"It hurts…?"
Su Bai struggled to open his eyes, his head feeling as though it had been smashed by a hammer.
After resting for quite a while, he finally began to take in his surroundings. What he saw was nothing but brown animal hide—this was a tent made of beast skins.
Su Bai immediately sat up, lifted the tent flap, and stepped outside. One look around, and he froze.
Before him was a wide open clearing, surrounded by towering trees. The ground was covered in unfamiliar weeds and wild grass.
"Wait… where am I?" Su Bai muttered, completely confused, frowning as he tried to think.
Suddenly, his eyes widened as a memory surfaced.
"I remember finishing a novel and deciding to go hiking to relax… then I accidentally fell off a cliff…"
"Am I at the bottom of the cliff?"
He blinked and looked around, but there was no cliff in sight. In fact, even the nearest mountain was far away—at least ten kilometers off by rough estimate.
Lowering his head, he checked his clothes. He was still wearing the sports outfit he'd left home in, except now it was torn and tattered, looking no better than beggar's rags.
Scanning the area carefully, Su Bai noticed clear signs of human activity and came to a conclusion:
This was a campsite—just without any people in sight.
"Was I rescued by someone?" Su Bai relaxed slightly. As long as he wasn't alone in the wilderness, things weren't completely hopeless.
He walked deeper into the camp, observing carefully. He spotted a half-burnt campfire, and judging from the layout, the tent he had woken up in was on the outer edge of the camp.
"You've got to be kidding… I'm injured and they just dumped me on the outskirts?" Su Bai complained, though his expression grew increasingly serious.
As he continued inward, rounding a few trees, he found even more traces of activity—and that only made him more uneasy.
"What's going on here? Bones all over the ground? And beast-skin tents?" Su Bai stood blankly beside a tent. Looking ahead, there were over thirty tents in total.
Then he saw people.
They were dressed in animal hides or clothing woven from leaves.
"Cannibals? Or savages?" Su Bai blurted out.
"Jibala—!"
"Lexingni…①"
The moment they heard his voice, the people looked over and shouted something—but Su Bai couldn't understand a single word.
It wasn't Chinese.
Not English, French, Italian, or German either.
Not even any dialect he'd ever heard.
It was a completely unfamiliar language.
"Where on earth am I…?" Su Bai screamed helplessly inside his heart.
"Tap, tap, tap…"
A man walked up to him, gesturing animatedly while speaking.
"Zimi moshin jiani, linen zilai…①"
"…!" Su Bai's pupils shrank. Only when the man got close did he realize how strange he looked.
Short black hair. A square face. Dark yellowish skin. About 1.8 meters tall—those were normal enough.
Then came the abnormal parts.
On his forehead was a pair of black horns, about three inches long. When he opened his mouth, it was filled with sharp teeth. His pupils were brown.
"No way… there shouldn't be humans like this on Earth," Su Bai's expression changed. The horns were clearly real, not some kind of decoration.
Wait…
Could it be that I'm not on Earth anymore?
The thought startled him—but once he accepted it, everything suddenly made sense: the incomprehensible language, the strange species.
"Wujian qu ni daiwo.①"
Seeing Su Bai standing there in a daze, the horned man grabbed his arm and pulled him deeper into the camp.
Su Bai didn't resist. Calming himself, he observed his surroundings carefully. The deeper they went, the taller the tents became—and the more people there were.
And more strange people.
Some had cat ears on their heads.
Some had wings on their backs.
Some had snake tails trailing behind them…
Of course, there were also people who looked fully human like him—though their hair and eye colors varied. Green, red, and more.
"What kind of world have I come to…?" Su Bai groaned inwardly, his mind racing as he tried to figure out how to survive.
"Tap, tap, tap…"
After walking for two or three minutes, he was brought before an enormous tent. People of all ages—old, middle-aged, and young—were gathered around it, while noisy voices came from inside.
"The Shaman won't last many more days. We must find a new one."
"Everyone in the tribe has been tested. None of them have the talent."
"Then what do we do? Without a Shaman, our tribe will perish! I don't want to become a wanderer."
"Isn't there still one person left?"
"You mean the wanderer we picked up three days ago?"
"Yes. He's the only one who hasn't been tested."
"Shaman, what do you think?"
"Let him come in."
"Yes."
...
The noise inside the tent suddenly stopped.
"Tap, tap, tap…"
The tent flap was lifted, and a man stepped out. His upper body was bare, a scar ran across his cheek, and on his head was a pair of palm-length red horns.
"Raiguni," the red-horned man called, beckoning to Su Bai.
"He wants me to go in?" Su Bai guessed from the gesture. After a brief hesitation, he stepped toward the massive tent.
The moment he entered, a sour stench and a heavy smell of blood hit him. It came from the muscular men inside and nearly made him retch.
There were six people inside the tent. With Su Bai, that made seven.
But the one who drew the most attention sat at the very back—an elderly man.
"This must be the one in charge," Su Bai thought, carefully observing him.
The old man had shoulder-length white hair. His eyebrows and thick beard were also white. Yet his black eyes were sharp and full of vitality, nothing like those of a dying elder.
"Jigu shangqi…"
Someone pushed Su Bai forward until he stood before the old man.
Su Bai felt tense. He frowned slightly, watching the elder closely. If anything went wrong, he was prepared to take him hostage—anything was better than being turned into food.
"Buzz—"
The moment Su Bai's eyes met the old man's gaze, his mind went blank.
His consciousness was irresistibly drawn into those eyes.
In the next instant, he felt as though he were floating in the depths of space—dark, silent, and boundless. In the void, a flame ignited. A tiny point of light slowly expanded until it filled his entire vision.
"There's something inside the flames…"
Su Bai stared wide-eyed. When he finally saw it clearly, his heart began to race.
It was a creature—neither snake nor dragon, yet resembling both.
"Hmph!"
A muffled grunt sounded.
A surge of information flooded into Su Bai's mind, and he suddenly snapped awake. Everything he had just seen vanished, as if it had all been an illusion.
He was once again facing the old man.
But now, the elder's face was pale. His eyes had lost their brilliance, dim as though a great deal of mental energy had been drained.
"Shaman, does he have the talent to become one?" the red-horned man asked anxiously.
"Cough, cough…" The old man coughed several times, gasping for breath, then slowly nodded.
"That's great—we won't lose the Shaman's lineage."
"Totem and ancestors, bless us."
...
"Huh?!"
Su Bai didn't know why—but all of a sudden, he could understand what everyone was saying.
And he finally understood why they had brought him here.
They wanted him to become the tribe's Shaman?!