Chapter 1

Late October marked the arrival of winter in Tong City.

Inside the rehabilitation training room, Chu Ning felt the gentle warmth indoors. Wearing only a thin shirt, he supported himself with his arms and deftly completed a full set of difficult rehabilitation stretches.

Nearby, his fellow orthopedic patients who had watched his entire rehabilitation session broke out into applause.

“What are you all gawking at? Don’t use this as an excuse to slack off.”

Nurse Xing, who was responsible for keeping records, pushed a wheelchair forward, shooing away the patients idling in the training room. She walked over to Chu Ning’s side, her usually tense expression softening into a hint of a smile. “You finished a minute and a half earlier than yesterday.”

“These exercises are really effective for me.”

Chu Ning sat back in the wheelchair, using his arms for support, pulled the jacket draped over the backrest onto himself, and thanked Nurse Xing politely.

She nodded. “You’re recovering quickly, but you still need to take it step by step. Don’t rush—it’s important to be patient.”

Chu Ning replied, “I understand.”

You understand? Not likely.

Nurse Xing sighed inwardly, her gaze lingering on his refined, fair face for a moment. What crossed her mind, however, was how little time and money he had left for his rehabilitation.

People said the adopted son mistakenly taken in by the Chu family was a useless good-for-nothing, but after spending more than a month with him, Nurse Xing had witnessed firsthand that the young man was nothing like the rumors.

She thought of the cruel and biting gossip aimed at him, as well as the Chu family’s recent efforts to buy news headlines and their eagerness to sever ties with him in interviews. Nurse Xing couldn’t help but feel a pang of sympathy, lamenting the whims of fate.

After much hesitation, she finally couldn’t help but ask, “Chu, have you heard from them lately?”

It was clear who “them” referred to.

Chu Ning’s expression remained natural. “No.”

The Chu family had decided to sever ties with their mistakenly adopted son, abruptly stopping the medical payments that should have been renewed last month.

“Chu, your medical and rehabilitation expenses will only last for less than a week. I remember your parents sold the house, right? The hospital’s rehabilitation appointments are tight, so you’ll need to plan ahead….”

Nurse Xing sounded businesslike, but there was unmistakable concern in her tone.

“Yeah, my family’s nearly sold everything for me,” Chu Ning joked bitterly, then paused before continuing, “But I’ll stand up again soon.”

Nurse Xing sighed internally and pushed the wheelchair for him. “Time’s up. I’ll take you out of the training room.”

Chu Ning smiled and nodded. “Thank you.”

·

The Tung Blossom City Hospital was a top-tier general hospital in Tong City, with the rehabilitation training room located on the seventeenth floor.

Chu Ning had been diagnosed as a lifelong vegetative patient after crashing off a cliff while racing. He lay dormant here for a year, only awakening a month ago.

Upon waking, a sharply dressed man informed him that he was, in fact, a child who had been mistakenly swapped at birth due to a nurse’s carelessness.

His wealthy adoptive parents had their own biological son, and he was nothing but an impostor—mistakenly taken in by a wealthy family and living in luxury for twenty years.

As for this fake young master, he had leached off his adoptive parents for over twenty years, showing no gratitude and instead parading the Chu family name to bully others and act recklessly.

Now that the real son had returned, the impostor was expected to step aside.

His true biological parents? They were nothing more than ordinary office workers.

Once a wealthy young master, accompanied by servants and luxury cars, now reduced to the son of a pair of regular people, Chu Ning felt no stirring in his heart. In fact, it all seemed unreal.

Unreal, because he had discovered he had transmigrated.

Not only transmigrated, but arrived in a parallel world where another “Chu Ning” existed.

Especially after meeting the supposed biological parents the suited man spoke of, Chu Ning was all the more certain.

In the world before he transmigrated, spiritual energy had exploded, ghosts ran rampant, chaos ruled, and the apocalypse descended without warning. Before he was ten, Chu Ning was separated from his parents, but was fortunately adopted by a master who taught him skills. He barely survived in the apocalyptic wasteland, living to twenty, only to run afoul of the most fearsome beast of the end times.

Chu Ning thought he had died.

Yet unexpectedly, he had the chance to live again—though as the wrongly adopted son of the Chu family. He was reunited with his real parents and gained a younger brother.

Thinking of his brother, Chu Ning returned to himself and touched the phone in his jacket pocket.

Yesterday, Chu Mingming had promised to pick him up after school, but so far hadn’t shown up.

After Nurse Xing pushed him out of the rehabilitation department, Chu Ning wheeled himself alone into the elevator.

His luck was poor; inside, he encountered a young couple quarreling.

The woman was young and capable, holding an infant less than a year old. The baby’s cheeks were flushed, its fine hair damp and sticking to the forehead, letting out faint cries like a kitten.

The man, dressed in a suit with neatly slicked hair, carried a document folder under his arm, his brows furrowed as he explained something to the woman.

She looked cold, listening to him for a time before tightening her hold on the bundle. When she looked up, her eyes blazed with fury.

“Divorce! We’ll divorce as soon as we get home!”

“Zhang Lihui, I’m telling you, if anything happens to our daughter, you and your mother will never hear the end of it from me!”

“You want a divorce? I refuse!”

Called Zhang Lihui, the man’s face darkened. His eyes swept over Chu Ning, who had remained quietly in the corner pretending to be a decorative plant since entering the elevator. He held his temper, bowing and scraping to the woman, “Our daughter falling into the water was an accident. My mother apologized just now—can’t we just let it go? Stop making trouble.”

“I’m making trouble?”

Her voice spiked, then fell, her teeth clenched. “Zhang Lihui, let me be clear. Your mother wasn’t careless—what she did to our daughter was deliberate murder!”

Zhang Lihui’s face changed. “What nonsense are you spouting? My mother didn’t mean—”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses!”

While they argued, the elevator dinged and stopped at the ninth floor.

The ninth floor was for emergency inpatient cases. As the doors opened, a crowd squeezed in, doctors and nurses leading the way, followed by a stretcher carrying a patient.

The woman holding the child retreated to Chu Ning’s side, her husband was pushed to the elevator doors.

Zhang Lihui turned around angrily, only to come face to face with a pale, twisted visage—drooling, eyes rolling wildly.

“...Ah!”

“A ghost!!!”

Zhang Lihui shouted, drawing everyone’s attention.

The doctor beside him frowned in annoyance. “Sir, the patient needs peace. Please keep your voice down.”

Patient? Zhang Lihui paused, realizing the person on the stretcher, though frightening, was still breathing.

At least it’s a person!

He relaxed instantly, straightened his collar, stepped back, and covered his mouth and nose with the document folder, his eyes showing blatant disgust.

“What’s wrong with this patient—is it contagious?”

The doctor was used to such reactions and didn’t bother to respond.

Just then, the patient’s family started crying in the elevator, muttering, “Doctor, do you think my son is possessed? We just finished visiting his third granduncle’s grave, and suddenly he turned like this! I heard he even went to his wife’s family’s grave two days ago! The elders always say ‘never visit two graves in one month’—maybe his wife’s family’s old ghosts got angry and latched onto him!”

“Auntie, you really know how to make things up. I’ve visited graves three times this month and I’m still alive and kicking.”

The doctor, exasperated, explained repeatedly, “The patient knocked his head while visiting the grave, causing neuronal abnormalities. Surgery will fix it.”

The family was skeptical, then suddenly wondered, “Strange, how long has it been? Why hasn’t the elevator moved?”

No sooner had she spoken than everyone looked at the floor display.

The crimson “09” glared back at them.

A chill crept through the air; Zhang Lihui, standing closest to the doors, nearly jumped. “Ninth floor! Why are we still here?!”

The patient’s family panicked. “Maybe my son really is possessed! Maybe we’re all haunted!”

Haunted, my foot!!!

Everyone in the elevator screamed internally.

Yet the patient’s raspy, urgent breathing only made the atmosphere more eerie.

Doctors and nurses: …

Could it really be something supernatural?

Just as everyone was on edge, a clear voice broke the tension.

“Sorry to interrupt, but you haven’t pressed the floor button since entering.”

No one pressed the floor button?

Everyone froze, then turned toward the voice. In the corner sat a handsome young man in a wheelchair.

The doctor couldn’t help but glance at him again, then slapped his forehead, embarrassed. “Looks like we forgot.”

Chu Ning pulled his jacket tighter, smiled gently, and pointed toward Zhang Lihui, who stood nearest the control panel. He spoke unhurriedly, “Sir, you also bumped into the button I pressed earlier when you stepped back.”

Zhang Lihui: “Me??”

Chu Ning nodded. “You probably hit it with the corner of your folder.”

Zhang Lihui: “......”

This was mortifying.

His expression shifted rapidly, and under everyone’s gaze he pressed the button again. Sure enough, the elevator began to descend.

So it was all just a misunderstanding?

There are no ghosts in this world!

Not only Zhang Lihui, but even the doctor breathed a sigh of relief. He sternly forbade the patient’s family from spreading superstitious rumors in the hospital.

The patient’s family: ... aggrieved.

The elevator soon reached the first-floor emergency room. The patient’s family followed the doctors and nurses, hurriedly pushing the stretcher inside. Zhang Lihui waited at the door for his wife; she ignored him, clutching the child and heading straight ahead.

Chu Ning wheeled himself out of the elevator, not far off, hearing a nurse exclaim at the emergency room entrance, “Doctor! The patient’s lost heartbeat and breath!”

… A gust of icy wind swept through the hospital corridor.

Chu Ning touched the goosebumps on his forearm and stopped the wheelchair.

Outside the emergency room, the baby in the woman’s arms suddenly let out a sharp cry; her flushed cheeks turned a stiff purple—

“Baby! Baby?!”

The woman, realizing something was terribly wrong, turned frantically to her husband. But he remained oblivious, still rambling behind her about the countless arguments between his wife and mother and his desire for a second child.

The baby’s cries grew hoarse and desperate.

Yet none of the nearby passersby, doctors, or nurses reacted. They were focused on resuscitating the patient who had lost his heartbeat. The woman tried to approach the doctors for help, but suddenly found herself unable to speak or move!

Why is this happening! The woman holding the child felt dizzy.

Chu Ning noticed her distress.

He thoughtfully glanced at the breathless man on the stretcher, his brows furrowing unconsciously, then wheeled over to the woman.

Chu Ning extended his hand gently. “May I take a look at your child?”

The young man's delicate, harmless appearance made the woman hesitate. Suddenly able to move again, she inexplicably handed the child over.

But as soon as she did, regret flooded in.

He looked handsome, but what if he was a child trafficker?

Yet he was in a wheelchair—not someone likely to abduct a child.

Her anxiety seesawed; sometimes she felt she was crazy, other times she instinctively trusted the young man.

“Your baby is adorable.”

Chu Ning paid no mind to the woman’s inner turmoil. He smiled, his slender fingers gesturing gently in front of the baby’s eyes, playfully opening and closing his hand several times. Gradually, the wailing child quieted, even smiling sweetly at Chu Ning.

The woman stared, tears nearly spilling when she saw her child smile.

“Thank you, thank you!”

She didn’t even know what she was thanking him for, only that the young man seemed to have done something miraculous.

Chu Ning graciously accepted her thanks, returning the child and gently assuring, “She’s frightened and has a fever. You should get her an IV drip quickly.”

The woman nodded vigorously.

Just then, Zhang Lihui realized he’d been talking to thin air, his anger flaring as he rushed to his wife, berating her.

“Song Wan, can’t you be more sensible? Think of the Zhang family! My mother just wants a grandson. Once you give us a big healthy boy, she’ll stop targeting our daughter.”

The woman—Song Wan—“……”

She drew a deep breath, calmly wiped her face, placed the child in Chu Ning’s arms, and decisively kicked off her heels, hurling them at her husband’s greasy, disgusting face!

“Zhang Lihui, get as far away from me as possible!”

“I am done with you!”