The machine's hum changed. It was no longer the usual background noise; instead it sounded like a deep, continuous high‑frequency resonance, similar to a race car engine revving up before a sprint, slowly climbing to its peak frequency.
For fifteen years Tang Xuan had lain there, accustomed to the ash‑gray void below his neck—a barren plain where neural signals had been permanently severed. Now even that barren edge seemed to be collapsing. The sense of "head" was being peeled away, as if his soul were being ripped from the flesh's morass.
He tried to grab onto something, but there was nothing to hold.
His consciousness was detaching from its biological host. Power failure? Equipment malfunction?
Then everything stopped. No space, no time—only a disorienting, weightless float that made his stomach drop. Even the darkness lost its texture.
A near‑death experience? Or an ultimate hallucination caused by cerebral hypoxia?
He forced his prized rationality to analyze the situation, but his thoughts fluttered like a kite with its line cut—no reference points anywhere.
In the void, fragments of information surged in and vanished in an instant, like flickering electrical pulses with no lingering trace. Broken, overlapping, absurd images ran through his mind: chanting monks, the faint pop of a candle flame, a child's cry, and an acrid incense smell. Then a viewpoint flashed.
A view from directly overhead.
Someone was watching him.
He tried to turn his head to see who, only to discover he had no "turning" mechanism at all. The overhead perspective disappeared the moment his gaze met it, like a pair of eyes staring from a abyss that suddenly shut.
What's that? Who's there?
Before he could answer, an invisible force yanked him down.
It wasn't a fall—it felt like being torn apart. Imagine a body being ripped by multi‑ton forces, shredded repeatedly, then force‑stitched together within seconds. Every nerve screamed; it was a tsunami of signal overload he hadn't felt in fifteen years.
Pain?
His cervical spinal cord had been severed fifteen years ago—how could he feel anything? Phantom limb pain? Or had someone altered the contrast‑agent formula, causing cortical spasms?
It felt as if a massive body were forced into a tiny, cheap container, every edge pressing mercilessly. That long‑forgotten sensation—chaotic, noisy, suffocating, a desperate, escalating pain that robbed him of a voice—washed over him.
At the apex of agony, everything went dark. He opened his eyes.
The ceiling was made of rough wooden beams, grainy with plant fibers. No harsh, sterile overhead light—just a flickering, amber glow from a fire. He didn't spring up; instead, he let his mind calm the lingering pain.
He flexed his right index finger.
It moved.
A warm, full sensation surged through his fingertip, carrying the feedback of blood flow straight into his cerebrospinal fluid.
Tang Xuan froze.
He stared at the finger— a five‑year‑old's index, short and tender, the nail edge tinged red as if recently nicked and not fully healed.
Before age thirty‑five, moving a finger never seemed remarkable. Since then he'd run the calculation roughly two thousand times, each time concluding the nerves were destroyed, the connection severed—impossible.
Now the finger moved.
He curled, extended, and curled it again, feeling the subtle friction of skin folds.
Not a simulated signal—real, tactile feedback with temperature and pain.
He continued the check: wrist—fine; arm—muscle mass severely under‑developed, almost child‑like; legs—fine; right little toe—oddly flexed twice with great force.
He slowly sat up. In modern medicine this would require two nurses and an imported robotic brace. He did it using two atrophied rectus abdominis muscles.
A hand steadied him.
Looking up, he met a stunned face: a gray monk's robe, shaved head, around forty, jaw still slack, frozen as if he'd seen a ghost.
From the corridor a voice called, "Brother Zhiming, is Xuan Zang awake?"
The monk named Zhiming turned, his throat twitching. "…Awake."
Tang Xuan ignored the chatter, his eyes scanning the room like a scanner. Earthen walls, wooden beams, mortise‑and‑tenon joints—no modern screws. The windows were paper‑covered, letting in less than thirty percent of light, no glass.
The monk's clothing was coarse, made of natural low‑count hemp, with absolutely no synthetic fibers. The pronunciation of "Xuan Zang" outside had a distinct Middle‑Chinese retroflex, nothing like modern Mandarin.
Tang Dynasty? He ran the pattern matching in his head and concluded early Tang was the most probable era.
All the details pointed to a single absurd inference.
Am I time‑traveling?
A cold laugh echoed in his mind.
What a joke—he's not a sci‑fi protagonist. This violates the second law of thermodynamics and General Relativity's curvature constraints. He closed his eyes, desperately trying to fit the phenomenon into a physics model.
Strong magnetic fields from an MRI overlapping high‑frequency sunspot energy? Gamma‑ray overdose? A wormhole? Or perhaps his consciousness wavefunction had undergone macroscopic quantum tunnelling?
His brain fired at full speed. After a minute:
Can't compute. Insufficient data.
He abandoned the futile calculations. If he was stuck here, he might as well enjoy the "new chassis"—full‑duplex, zero‑latency communication. Experiencing a fresh meat‑shell was better than anything else.
He opened his eyes again.
The voice outside the corridor paused, sensing something off.
Tang Xuan glanced at the bewildered Zhiming, noting the monk's urgent yet superstitious demeanor—a useful flaw. Ancient thinkers left gaps in their worldview; give them a divine cue and they'll patch the logic themselves.
He took two seconds to frame his words, using the most steady, almost reverent tone a five‑year‑old body could manage: "I…just dreamed of a bodhisattva."
Zhiming leaned forward an inch. "What did the bodhisattva say?"
Tang Xuan paused, eyes neutral. "The bodhisattva said, 'This calamity is over. Do not worry.'"
Silence settled in the room. Stable. He completed his mental assessment—ready to wield a "dimensional‑reduction strike" on these antiquated minds.
Zhiming brought a bowl of plain congee and left.
Tang Xuan lifted the bowl, took a sip. Plain rice water—no salt, no seasoning.
He lingered for nearly four seconds, fully aware:
I am drinking. The bowl's warmth, its texture, the gravitational pull as the liquid passed his throat. He drained the congee, set the bowl down, and stared again at the wooden beams overhead. Fifteen years. He had waited fifteen years. Even in this backward era, as long as he could move, he felt godlike.
He began scheming: Step 1—adapt to the language of this time; Step 2—train this body properly…
When he was formulating step 7, a faint disturbance rose from the deepest recess of his new vessel—like a distant whisper carried away by wind, leaving only a trembling, tear‑stained frequency.
Tang Xuan opened his eyes.
It seemed the body had previously housed someone else, and the former tenant hadn't quite moved out.
A sparrow flapped its wings and vanished outside.
Maybe it's tinnitus, he rationalized, closing his eyes to continue planning.
The sob‑like tone lingered in an indiscernible void until it finally faded. He pretended not to hear it.