The screech of tires was the last thing Marcus heard before the world went white.
He'd been crossing the street, phone in hand, checking one last email from his boss about tomorrow's presentation. Tomorrow. The word felt ridiculous now, hanging in his mind like a broken promise as he felt his body tumble through the air. There was no pain, not really—just a distant sense of wrongness, like watching someone else's tragedy unfold on a screen.
This is it, he thought with strange clarity. Twenty-eight years old, and this is how it ends. No fanfare, no final words, no chance to tell Mom he loved her or finish that novel he'd been writing for three years. Just a moment of carelessness and—
Nothing.
The white faded to black, and Marcus Chen ceased to exist.
Pain.
Not the sharp, sudden pain of impact. Not the burning agony of broken bones or torn flesh. This was different—a slow, gnawing emptiness that radiated from somewhere deep in his core. It felt like his stomach was eating itself from the inside out, a hollow ache that made every breath feel labored.
Marcus had never felt anything like it. He'd skipped meals before, sure. Pulled all-nighters fueled by coffee and takeout. But this... this was something primal. Desperate. His body was screaming for sustenance in a way that transcended mere appetite.
The hunger consumed every other thought.
He tried to move, and his body responded with sluggish reluctance. His limbs felt heavy, weak, as if he'd been bedridden for weeks. A dull headache pulsed behind his eyes. His mouth was dry, tasting of something sour and stale.
Slowly, Marcus forced his eyes open.
Darkness greeted him, broken only by thin slivers of moonlight filtering through gaps in wooden walls. Above him, rough-hewn beams supported a ceiling of bundled thatch. The air was thick with the smell of earth, smoke, and unwashed bodies. Somewhere nearby, someone was breathing—a soft, rhythmic sound in the night.
This wasn't his apartment.
Panic flickered through him, dulled by the overwhelming lethargy in his limbs. He tried to sit up, but his arms trembled with the effort. How long had he been lying here? Why was he so weak?
And why was he so hungry?
As he struggled to orient himself, something else pressed against his awareness—foreign memories, seeping into his consciousness like water through cracks. Images that weren't his, but somehow were.
A small village surrounded by terraced fields. Dirt roads winding between houses of wood and clay. The taste of thin rice porridge, barely enough to quiet the constant ache in his belly. Rough hands, calloused and worn, that belonged to him but didn't.
Chen Liang.
The name surfaced in his mind, and with it came a flood of understanding. He was Chen Liang, fifteen years old, third child of Chen Wei and Lin Shu. This was his home—a single-room dwelling on the eastern edge of Bluestone Village, where his entire family slept separated only by thin cloth partitions.
But he was also Marcus Chen, twenty-eight, accountant, dead in a traffic accident that felt simultaneously like yesterday and a lifetime ago.
Two lives. Two sets of memories. One body.
Marcus—Chen Liang—lay there in the darkness, trying to reconcile the impossible. The memories of Chen Liang were fragmented, hazy, as if viewed through murky water. But they were there, undeniable. He remembered the village, remembered his family, remembered the endless cycle of work and hunger that defined their existence.
Bluestone Village. Population maybe three hundred souls, all of them farmers scratching a living from the terraced fields carved into the hillside. The village sat in a narrow valley, surrounded by forested mountains on three sides. To the south, a dirt road wound down to the county seat—a journey that took two days on foot, though Chen Liang had never made it.
Life in Bluestone was simple, brutal in its simplicity. You worked the fields from dawn until dusk during planting and harvest seasons. You tended vegetables in your small garden plot. You hauled water from the stream that ran through the valley. You did whatever odd jobs you could find—repairing fences, hauling stones, chopping firewood for those who could pay a few copper coins.
And still, it was never enough.
Chen Liang's family rented their land from the village headman, who in turn paid taxes to the county magistrate. After rent and taxes, they had barely enough grain to survive. Meat was a luxury afforded only during festivals. New clothes came once every few years, if they were lucky. Illness or injury could spell disaster.
The hunger was constant, a companion as familiar as his own shadow.
From Chen Liang's memories, Marcus understood that he'd been sick. A fever that had struck suddenly three days ago, leaving him bedridden and delirious. His mother had forced bitter herb tea down his throat. His sister had pressed cool cloths to his forehead. The fever had broken yesterday, but it had left him weak as a newborn kitten.
Hence the hunger—worse than usual because he'd barely eaten in three days.
Marcus tried to focus on his body, taking inventory. His hands, when he held them up in the dim light, were larger than before—not a child's hands, but not quite a man's either. Fifteen, Chen Liang's memories whispered. On the cusp of adulthood, though in Bluestone Village, childhood ended as soon as you were strong enough to work the fields.
His arms were thin, corded with lean muscle earned through labor. He could feel his ribs through his skin, sharp ridges that spoke of a lifetime of insufficient food. His legs ached with a deep, familiar soreness.
This body had known hardship in a way Marcus never had.
"Liang?"
The whisper came from his left, beyond the cloth partition. A moment later, fabric rustled and a figure appeared—his sister, Chen Mei. Seventeen years old, thin-faced and sharp-eyed, with her hair braided simply down her back. Even in the darkness, Marcus could see the worry etched into her features.
"You're awake," she said softly, kneeling beside his mat. "Don't sit up yet. You're still weak."
Her hand found his forehead—cool, checking for fever. Satisfied, she pulled back.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
Marcus opened his mouth to answer and found his throat too dry to speak. He coughed, and Mei quickly reached for something in the darkness—a ceramic cup. She held it to his lips, and he drank gratefully. The water was lukewarm and tasted faintly of clay, but it was the most welcome thing he'd ever experienced.
"Better," he finally rasped, and was startled by the sound of his own voice. Deeper than he remembered, rougher.
"Good. Mother was worried we'd lose you." Mei's voice carried a forced lightness that didn't quite hide her relief. "You always were the dramatic one, scaring us like that."
From Chen Liang's memories, Marcus knew this was their dynamic—Mei, practical and sharp-tongued, never quite saying what she meant. She showed affection through teasing, through actions rather than words. The Chen family wasn't given to open displays of emotion. Sentiment was a luxury, like meat or new clothes.
"Sorry," Marcus heard himself say, and meant it. These people—this family—they'd cared for him, worried over him. Even if the memories were Chen Liang's, the emotions attached to them felt real.
"Rest more," Mei said, rising to her feet with a whisper of cloth. "Tomorrow, Mother will make rice porridge. You need to eat, build your strength back. There's work to be done once you're recovered."
There was always work to be done.
As Mei disappeared back behind her partition, Marcus lay in the darkness, listening to the quiet sounds of his family sleeping. His father's deep, rumbling snores from across the room. His mother's softer breathing beside him. His younger brother Chen Bao, eight years old, shifting restlessly on his mat.
This was his life now. No going back. No waking up from this dream.
Marcus Chen had died on a city street, phone in hand, mind full of spreadsheets and presentations. Chen Liang lived in a world without electricity or running water, where the most pressing concern was whether this year's harvest would be enough to pay the rent and still have grain for winter.
The hunger in his belly was a stark reminder of that reality.
He closed his eyes, exhaustion pulling him back toward sleep. But before the darkness took him, one thought crystallized in his mind—sharp and cold and terrifying.
I can't die again.
The memory of that final moment flashed through his consciousness. The white light. The nothingness. The absolute certainty that Marcus Chen had ended, ceased to exist, been erased from the universe as completely as if he'd never been born at all.
He'd died once. Experienced the ultimate end. And somehow, impossibly, he'd been given another chance—woken up in this body, in this world, with another shot at existence.
But what if this was it? What if there was no third chance? What if dying as Chen Liang meant true oblivion—no reincarnation, no afterlife, just the permanent, terrifying void?
Fear coiled in his gut, colder and sharper than the hunger.
He didn't know these people, not really. Chen Liang's memories gave him familiarity, context, but they weren't his memories. This wasn't his mother or father or siblings. This wasn't his life he was living—it was someone else's, borrowed, inhabited like wearing a dead man's clothes.
But it was the only life he had now. The only existence standing between him and that infinite darkness.
I can't go back there. I won't.
Whatever it took to survive in this world—in this weak, malnourished body, in this poverty-stricken village, with these strangers whose faces came attached to emotions that weren't quite his own—he would do it.
Morning came with the sound of roosters crowing and his mother moving about in the pre-dawn darkness. Marcus woke to that same gnawing hunger, somehow even sharper after a night's sleep. His stomach cramped, demanding sustenance.
"Liang?" His mother's voice was soft, careful not to wake the others. Lin Shu appeared beside his mat, her face worn and weary in the dim light filtering through the gaps in the walls. She looked older than she should—forty, perhaps, but aged by hard labor and worry into something closer to sixty.
"I'm awake, Mother," Marcus said, the words coming easier now. Chen Liang's memories guided his tongue, made the language feel natural even though some part of him recognized it wasn't English.
Lin Shu's face creased with relief. "The fever is truly gone, then. Good." She reached down to help him sit up, and Marcus was struck by the strength in her thin arms—a lifetime of labor condensed into wiry muscle and calloused hands.
"I've made porridge," she said. "Just a little. We need to save the rice for your father and Bao—they're working the upper fields today. But you need something in your stomach."
Guilt twisted through him. Even sick, recovering, he was a burden on this family's limited resources. From Chen Liang's memories, he knew they were rationing carefully, trying to stretch their stores until the harvest came in. Every bowl of rice he ate was rice someone else wouldn't have.
But his body didn't care about guilt. At the mention of food, his stomach clenched painfully.
Lin Shu helped him to his feet, and Marcus was shocked by how unsteady he felt. His legs trembled, threatening to give out. He grabbed onto a wooden support beam, breathing hard from just the effort of standing.
"Slowly," his mother cautioned, her hand supporting his elbow. "You've been abed for days. Your strength will return."
She guided him to the far side of the room, where a small fire burned in a clay hearth built into the floor. A blackened pot sat atop it, steam rising from within. The smell that hit Marcus's nose—simple rice porridge, nothing more—triggered such an intense reaction that he nearly wept.
Lin Shu ladled a thin serving into a wooden bowl and handed it to him. The porridge was mostly water, with barely enough rice to give it substance. In his previous life, Marcus would have called it gruel, would have turned his nose up at it.
Now, it looked like a feast.
He ate slowly, savoring every mouthful even as his body screamed at him to gulp it down. The warmth spread through his chest, easing some of the cramping in his stomach. It wasn't nearly enough—his hunger remained, a constant companion—but it was something.
"Thank you, Mother," he said when he'd finished, and saw her smile—small, tired, but genuine.
"You're my son," she said simply, as if that explained everything. Perhaps it did.
As the rest of the family began to stir, as his father Chen Wei rose with a grunt and a stretch, as young Bao emerged rubbing sleep from his eyes, Marcus sat by the dying fire and watched them. His family. His new life.
Outside, the sun was rising over Bluestone Village, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold. Another day beginning in the endless cycle of survival.
And Marcus—Chen Liang—was alive to see it.
Whatever came next, he would face it. He had no choice.
But somewhere in the back of his mind, as he watched his father prepare for another day of backbreaking labor, as he saw his mother's worn hands and his siblings' thin faces, a thought took root.
There has to be more than this.
He didn't know anything about this world beyond Bluestone Village. Didn't know about cultivators or martial arts or anything beyond the simple struggle to eat and survive. But he knew there was more. Chen Liang's memories held vague notions—stories told by traveling merchants, rumors of people who could do impossible things—but nothing concrete.
For now, though, that didn't matter.
For now, he just needed to recover his strength.
One day at a time.