Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Saved For 18 Years—Everyone Thought I Was Mute
Binhai University. On the coach bus heading to Mount Tai.
Jiang Nan held a red booklet in his hand, his gaze fixed on the bold, embossed text printed on the inner page.
【Grade 2 Speech Disability Certificate】
【Certificate Holder: Jiang Nan】
Staring at the little red booklet that had accompanied him for so many years, Jiang Nan couldn't help but twitch the corner of his mouth.
He then turned expressionless and shoved it back to the very bottom of his backpack.
This was probably the greatest misdiagnosis in the history of human medicine.
From the day the director of the welfare home had found him beside a public toilet's septic tank…
He had been labeled an abandoned infant, a mute, and a social recluse.
The caretaker aunties at the welfare home had pitied him.
His elementary school teachers had looked out for him.
The delinquents in middle school had bullied him because he couldn't cry out.
The school beauty in high school had lamented that such a handsome face belonged to a mute.
18 years, 3 months, and 6 days in total.
Aside from Jiang Nan himself, no one knew he wasn't mute at all.
He was simply…too expensive to waste.
Jiang Nan turned his head and gazed at the scenery rushing past outside the window, his mind shifting.
A pale blue light panel that only he could see materialized before his eyes.
【Host: Jiang Nan】
【Current Word Spirit Reserve: 6,666 words】
【Today's Quota: 1 word (already extracted)】
【Status: Silence Is Golden (word count stackable)】
‘6,666 words.’
Jiang Nan silently chewed over that number in his mind.
This was the result of having gritted his teeth through 6,666 days of silence since his transmigration.
Because this wretched system stipulated that he could only speak 1 word per day.
Although they could be stacked indefinitely, for a transmigrator carrying the soul of an adult, this was a torment more unbearable than prison.
But in order not to waste a single bullet, he had kept his mouth completely shut—communicating with this world through pen and paper for 18 full years.
Jiang Nan, seated in the 3rd-to-last row by the window, had his head tilted sideways, gazing outside, his eyes deep and unfathomable.
"Jiang Nan, are you carsick? If you feel unwell, you have to let the teacher know. I have an orange here—smelling it will help a little."
The one speaking was the English teaching assistant leading the trip, Chen Tong.
She carried one-quarter European heritage, and her auburn-red hair gleamed brilliantly under the sunlight. Her complexion was especially fair and luminous.
At this moment, with the gentle swaying of the bus, her full, voluptuous figure involuntarily leaned toward Jiang Nan.
Her soft, abundant curves pressed snugly against Jiang Nan's arm, squeezing and shifting with every rise and fall of the vehicle.
‘Chen Tong.’
Jiang Nan registered the astonishing elasticity pressing against his arm, yet his expression remained perfectly calm as he simply shook his head.
He then pulled out a sticky note pad from his pocket and, with practiced ease, wrote down 2 words.
【Not carsick.】
"That's good then. We're almost at the Mount Tai service area up ahead—teacher will buy you something to eat when we get there."
Chen Tong smiled and ruffled Jiang Nan's hair, completely unaware of how intimate their current position looked.
Jiang Nan quietly shifted a little further toward the window.
He was in no mood right now to enjoy a beautiful teacher's unintentional favors—his full attention was locked on that damned system panel.
Beyond the word-accumulation feature, the system's core 【Word Spirit Skills】 could only be obtained by checking in at specific locations.
But this broken system was like an old-fashioned radio with poor signal reception!
For 18 years, no matter where he went, the panel had never shown anything but a single red line of text.
【Current Area Is Outside Service Range.】
In order to find this damned check-in point, he had started working part-time jobs from a young age just to save up money!
Every winter and summer break, he signed up for various senior citizen tour groups and had traveled across every corner of the great nation.
This time, too, it was after hearing that the school was organizing a trip to Mount Tai that he had been the first to sign up.
Ding!
With Mount Tai now visible in the near distance, Jiang Nan tentatively clicked the 【Check In】 button in his mind once more.
【Error! Current Area Is Outside Service Range.】
‘Damn it.’
Jiang Nan inwardly threw up a fierce middle finger.
‘Still not working? Is this system broken or what?’
Just as he was stewing in complaints and preparing to close his eyes for a rest, a droning buzz suddenly penetrated the ears of every single person inside the coach.
Zzzzt!!!
"Ahh! My ears!"
"What's that sound?!"
The previously cheerful atmosphere inside the coach exploded in an instant, as students clapped their hands over their ears in pain.
The class president, Li Xin, had been at the front holding a microphone doing karaoke—he now let out a sharp yell, and the microphone dropped to the floor.
But this was only the beginning.
Immediately after, the sound became crystal clear—no longer noise, but a bone-chilling declaration.
【Warning! A future crisis has been determined. Blue Star's Will has activated its emergency protocol.】
【Teleportation sequence initiated.】
【Countdown: 1 minute.】
【All humans, please prepare yourselves. Bring all supplies, food, weapons, vehicles, and…your loved ones within reach.】
【You will be teleported to the "Savage Realm"—a world teeming with both opportunity and death.】
【Only those who survive until the sun rises in this world will be qualified to return to Blue Star and become the kindling that saves the future.】
【Good luck.】
The voice faded. The silence inside the coach lasted 2 seconds.
Then, an eruption of uproarious laughter.
"What the hell? Who is it? Who's pulling a prank?"
The class president, Li Xin, was a tall young man. He yanked off his headphones, stood up, and scanned the bus with a laugh:
"Who connected to the bus Bluetooth? The voice acting on that audio drama is pretty professional—sounds almost real."
"Miss Chen, was this a surprise you planned for us?"
"Hahahaha, the Savage Realm? I'll take the Doul*o Continent! Someone call Tang San! WeGame one-click rune slaughter is ready to go!"[1]
The students laughed and joked, not taking any of it seriously.
After all, in peacetime, the first instinct upon hearing something supernatural like this could only be that it was a prank.
Only Chen Tong furrowed her brow. She stood up.
Her sense of responsibility as a teacher compelled her to maintain order.
"Everyone settle down!"
Chen Tong clapped her hands, her gaze sweeping sternly across the entire bus.
"Whoever is joking around—we are in a moving vehicle right now, and you must not distract the driver! Whoever connected to the Bluetooth, disconnect immediately!"
However, the driver, Master Wang, had gone pale as a sheet at this point, his hands trembling on the steering wheel.
"Miss Chen…it's not Bluetooth…"
Master Wang's voice quavered. "The intercom's been broken for ages…and besides, that sound felt like it was drilling straight out of my head…"
At that exact moment, a synchronized chorus of phone vibrations rang through the entire coach.
Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz!
Every single person's phone received a text message at the exact same second.
Jiang Nan lowered his head and looked at his phone screen.
It was a maximum-priority pop-up notification from the 【Huaxia National Ministry of Defense】—a red exclamation mark glaring back at him.
【Emergency Notice: Attention all citizens! The voice you just heard in your mind is NOT a drill! NOT a prank!】
【Please immediately follow the instructions and secure every survival resource within your reach!】
【Repeat—this is NOT a drill! For the sake of survival, please live until sunrise!】
The air inside the coach froze solid in an instant.
"This…is this real?"
Li Xin's hand holding his phone stiffened mid-air, the smile on his face collapsing instantly. "A text from the Ministry of Defense? This isn't a scam?"
"Wuuuuu…I want to go home, I don't want to go on the spring trip anymore!"
A timid girl burst into tears on the spot.
Screech!!
The coach slammed to a sudden stop on the shoulder of the highway.
Driver Master Wang, not even bothering to kill the engine, frantically dialed his phone with shaking hands.
"Hello?! Wife! Pick up! Pick up fast! Grab our daughter! Bring food! Something's really happened!"
The inside of the coach erupted into chaos in an instant.
Some screamed. Some tried to jump out the windows. Some stood frozen like statues.
"Everyone don't panic! Don't run!"
Chen Tong's face had gone deathly pale as well, yet she forced herself to stand tall, spreading her arms wide as she tried to calm the students spiraling out of control.
"Stay on the bus! Master Wang, lock the doors! We're safer if we stay together!"
Amid the pandemonium and terror, Jiang Nan alone remained in his seat at the 3rd-to-last row—completely motionless.
He didn't scream. He didn't make a call. His expression barely shifted at all.
He simply gazed quietly out the window.
The sky that had been a brilliant blue was now turning a bizarre, bloody crimson, as though the curtain of the world itself was being torn apart.
‘Current area is outside service range…’
Jiang Nan recalled the failed system prompt from moments ago, then recalled what that mysterious voice had said about being "teleported to the Savage Realm."
If there was no check-in point here…
Then could it be that this new world they were about to enter was precisely the map the system had been waiting for all along?
Amid the screams and wailing that filled the chaos, within Jiang Nan's pitch-black eyes, there was no fear—only a faint, unmistakable glimmer of…
Anticipation.
【Countdown: 10…9…8…】
Jiang Nan tightened his grip on the pen in his hand. His other hand rested gently over the sticky note bearing the number 6,666.
If this was real—then these 18 years of silence would perhaps, today, shake the very heavens.
FOOTNOTE:
1) In League of Legends, the "one-click rune" feature for Renekton (often referred to as the "Slaughterer" or "Butcher" / 荒漠屠夫 in Chinese) is a built-in helper tool within the WeGame platform. This feature allows players to automatically apply professional or high-win-rate rune configurations directly to their game client during the champion selection phase.