Surviving the Calamity

“When you set out on this path, countless demons and monsters will try to shut you up, but you have to speak. You have to speak!”

Xun Xu keeps transmigrating intermittently into a strange world. The sects there have bizarre cultivation systems of their own.

In the “Mother-and-Child Palace” of the “Four Emptiness Abbey,” the women worship a fervent fertility cult that makes her deeply uncomfortable. Meanwhile, people go missing from the “Strangers' Pit” every few days, as if it's perfectly normal.

Whenever someone disappears, she, a “packing boy” responsible for boxing things up, ends up with another batch of hearts, livers, spleens, lungs, and kidneys to dispose of... They say these are “tonics” being sent to the palace for the nobles, to help them live longer.

Everything about this place is so strange. Is she in some kind of ancient-world wasteland? Or a fantasy world tainted by mental pollution?

Xun Xu keeps guessing at all the possibilities.

She's terrified, but there's nowhere to hide. The otherworld is a man-eating den of demons that swallows her up from time to time, leaving her confused and helpless, again and again.

Then one day, she sees a hot news topic: “Artificial wombs to officially enter use in 2077.”... And on another day, she overhears the head of the “Mother-and-Child Palace” chatting with his colleagues: “The people from the future are coming to inspect us. Get ready.”

Terror and shock flood her mind in an instant.

This isn't some otherworld! It's the ancient past, colonized and plundered by time travelers from centuries in the future! This isn't the Four Emptiness Abbey, it's the Time Travel Museum!

Whenever a new technology is born, what comes first isn't a beautiful vision of how it will improve people's lives, but the greedy, brutal expansion of capitalists.

These future people crawl through the river of history like fleas. And beyond them, it seems another faction has mixed in as well.

“Dala-la...” A traitor on the verge of death secretly hands her a box. “I know where you're from. Take it.”

“Take it, and tell it about all the chaos in the world! It won't ignore you. This is called making your voice heard in the highest court!”

Xun Xu can't figure out what she's supposed to be talking to. The strangers from the west call it “Terra,” while the cultivators say, “It's Nuo, the manifestation of the Nuo god.”

There are all kinds of claims, but seeing is believing. She sets out on a journey to repair time and uncover the truth...

[Reading note] It has a sci-fi core, but also fantasy elements. The fantasy is simply another way of depicting science fiction.

*Highlights: Spirits above and below, guard me well; drones descend to work their magic! // I can't believe I'm the only one who likes this wild story about science beating magic.

* * *

Content warnings:

1. The protagonist's main weapons are causality and her tongue (she reports things to Nuo). This may not be as fiery and cool as a typical fantasy protagonist. If you can't accept her big move being a talking technique, please leave now.

2. The protagonist is extremely selfless.

3. “Historical fiction” means making things up, and “adaptation” means changing everything.

The novel has a hodgepodge of elements: sci-fi, fantasy, and Chinese-style horror. The historical storyline also features local indigenous people, and its social background is loosely based on the Five Barbarians' upheaval during the Wei and Jin dynasties. It's not very rigorous.

The main story has lots of disturbing content: bizarre, grotesque, and disgusting. If you can get through the first three chapters, you've probably made it past the worst.

Theme: All it takes is one thought to save the people