Step One: Make proper preparations

A young man was standing, slightly angled to the side in front of a three-meter mirror-like, round object. His black almond-shaped eyes were raised. His thin pink lips, opening and closing. He was slightly facing to his side, highlighting his straight, pointed nose and defined jawline. He was extremely fair and white. On his face was a serious expression, in which, looking closely, had a subtle hint of pampering.

The young man had facial features that were obviously Asian but his platinum blond hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, gave him away. Clearly, he’s of a mixed-race.. A two-meter and a half giant bird was standing opposite him. The young man was currently seriously reprimanding this giant bird. With the young man’s one meter and eighty height and the giant bird’s two meter and fifty, the scene looked quite funny.

The giant bird had a solemn expression on its face. However, its bright purple eyes can’t hide the silly look and confusion from within. The young man was still talking, stretching his hand to rub the silly bird’s head in the process. There seemed to be endless things he wanted to say. Then, suddenly, he paused, perking up his ears and listening attentively.

From the corners of the room, faint noises could be heard. There seemed to be people talking nearby.

The young man, Lei, listened for a while. He glanced at source of the sounds, thinking. After a while, he turned his attention back to the two-meter and a half giant bird opposite him again, ignoring the noises. He continued his interrupted speech from earlier and with a stern attitude, nagged non-stop like a mother hen.

“Remember not to play too much. After I left, you should obediently listen to Ms. Emily. She’s already old, don’t make trouble. When you grew old enough to support yourself, you should go back to the Beast planet, that’s where you belong. Find your real mom, don’t miss me. We won’t be able to see each other again after this.”

After he finished this words, the two-meter and a half giant bird let out aggrieved noises, sounding his disapproval.

Lei sighed, he continued. “I know. It wasn’t my intention to make you feel sad. I didn’t want to leave you so soon either, you’re still too young. But what can I do? I can’t stay here for long.. I’d be dead if I do. Unless, you want to see my decapitated corpse? Sigh. Don’t worry. Although I am not as strong as the old man, or everyone from this empire, I’m still quite capable of a lot of things. Just think about yourself. Learn to mature quickly. You’re so foolish. Though I know part of it is because you’re still a newborn, still, strive to make yourself better. If you continue to be like this, at this rate, forget about going back and finding your mother, you might as well offer yourself and become a roasted chicken! Ok, ok. I’m not saying this to scare you so be good and listen, alright?”

Right after he finished this sentence, the three-meter mirror-like, round object showed some changes. The still surface a moment ago, which looked like a transparent glass film now became a black spiral-like whirlpool, seemingly able to pull people in.

Lei was about to say another sentence when he saw these changes from the corners of his eye. He halted abruptly, staring wide-eyed at the thing in front of him. His eyes were showing complicated emotions. There were some surprise, excitement, joy, sadness, fear, uncertainty and a little bit of distress. He wasn’t sure what to really feel either. Coming to this step, he suddenly felt at a loss of what to do.

The two-meter and a half giant bird was looking at him quietly from the side, no longer making noises. Lei felt even more complicated. He reached out his hand to comfort the ‘little’ guy, saying, “It seems it’s almost about time for me to go..”

But before his raised hand touch the ‘little’ giant guy, a commotion was suddenly heard coming from the door. Lei immediately turned his head to look. The moment he turned his head, he saw the old man, carrying his son, with expression he couldn’t explain, running like crazy towards his direction. He didn’t even have time to react when this old guy, sprinting like mad, arrived in his side and pushed him to the three-meter high space portal without notice!

Lei was instantly dumbfounded. His mind went blank, full of question marks. He couldn’t even open his mouth to ask and the strong force pulled his entire person, drowning his entire vision away.

The last thing he saw were two familiar frantic guys, dashing wildly from the door, as if a mass of zombies were chasing after them. When his vision completely darkened, he felt his body becoming weightless, his head, nauseous and dizzy. His entire face instantly lose its color, becoming pale and his breathing, short.

This feeling was very uncomfortable and it lasted for more than an hour. When it was finally over, Lei found himself standing on a high, grassy slope. Upon landing, he immediately steadied his footing, bending down and holding his head, trying to recover a little. His whole body was slightly shaking and he was very unstable. Still, gritting his teeth, he forced himself to look around. Looking around, he found no one in the vicinity. He seems to be on a small hill.

In front, right below the slope, was a river. Looking further ahead, a bustling city extending far into the horizon could be seen. On both side and behind, surrounding the small hill, was a lush green, forest, and an enormous mountain...

Lei finally recovered a little strength and stared at the bustling city, in front of him in a daze. After a while, he murmured “..I ...I’m back?” Immediately after saying that, a loud bird’s cry came from behind. He froze, his beautiful illusion immediately shattered.

Silently lamenting, he thought, I haven’t even started celebrating yet and a bucket of cold water was already poured on me. Does this mean I’m still not safe?

Stiffly, he turned his head. With this turn, he can almost hear his neck doing cracking sounds, like those in horror movies, with how slow and stiff his movement was. Standing about five to six meters away from him, the white-haired old man, with a black fat cat on his shoulder, was gazing at him silently.

The one who made the cry, the two-meter and a half giant bird, Red, was also there. He was currently running at a high speed towards him. He was about to open his mouth to tell him to stop when with a whoosh, Red had already directly pounced on him.

Still weak from the earlier event, Lei immediately lose his balance and fell, almost rolling down the steep slope.

He made a stifled grunt, obviously in pain. He tried to breath slowly, enduring the pain. Laying there weakly for a while, he turned, before scolding the giant bird severely. Red was still happily cuddling him, seeming to not mind. It was unknown whether it was because he didn’t understand or he simply like acting spoiled in front of Lei.

Finally recovering his strength after an entire quarter of an hour, Lei took a lot of effort to get the bird off him. The old man at the side only continued to watched them, looking like a benevolent king, letting the two idiots mess around.

Getting off from Red’s claw with difficulty, Lei finally managed to stand firmly. There was an obvious weariness on his face. He didn’t waste time and immediately asked the questions bothering him. “What happened? Where are we? Why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to send only me? What were you doing with Fred and Bill before? Did something went wrong?”

The old man stared at him in silence for a while. Then, he spoke, his voice still raspy and hoarse. “Find a safe place first. We’ll talk along the way.” He haven’t finished his sentence when he already turned around and left, heading to the forest below. Lei was left somewhat in a daze but he immediately followed suit, dragging the whining Red behind.

Upon going down the slope and reaching the edge of the forest, the old man began to speak, answering Lei’s question one by one “We deviated from the original destination. We’re currently on a magical planet. As for which one, I still have no idea. Fred and Bill were Federation spies. They wanted to send you to the Federation’s side by using the portal. They were found out by my smart son when Fred was setting the coordinates. Fred tried to catch my son but he ran to me. I was preparing the space suit then and had no idea. When I saw the Federation’s logo on Fred’s hand, I immediately understood and ran. The rest is what you saw.”

Lei had a thoughtful expression. Then, he seriously asked, “How did you know this was a magical planet? And what’s a magical planet anyway? And this federation, why would they be interested in me? Would they follow us here? What do we do?”

The old man stopped, turning his head to stare at him. He asked, “I’ll answer your first two questions later but first, are you sure no one other than me, knew you were a person from the past?”

Lei was startled by this sudden question before seriously nodding his head.

The old man then continued. “It should be fine then. They must have heard the news of your miraculous survival and wanted to take you. There was a lot of federation spy deeply integrated in the empire so them hearing the news is no wonder. They couldn’t take you from the institute and could only find an opportune moment. You, wanting to move from Roswald was exactly what they were waiting for. There’s absolutely no way they will let this opportunity go so they took advantage of it. Assuming this was indeed their purpose, there is nothing to worry about them following us here. They will certainly not waste their time looking for someone with only a rumored ability. Furthermore, they must already be aware of your body’s quality test result”

Coming to this point, the old man’s expression suddenly became serious. “However, if they knew that you were a person from the past.. it will be very troublesome.”

“Knew.. that I’m a person from the past? What does that have to do with the federation? What will they do? There’s no way they will chase me just because of that, right?”

I understand if the Empire wants to chase me and take my head but what sin did I committed for the federation to come chase me too? What, did they want to join the fun?

Lei have always been anxious about this matter regarding his identity. This was, after all, the sole reason why he wanted to left the empire in the first place. He thought he was finally about to be freed from this worry today Who knew things would suddenly make a turn and become like this.

“Don’t worry too much. Even if they wanted to start a chase, it wouldn’t be easy. They might not even be able to get here even within billions of years searching. The least it would take them would be a few decades. If they found you were here, they might even directly give up.”

The old man spoke with certainty. Lei couldn’t help but breath a huge sigh of relief. But he was still feeling suspicious. He raised one of his eyebrow and asked, “How can you be so sure? Is there something special about this place? But don’t we have a fixed destination set before leaving? How did we ended up here, anyway?” The old man said we deviated from our original destination. That means this place where we are right now is not the same coordinates as what Fred inputted.

Hearing his string of questions again, the old man finally snapped. He looked at him impatiently. “Stop asking so many questions at once. You’ll be able to find the answers yourself soon. We should leave this forest. Hurry up first before some strange beast comes and finds us.”

The last word, us, haven’t been fully spoken when a loud thud was heard from behind. Red, who was just behind Lei when they entered the forest more than a minute ago was nowhere to be found. Instead a black giant python with its pupils in slit was looking at them with extremely hungry eyes, its tails wagging excitedly from behind.

Thumping sounds came from the wagging tail which was bumping on the large trees. It nearly uprooted the trees from the ground with the huge impact.

The old man still have his mouth open when they came face-to-face with this scene. However, before any of them could react, Red, who was missing just a while ago suddenly rushed out from the overgrown bushes, running away like his life depended on it, not even turning back to look once.

After running a few distance, he seemed to remember something, making a U turn, he ran back swiftly. Pulling along Lei who was still standing in daze, along with the old man and his son, he began running wildly again.

Halfway through, Lei finally snapped back to his senses. He frantically shouted. “Now, what?! What the f*ck is that thing?! Why is it chasing us?! I say, did you forgot to check your horoscope, old man?! Why are we being so unlucky?!”

The old man grunt, shouting back at him, “Go ask that son of yours!” Lei immediately turned his head to the silly ‘little’ bird in front. As if understanding their conversation, Red also looked back at him. His big, round eyes, blinking, looking very innocent. Lei didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He could only keep running for his life.

They kept running like this for nearly two hours before Lei finally couldn’t take it and directly collapsed on the ground.

He was exhausted to death.

Earlier before entering the space portal, he wasn’t able to wear the space suit the old man prepared. After all, they had no idea, he would have to take an early ‘flight’, way ahead the schedule. He only had his phone and backpack, he always carry on his body with him.

The space suit was supposed to protect him from being crushed by the pressure from the space. He was only an ordinary human that couldn’t get any more ordinary, after all. Traveling through space is really too much for him. For people like him, travelling without a space suit, having an intact corpse would be already a huge feat.

However, he actually survive and only felt extremely weak right after. Even the old man, the strongest person in the Milky Way wouldn’t be able to do that without his ability. And to think he could still make himself stable and even run- the old man was really itching to dissect him to know what things are hidden in his body.

This old guy, usually, he doesn’t care about anything other than his son and money. But this young guy who call himself Arthur was really picking his interest.

Lei had no idea he was about to be dissected by the old man. If he had to be honest, he really just wanted to lie down and rest. However, in this unfamiliar environment, how could he dare lie down and rest? The old man already said in the beginning that they should find a safe place. With this indication, how could he suggest to rest?

So, he really had no other choice than force himself to continue.

Before completely losing his consciousness, Lei felt himself being carried. Right after, a soft, cool feeling penetrated him. Within the slit of his eyes, he saw the blurry outline of Red and the old man. His tensed muscles immediately relaxed. He inexplicably felt secured. Finally all of his vision succumbed to darkness. He had fainted completely.