moment of activation! And with his own thin arms and legs, for his "blue bar" (energy reserves) to withstand the consumption and successfully control one wolf was already incredibly lucky; he really didn't have the stamina to control a second wolf… As he thought this, the enemy wolf struggled desperately. Orson didn't have time to think further, his eyes also turned red, and he controlled his wolf to bite down hard. Sharp teeth pierced the enemy wolf's throat. Blood gushed out as it twitched.
It seemed the strategy of defending and counter-attacking had been correct… The enemy wolf's struggles under the sharp teeth and claws weakened. Orson secretly sighed in relief. At least he had managed to control one wolf for his use. Otherwise, with his small post-transmigration arms and legs, forget about defending and counter-attacking, he would have simply been a puzzle for the medical examiner—they wouldn't even be able to piece the body together!
Soon, this wolf also stopped struggling. Orson again felt a strange aura, both cold and hot, drill into his heart. His heart twitched, and having just managed to stand up, he fell backward onto his bottom.
A congenital heart disease? Orson's face was pale. Or perhaps… He clutched his chest, looking at the wolf corpse opposite him, mangled and motionless. Was that strange aura entering his heart because of this wolf's death?
Recalling the intense heart pain before he woke up, which he had thought was a dream, Orson looked around at the jumbled corpses hidden by the tall weeds and suddenly understood the reason.
He was stunned for a moment, then slowly let out a breath of turbid air.
Regardless, I survived!
Orson spat out a mouthful of wolf fur and stepped on the wolf corpse to declare victory. But suddenly, his expression changed drastically because his original body, having fallen back into the pile of corpses, had inadvertently seen the swaddling cloth again, which the woman in the gray windbreaker hadn't let go of even in death… Orson had assumed this woman was probably his birth mother after transmigration or some similar role, and that he had most likely been resurrected from this swaddling cloth and crawled out…
However, this small swaddling cloth was clearly for a newborn baby.
And his current body, though thin and small, was clearly the physique of a child at least three or four years old!
The wolf controlled by Orson paced over to Orson's side, turned its head, and from an observer's perspective, looked at his own pale, new appearance—a little fellow who had just learned to walk, even shorter than this adult wolf. It then looked at the swaddling cloth that the long-dead woman still wouldn't release… The original baby in this swaddling cloth, who was it, and where had it crawled off to?
"Awooo————"
The howls of more and more wild wolves rose and fell from all around.
End
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