"Gah!"
Li Wei's eyes snapped open with a desperate gasp.
He sucked in a breath so hard his lungs felt like they were tearing apart. He rolled onto his side, retching violently, expecting to spit out the piece of the spicy meatball he had just eaten.
His fingers clawed at the dirt, as his body convulsed in agony.
He felt something choking his throat, but instead of the meatball, he spat out blood.
Thick, dark, purple blood.
"Uggh!!! The hell?" He wheezed.
His voice sounded hoarse thanks to the mouthful of blood he had just spat.
Li Wei tried to push himself up, but a sharp, blinding agony exploded in his chest. It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer and rammed it to his ribs.
"Aghh!"
He collapsed back onto the ground, gasping as tears squeezed out of his eyes from the sheer intensity of the pain.
'The Truck! Yes! The truck!' Li Wei finally remembered Truck-kun.
And in the next second, everything that had happened so far flashed in front of his eyes.
The kids skateboarding… The makeshift ramp… The delivery truck… The physics defying jump… The crash… And…
'Rapid Transmigration Services'
It all came back to him.
Li Wei blinked, trying to clear the black spots dancing in front of his eyes.
'So I am not dead?' He thought, fighting through the pain in every inch of his body.
But when he turned his head to look around, he wasn't in his apartment.
There was no glowing monitor. No plastic chair. And no truck-kun peeking into his apartment.
Instead he was lying on a filthy straw mat that felt damp on his skin. Above him, the roof was made of rotting wood that had turned black with decay, and hay.
"Ehhh! They did not bring me to the hospital?" Li Wei muttered to himself, "Did the paramedics... put me in a barn?"
"Did they think I was already dead?"
"Are they going to bury me alive?"
"Ughh! Damnit! I am alive you bastards," Li Wei raised his hand, trying to block the sunlight falling on his face through the broken roof of the barn.
But when he looked at his hands, he was left confused. They were not his hands.
Li Wei had the pale, soft hands of a writer who hadn't seen the sun in years. His fingers were usually stained with ink or Cheetos' spice.
But these hands, though were pale, were covered in dirt, calluses, and dark, ugly bruises that ran up his forearms.
The skin was rough, weathered. The wrist was so thin it looked like it could snap in a stiff breeze.
Did the truck do all this to him?
Li Weight took in a deep breath, as more panic began to set in.
There was no doctor, no beeping machines, no oxygen mask, and now his hands didn't feel his.
He had too many questions and no one to answer, when he felt dizzy in his head.
He felt a whirlwind in his head. He began to see scenes flash in front of his eyes.
Memories that didn't belong to him slammed into his skull like a tidal wave. They weren't hazy or dreamlike. They were violent and vivid.
A cold stone courtyard.
A boy kneeling in the mud.
A heavy wooden staff cracking against his back.
The sound of ribs snapping.
Sounds of Laughter. Cruel, mocking laughter.
"Trash!"
"Look at him, the Seventh Son! Thinking he is special!"
"Useless cripple! Beat him until he stops moving!"
The taste of mud. A woman's weeping face in the distance.
And a name.
Gu Fan.
Li Wei shut his eyes hard. The pain in his head throbbed so loud that it threatened to split his skull in two.
"Gu Fan?" His teeth gritted hard through the pain, "The Seventh Son? The Cripple?"
The name sounded familiar. He had heard this name before. He knew that name. Of course he knew that name. Because he fucking wrote that name.
Gu Fan was a minor cannon fodder character he had introduced in the first arc of Divine Poison Sovereign.
He was the timid, illegitimate son of the Clan Head, born with blocked meridians, who was destined to never cultivate.
He existed for exactly five chapters.
His only purpose in the story was to show how cruel the Gu Clan was, to establish the ruthlessness of this world, and to die miserably.
"I... I transmigrated?"
He looked around the dilapidated shack. This was the servant quarters' storage shed.
In the novel, Gu Fan was thrown here after offending the Second Young Master during a clan gathering.
"Wait." Li Wei's writer's brain kicked into overdrive.
The initial shock was still there, but the analytical part of his mind that had plotted intricate story arcs for nearly three years took over.
"Which chapter? When was this?"
He frantically sorted through the foreign memories, rifling through them like pages in a book.
"Huh…" But just as he tried to remember, everything around him turned black for a second. He had lost too much blood.
"Don't fall asleep." Li We spoke to himself, "Remember!"
The beating... It happened today. The sun was already high so it must be afternoon now.
The reason for the beating? He had dared to ask for resources in hopes that he could cultivate like everyone else.
Li Wei's blood ran cold.
That beating happened in Chapter 5.
He remembered typing it. He remembered thinking, 'I need to make the clan look absolutely irredeemable. Let's have them beat a cripple half to death just for asking for a cultivation technique.'
And then, in Chapter 6, which is tomorrow. Gu Fan would be lying in this exact shed, unable to move.
A servant girl named Xiao Mei would come and bring a bowl of porridge laced with 'Heart-Rotting Powder' on the orders of the Second young master to "End his suffering" and clean up the clan's shame before the big tournament.
'Heart-Rotting Powder' was a very potent and expensive poison that Li Wei used to kill Gu Fan.
It was an overkill, but after killing the target, the poison would seep out as sweat and evaporate, leaving no evidence behind. And make it look like a natural death.
The Second Young Master used this to ensure that he was not implicated just in case their father gets all emotional on his son's death even though he was illegitimate.
"I am going to die tomorrow?!"
Li Wei… No, Gu Fan stared at the rotting wooden wall. The absurdity of it made him want to laugh, but his broken ribs made him wince instead.
"Ugghh! I wrote this… I was the God!" He whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of awe and horror.
"Every bruise on this body... I typed them. The sound of these ribs cracking . I did this to myself."
"I killed him with my fingers. I typed the words that sealed his fate."
"And now I am him?"
He clenched his fists. The fear was there running through his veins.
But there was also this strange clarity in his mind. He was the Creator of this world.
He wasn't just some random transmigrator who had to figure things out. He was the god of this world.
He knew every secret.
He knew where the Clan Head hid his stash of spirit stones.
He knew the secret mantra to open the hidden level of the Clan Library.
He knew that the Sect leader of the Holy sect was actually a demon in disguise.
He knew the weaknesses of every technique, every beast, and every character.
Everything was on his fingertips.
But right now, none of that mattered. Spirit stones and mantras were useless to a corpse.
"I have to survive tomorrow," he hissed through clenched teeth, "If I eat that porridge, it's game over."
Then his mind drifted to the protagonist of this world. Gu Chen.
Gu Chen was his pride and joy, the "Eye of the Gu Clan."
Gu Chen was a genius born with a unique visual technique, the "Heavenly Eyes".
In the novel, Gu Chen was a righteous, somewhat stoic hero.
He was the one who eventually found Gu Fan's rotting corpse in the mass grave.
He then vowed to cleanse the clan of its corruption. Gu Fan's death was the catalyst for Gu Chen's first major power-up.
"Gu Chen..." Li Wei muttered, staring at the dust motes.
In the book, Gu Chen was the hero. He was probably training in the main courtyard right now, enjoying resources Gu Fan could only dream of, surrounded by elders who praised his talent.
Li Wei didn't hate Gu Chen. How could he? Gu Chen was his son, in a way.
He had spent three years detailing Gu Chen's struggles, his victories, his setbacks and his love.
Li Wei loved Gu Chen.
But the reality of living in the mud while his creation lived in the sky was a bitter pill to swallow.
"I am not a villain," Li Wei thought, trying to regulate his breathing, forcing his heart rate down, "I just... I don't want to be a plot device. I don't want to be the tragic backstory that motivates the hero to be better."
In the novel, Gu Fan's death served a purpose. It showed Gu Chen the cruelty of the world. It was a stepping stone.
"To hell with character development," Li Wei spat, wincing as his ribs, "I am not dying for anyone's plot growth."
"I am not dying so you can feel sad for a chapter and then forget about me when the Jade Beauties shows up."
He looked at his broken body. He looked at the locked door of the shack.
"Gu Chen, you want to be the hero? Fine. Go save the world. Go fight the demons."
"I made you the hero, Gu Chen. I gave you the halo. But you have plot armour, and I have nothing but a broken body and a deadline.
Li Wei's eyes, one swollen shut and the other burning with a terrifying intensity, fixed on the sliver of light coming through the door frame.
"If I survive this, don't hate me if I steal your opportunities, and my life back."