At noon, the scorching sun hung directly overhead.
Yang Bairao crossed the prairie and finally came across a river.
Even without any wilderness survival skills, his experience of doomscrolling short videos taught him that following a river would naturally lead to a village or human settlement.
He just wondered if he would face language, cultural, or dietary barriers in this new place.
Speaking of dietary barriers, Yang Bairao deeply detested wheat-based foods.
Whenever he thought of them, he rejoiced that he had been born in the land of fish and rice.
Though his hometown was nestled in a mountainous region, it was abundantly supplied with rice and fish, blessed with ample rainfall, and every household lived in relative comfort and plenty, enjoying a rather decent life.
If such a life could have continued indefinitely, it might well have been a dream paradise.
It was those hateful people who had forced his family to leave their homeland behind, leaving them with no choice but to either join the ranks of the wandering idlers or sign up for the grueling life of beasts of burden.
The early-year vision of the utopian dreamers—that some would get rich first and then drive others to get rich later—had long since vanished.
He had wandered too far in his thoughts, far too far...
Yang Bairao managed a bitter, helpless smile; dwelling on these things was of little use now.
Since he had transmigrated, it was tantamount to a fresh start. Transmigrating with a cell phone that had no signal at least gave him a chance to develop and rise up.
With his junior college diploma and a smattering of knowledge in physics, mathematics, chemistry, geography, and biology, surely conquering this nameless world would be as easy as turning over his hand.
Why, if he were to become the first person to invent the steam engine, he could amass a fortune overnight, and throw in some explosives for good measure—heh, he would be the one calling the shots.
There he went, letting his imagination run wild again...
Yang Bairao had been a corporate cog for far too long; his ability to amuse himself was truly top-notch.
Just as he was walking alongside the river, parched and starving, Yang Bairao suddenly grew as anxious as an ant on a hot pan, completely at a loss.
There was no other reason: after a full day of use yesterday and pulling it out to check the time during his night walk, his non-removable-battery smartphone was already running critically low on power, relentlessly nagging him that it was about to go on strike.
When this phone went on strike, it felt like someone suffering from drug withdrawal—every part of his body felt miserable.
Being unable to find a place to charge it, feeling hollow and panicked inside, was a minor issue; sometimes it could even make a person overwhelmingly irritable.
"What should I do? Tell me what to do!"
The words slipped out of Yang Bairao's mouth, his chapped lips trembling because of the dying battery.
At that moment, as if making a monumental resolution, he decided to preserve that last sliver of battery and shut the device down directly.
The midday sun was warm and overhead, not overly hot.
Without his phone, he had lost yet another crutch to lean on.
Listening to the sound of flowing water ahead, he parted the cumbersome grass that blocked his vision. Though the path was rough, he quickly pushed through in a few strides.
When he finally caught sight of the riverbank, the energy that had been slowly draining from him rallied once more, and he felt a step closer to rebirth.
Approaching the bank, he looked at the clear, flowing water, where the stones at the riverbed gleamed with multicolored hues under the sunlight, making for a truly stunning sight.
He didn't care whether the water source was clean or whether it would saddle him with parasites like some beast of burden; quenching his thirst was an urgent necessity. He immediately dropped flat onto his stomach and began gulping down the water with loud, gurgling sounds.
"So sweet!"
An involuntary exclamation escaped him.
Using the river's reflection, Yang Bairao got his first proper look at his own appearance.
Although he was mentally prepared, actually seeing that his face had completely changed wiped out almost every lingering shred of hope in his heart.
This was a young, naive face, completely different from his past middle-aged visage, which had been somewhat gaunt and weary, yet tinged with a thread of hope.
Though this youthful face wasn't entirely ordinary, apart from his current gaze, it clearly belonged to someone who had seen very little of the world.
"Did I really transmigrate?"
Before the sentimentality could settle following this exclamation, he suddenly heard a distinct, unusual whistling sound tearing through the air.
A dark shadow grazed past his waist and plunged lightly into the muddy sand right in front of him. The greater portion of the straight wooden shaft remained exposed, tipped with tail feathers at the end.
The feathers fluttered gently in the breeze blowing off the river...
Even though he had never encountered a real arrow before, Yang Bairao, having thoroughly read *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* and binged short web-dramas for years, broke out in a cold sweat.
"An ambush?"
Jolted out of his reverie, Yang Bairao pulled himself together in an instant.
With no time to wipe the droplets of water from the corners of his mouth, he hurriedly ducked, his hands instinctively flying up to protect his head as he prepared to dive into the bushes behind him to evade this mysterious assault.
At that exact moment, a muffled male voice rang out, accompanied by a quiet, feminine murmur.
"Don't shoot, he's a human."
"Oh..."
As Yang Bairao neared the bushes and heard those words, he remained on guard, but the girl's voice clearly resembled that of an innocent modern maiden and didn't sound like a bad person at all; his wariness vanished in an instant.
With his guard down, his mind raced. First, he realized he could understand their speech; although it deviated somewhat from modern pronunciation, his years of traveling far and wide had exposed him to numerous dialects, and he could grasp the meaning from those few words.
He hurriedly spun around. As a modern man born and raised in a safe country, he naturally carried little wariness toward strangers.
He looked at the newcomers with a puzzled expression, only to find an elderly man and a young girl who barely reached his current shoulder height.
The old man was around sixty years of age, slightly hunched, with a sun-weathered, dark, and rustic face.
His clothes were woven from coarse hemp cloth. Although the fabric wasn't as fine as his own and was covered in patches, it was remarkably neat—in fact, Yang Bairao looked more like a beggar by comparison.
The young girl had a slightly yellowish complexion, suggestive of malnutrition, with a lean figure, small eyes, a petite nose, and thin lips that came together to form a fairly pleasant look.
Her garments were made of fabric similar to the old man's, but dotted with embroidered flowers sewn onto the dress, which looked rather cute for a girl of her age.
"Little brother, it's this old man's fault! I didn't discipline our girl properly!"
The old man apologized first, casting a sidelong glance at the girl beside him. The girl kept her hands behind her back, though her frail frame could not entirely hide the grass-woven longbow she held behind her, looking slightly awkward.
"S-sorry!"
The girl's voice was light and soft, and the distinctive accent carried by her lips sounded exceptionally pleasant.
"Her accent is a lot like a Chongqing spitfire's, but much gentler."
Yang Bairao didn't take in anything else; his mind immediately analyzed the girl's voice.
Seeing that Yang Bairao remained silent, the two of them mistakenly thought he was upset.
The old man explained once more: "This old man is Xiang Dongliu, and my little girl is Xiang Die. I don't know how to address you, little brother? Let this old man make amends to you first!"
After speaking, Xiang Dongliu nudged Xiang Die beside him, wanting the troublemaking girl to apologize quickly.
Hearing these names, Yang Bairao was first struck dumbfounded, then immediately waved his hands. "It's nothing, it's nothing! It didn't hurt me anyway, you guys are too polite. This is much better than crossing the street where we're from—over there, drivers practically wish they could run you over without dropping a single apology."
Yang Bairao waved his hands repeatedly to signal that he hadn't taken it to heart. While Xiang Dongliu and his daughter understood the individual words he spoke, strung together they sounded rather baffling, though they managed to gather the general meaning: the young man before them wasn't holding a grudge.
Xiang Die's sallow face flushed with an apologetic look. She trotted lightly to the riverbank, gently pulled the arrow out of the mud, slid it back into the bamboo basket on her back, and stared at Yang Bairao with undisguised curiosity.
Having finally run into living people, Yang Bairao felt a surge of hope for his future.
Before the two of them could speak, terrified that they might slip away, he blurted out, "I come from a very far place. What place is this? Oh, right, my name is Yang Bairao!"
At these words from Yang Bairao, the father and daughter exchanged glances. Initially, they were a bit curious about his explanation, but realizing he was a stranger to these parts, the apologetic father, Xiang Dongliu, spoke up first: "This place is the depths of the East Wasteland Prairie. As for how deep, this old man doesn't know."
……
Many days later, Yang Bairao sat eating boiled wild vegetables inside a thatched hut, feeling utterly bored.
The thatched hut was of the most rudimentary sort; in his rural hometown, even pigs wouldn't live in such a place.
The walls, about a meter high, were built from mud mixed with grass roots to form crude bricks, while the upper structure was woven slowly from thatch, resembling a giant conical straw hat sitting squarely on top of the mud walls.
As for the bowl in his hand and the pot used for cooking, they were equally primitive—the pot was made of stone, and the bowl of sun-dried mud.
The wild vegetable soup was genuinely just wild vegetable soup; presumably, it was slightly better than what his grandparents' generation had endured during times of severe grain shortages.
"East Wasteland Prairie—heh, it's all just grass. No wonder it's called the East Wasteland Prairie."
Yang Bairao put down his bowl. After wandering around this small village like a vagrant for the past few days, he finally understood where he was and fully accepted the reality of his transmigration. The tiny spark of hope he had harbored had completely vanished into thin air.
He was deep within the East Wasteland Prairie, and as for how deep, just as Xiang Dongliu had said, nobody knew.
The village they inhabited bordered a small river, scraping by on river water, wild vegetables, and hunting.
The prairie was lush with grass and teeming with prey; as long as the villagers were willing to work hard and put in effort, life could genuinely get a little sweeter.
Yet no matter how hard three generations of people tried, they remained hunters through and through—that much was certain.
Because he had arrived recently and wasn't a local, many villagers didn't quite trust him yet, withholding a lot of information.
The news he had gathered came entirely from Xiang Dongliu, a man who clearly had never studied books.
The house he currently lived in belonged to Xiang Dongliu. The sleeping area on the floor was covered in a thick layer of dry grass, and at night he simply curled up on the wild grass in his tattered clothes to make do.
By day, the hunters went out in search of game, returning to the village by nightfall. Most of the time, they came back empty-handed; lacking modern tools and productivity, tackling wild beasts was no easy feat.
Fortunately, generations of exploration across the prairie had left behind records of numerous edible wild vegetables, allowing these people to live here generation after generation without ever thinking of leaving.
"Little brother, get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, this old man will take you hunting with us."
As Yang Bairao squatted on the ground, his mind wandered wildly—sometimes a complete blank, other times fantasizing about soaring through the skies and burrowing through the earth. But upon hearing the old man's words, he felt as though he were plunging instantly into an abyss. It was just like back in the day when he was slaughtering enemies in a video game, only for his team leader to suddenly walk up and tell him: "Get some sleep, make more concrete test blocks tomorrow and you can earn a bit more money."
"Damn this life! Damn this transmigration!"