#1
The sky Yu Ruishu saw when he first opened his eyes was not the sky he knew.
No sterile white hospital ceiling, no flickering neon lights—only a stretch of dirty gray, like an old cloth draped over rickety rooftops. The stench that hit his nose—a mix of rotting sweat, filth, and something sickly sweet—made his chest tighten. He tried to sit up, but his entire body felt like it was pinned under a mountain.
This… wasn't Cambodia.
His last memory was the cold bite of metal against his stomach, the hum of machines, and the cold stare of the man who claimed he would give him a job. Then, darkness. And now… this.
He glanced around. He lay in a gutter, wrapped in coarse patched cloth. Around him, piles of trash and leaning wooden shacks seemed to prop each other up, as if afraid to collapse. Shouts, the cries of children, and the howls of skinny dogs filled the air. A slum.
Transmigration. The word flashed in his mind, cold and absurd. He, Asthar Yu, a twenty-two-year-old accounting graduate whose organs had just been harvested in a dark Cambodian warehouse, was now… where?
"You lazy brat! Wake up! If you want to eat, find it yourself!"
A sharp kick landed in his ribs. Yu Ruishu groaned, rolling over. A grizzled old man with red eyes and the stench of alcohol stood over him.
"You think this is a hospital? This is the Grave of Mercy! Here, those who can't feed themselves get ready to die and become fertilizer!"
The man spat near his feet and shuffled away.
Yu Ruishu sat up, gasping. Grave of Mercy. An apt name. Slowly, he examined his new body. Younger, maybe fifteen or sixteen. Skinny and frail. Hands dirtied and covered in small cuts. Wearing tattered clothes that barely covered him. And most importantly—no surgical scars on his stomach. The body was intact. But the soul inhabiting it felt torn apart.
He tried to stand, legs trembling. A gnawing hunger surged in his stomach, making him dizzy. Practical logic, honed by a life of planning, immediately kicked in, suppressing panic.
Step one: assess the environment.
Step two: identify resources.
Step three: analyze risks.
He crawled out of the gutter, weaving through narrow paths between the shacks. His eyes, empty at first, began to sweep every detail with the sharpness of desperation. He noticed an old woman dividing a hard piece of bread between two children. He saw a group of teenagers gathered together, eyes sharp and cunning. A thin man sat in front of a shack, staring blankly. His gaze had no light.
No one paid him any attention. He was just another piece of human trash in this place.
Suddenly, a commotion erupted at the end of the street. Two bigger men, faces smeared with grime, were dragging a thin boy.
"Let go! That's my mother's share!" the boy shouted.
"Your share? In the Grave of Mercy, the strong take it all!" one man snapped, elbowing the child in the stomach.
Yu Ruishu froze. The scene was all too familiar. Not a robbery of bread, but the same principle: the strong take from the weak. The old man's warning echoed in his mind. Those who can't feed themselves… prepare to die.
He had no strength. No name in this world.
But he had something others might not: a mind trained to find weaknesses in systems, loopholes in rules. He had been betrayed by the "official" systems on Earth. Here, the system was more brutal and raw.
Suppressing hunger and fear, Yu Ruishu retreated into the shadows. His eyes, empty until now, started to glow with cold calculation. He was no longer Asthar Yu, the passive victim. He was an entity that had to survive.
Step one: survive today.
Step two: understand the rules of the game in the Grave of Mercy.
Step three: find the loopholes.
He scanned the surroundings again. This time, not as a confused victim, but as an analyst gathering data. Patterns of movement, conflict hotspots, potential sources of food overlooked.
In the distance, a towering city rose, casting a soft light into the darkening night sky. Another world—the true "Flawless Expanse." A world where, according to the old man, people could control wind and fire, and live hundreds of years.
But here, in the Grave of Mercy, the only law was the growl of empty stomachs and the hardness of fists.
Yu Ruishu wiped his face, took a deep breath. The stench filled his lungs.
"All right," he whispered, voice hoarse and foreign. "Audit begins."
He stepped out from the shadows, into the crowd, ready to face his first day—as a nameless, talentless survivor armed only with intelligence and trauma.