When Ji Xun woke up, he found himself in a completely unfamiliar room.
Two thoughts immediately flashed through his mind.
The first: Gutted kidneys.
The second: A scam, a "heavenly jump" (仙人跳).
This was a sealed room, with walls the color of concrete. There was nothing in it except a bed and what looked like a toilet stall. No windows, no furniture—it resembled a prison cell, an escape room, or perhaps a themed fetish room.
But it definitely wasn't a proper room.
Ji Xun was lying on the bed, naked, and feeling somewhat out of sorts.
Beside him, there was a woman, also naked.
He glanced at her briefly to confirm—yep, nothing left to the imagination.
This was a stunningly beautiful body, with smooth, delicate skin that looked intoxicating, a full bust, and a face that was exquisitely, almost eerily, perfect.
What... is going on here?
The sudden appearance of such a beauty didn't excite Ji Xun. Instead, he instinctively felt uneasy.
He tried to recall whether he had blacked out from a drunken stupor or been hit on the head. But his memory was clear—he had gone to sleep normally the night before, and upon waking up, he found himself in this strange room.
...
It wasn't a dream.
Ji Xun quickly confirmed this.
Though his waist was sore and barely able to straighten, there were no injuries, and his kidneys were obviously still intact.
There was no group of tattooed, burly men bursting in demanding ransom.
So, it couldn't have been a scam, and it wasn't a case of gutted kidneys.
He gave the woman beside him another once-over, noticing she was still unresponsive. Ji Xun reached out to touch her, intending to wake her up and ask what was going on.
But as soon as his fingers made contact, his brows furrowed.
The sensation was completely off.
Something's not right!
Ji Xun's expression turned serious, and he touched her skin again. It was smooth, plump, and elastic, but strangely cold to the touch.
This wasn't the temperature a living person should have.
Dead?
A strange look flickered in his eyes.
After a brief moment of thought, he reached out to feel her carotid artery, and instantly, as if realizing something, his expression grew even more solemn.
Indeed, he couldn't feel a pulse.
At that moment, he confirmed: This was a corpse.
Strange...
Ji Xun stared at the corpse before him, the gravity in his gaze shifting to confusion.
It wasn't that he had never seen a dead body before, nor was he scared that he had slept next to one.
It was that he had never seen such a "strange" corpse.
Rather than the fleeting shock, it was the bizarre nature of the situation that made him feel something was fundamentally wrong.
Ji Xun took another careful look. There were no visible wounds on the woman's body.
Aside from the absence of a heartbeat and breath, and the fact that her body temperature was lower than normal, she looked almost identical to a living person.
That was the most perplexing part.
Under normal circumstances, a corpse's body temperature would decrease about one degree per hour in the first ten hours after death.
This meant that, after roughly one day, the body temperature should equal the ambient temperature.
When Ji Xun touched her earlier, he had confirmed that her body temperature was already close to the room's temperature.
From this, he roughly estimated her time of death to be around twenty hours ago.
But there was another issue.
After half an hour, a corpse starts to rigor mortis, and within twelve hours, it becomes completely stiff.
But this woman's skin was still as delicate as before, her body still had fullness and elasticity, and her joints weren't stiff at all.
An undead?
This was mind-boggling.
The environment seemed fine, the temperature was normal—so where had things gone wrong?
For the first time, Ji Xun began to question his own judgment.
Was there another factor affecting rigor mortis?
Or perhaps—
This wasn't a human at all?
...
Is this some kind of prank?
The thought crossed his mind, and Ji Xun began to thoroughly inspect the corpse again.
He squeezed both her arms and legs, checked the fine details of her hair, and confirmed she had normal bones and internal organs, and her mouth contained bodily fluids.
This wasn't some prank involving a lifelike silicone doll or some other weird object.
It was a real human corpse!
Now Ji Xun was completely baffled.
How did he end up here, waking up next to such a strange corpse?
His eyes darted around as he pondered for a moment.
His gaze shifted away from the body, and he began to scrutinize the room's environment.
The room itself was equally strange.
A rusted iron door was tightly shut, with no apparent locking mechanism that could be opened from the inside—resembling a prison.
But judging by the door's unusually thick and complex lock, it looked more like the entrance to a bank vault.
Or perhaps... a laboratory holding some kind of high-risk entity?
From the rust, it seemed abandoned for quite some time.
However, just as he was inspecting the door, it felt as though a mysterious force answered his thoughts, and an even stranger scene unfolded before him.
"You have touched the extraordinary and gained enlightenment."
Ji Xun stared at the new line of text in front of him, almost doubting his eyes.
He blinked, but it was still there, clear as day.
Looking at the corpse on the bed again, he saw another line of text appear.
[Fallen Witch]
Detailed Explanation: First-tier B-grade disaster; a spiritual contamination entity, a warped witch who controls desire. She excels in mental attacks and survives by absorbing human essence and souls. If you can't kill her, perhaps enjoying a final moment of pleasure at the end of your life is a decent alternative.
...
Damn!
It really wasn't a human!
Ji Xun's eyes narrowed slightly.
Although he had no idea what this "enlightenment" was about, he suddenly felt like he understood.
Since normal reasoning clearly didn't apply here, it was time to think in a different way.
All the strange occurrences pointed in one direction.
In that moment, a bizarre thought popped into Ji Xun's head: Could it be... that I've crossed over?
The various signs indicated that this was most likely not his original world.
After a brief moment of astonishment, Ji Xun's face didn't show much change. Instead, a thoughtful expression appeared in his eyes as he mulled over the logic of this hypothesis.
Clearly, once the idea of crossing over was added to the equation, everything else suddenly made sense.
This was the perfect explanation for why he was here, and why the corpse beside him was so unusual.
Oh,
Right.
It wasn't just a corpse!
What about the "B-grade," "disaster," and "spiritual contamination" terms? What did those mean?
Maybe some kind of monster?
Or perhaps a humanoid creature from another world?
Ji Xun adopted a different perspective, reexamining everything before him.
He wasn't sure what the mysterious text meant, but it was clear that things were getting increasingly bizarre.
Seeing that this "Fallen Witch" was described as one who devours souls, he knew that staying here with her wasn't a good idea.
He needed to leave, and fast.
His clothes were scattered under the bed.
Ji Xun tried to get up to put them on and find a way out—perhaps there were some other clues.
However, the moment he tried to stand, a wave of weakness suddenly hit him. His legs buckled, and he fell straight onto the woman's corpse beside him.
Thud~
The soft, yielding sensation immediately struck his hand.
Ji Xun, trying to push himself up, felt a sharp twinge in his side and finally realized something.
Looking down at the ribs on his body, it dawned on him why he had ended up in this situation.
And when he looked closely, he even saw his own body data appear before him.