"Anchor failure!"
Wang Yunxiao opened his eyes and silently stared at the wooden board above his head.
This was a bunk bed that could only be found in student dormitories, crudely handmade and made of poor-quality wood. Even if this kind of item was listed on Xianyu for fifty yuan including shipping, there might still be no buyers...
What was Xianyu again?
Wang Yunxiao's intuition told him that he might have traveled through time or to a parallel universe.
This wasn't his own body, and he had no memories of the original owner; more troubling was that even his own memories were incomplete.
And they might not even be real.
...So where was my system?
Wang Yunxiao silently called out in his mind, but there was no response.
The difficulty of this start seemed a bit high.
He lay in bed, motionless, slightly moving his eyeballs to start collecting all the information around him.
First, he had to determine the identity of the original owner of this body.
It was pitch-black around him, indicating it was likely night; outside the window, the night was deep, yet one could still vaguely make out more than one bunk bed in the room.
The clothes he wore were made of poor-quality material, perhaps some kind of coarse hand-woven fabric. The blankets on him were also thin; however, the weather wasn't cold...
"Big Brother?"
"Big Brother is awake!"
Suddenly, someone yelled from beside him, nearly causing Wang Yunxiao's heart to stop from fright.
He turned his head to look and saw a burly-looking boy leaning over the edge of his bed, trembling with excitement, his eyes brimming with hot tears.
At that boy's shout, six or seven bare-bodied lads immediately rushed over, surrounding Wang Yunxiao in the center.
If someone hadn't lit a candle in time, Wang Yunxiao almost believed he had traveled to either a detention center or a pyramid scheme den...
By the dim candlelight, he could barely make out that those around him were children, young, with yellowed, skinny faces. The oldest one appeared to be only about twelve or thirteen.
"What's all the noise for?"
Wang Yunxiao sat up without changing his expression, while glancing at his hands and feet from the corner of his eye.
Indeed, just as he had felt lying on the bed, the body he found himself in was not that of an adult.
Then this place must be a school, or... an orphanage?
"What happened to me just now?"
Wang Yunxiao realized he had to use this precious time to figure out where he was and what had happened.
"Big Brother, didn't you say you'd take us to the cafeteria tonight for some meat? Who would have thought you'd sleep like the dead, impossible to wake up no matter how much we called."
The boy who had just been leaning over his bed said plaintively, "If it weren't for the fact that you were still breathing, I would have thought you were gone!"
Why didn't you go find an adult, or call an ambulance then?
Looking at his two big eyes whirling around, he didn't seem to be a fool. The reason he didn't do that must be because they didn't have the means to do so.
Wang Yunxiao scanned the room, noticing that all the children around him had clear, straightforward eyes with no one instinctively dodging or doubting, which meant his status as "Big Brother" was still quite stable in their hearts.
He was temporarily safe.
"My head is fuzzy, I can't remember anything."
He spoke bluntly.
"Ah? Big Brother, you're like this… do you still remember who I am? I'm Matuan!"
The boy became anxious when he heard this.
"Don't panic, all I remember is someone slapping me on the back of my head, and then I came back here in a daze."
Wang Yunxiao calmly continued, "What happened today, have you been with me all along? Who did we meet, what did we do, and what did I say to you before I went to sleep?"
Seeing his composed demeanor, the children who had been looking at each other quietly settled down.
Wang Yunxiao noticed their gazes instinctively shifting toward a bespectacled boy hiding at the back.
The boy was skinny and tall, with a center-parted haircut, wearing a pair of broken glasses that had been tied together after both legs had snapped off. He pushed through the others to come in front of Wang Yunxiao and asked by showing two fingers, "Brother Yuanxiao, how many fingers am I holding up?"
"Two!"
"Do you still remember your own name?"
Wang Yunxiao was about to say his name was Yuanxiao but shook his head at the last moment, saying, "I can't remember."
"Your full name is Wang Yunxiao, we all call you Yuanxiao, I am Youtiao, he is Matuan, he is Youbing, he is Guozi…"
The boy who claimed to be Youtiao introduced the others in turn.
Wang Yunxiao nodded silently, it sounded as though they all had names of traditional breakfast items from the North, suggesting that he was probably in the North, and not in any formal school, but more likely in an orphanage or similar welfare institution.
The welfare treatment must be not bad, since although they were pale and thin, they did not appear to be suffering from chronic hunger or malnutrition. Otherwise, you could die from hunger just by calling out these names in the middle of the night.
What he needed to determine now was the time, or rather, the era.
As he observed the surroundings, Youtiao also observed him and continued to speak, "Didn't someone deliver a bunch of stuff the day before yesterday? The President wanted to give us an extra meal. You went to the kitchen once and said you saw something delicious, telling us to get up in the middle of the night to join you for a feast. And then... you just passed out asleep, and we've been waiting until now."
Wang Yunxiao didn't speak, silently digesting the information.
At that moment, he heard Youtiao say, "Big Brother, could you have been hexed?"
Wang Yunxiao asked in return, "Have I ever taken you guys to the kitchen before?"
Everyone shook their heads.
He then asked, "Have I ever treated you guys to a special meal?"
Matuan hesitated, "Does groping for clams in the river a few days ago count?"
Wang Yunxiao stood up and said to the children gathered around him, "Come on, let's go to the kitchen and see if there's any meat that can satisfy my craving!"
The crowd suddenly cheered and scattered like birds and beasts, climbing back to their beds to get dressed.
They were young and didn't have many concerns, except for Youtiao who frowned and stared at Wang Yunxiao, whispering, "Brother, you seem off today. Maybe we shouldn't go. Even if there really is good food, we'll get to eat it sooner or later."
"It's not about whether we can eat or not."
Wang Yunxiao waved his hand, "It's about whether my word counts."
He couldn't just blurt out that he just wanted to go to the kitchen to find a kitchen knife.
Without a weapon at hand, he always felt uneasy.
Five minutes later, he led his brothers—or rather a gang of boys that cats and dogs would disdain—on the mission to conquer the kitchen.
It was not a big problem; they were all kids and easy to fool.
As he had expected, this was indeed an orphanage, though its scale was beyond his imagination.
The long corridor vanished into darkness, its end nearly out of sight. Both sides were lined with doors, just like the one to their dormitory, worn and imperfect. This type of bare-bones architectural and decorating style, which didn't spend an extra penny, reminded him of the teaching building of the key experimental high school in his hometown—a square block that looked like a matchbox and could cram in nearly three thousand students from three grades.
"How many people are here?"
Wang Yunxiao asked Youtiao in a low voice.
Youtiao thought for a moment and said, "Including the new arrivals today, there should be 672 people, right?"
"That many?"
The number surprised Wang Yunxiao; in his memory or common sense, a normal orphanage should not have so many children.
"There's a war going on."
Youtiao stared at Wang Yunxiao with equal surprise, "Brother, you haven't forgotten that too, have you?"
"I told you my head's all muddled up."
Wang Yunxiao pressed on without changing his expression, "Who are we fighting with? Did we win or lose?"
A war that could produce so many orphans overnight couldn't be nameless in modern history—don't ask why he thought of modern history; he was standing on a concrete floor after all.
Knowing who the fight was against would basically allow him to figure out the current era.
"The French, I guess, and the combined fleets of several other countries. But in the end, we won, captured Hongyan State, and then the President changed the era."
Who? Where? What?
Wang Yunxiao was completely baffled.
Is this still Earth?
He lapsed into silence, and so did the other children, all moving stealthily through the corridor.
Even though Brother's mind was troubled, the canteen wouldn't grow legs and run away.
As he descended the stairs, Wang Yunxiao took another look outside the window.
The window overlooked a vast playground. At the end of the playground, the shadowy contours of the city buildings rose and fell in the distance.
There was no moon in the sky, but the stars were a glittering river, clear and visible.
The canteen's doors were not locked; just past the canteen, he could enter the kitchen.
The student canteen was quite large, with rows of long tables and benches neatly arranged, capable of accommodating several hundred students dining at the same time.
This was not right, unless the designer had anticipated the orphanage's scale from the start, or his own deduction was inaccurate.
A chill wind blew by, making the hairs on the back of Wang Yunxiao's hand stand on end.
He thought he heard a sound but wasn't sure if it was just his imagination.
Still, exercising caution, he gestured for the kids following him to stop moving by making a hushing motion.
He himself picked up a bench from the table and pressed on.
The bench was heavy and had an old feel—a stale smell of pickled vegetables emanated from it, the wood already pulped.
Judging just by the feel, it must have been serving here for over twenty years.
There indeed was a sound.
As Wang Yunxiao approached the kitchen's door with caution, he was certain that he heard the noise of chewing and swallowing.
Maybe it was a rat.
Or someone else with the same thought as his, a greedy glutton?
Wang Yunxiao moved forward slowly, traversing the narrow passage. It was somewhat dark here; he reached out to touch the wall, finding one side was wall and the other felt like wood.
It was like a crate—the kind used by the military to store ammunition, square and wooden.
The passage was not narrow after all; it was filled with crates on one side.
These crates extended all the way to the kitchen, almost leaving no space to stand. When he reached a lit area and saw an open crate with neat rows of green tin cans inside, he realized they were military food supplies.
Military rations? Really getting meaty... But what exactly is this place, and how did they get their hands on so many military cans? Is it like those secret facilities in movies for human experimentation or assassin training?
Wang Yunxiao picked up a can and saw it was labeled 'luncheon meat' in Chinese.
His anticipation plummeted to zero.
Click—
The sound coming from nearby made him turn abruptly, and he saw a figure standing by the sink.
That was not the sound of opening a can.
The person was not holding a can of luncheon meat, but a human hand instead.