The surface of the small bronze mirror was somewhat mottled, patches of rust scattered like clouds along the edges, but the center remained surprisingly clear, able to reflect a silhouette.
The face was still his own—fair-featured with a youthful, scholarly air, only completely devoid of color, his lips frozen a pale purple.
None of that was an issue; what was strange was his eyes.
Both of Jiang Zhaoye’s eyes had originally been black, but right now, they had turned into odd eyes—the pupil of his right eye currently displayed an exquisitely beautiful ice-blue.
Clear and crystalline, deepening from light to dark, like a melancholy, otherworldly glacial lake.
Gripping the mirror tightly, he drew it closer, clearly seeing the cloud-like patterns within the blue eye’s pupil, resembling... the white cicada originally solidified inside that blue amber.
Jiang Zhaoye’s mind buzzed, and he abruptly recalled what had happened before.
After finishing his practice, his legs had gone numb when he stood up, causing him to take a spill and bump his mouth.
Then the blue pendant on his chest had mysteriously turned freezing cold, began glowing, and burrowed into his right eye. The pain had knocked him unconscious, and by the time he opened his eyes again, he was already in this ice cave.
It was that pendant! There was definitely something wrong with that pendant!
Clutching the bronze mirror, Jiang Zhaoye plopped down onto the ground, all sorts of thoughts racing through his head. He raised a hand to touch his right eyelid, feeling a subtle coolness over the surface of his eyeball, like the refreshing sensation after applying eye drops—not uncomfortable at all.
He tried closing his left eye, looking only through the right.
His vision was sharp—even clearer than before. Jiang Zhaoye then closed his right eye and looked with his left; in comparison, the left eye was indeed a bit blurry. He had studied too hard during his third year of middle school, leaving him slightly nearsighted. During class, he sometimes had to squint at the blackboard. It wasn’t severe enough to need glasses, but his vision certainly couldn’t compare to the 1.5 vision he had two years ago.
Looking at it this way, his right eye’s vision hadn’t suffered at all; it was even better than before.
He tried rolling his eyes again, looking up, down, left, and right, and even pulled his upper and lower eyelids apart with his fingers to inspect them in the mirror. There was no sensation of a foreign object, nor any pain.
Aside from the color change, everything about this eye seemed completely normal.
Resting his chin in his hand in thought, Jiang Zhaoye held the mirror further away and looked at his delicate face. One black eye, one blue eye—like two completely different gemstones set into his eye sockets.
A little weird, but kind of cool.
For a boy who hadn’t outgrown his eighth-grade syndrome, having heterochromia wasn’t something he minded in the slightest; in fact, he felt a secret thrill about it.
But the main question right now was: why had it turned blue? Jiang Zhaoye lowered the bronze mirror and began recalling the origins of that pendant.
Finding the pendant had happened when he was very young, probably six or seven years old. He only specifically remembered that it was also during summer break, when his whole extended family—paternal grandparents, maternal grandparents, mom, and dad—had traveled out of province on vacation.
While combing the beach for seashells, he happened to spot a fair-sized clam shell washed up by the waves.
At an age where he was a menace to both man and dog, with zero concept of discretion, he picked it up and started prying at it with a rock. Putting every ounce of strength into prying it open, he retrieved a plump, round blue bead from the clam meat. Back then, he had been thrilled out of his mind, thinking he had struck gold, and rushed over excitedly to show it to the adults.
Hearing him say he had harvested it from a clam, Ms. Wen assumed it was a pearl. She took it, examined it closely, and handed it back with an amused smile, saying nothing.
The old man beside her mocked him, saying he had picked up a man-made trinket, not some valuable treasure.
Little Jiang Zhaoye was furious.
Seeing his indignation, the old man even explained to him that it wasn’t a pearl, nor was it any kind of treasure like amber.
Natural amber obviously wouldn’t be blue, and what was more, the tiny bug inside didn’t look real either. Where in the world would you find a white cicada? It was far too delicate, looking more like an artificial ornament—probably dropped into the sea by some tourist, swallowed up by the clam, and then accidentally cracked open by Jiang Zhaoye like a blind box.
A six- or seven-year-old kid didn’t care whether something was valuable or not; he only knew that holding it in his palm felt wonderfully cool, and wearing it against his skin felt exceptionally comfortable. Touching it always brought him an instinctual sense of peace. And so, he treasured the pretty bead he had unboxed beyond measure, letting no one touch it, clutching it in his hand even while sleeping.
Later, after they returned home, his grandmother saw how much he adored it and used red cord to weave a pendant cord, turning the bead into a necklace. From then on, he had worn it around his neck like an amulet. It had been seven or eight years now; he had never taken it off, not even to shower, and it had long since become second nature.
He had always thought it was just a pretty glass bead. Who could have imagined it could actually turn into light and burrow into his eye?
Sitting on the ground, Jiang Zhaoye couldn’t help picking up the bronze mirror from his lap to look again and again, his brain spinning rapidly. There were few middle school boys who didn’t read novels and comics; he was no stranger to this kind of plot.
Finding a mysterious artifact, binding it with a drop of blood, obtaining a golden finger, transmigrating to another world... a textbook web novel opening.
So was he... the chosen one? Because of that white cicada?
Closing his eyes, he tried meditating in his mind, using his thoughts to call out to that cicada, to call out to that bead, to call out to anything that might exist.
Yet nothing happened.
His mind was dead quiet. Only his own thoughts spun silently, like a vast and empty snowfield without even an echo.
Unwilling to concede, Jiang Zhaoye simply tried calling out aloud: “Little White Cicada?”
“...”
“Brother Cicada? Lord Cicada? Ancestor Cicada?”
“Cicada Fairy?”
“Senior?”
“System?”
“Golden finger?”
“...”
Aside from his own echoes, the cavern held only a toe-curlingly awkward silence.
“Is anyone there?”
But obviously, it didn’t do jack squat.
Jiang Zhaoye let out an exaggerated, theatrically loud sigh.
It seemed this wasn’t the kind of golden finger that popped out on its own to chat. What a shame; he had been hoping for the kind where you become invincible just by checking in.
Stowing the bronze mirror, Jiang Zhaoye pushed himself up from the ground. Having sat crouched for a while, the chill had seeped through the stone tiles straight into the marrow of his bones, leaving his toes almost numb.
He pressed the button to light up his watch—still no signal. He tried calling Ms. Wen again; as expected, out of service.
The watch still had three-quarters of its battery left, which could last several days if conserved. Jiang Zhaoye used it to check the ambient temperature.
Zero degrees.
What a sin... The thin T-shirt he wore was practically useless against the cold, and on his lower half he was wearing nothing but boxers that didn’t even cover his knees, leaving both legs bare to the frigid air.
And he was starving.
Ever since finishing lunch at noon, he had been sitting on his training mat cultivating, practicing for six or seven hours with barely a few sips of water. Then he had been teleported to this godforsaken place; by now, he was utterly famished.
Jiang Zhaoye’s family was well-off, and his elders had doted on him since childhood. The greatest hurdles in his life had merely been his parents’ divorce and his high school admission placement; he had never endured hardship like this before. Now cold, hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, he was pushed close to his limits both mentally and physically.
If he didn’t find a way to resolve the pressing matter of food and warmth soon, he might really kick the bucket in this ice cave.
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to calm down.
At times like this, panicking was the last thing he should do.
His parents had divorced during his final year of middle school, and with his mother constantly busy with work, Jiang Zhaoye had juggled school and daily life on his own, learning how to figure things out for himself whenever trouble struck.
...Water wasn’t a major problem.
On his way here, he had seen several icicles dripping water, along with a few small puddles on the ground that hadn’t completely frozen over. Though he had no idea whether it was clean, he was in no position to be picky right now.
Food and warmth were the real issues.
What he needed most right now was winter supplies, as well as food.
Rate on N.U.
