The bat froze, hanging in the air.
Li Chengyi was stunned. He looked at everything in front of him and didn’t know how to react.
In front of him was…
… a wide, dark parking garage.
In the large rectangular space, there wasn’t a single vehicle. It was like a long sealed box, with only dim lights illuminating the floor.
The lights were pale white, and there were two types.
On the right was a long line fixed to the black ceiling, extending into the darkness in the distance.
The other one on the left was a segmented line about a meter wide. Lamps hung horizontally on the ceiling every ten meters or so, one after another, also extending into the darkness in the distance.
The black reflective floor was slightly whitened by the light, and some blurry white lines of parking spaces could be seen.
What the hell? Am I dreaming? Li Chengyi lowered the bat and pinched his thigh hard.
The intense pain quickly spread throughout his body, waking him up.
He quickly realized that it wasn’t a dream.
Even transmigration had occurred, so it seemed normal for something else to happen.
He took deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling, and calmed down a little.
Standing at the door, he paused. First, I have to determine if this is a dream.
He raised the bat and brought it close, almost pressing it against his face. He carefully observed the texture at close range.
There were tiny spots of smooth rust on the surface of the bat, and the silver paint reflected the distant lights.
There was also a scroll-like pattern engraved in the middle, with a line of small words in the pattern: It’s a Hard Knock Life.
Below the small words was the company name: Essential Exercise. Below this were the two neat letters representing the company.
Dreams can’t be so clear and detailed! Li Chengyi felt a chill run down his spine. He gripped the anti-slip handle of the bat tightly. The dense lines brought a rough feeling, making him once again certain that this was not a dream.
According to his experience, he only needed to observe the details to discover if he was dreaming or not.
The details of dreams were often hazy.
And now…
He stood at the door and took a deep breath. He looked at the parking garage outside, not wanting to go out at all.
Subconsciously, he took a step back and wanted to shrink back into the room and close the door.
Perhaps closing the door and opening it again will return everything to normal.
While he was thinking, his back pressed against a cold wall.
“!!!” Li Chengyi stiffened and quickly turned around.
The bedroom behind him had turned into a grayish-white wall!
The room was gone?!
His bedroom was gone?!
He was holding a bat and wearing the gray underwear he was wearing when he went to sleep. He stood rooted to the floor with a blank look, not understanding what was happening.
The room was gone.
The door frame was gone too.
Behind him was only a stone wall identical to the other walls.
If not for the bat in his hand, he might have thought that his sleep in the room had been an illusion.
Li Chengyi stretched out his hand and gently touched the wall in front of him.
The hard, cold touch and rough texture told him that the wall in front of him was real.
There were even some tiny damaged spots on the wall, as though something sharp had hit them, revealing another layer of grayish-black material below.
What the hell is going on?! Li Chengyi was stunned.
He turned around again, looked at the parking garage, and took a deep breath.
After he hesitated for a while, his expression gradually calmed down, and the look in his eyes changed rapidly.
Not long after, he finally let out a long breath and took a step forward.
Whoosh!
In an instant, the world spun. Li Chengyi’s vision blurred, and his consciousness fell into a momentary haze.
He seemed to be floating, and the world was spinning.
Beep beep beep…
The ear-piercing sound of an alarm vibrated in his ears.
Li Chengyi’s vision gradually returned.
The parking garage in his eyes changed into the white ceiling of his room.
Pieces of square metal, pieced together with white square frames and black lines, were the simple ceiling patterns of his room.
He sat on the bed in a daze, with his phone on the bedside table beeping and vibrating slightly.
It was an alarm.
The word ‘exercise’ appeared on the light blue screen.
The time was 7:32 a.m.
Li Chengyi took a deep breath and felt his heart still thumping.
The scenes just now were so realistic that he had yet to return to his senses.
Sitting on his bed and waiting for his blood flow to slow down, he picked up his phone and turned off the alarm.
The background of the phone was a piece of dark blue seawater, and in the center were three young people in red life jackets lying on their backs on a round inflatable cushion.
The three of them had their hands behind their heads and were smiling happily.
Golden sunshine, a gray inflatable cushion, red life jackets, and three bright smiles formed a warm picture in the center of the deep blue sea.
Li Chengyi looked at the background photo on the screen while holding his phone in the air. After a while, vague memories surfaced in his mind.
Lin Sang, Chen Xudong.
He remembered the names of two other people besides him.
The girl’s name was Lin Sang, and the muscular boy’s name was Chen Xudong.
This was when the three of them had gone to the Bisha Islands on the other side of the Blue Ocean two years ago and asked for an aerial photography photo.
He put down his phone and looked at its appearance.
It was just a simple rectangular silver case, not much different from the phones in his previous life.
There was only the screen and no buttons.
Whoosh.
He put down his phone, lifted the blanket, stood up, walked to the window, pushed aside a few jackets hanging in front of the window, and opened the window.
The cool air outside turned into a gust of wind that blew onto his face, and the aroma of fried eggs entered his nostrils.
The light outside the window was pure white, and the window was on the fourth floor. There were rows of cars of various colors parked below.
Opposite was another grayish-white ten-story building. From here, he could see the families gradually moving through the windows between the floors.
Li Chengyi turned his head and looked at the sky farther away.
Under the blue sky, the hazy white clouds were like cotton wool, sometimes blocking the sunlight and sometimes leaking a little gold.
He composed himself, turned around, walked to the desk, and took out a clean mirror from the drawer.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
The mirror reflected an ordinary young man with black eyes and light yellow skin.
His eyebrows were slightly thin, and the corners of his eyes were slightly raised, as though he was smiling at all times. Other than this, there were no other memorable characteristics.
His nose was neither high nor short, and his mouth was neither wide nor narrow, neither thick nor thin.
He was in his twenties, and his eyes were curious and surprised.
It seems no different from my previous life? This thought flashed through Li Chengyi’s mind.
According to the habits of his predecessor, he should now get dressed and go out to exercise.
Although his memories were blurry, he still remembered many things.
He opened the closet, quickly found a gray tracksuit, and put it on. Then he opened the door and went into the living room.
The living room was empty. His parents and sister were no longer here. There were also a few pairs of shoes missing from the shoe cabinet at the door.
There was a box of gray jelly-like things on the grayish-white rectangular stone table.
Li Chengyi walked closer and picked it up to take a look.
There was a line of words printed on the surface of the box: Snow Fungus and Mung Bean Congee—Guding Brand.
After hesitating for a moment, he tore open the lid of the box and raised his head to drink.
It tasted sweet, no different from what he had eaten in his previous life.
He quickly finished breakfast, changed his shoes, and slung his fanny pack over his shoulder.
Li Chengyi carefully recalled his blurry memories, took his phone and keys, opened the door, and walked out of the house.
In the empty and cold stairwell, the silver elevator moved faster than he expected.
After pressing the button, he arrived on the first floor in four seconds.
After he left the stairwell and walked out of the building entrance, his feet stepped on the gray ground outside for the first time. Feeling the hard and solid touch, Li Chengyi suddenly felt at ease.
He stood at the entrance of the building and felt the warm wind blowing on his body. The wind had the fragrance of flowers and breakfast, and an indescribable sense of life bubbled up in his heart.
Ring, ring.
Suddenly, a bell rang from the entrance of the building opposite.
An old man with white hair was helping his granddaughter onto the back seat of a bicycle. He took three steps forward, got onto the bicycle, and calmly sent his granddaughter to school.
The little girl, who was less than ten years old, was carrying her school bag and yawning. There were still some tears at the corner of her eyes and finger marks on one side of her face.
Li Chengyi stretched his ankles while watching the little girl and the old man gradually leave.
He jumped twice and jogged in the direction the bicycle had left.
This direction led out of the neighborhood, and the place where his predecessor exercised daily was in a small park on the side of this neighborhood called Happy Community.
On the road inside the neighborhood, cars drove past from the side, most of which were people going out to work.
The leaves and branches above his head rustled in the wind, and faint yellow debris kept drifting down. They seemed to be some kind of petals or fluff on the leaves.
Li Chengyi ran out of the neighborhood along the road and stopped in front of a large red stone engraved with the words ‘Happy Community’ on the right side of the gates. Then he continued running toward the right side of the neighborhood.
Fresh air, suitable temperature, bright light, clean streets.
There was a constant flow of cars and people going to work and sending their children to school, as well as people getting up early to exercise.
All the realism made Li Chengyi’s unstable mood gradually calm down.
He ran to the entrance of the small park in one spurt, stopped by a circular open space, and waited.
The two people exercising with his predecessor were the other two in the background photo on his phone: Lin Sang and Chen Xudong.
Five days a week, they would come here to exercise early.
Li Chengyi was looking forward to it and was also a little nervous. Everything in this world was new to him.
The past interpersonal relationships of his predecessor were both familiar and unfamiliar to him.
While he was thinking about how to deal with his two good friends, the uneasiness brought about by the strange experience last night gradually faded from his mind.
He had a vague feeling of being in a trance, as though this was his true self and the previous life in his memory was just an extremely real dream.
But this feeling was thrown to the back of his mind in the blink of an eye.
Because someone was already running toward him from the right.
“Little Yi!” the man called from afar, his running movements standard.
This person was tall and burly, at least 1.9 meters tall. He had a crew cut and bulging muscles. He was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt and gray sweatpants. He had thick eyebrows, big eyes, and a big red mole on the left side of his forehead. It was Li Chengyi’s predecessor’s good friend and classmate Chen Xudong.