Final Ending

"Day five... I must go outside."

Lu Yuanming told himself this for the ninth time.

He had transmigrated, to five years in the future, to the year 2028.

This was still Earth, but why say so?

Because looking out of the shabby window of the room, he could see English letters everywhere on the street below. He recognized the words 'New York' appearing frequently, as well as 'South Bronx.'

Indeed, he had traveled to the South Bronx district of New York City, a famously impoverished area.

Lu Yuanming's soul had transmigrated; the original owner of the body he occupied was an Asian. The key point was that Lu Yuanming had not received any memories from this body, so he had no idea what the original owner's name was or about his social connections.

From what Lu Yuanming could gather from exploring the apartment, the body's original owner was not old, likely around the same age as him before transmigration, in his twenties.

The original owner of the body was extremely poor. The apartment he lived in was very run-down, and that was not all. There was hardly any furniture in the room and, despite it being 2028, the owner did not even have a cellphone. Lu Yuanming had confirmed the current time by looking at some billboards outside the window. It was simple – the United States was amidst another presidential election, and those billboards were plastered with information about the candidates. That was how Lu Yuanming knew the time.

If it was just poverty, that would have been one thing. Having the chance to live another life, Lu Yuanming would not have been choosy.

But the crucial issue was that the body's original owner was not just poor, but also an addict!!

The body was terribly frail, with needle marks all over the arms. A little extra movement would make Lu Yuanming start panting. Looking in the mirror, he saw that the original owner had deep-set eyes and a pale complexion—the very image of someone on the brink of death.

Lu Yuanming felt like he was almost ready to commit suicide.

Alright then!

Even with the body being so weak that it seemed close to dying, he endured it. At worst, with sheer willpower, he thought, he could reverse this body's ill habits. After all, he was a soul transmigrant; he himself never had these bad habits, so there would only be the physical withdrawal response, not the addiction of the mind. As long as he remained resolute, it was impossible for him to fall back into those bad habits.

If that were all there was to it, Lu Yuanming could have endured. But the key point was that there was much more!

Ever since he had arrived, there had been a constant stream of people knocking on his door – African Americans, Caucasians, and Asians of various descent. None of them looked like decent folks; most were emaciated addicts, along with some street thugs. The most terrifying part was that among the people looking for him, there were clearly members of organized crime – genuine mobsters.

Why was Lu Yuanming so sure of that?

He swore on the bullet holes that had recently appeared in the door of his room. If these guys weren't gangsters, then what were they?

Back before Lu Yuanming had transmigrated, he was an average college graduate from a normal family in Country Z. He had never dealt with gangsters in his life!

As an ordinary person from Country Z, drugs, firearms, gangs – these things were all too distant from his life, as remote as establishing a government online in the past.

Therefore, Lu Yuanming was so frightened that he dared not step outside. He didn't dare to respond to the people outside his door. After arriving, he had survived on a few pieces of bread he found in the room. When thirsty, he drank tap water. When hungry... there was just no way around it; he had to go hungry. Thus, he had held on for four days, but he could no longer bear it. He had to go out!

"I found a total of six dollars and thirty-five cents. I'm not sure about the current prices, but it should be enough to buy some food. Then... I'll take it one step at a time."

Lu Yuanming had too many thoughts, like going back to Country Z, especially to Chongqing. He wanted to confirm whether he still existed, whether his parents were also there, whether he had transmigrated to the future or to a parallel world. He wanted to confirm all of this.

Before the transmigration, Lu Yuanming was in a vegetative state. He had been in a car accident shortly after turning 23 and finishing university.

After that, he couldn't move at all, not even twitch an eyelid, but miraculously, he remained conscious. He could hear the people around him talking, could feel his body's presence, but he just couldn't move. According to the doctors, his various symptoms indicated he was a vegetable. Whether he could wake up in the future, they dared not guarantee.

Lu Yuanming had spent over half a year in this tormenting agony, confined in darkness until a beam of light appeared before his eyes. Instinctively, he "ran" towards it and found himself transported into the body of this Asian American.

Even more astonishing was that he could travel back every seventy-two hours. However, upon returning, he was still trapped in the vegetative state of his body, which was nearly indistinguishable from death... No, being trapped in darkness, with nothing but the ability to hear the surrounding sounds, was truly more terrifying than death itself!

(There are too many puzzles. Why can I travel through time? And even to the future... For now, I must find a way to keep this body alive, and then return to Chongqing, China, to have a look!)

Lu Yuanming thought of his long-term plans for the future, but for now, he had to face going outside... In a city and area rife with gangs, drug offenders, robbers, and frequent shootings, it was akin to a battlefield for Lu Yuanming!

He leaned against the door, listening intently to the noises outside for several minutes before he cautiously opened the door and slowly made his way out.

Outside the room was a dilapidated apartment hallway with wooden floors that creaked when walked on. The dim lighting in the corridor was provided by a single bulb on each floor, and these were the oldest kinds of yellow bulbs, many of which flickered incessantly as if they were long overdue for repair.

Seeing all this, Lu Yuanming felt a prickling sensation in his heart. This old apartment was just like those settings for spectres and curses you'd find in horror films.

But he was so famished now that he couldn't care about all that. He took advantage of the empty hallway and hurried towards the apartment's ground floor exit.

Just as Lu Yuanming reached the main entrance of the apartment, he felt an inexplicable sense of being watched from behind, that itchy feeling on the back of your neck. He instinctively turned around, only to see a pitch-black corridor. Starting from the fourth floor where he descended, all the lights were mysteriously extinguished, creating a deep darkness, like the entrance to hell, only pierced by the light coming from outside the apartment behind him.

Lu Yuanming shuddered all over. He couldn't see through the darkness, but he felt as if someone, or something, was watching him from its depths...

Driven by a primal survival instinct, Lu Yuanming started to run out of the apartment, his mind blank with unimaginable terror, and he even let out an involuntary scream. But just as he was about to step out into the sunlight, a flowerpot from above crashed down, hitting him squarely on the head.

With a sharp crack, Lu Yuanming's head burst open and blood flowed, tumbling him to the ground. A massive wave of dizziness nearly knocked him unconscious.

But perhaps it was his previous experience of being hit by a car and becoming a vegetative that gave him some resistance to this dizziness, or maybe it was the inexplicable terror behind him driving him. Whatever the reason, he didn't pass out; instead, he crawled bit by bit, dragging himself toward the sunlight just outside the apartment.

From the corner of his eye, Lu Yuanming thought he saw darkness surging from within the apartment. The dark within seemed to liquefy and moved rapidly towards him.

He must not let the darkness touch him!

Lu Yuanming knew instinctively that if the darkness touched him, he could suffer torment a thousand times worse than death, worse than reverting to a vegetative state!

With his last bit of strength, he clawed his way towards the sunlight. Though it wasn't even half a meter away, it seemed an eternity, and he struggled so hard that his fingernails flipped back, bloody and torn. Just when the darkness was less than a meter behind him, his head finally made it into the sunlight. In that instant, he felt warmth spreading from the top of his head down his body, and the chilling, goosebump-inducing cold that had emanated from deep within him disappeared.

(I've come back to life...)

Just as Lu Yuanming finally breathed a sigh of relief, a window opened above the apartment, and a pair of hands covered in warts tossed out an old television set, which came crashing down directly onto his head, exploding on impact. Lu Yuanming's head was completely shattered.

And then... Lu Yuanming watched from a strange perspective as his own smashed body lay there. It was as if he was floating about five or six meters above his corpse, looking down. He felt he should be afraid, horrified, angry, agitated, but he was devoid of any emotion, even thought. Lu Yuanming sensed the "me" that made up his existence dissipating...

The next moment, or rather, in an instant where time seemed irrelevant, Lu Yuanming felt an immense force yank him "downward" forcefully!

Lu Yuanming witnessed a massive spiral wonder, like a tornado or a meteorological typhoon. He saw it all from an elevated perspective, the heart of the gigantic spiral storm being Earth itself. He was being dragged down into the storm, into blackness, chaos, the unknown, falling endlessly downward.

Then Lu Yuanming saw the land, a vast expanse of ash-colored ground stretching into infinity, with objects larger than stars in the distance he couldn't quite make out, and right below him, he was plummeting towards a burning, shattered New York City...

In that instant, Lu Yuanming suddenly had an epiphany.

He was dead.

This was the world after human death!