Dormancy 01

“Did you finish it?” Fang Zhiyi’s first words upon leaving were to ask.

Little Hei’s face was full of resentment. “Finished, my ass! If my clone hadn’t finally managed to get the message out, you’d be done for!”

Fang Zhiyi awkwardly picked his nose.

This time, Little Hei looked dead serious. “The big worlds aren’t like the small ones we’ve been to before... The worst part isn’t that you might die here—after all, I left that thing with you.” He pointed at the vacant-faced Xiaoxiaohei. “The worst part is that almost all big worlds will assimilate you. They accept your existence by default, and they also default to treating you as belonging to that world. The deeper you get entangled, the higher the assimilation rate, until you can’t extricate yourself.”

Little Hei paused. “That’s why transmigrators have so-called systems around them. They don’t exist just to make things convenient for the transmigrator; they’re also meant to remind the transmigrator of who they really are.”

“That world where you were a ghost nearly did you in. And then you turned around and jumped right into another one. Do you have any idea that if you had succeeded in becoming an immortal, even if I dragged you out by force, you would have ended up a lunatic?”

Fang Zhiyi gave an uneasy laugh. “Well… that thing didn’t explain it clearly.”

“It was just a fragment I tore off from myself in a hurry,” Little Hei said. “Being able to offer you protection is already a lot.”

“Bro, originally you were just supposed to coast along and then wait. But who knew you couldn’t stand still…”

Fang Zhiyi thought for a moment. “I’m not really sure either. I just always felt like I had to do it.” He suddenly caught on. “Is that what they call the will of the big world?”

Little Hei replied, “Yes. Big worlds don’t reject transmigrators—they devour them. What makes them scarier than small worlds is that they make you feel like you want to do the thing.”

Seeing that Little Hei was about to ramble on, Fang Zhiyi changed the subject. “By the way, how’s it going on your end?”

As soon as this was brought up, Little Hei became even more depressed. “What do you think? I’ve spread my clones everywhere, and you just hide somewhere nice and easy. That thing is still breathing down my neck! There was even one moment when I crossed five worlds in a row—five!”

Fang Zhiyi paused. “Actually… you don’t have to work so hard.”

Little Hei fell silent.

After a moment.

“Don’t think I’m doing this for you. That thing’s target was always me. In its eyes, you’re just an ant. I’m helping myself.”

Fang Zhiyi said nothing.

“But the plan is still going smoothly… Even if the success rate isn’t high, it’s not like there’s no chance to turn things around.”

“Oh, I ran into some lunatic. He showed me my world being destroyed…” Fang Zhiyi suddenly said.

Little Hei’s eyes shifted toward Fang Zhiyi. After a long while: “That was just an illusion.”

Fang Zhiyi nodded. “I know.”

“Can you give me a smarter clone? This one is way too noisy.” Fang Zhiyi made another request.

Little Hei rolled his eyes at him—he rolled his eyes in almost exactly the same way Fang Zhiyi did. “Don’t be so picky.” Even as he said that, his tentacles were already reaching into Xiaoxiaohei’s body.

Fang Zhiyi was about to say something else, when Little Hei’s body suddenly tensed up. “That sticky bastard’s on my tail again! Don’t do anything stupid!”

His tentacles, which had been coiled around Fang Zhiyi, suddenly released, and then Fang Zhiyi felt a massive force hit him, sending him flying.

“Can’t you be a little gentler?”

Little Hei didn’t answer. His originally swollen body shrank down several times and then gradually disappeared on the spot. Fang Zhiyi hadn’t even seen what was chasing them before he was sucked into a passage.

An ordinary world. Everything was ordinary.

At that moment, Fang Zhiyi was sitting in a chair, holding a phone in his hand. He let out a long breath. “Finally, one normal one.”

The words had barely left his mouth when the door in front of him was pushed open.

A man with a cigarette dangling from his lips walked in.

“Hey, Fang, how do you want to settle this? Your brat stole some sausages.”

In his hand, he held a thin, frail girl like she was a chick, her face full of fear.

Fang Zhiyi looked behind him and saw two boys with their heads lowered, following.

Before he could say anything, Xiaoxiaohei proactively sent him the story.

It had managed to find someone in this world with the exact same name as Fang Zhiyi.

But this original owner was the scum of scoundrels. Fang Zhiyi had two older brothers: the eldest ran some small business on the side and was decently well-off, the second was single and spent his days watching over the fish pond he contracted, living a pretty steady life. And Fang Zhiyi was the third son, unemployed. Because of this, his parents had given him the family house—the only one they had—on the condition that he take care of them in their old age.

Fang Zhiyi had a daughter with his first wife. Her name was Fang Xiaolian. However, Fang Xiaolian’s mother couldn’t stand Fang Zhiyi’s drinking, domestic violence, and poverty, so she abandoned her daughter and ran off.

Because of this, Fang Zhiyi would lose his temper every time he saw Fang Xiaolian. If it hadn’t been for her grandparents protecting her, she probably wouldn’t have lived this long.

Two years later, Fang Zhiyi remarried. The woman he married was named Hu Xiulian, and she brought two sons with her. These two boys were older than Fang Xiaolian, so naturally they became her older brothers. Fang Zhiyi treated these two non-biological children very well, and the two boys quickly caught on. They bullied Fang Xiaolian openly and secretly, and Fang Zhiyi didn’t care.

Under Hu Xiulian’s instigation, he also started to feel it was unfair. Why should the two oldest brothers not have to support their parents? One night, drunk, he went to look for his older brothers and caused a scene. Those two really didn’t want to take care of the old folks and didn’t take Fang Zhiyi seriously at all. In a rage, Fang Zhiyi took it out on the two elders.

Hu Xiulian also hated Fang Zhiyi’s parents. She would subtly needle them, sometimes not giving them clothes to wear, sometimes not giving them food to eat. Over time, she pushed Fang Zhiyi’s mother to her death. After his mother died, Fang Zhiyi wasn’t the least bit sad. Instead, he used the funeral to collect a lot of gift money, making him happy as could be.

When Fang’s father saw how heartless his son was, grief-stricken, he fell ill and, less than a month after his wife’s death, passed away as well.

Fang Zhiyi just felt like he had thrown off two burdens.

He thought life would get better after that, but then something happened. Hu Xiulian’s eldest son got into a fight over a girlfriend with some thugs from town and ended up losing badly. That same night, he ambushed the gang leader. The fight got out of hand, and he seriously injured the leader. When he came home and talked about it, Hu Xiulian came up with a brilliant idea: make Fang Xiaolian take the blame.

“She’s young. Nothing serious will happen to her,” Hu Xiulian said. “Besides, she’s just a waste of space, a girl. Nothing but trouble.”

Fang Zhiyi agreed without hesitation. He coaxed and threatened Fang Xiaolian into taking responsibility for the incident.