May 15, 1143. Overcast.
It has been three months since I transmigrated into this world. The Church's probing is over, and the business I came to Telier to handle is finished as well. At last I can take up a pen and write the first entry in this diary.
If I don't soon find a place to speak my mind, I'm truly afraid I'll take all those jumbled memories in my head—the twenty-first century AD, high-speed rail, airplanes, the internet—for one long dream, and come to believe that, in this Fifth Epoch, the city of Suxite in Yindisi is my happy hometown.
Earlier, when I saw that fellow Luosaier secretly hiding his diary notebook, I was still snarking to myself: what decent person writes a diary?
I never thought reality would slap me in the face so soon...
Still, it's all right. No one can read this writing. I'm using Chinese, which only I understand. If someone really could make it out, that would be wonderful.
Because that would prove I am not alone.
Yes. I am not a person of this world at all. I am a transmigrator, from the Earth of the twenty-first century.
Unfortunately, so far as I know, there is still nothing sufficient to prove that any other transmigrator exists. In every nation, both culture and technology have developed slowly, in a perfectly ordinary way—about the level I remember from after the Renaissance and before the Industrial Revolution. Crude, primitive firearms and cannon already exist here. Navigators are trying to find archipelagos and new continents. A banker's notes are sometimes even more intimidating than a noble's handwritten order... Of course, the nations are nothing like the ones I know, and the faiths are bizarre in every imaginable way.
The one thing I'm thankful for is that the people of this other world still have two hands, two feet, and two eyes, and have not grown anything odd. This body of mine now is the same.
That let me adapt to everything quickly after I transmigrated, without giving myself away too badly.
But. Sure enough, a moment like this calls for a but.
Transmigrating may have given me a new body, turning me from a fragile young man worn raw by working through the night into a young, healthy, vigorous "otherworlder," but the problem is that this world, like Earth, is divided into men and women—and I had the misfortune to become the latter...
I still remember the name I used all my life. I remember that not-yet-awake face in the mirror when I washed up every day. I remember Mom and Dad. I remember those friends who loved to tear into me, the coworkers who were asking for a beating, the silly fools in the group chat. I remember everything about Earth. And yet I can't shake the feeling that I have lost something forever...
Still, becoming a woman isn't all bad news. At least when Luosaier works with me, he voluntarily gives up a sizable part of the split, and I always feel he does it because of my sex, because of my looks... Which brings me to this: that fellow doesn't have ideas about me, does he? I need to give him a proper warning, before he truly starts treating me as someone to pursue. That would be far too terrifying!
Back to the point.
Since transmigrating, I really have met quite a few people. There are new friends—for instance Hengli'aite, who seems to know everything but likes speaking in riddles; Miss Weiyefu, born a commoner yet looking more elegant than any noble; and Mr. Moerwan Dulang, a lawyer who seems more like a history teacher. All of them have helped me a great deal. There are also people the original owner of this body knew long ago, though only a few blurred scraps of memory remain to me: that older female cousin I know only through letters, Luosaier, whom I just mentioned, and his buddies, and my father—he truly loves me. He loves that original "me."
Even so, I still feel hollow inside. That loneliness—how to put it—is as if all the liveliness belongs to them, and I am only a spectator.
It has nothing to do with status. It isn't that my character is bad, and it certainly isn't that I look down on anyone or think myself inferior. It is the pent-up misery of a modern person transmigrated into ancient times: at a loss, with no one to confide in.
I am writing this diary partly because I fear that, as the days stretch on, I will slowly forget all this, forget who I originally was, and blend completely in among these people. In the long run that might be a good thing, but I still can't bring myself to accept it.
Mom and Dad, and my old friends, must still be waiting for me to come back. So long as I can find a way to transmigrate home, it won't be too late. It definitely won't be too late.
...But how could it be that easy? This world doesn't even have decent technology. It is nothing like the Earth I know. To look for a way back, I first need money, status, and connections. For a declining family, that is far too hard. Even though I've already saved a little money and gained the royal family's notice, in the eyes of the true great nobles it is probably nothing more than children playing around.
Come to think of it, before I transmigrated I read so many web novels of this sort. Every last protagonist seemed to be playing with cheats on. Either they knew everything from astronomy to geography, their heads full of profound physics and chemistry, or overlooked geniuses crowded all around them, and the slightest hint could produce some technological advance, lead the trend of the age, win them a rich and beautiful bride, and carry them to the peak of life.
Only after I came over myself did I find that reality is far crueler than the novels.
Several thousand years have already passed between the myths in the Church's scriptures and the records in the history books, yet this world is hardly different from Earth's Middle Ages. They still use pit latrines, dump filthy water into the street whenever they please, let it run into the river, and then draw water from the river to drink... Fortunately, they do know to boil water—at least my family does. I hear the Church requires it. And they are diligent about bathing, which is better than the Middle Ages on that point... But at this level of technology, I fear that computers and the internet will never appear, not even by the time I die of old age, let alone research into quantum mechanics, the exploration of space, or any understanding of how "transmigration" works.
I know a steam engine has to boil water, but I only half understand how boiling water then becomes power. I know that sailing ships will later be replaced by ironclads, but I don't understand the least bit of the actual design... The people of the Craftsman Church might grasp it the moment they heard, but my faith is the Eternal Blazing Sun, and I have nothing to talk about with them. If I rashly went to Miss Weiyefu and asked her to introduce me to the archbishop of Telier so I could tinker with inventions, I might be seized as a heretic, thrown into the Inquisition, and roasted over a low flame until well done.
Oh, right—much as the web novels say, this world also has a conservative Church, and stakes all too eager to burn. What is different is that mysterious power truly exists here!
Since science cannot explain how I came over, perhaps mysticism can point me to a road home?
Fortunately, I came into contact with this power early on, and became an Extraordinary—one of those who have swallowed a potion and mastered supernatural power. The course of it was somewhat winding, and the reasons were something of a stretch, but it is a good beginning all the same.
As for later getting to "know" Luosaier again, founding a newspaper with him and putting the paper out, making my first fortune, having the honor of a summons from the king, and even using this trip to the capital, Telier, to join that high-end gathering organized by Mr. Fool—all of it is probably a chain of consequences from that one matter.
And all of this has to begin with that day three months ago. That night, I died...