Volume One, Chapter Seven: Rebirth and Transmigration

Li Yan felt a sudden blur before his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was greeted by a soft white light.

“Who are you? Where is this?” He quickly recalled how two men had just pulled him through a portal.

Instantly, he became highly alert, bending slightly and cautiously surveying his surroundings.

Once his eyes adjusted, he realized he was in a white room.

The two men who had brought him here sat ahead, their black suits starkly contrasting with the pristine whiteness around them.

They both wore amused smiles as they looked at Li Yan.

“Li Yan, you must be 31 years old now, right? How does it feel to be reborn?” one middle-aged man asked with a playful glint in his eyes.

At his words, surprise flickered across Li Yan’s face, barely concealed.

Strictly speaking, he was indeed 31 this year.

How did this man know he had been reborn?

A flood of speculations raced through his mind.

None, however, could reasonably explain why these two men had appeared.

Though unsettled, he feigned calm and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where is this? Let me go immediately, or I’ll call the police.”

The middle-aged man chuckled softly. “Interesting. Your reaction is swift when faced with trouble.”

“Who are you exactly? Where is this place? Why have you brought me here?” Li Yan asked, suspicion creeping in.

Could these be allies of Chen Xiangyang?

So soon, they had found him.

That shouldn’t be possible—how did they know he was a reborn?

“Stop guessing. You are indeed a reborn,” the man said, nodding emphatically.

Suddenly, an image appeared before Li Yan.

It showed him standing on a rooftop, smoking, his face etched with worry and confusion.

Wasn’t this the version of himself from just a few hours ago, before rebirth?

What was happening?

Then, the scene began to rewind.

It replayed the events of his previous life, as if viewed from a godlike perspective, reviewing a short but thoroughly failed existence.

Soon, Li Yan had witnessed the entirety of his past life’s brief and dismal course.

At that moment, he knew hiding the truth was pointless.

Instead, his curiosity turned to the two men before him.

“Who exactly are you? I assume you’re not ordinary people,” he said, steadying himself and looking them squarely in the eye. This was the real him.

The middle-aged man nodded. “Yes, your composure is commendable. You guessed right—we are far from ordinary.”

---

Li Yan remained silent, waiting for the man to continue.

“Glad to meet you, Li Yan. I am Yue Chengze, affiliated with the Temporal Order Division, Ninth Squad,” the middle-aged man said as he rose and approached slowly.

“Oh, and this is Wu Xu, my partner. He’s a man of few words—you can think of him as mute,” Yue added.

Wu Xu stood aside, curling his lips in mild displeasure at the introduction but simply nodded to Li Yan without speaking.

Li Yan glanced first at Yue Chengze, then at the younger Wu Xu.

His guard remained up as he asked, “Temporal Order Division, Ninth Squad? I don’t believe we know each other. Why have you brought me here?”

He racked his mind, recalling no such department within the Chinese government.

Yue Chengze seemed unsurprised by Li Yan’s suspicion.

“You are a reborn, correct?” he said.

At this point, hiding was futile.

Li Yan nodded, admitting he was indeed a reborn.

“So what do you want from me?”

“First, take a look at this. Once you’ve seen it, I’ll explain everything in detail.”

In the spotless room, a shifting image appeared.

Clusters of light shimmered with myriad colors—each containing swirling nebulae.

These orbs were tethered by a line, rolling ever forward.

Suddenly, enormous eyes emerged within the calm fabric of spacetime—eyes like black holes, unfathomably deep, drawing one helplessly into their abyss.

Around these enormous eyes swarmed countless monstrous creatures.

The eyes snapped wide open, instantly engulfed in a blood-red hue that even bathed the glowing orbs in crimson.

Seemingly receiving a command, the creatures swarmed the nearest orb, ravenously devouring it.

The scene shifted again.

Li Yan saw himself on the rooftop, locked in gaze with the monstrous eyes.

Then the orb began to collapse; countless nebulae were swallowed by the creatures, and the world he called home began to disintegrate rapidly.

The image abruptly ended.

Li Yan sat silent for a long time after watching.

He felt infinitesimal before those terrifying eyes—small as dust.

Yue Chengze smiled faintly. “Finished watching? Do you feel small now?”

Li Yan nodded in affirmation.

“Simply put, we maintain the order of time’s natural evolution across countless parallel worlds. You should understand ‘parallel worlds,’ right? Those orbs you saw are parallel worlds unfolding along different timelines. The world being consumed by those monsters was the one you lived in.”

Parallel worlds? Li Yan found the concept easy enough to grasp, though the truth that his former world was devoured by those horrors was hard to accept.

Yue Chengze continued, “Strictly speaking, you didn’t just ‘reborn.’ It’s more like a crossing over combined with rebirth. The world you lived in has collapsed, and so has its timeline.”

Li Yan half-understood but didn’t interrupt.

---

“Our Temporal Order Division exists to uphold the natural evolution of timelines across these innumerable parallel worlds. The timeline of the world you lived in was quite similar to this one’s. That’s why, after your original world’s timeline collapsed, beings like you—reborns—began to appear.”

“Does that make sense?” Yue Chengze asked.

Li Yan ran a hand through his hair and nodded slightly. “I think I get it, roughly.”

“Good. Now, based on what you’ve seen, I’ll explain why we found you.”

“It all starts in your time—in 2012. You might have heard of the Maya prophecy that year predicted the end of the world, right? That prophecy is real—but only for some parallel worlds. Recently, a tremendously powerful entity, whom we call the Demon Eye, has devoured many parallel worlds sharing this timeframe, causing widespread temporal chaos.”

Noticing Li Yan’s furrowed brow, Yue paused deliberately, allowing him time to absorb the information.

After a moment, Li Yan said, “Go on.”

Yue resumed, “These parallel worlds each flow at different paces—some faster, some slower. The collapse of certain worlds has caused time lines to fracture and collapse, leading to reborns and travelers like yourself.”

Li Yan blamed his poor physics knowledge but felt he was beginning to understand. After all, he had read many novels about rebirth and time travel; now, that knowledge was proving useful.

Seeing this, Yue chuckled again. “To put it simply, next door is a prison for reborns like you. The second cell on the left holds Chen Hansheng—he was reborn from 2019. Had we not detected an anomaly in his world’s timeline, he might have slipped through.”

“Really?” Li Yan asked, surprised.

“Of course. If you want, I can arrange for you to be locked up next to him. You’d stay until the timelines stabilize, but that could be years... or tens of thousands of years from now.”

Li Yan shook his head. “Uh... no thanks. Is there any way I can avoid imprisonment?”

Inwardly, he was fuming. Chen Hansheng, after all, had been causing chaos since his rebirth—breaking hearts and stirring trouble. Meanwhile, Li Yan had barely been reborn a day and was already facing confinement. It was a crushing injustice.

Yue Chengze gave him a meaningful glance. “You’re special compared to them. You don’t have to be locked up.”

“Special?” Li Yan asked, puzzled.

Yue nodded. “For reasons unknown, you bear four layers of temporal markers—essentially four nodes from different parallel worlds within you. After we eliminate the Demon Eye, these nodes will be needed to reconstruct the timelines.”

“I see,” Li Yan said, only partially grasping.

“Or you could say you’re a fusion of four versions of yourself from parallel worlds, carrying the combined strength of all four. Cases like yours are extremely rare—keeping you around is useful.”

“We found you because of what you did tonight. A recent high school graduate daring to capture a wanted criminal alone is unusual. Besides, do you think an ordinary person could kick a nearly 1.8-meter tall, hundred-kilogram man flying over ten meters? That’s the power of your fourfold self.”

Hearing this, Li Yan finally understood.

He had thought the strength he displayed tonight was a burst of adrenaline when he shattered Chen Xiangyang’s shoulder blade with one blow and kicked him far away.

He recalled a movie starring Jet Li that spoke of countless parallel universes.

By eliminating versions of oneself in other worlds, one could absorb their power.

No wonder.

“Alright then, what do you want me to do?” Li Yan asked directly, wanting to know the purpose behind their summoning.

Since they weren’t imprisoning him, it meant they had a task in mind.