The sterile hum of quantum processors filled the underground laboratory as Dr. Dao Qitian adjusted his neural interface for the thousandth time that week.
His fingers, stained with chemical residue and scarred from countless experiments, moved with practiced precision across holographic displays showing impossible equations.
At twenty-five, he'd already revolutionized three fields of science—quantum mechanics, nano-engineering, and consciousness mapping—but tonight felt different. Tonight, something was calling to him from the ancient artifact sitting on his desk.
The book had no cover, no title, just weathered pages bound in what appeared to be some kind of organic material.
He'd discovered it three months ago during an archaeological expedition in a remote Chinese village, buried beneath layers of sediment that carbon dating suggested were impossibly old.
The villagers had been eager to get rid of it, claiming it brought nightmares to anyone who tried to read it.
'Superstitious nonsense,' Qitian had thought at the time. Now, surrounded by walls of data predicting humanity's extinction in less than five years, he wasn't so sure.
The cosmic radiation readings were getting worse. The calculations didn't lie—their universe was collapsing, reality itself unraveling at the quantum level.
Every brilliant mind on Earth had reached the same terrifying conclusion: there was no escape, no solution, no hope.
Qitian rubbed his bloodshot eyes and reached for the mysterious book again. His hand trembled slightly—exhaustion, he told himself, though deep down he knew it was something else. Fear, maybe. Or anticipation.
The paper felt rough under his fingertips, almost alive. As he turned to a page covered in symbols that seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them, the edge caught his thumb.
"Damn it," he hissed, watching a drop of crimson blood well up from the cut. It was such a small wound, barely worth noticing, but as the blood dropped onto the open page, everything changed.
The symbols began to glow with an ethereal light that had nothing to do with science as he understood it. The book grew warm in his hands, then hot, then blazing with energy that should have burned him but instead felt like coming home.
Visions flooded his mind—vast realms where mortals could shatter mountains with their bare hands, where cultivation of spiritual energy could grant true immortality, where death was merely another boundary to transcend.
The Book of Stories, as he somehow knew it was called, showed him glimpses of a universe where the laws of physics bent to human will.
'This is impossible,' his rational mind insisted, even as his heart raced with possibility. 'Hallucinations brought on by stress and sleep deprivation.'
But the images kept coming. Floating islands suspended in star-filled skies. Warriors who could split the heavens with a single sword strike. Ancient sects preserving knowledge that made his quantum theories look like children's drawings.
For weeks after that first contact, Qitian threw himself into research with manic intensity. He cross-referenced the book's contents with every scientific principle he knew, looking for some explanation that would fit into his understanding of reality.
The more he studied, the more convinced he became that this other world wasn't fiction—it was another universe entirely, one where consciousness itself was the fundamental force.
The breakthrough came when he realized the book wasn't just showing him another world—it was offering him a way to reach it.
Using principles that shouldn't have worked, combining quantum entanglement theory with consciousness transfer protocols that existed nowhere in human science, Qitian began designing what he privately called his "soul anchor." If the book was right, if consciousness could exist independently of physical matter, then theoretically...
The alarms started blaring on humanity's last day.
Qitian stood in his laboratory as the walls shook around him, emergency lights casting everything in hellish red.
Outside, the sky was tearing apart like fabric, revealing the void beneath reality.
Every screen in the lab showed the same message: UNIVERSAL COLLAPSE IMMINENT - 00:03:47 REMAINING.
His hands flew over the controls, activating the soul anchor device he'd spent months perfecting.
The machine hummed to life, its quantum processors working at theoretical maximum capacity. All around him, the collected knowledge of human civilization sat in crystalline data cores—mathematics, literature, music, art, every discovery and dream his species had ever conceived.
'If I'm going to die,' he thought grimly, 'I'm taking humanity's legacy with me.'
The countdown reached zero.
Reality screamed and shattered. Qitian felt his consciousness torn from his body as the universe collapsed around him, his soul wrapped in layers of quantum-encoded information like a protective cocoon. Everything he was, everything humanity had been, compressed into a single point of awareness hurtling through the void between worlds.
Then... darkness.
---
Consciousness returned slowly, like surfacing from deep water.
The first thing Qitian noticed was that he couldn't move properly. His limbs felt wrong—too small, too weak, responding sluggishly to his commands. Panic flared in his chest until memory caught up with awareness.
'I made it,' he realized with growing wonder. 'The soul transfer actually worked.'
But something was wrong. His new body felt... different. Damaged, somehow. And the memories filtering through his mind weren't entirely his own.
He was Dao Qitian—the name had followed him across universes—but this Dao Qitian was only twelve years old, born into a world where spiritual cultivation was as natural as breathing.
Except this body had never breathed properly. For years, he'd been trapped within it like a prisoner, watching helplessly as everyone around him believed him to be mentally deficient.
The cruel irony wasn't lost on him. He'd escaped the death of one universe only to find himself trapped in the body of a boy everyone thought was an imbecile.
But today was different. Today, on his twelfth birthday, his adult consciousness had finally gained full control.
"Qitian! Come quickly, the feast is ready!"
The voice belonged to Dao Mei, the woman who'd raised this body since he'd appeared mysteriously in their village a year ago.
She wasn't his birth mother—that much was clear from the memories slowly organizing themselves in his mind. He was a scion of a Divine Clan, exiled to this remote world through political machinations he didn't yet fully understand.
'I see,' he thought.