Ethan Lane squatted down, looking strangely at the black object. "Looks like a gun barrel..." He reached out, grabbed the barrel, and pulled it out. "It really is a gun, a bolt-action rifle. But why would there be a gun here?"
Ethan Lane looked at the spot in the snow where the gun had been. It seemed like something was buried underneath. He quickly started digging with the gun as a tool.
After a while, he stopped. A piece of blood-stained clothing appeared in the snow. Ethan Lane hesitated for a moment, then continued digging.
Finally, the owner of the clothes was unearthed. Ethan Lane stared blankly at the corpse in front of him, slowly backing away a few steps before sitting down in the snow.
"A dead person? How can there be a dead person here?" Ethan Lane muttered to himself. A long time passed before he finally came to his senses. "So cold, so hungry..." He was completely numb from the cold. If this continued, he would be dead soon.
Ethan Lane slowly stood up, looking at the corpse in silence for a while, and finally spoke: "Sorry, brother. I'll borrow your clothes. I will give you a proper burial." With that, he began to strip the clothes off the body.
A while later, Ethan Lane finally got the clothes off. Ignoring the frozen bloodstains, he put them on immediately. "Hiss... finally, a bit warmer. But these clothes are way too big, wearing them is like wearing a dress."
He looked at the corpse, which was left with only a few pieces of undergarments. The man's face didn't look Chinese; he seemed to be a European man with a full beard. Ethan Lane frowned. He was wondering what kind of place he had transmigrated to. Judging by the gun and the clothes, it seemed to be a modern society.
*Rumble...* His stomach growled again. Ethan Lane had no choice but to set out again in search of food. He searched the body, found a dagger and some bullets, and then set off. Shaking the rifle in his hand, he aimed at a tree and loaded it. *Bang!* The recoil sent him tumbling. It seemed to be a real, functional gun. He just didn't understand why the man would have died here with a gun in his possession.
Ethan Lane walked and thought, "This place isn't far from the cabin, and the fire in the cabin hadn't been out for long. Could he be the owner of the cabin? Then... who am I? His son? But who would treat their own son like this? Look at my tattered clothes, I could have frozen to death."
He shook his head. If he couldn't figure it out, he wouldn't think about it. Ethan Lane continued his search for food. Now that he had a gun, he could hunt any animal he encountered, unlike before when he had to search everywhere for something edible.
After walking for a while, he was getting farther and farther from the cabin. Ethan Lane hesitated about whether to change direction. But his growling stomach told him he couldn't go much further. If he didn't find food soon, he would be done for.
The long walk in the snow had already consumed a great deal of his energy. Even with a thick coat, his body temperature was gradually dropping. The consequences of not finding food were obvious.
"Huh? Is that... a deer! Haha, great, there's food." Ethan Lane excitedly ran towards a distant shadow. But walking in the snow was very difficult. He trudged through deep and shallow snow for a long time before finally reaching his destination.
"Strange, I just saw a deer. How did it disappear so suddenly? Oh, heavens, please don't play with me like this." Ethan Lane lamented, looked around, but still couldn't find any trace of the deer. Dejected, he sat down.
"Ouch! Huh? What's so hard?" Ethan Lane cried out in pain and stood up, looking strangely at the spot where he had just sat.
"There seems to be something underneath..." Ethan Lane poked with the gun in his hand, seemingly hitting something very hard. He cleared away some snow, and a part of what was buried underneath was revealed.
"This is..." Ethan Lane took out his dagger and knocked on it. The clinking sound told him it wasn't something edible. "Steel? But why is it so smooth, and a bit transparent and reflective? Glass?"
Unable to figure out what it was, Ethan Lane dropped the dagger and sat on the snow with a sigh. "Sigh, I thought it was some frozen animal, but who knew it was this thing... Huh?! Wait, bloodstains!"
Ethan Lane suddenly smiled and excitedly continued to dig. "Huff... huff... I'm exhausted. This small body is really not suited for manual labor. I think I'm even hungrier now." Ethan Lane looked at the thing he had dug out and said in astonishment, "What... what kind of animal is this, to grow into this shape... This would make Darwin turn in his grave!"
The surface of this unearthed creature was covered with a layer of something like translucent crystal. Ethan Lane tried to stab it hard with his dagger. *Ding!* The sound was crisp, and there wasn't a single mark on the surface.
Its appearance was also very strange. It had two pairs of odd wings, one long and one short, connected to... uh... two strange body parts. It had no hands or feet, a large head, and an overall shape like a shield. On it grew a pair of crystal-like red eyes, and it even had something like an angel's halo on top.
"This... biologists on Earth would cry, wouldn't they? But... why does this thing look so much like a Honkai Beast... No, no, maybe it just looks similar. There's no proof yet that I've come to the Honkai world," Ethan Lane muttered to himself.
Ethan Lane continued to examine it and then saw that the animal was almost split in half, with blood splattered all over the ground. Looking through the cleaved opening, Ethan Lane saw that this animal seemed to have no internal organs. Or rather, it's not that it didn't have any, but its insides were filled with some purple, organ-like things.
Ethan Lane looked at these strange organs, reached out, and picked up a piece. It seemed quite soft. He sniffed it; there was no strange smell or fragrance. He hesitated for a moment, then stuck out his tongue and licked it.
He was starving right now. As long as it was edible, he would eat it, even if it was poisonous. At worst, he'd die on a full stomach. "Hmm... no taste, strange animal." He tossed the organs aside and took out his dagger, preparing to get some meat.
He knocked and hammered on the strange animal's shell for a long time but couldn't break it open. He had to search around the area that had been split by something. "No meat?! How is that possible? What on earth is this thing!"
Ethan Lane grabbed a clump of organs and searched carefully, but still found no meat. "I..." He dejectedly threw the dagger on the ground, looked at the purple organs, and sighed, "Forget it, I'll just eat this. Dying full is better than dying hungry."
With that, he stuffed the organs directly into his mouth. "Hmm! It seems to taste pretty good. Is it my imagination? Speaking of which, this thing hasn't frozen even in this cold. This isn't scientific..." Muttering to himself, he kept stuffing organs into his mouth, soon staining his hands and face with a layer of purple stuff.
"*Burp*... I'm full. It feels good. I never knew being full was so enjoyable," Ethan Lane said with a sigh, patting his stomach.
He was about to stand up when he suddenly frowned. "Hiss... something feels wrong." He felt a hot current erupt from his stomach, and then his whole body felt uncomfortable, as if a mouse was scurrying around inside him.
"Ah! I knew it was poisonous. But this feeling is so unbearable, it's killing me. Ah!" As soon as he finished speaking, his vision went black, and he fainted on top of the strange animal.
Dark clouds seemed to be drifting over from the distant horizon. It looked like another blizzard was coming, and the fallen Ethan Lane remained motionless, as if dead.
No, not motionless. His body was undergoing a world-shaking change. "Where is this? Am I dead?" Ethan Lane looked around in confusion.
This place seemed extremely silent, without a single sound, just the constant flickering of some faint light. Soon, he felt something abnormal. He... seemed to have no body.
Yes, he was like a pure consciousness or in a dream, completely unable to feel his own body, and totally unable to speak. But he could move. As long as he willed it, he could move in any direction. But this situation made him very panicked. He thought to himself, "Is this the underworld? Looks like I'm really dead... I'm so unwilling, to have my transmigration end just as it began."