Chapter 2

In the faint morning light, the sun rose over the verdant hills in the distance. When the first ray of sunlight touched his eyelids, Jiang Li woke up.

The morning mist had not yet dispersed, leaving a damp film of dew over him. Jiang Li propped himself up, his joints aching all over. Sleeping on hard concrete for an entire night would make anyone feel terrible. He rubbed his nose. Fortunately, he was young and healthy, and summer nights weren’t cold, so he hadn’t fallen ill from it.

Still…

Jiang Li looked around the terrace he was on and began recalling what had happened the previous night.

If he remembered correctly, he had seen a meteor plummet from the sky and strike him directly. The whole thing was so bizarre that no one would believe him even if he told them, to the point that looking back on it made him suspect he had just been dreaming. If a meteor had truly fallen from the sky and hit him, he would have died long ago. He wouldn’t be standing here with nothing worse than an aching back and sore joints from sleeping on the hard ground.

Jiang Li scrambled up from the ground in a daze.

If he had been dreaming, why had he fallen asleep outside?

Jiang Li had no memory whatsoever of what happened after being struck by the meteor.

He rubbed the aching nape of his neck in confusion, unable to make sense of it.

“Xiao Jiang? Xiao Jiang? Are you up there?” came calls from down below.

Jiang Li leaned over to look. It was his next-door neighbor, Granny Chen.

Granny Chen had only just gotten up as well, and she was waving anxiously at him. “Hurry down and take a look! Why has someone smashed your front door?”

Jiang Li gasped in shock, “What?!”

Putting all thoughts of meteors aside, Jiang Li hurried downstairs.

The first floor of the Jiang house was the supermarket, so the front door was naturally the supermarket’s entrance. When renovating the shop, Jiang Li had gone out of his way to install brand-new storefront windows and doors made of tempered glass, which shouldn’t break easily!

Right now, one of the newly installed glass doors was completely gone, shattered glass scattered across the ground in an absolute mess.

Jiang Li’s heart twisted with distress. Granny Chen was just as angry. “Whose kid is so ill-mannered, smashing someone’s door for no good reason? Do you have surveillance cameras out front? I’ll go with you to demand an explanation!”

“I do. I installed them right from the start.”

“That’s good, then.” Granny Chen felt somewhat relieved, but then she wondered aloud, “With such a loud commotion, how did I not hear a thing?”

For no apparent reason, Jiang Li suddenly thought of last night’s meteor.

His sharp eyes caught an object lying amid the broken glass, likely the culprit that had shattered the door. Jiang Li strode over and picked it up. It wasn’t a stone like he had assumed, but an hourglass encircled by exquisite relief carvings, looking like an expensive work of art.

“Xiao Jiang, let me help you sweep up.”

Jiang Li snapped out of his thoughts, set the hourglass aside, and quickly said, “No, Granny Chen, please don’t trouble yourself. I can handle it.”

“All right, then… get me a bag of salt, will you?”

The supermarket hadn’t even opened for business yet, and he had already made his first sale.

While paying, Granny Chen smiled warmly. “Ever since your supermarket closed down, I had to walk so far just to buy a bottle of soy sauce. Now everything’s easy again. I just have to step out the door.”

While larger supermarkets carried a full range of goods, when it came to everyday essentials like salt or soy sauce, the small supermarket right on one’s doorstep was far more convenient.

Jiang Li smiled cheerfully. “Then I’ll be counting on your support from now on!”

Not much time was left before opening. Jiang Li saw Granny Chen out, quickly cleared away the broken glass, and phoned the door manufacturer to have them deliver a replacement. Hanging up, he looked at the half-empty doorway, utterly speechless.

To run into something like this before even opening, could anyone be unluckier than him?

…

Uncle Gao was a man of his word and indeed sent over a large celebratory flower basket^[1]. Aside from him, several of Jiang Li’s friends had ordered baskets as well. They arrived one after another, lined up in two rows by the entrance. Firecrackers were set off, crackling and popping in a lively burst of noise.

For the grand reopening, Jiang Li had printed a stack of flyers and handed them out a few days earlier. The opening discounts drew in quite a crowd, mostly neighbors living nearby, many of whom were old customers of Jiang Family Supermarket.

Customers came and went all morning, and only around noon as lunchtime neared did the shop finally empty out. Jiang Li ordered takeout and sat in front of the computer to check the surveillance footage.

The new door was already reinstalled. He could see it every time he looked up, and every glance made his teeth itch with irritation. The camera by the entrance clearly captured everything inside and outside. Using the mouse, Jiang Li dragged the playback bar back to the previous night and set it to fast-forward.

The entrance had been calm and quiet through the night, save for an occasional stray cat wandering past, peeking inside with eyes glowing like twin bulbs. Jiang Li opened his takeout container, and in the blink of an eye, when he looked back up, all that remained on the screen was a floor covered in shattered glass.

Jiang Li: “?”

Baffled, he dragged the timeline back with the mouse.

Rewind and replay. Not daring to look away for a single second this time, Jiang Li watched with wide eyes. One second the door was completely intact, and the next, it burst into a pile of shattered glass right where it stood.

He watched it back and forth several times, rewinding, slowing it down, pausing frame by frame… No matter how many times he checked, the result was the same.

If not for the uninterrupted timestamp in the upper-right corner, Jiang Li would have suspected someone had deleted sections of the footage.

He stared at the footage on screen: What kind of paranormal occurrence was this?!

Who on earth had smashed his door?!

The seconds in the top-right corner ticked by, yet the culprit behind the smashed door never showed up. Suddenly, a thought struck Jiang Li. He pulled out his phone to double-check the time.

He had assumed that the falling star he saw last night was just a dream, but the timestamp on the recording lined up almost exactly with when he had lost consciousness… A sudden chill ran down Jiang Li’s spine.

With trembling fingers, he typed: 【Do you guys think ghosts exist in this world?】

His roommates popped into the chat immediately: 【Are you out of your mind?】

【Still haven’t woken up from your afternoon nap?】

【If business at the supermarket isn’t doing well, coming back to be a corporate slave with me is always an option!】

True enough. Why would a ghost smash his door for no good reason?

Besides…

Jiang Li’s gaze drifted slowly to the hourglass ornament.

This morning, he had found this strange hourglass amid the pile of broken glass. With so much to deal with, he had simply set it aside and forgotten about it until now. Looking at it closely, Jiang Li immediately noticed something bizarre about it.

Though shaped like an hourglass, it didn’t contain sand. Instead, it was filled with glittering grains that looked like powdered gemstones. Furthermore, the passage in the middle was blocked; no matter how many times he inverted it, the grains never trickled down to the other side. The hourglass was exquisitely made, yet its aesthetic styling was peculiar, bearing no resemblance to any artistic style he had ever seen. A closer look at the carved patterns revealed complex motifs woven together, with two prominent symbols etched onto either end. Jiang Li studied them for quite a while without understanding a single thing.

He turned it over in his hands for a while, but considering its eerie origin, he didn’t dare dwell on it and quickly set it down.

With a creak, someone pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Detecting a customer, the electronic voice by the door sounded: “Welcome.”

“Oh? Is this a newly opened shop?”

Jiang Li stood up, freezing the moment he laid eyes on the customer.

The newcomer was a middle-aged man, but his entire appearance was completely out of place compared to an ordinary customer. He possessed deep, defined facial features, a Western face rarely seen in this small town, with short dark brown hair and vivid emerald eyes. Most striking of all, he was clad in a suit of armor, encased in rigid metal from head to toe, with a sword belted at his waist, looking like a character straight out of a movie or comic book.

Cosplay?

The oddly styled customer looked around the shop, then turned his gaze toward Jiang Li. “Are you the shopkeeper?”

Jiang Li stared unblinkingly at him, certain that the words coming from the man’s mouth were in a language he had never heard before, yet his mind somehow understood them completely.

In an instant, everything from last night’s shooting star to the bizarre surveillance video, every fantasy story he had ever consumed, and the events of his entire life so far flashed through Jiang Li’s mind like a revolving lantern^[2].

Noticing his silence, the strange customer looked puzzled. “Hello?”

“…” Jiang Li forced out stiffly, “Hello.”

He had spoken in Chinese, yet the customer oddly understood him without the slightest suspicion.

The customer asked, “What kind of shop is this?”

Jiang Li said, “This is… is a supermarket.”

The customer looked confused. “What is a supermarket?”

Jiang Li said, “It’s… a place that sells everything.”

“Do you have food and water?”

“Yes, we do.”

Thinking of the merchandise on the shelves, then looking at the customer before him, Jiang Li thought, I just don’t know if it’s anything like what you usually eat…

The customer let out a long sigh of relief and said, “My adventurer companions and I are passing through this city, and we wanted to buy some supplies here. Last time I came by, this place wasn’t a super… supermarket, was it?”

Jiang Li’s mind went completely blank. He asked subconsciously, “Adventurers?”

“That’s right.” The customer thumped his chest, his metal armor giving off a dull clank, and he laughed heartily. “You can tell just by looking at me! I’m an experienced adventurer.”

Jiang Li: “…”

He couldn’t tell at all!

What even was an adventurer?! Since when was that an actual profession in the world outside?!

Just where on earth had this customer popped up from?!

And the sword on his hip, why did it look like it had a sharpened edge?! Was that even legal?!

Jiang Li kept a wooden expression and didn’t ask anything else, terrified that opening his mouth would give him away. Instead, he just handed the man a shopping basket.

Taking the basket, the customer looked at it with fascination, having never seen such a material before. After inspecting it for a couple of seconds, he curiously scanned the shop called a “supermarket.” A dizzying variety of goods lined the shelves, yet not a single item was familiar to him. Staring at row upon row of shelves, he had no idea which way to go.

Jiang Li pointed the way for him. “The food is over there.”

“Thank you.”

Watching the strange customer disappear behind the shelves, Jiang Li stood silent for a long while before pulling out his phone with trembling hands: 【Do you guys think transmigration^[3] is real?】

The outgoing message spun for a few seconds before turning into a red exclamation mark.

Ding-dong!

【Your message failed to send. Tap to retry.】

Looking again, he saw that the phone’s signal had vanished without a trace.

Jiang Li: “…”

S-Somebody help!