Chapter Three: A World Beyond Comprehension

September in Huaguo.

The scorching heat of summer showed no sign of abating. Though the season was already drawing to a close, the humid, stifling air gave not the slightest hint of autumn's approach.

In the early morning, a dazzling shaft of sunlight pierced straight through the clear window, landing unabashedly on the sleeping boy within. He was slumped in a wooden chair, hardly a match for the softness of a bed. The occasional furrow in his brow suggested that he would feel the consequences of such a posture once he awoke.

His features were not striking enough to turn heads, but clean-cut and pleasing, with a hint of youthful freshness that a little care might have brought out. Yet all this was thoroughly ruined by his awkward sleeping position. Leaning precariously, his arms dangled at his sides, his body inching gradually downward under the pull of gravity. Fortunately, just as he was about to slip to the floor, he seemed to sense it and woke with a start.

Luo Chen opened his eyes, still heavy with sleep, and immediately felt a numb soreness in his neck. He sat up quickly and kneaded the aching spot with his hand, the motion swiftly banishing what remained of his fatigue.

"I fell asleep here again last night," he muttered.

Realizing how uncomfortable he felt, Luo Chen understood that he must have dozed off in the chair again. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last. He distinctly remembered putting a pillow on the chair, yet now it was nowhere to be seen.

Puzzled, Luo Chen turned to look behind him—and froze.

Where was this? The room's layout and decor were nothing like his own. His gaze swept the space, bewildered. On the desk sat a laptop, but it was pristine and new, a far cry from his battered old one. Books were neatly arranged, and the room itself was spacious and bright—nothing his rented hovel could ever have provided.

"Was I kidnapped?" he wondered.

Before he could think further, a sudden surge of electric pain shot through his mind, breaking off his thoughts and flooding him with a torrent of unfamiliar memories.

Transmigration. Even after absorbing the memories, Luo Chen found it hard to believe. Yet as he looked around the unfamiliar room, combined with the abrupt influx of another’s recollections, he had little choice but to accept it. Changing rooms was one thing, but to have someone else’s entire past forced into his mind—humanity had yet to invent anything so fantastical.

He looked down at his pale, slender hands—these were definitely not his own.

Resigned, Luo Chen accepted that he had indeed crossed over into another world. Panic and aversion quickly followed, the natural reaction to being thrust into a foreign place. It was like being dropped into a strange country; perhaps you could recall a few details, but the loneliness of leaving everything familiar behind was inescapable. And this was not just a foreign land, but an entirely different world.

In his previous life, Luo Chen had not fared well, but he had a family who loved him, and friends who were kind and familiar.

"At least I wasn't an only child," he consoled himself. Though his parents would grieve, he had an older brother who already had a family, so they would not be left alone in sorrow. As for his closest friends, they might mourn him for a time, but there was no need to worry about them excessively.

Since he was here and had no way to return, understanding this new world became his foremost priority.

Though the sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy whose memories he now held was not an expert on worldly affairs, he understood the basics of society and its current state. From the memories, Luo Chen learned that this was still a materialist world; at least, the boy’s recollections contained nothing fantastical or out of place. On the surface, it was nearly identical to Earth, which offered some comfort—at least he would not have to fight for survival every day. He had neither the luck nor the temperament to survive in a world of endless bloodshed.

The world's history, however, diverged dramatically from his own after 1962. Up until that point, events unfolded almost identically, but everything changed thereafter.

On October 15, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted. Unlike his previous world, the Soviet Union did not withdraw after thirteen days. Instead, a military blunder led to the outbreak of World War III.

This war, led by the United States and the Soviet Union, shook the world to its core. The fighting reached both superpowers' homelands, and Europe—still rebuilding after the last devastation—was once again reduced to ruins.

Far to the east, Huaguo was dragged into the conflict as well, but with less to lose. In fact, the war snuffed out a nascent domestic upheaval before it began, granting the country a decade of unimpeded development and sparing it a painful regression.

Eventually, under the threat of nuclear annihilation and a wave of anti-war sentiment, the conflict ended in mutual ruin. The Soviet Union collapsed, and the United States emerged greatly weakened. The world shifted towards true multipolarity and equilibrium, with national priorities moving from military aggression to cultural influence.

In short, this was an era of relative peace and safety. The major powers kept each other in check, and the United States, having suffered so much, was no longer able to dominate the globe. International disputes were few and far between.

What surprised Luo Chen most was that the owner of this body shared his name. From the memories, it seemed this boy was something of a winner in life—or perhaps only after Luo Chen’s arrival.

Orphaned, with a sister and a house.

Such a description might sound callous, given that their parents had only recently died in an accident, leaving the siblings to rely on each other and struggle through their grief. The original Luo Chen had spent a night here mourning before his parents’ photograph, only to fall asleep in the chair—leaving the current Luo Chen to take his place.

Luo Chen picked up the fallen photograph from the floor. It showed a middle-aged couple in their forties holding hands with a boy and a girl in their mid-teens—a harmonious family portrait.

From the memories, he learned that his father was named Luo Qinlin, his mother Fang Yuehua, and the fresh-faced girl in the photo was his younger sister, Luo Tianyi.

Her name and face seemed vaguely familiar to Luo Chen, but he did not dwell on it. With his parents lost in a car accident, he was spared the awkwardness of meeting them and calling strangers "father" and "mother," a prospect that felt unnatural even with the inherited memories. Now he could only hope his sister wouldn't see through the ruse.

In the fading traces of memory, the siblings had been devastated by their parents’ sudden death, taking days to recover. Thankfully, their resilience had seen them through, and they had not collapsed under the blow.

Three months had now passed since the accident. Time dulled even the deepest pain. Over those months, brother and sister had leaned on each other, growing closer than ever—which, ironically, made it even more likely that Luo Chen’s secret would be uncovered.