Shen Wei was lost in a dream so long it felt like another lifetime. In it, he was a man from a bygone era.
As a boy, he trained in martial arts under his father, a strict man who was quick to discipline him with a thin wooden stick.
As a teenager, his father went hunting in the mountains and never returned whole. He watched as the villagers carried the blood-soaked body down the path, and he threw himself upon it, weeping until he had no tears left.
Then, the dream showed him joining the army. A year later, he was grievously wounded in a brutal battle and discharged, sent home to his village to recover.
He married a woman with bright eyes and teeth like polished ivory.
A year after they wed, his wife gave birth to a son, and in the dream, he seemed overjoyed.
It was only seemed because this was not his experience to live, but to observe. He was a spectator watching the documentary of another man’s life.
Fragmented scenes flickered past. In the blink of an eye, twenty years had passed. The house grew crowded and lively with new voices.
But then, one day, his wife fell ill with a sickness from which she would never recover. Watching her grow more frail with each passing day, he felt a profound sense of loss and fear.
When she finally passed away, the colors of the dream bled away into shades of gray.
The warmth was gone, replaced by a hollow emptiness and a quiet confusion that never truly left.
The dream grew more fragmented and blurry after that. Just as Shen Wei felt it was about to dissolve completely, a clear pond materialized before him.
The stone basin was set into the ground, surrounded by an endless, pressing darkness. Only the water within the pond cast a faint, ethereal glow.
Suddenly, Shen Wei’s eyes snapped open. He stared blankly at the wooden beams of the ceiling above him.
He knew that roof beam. He knew it intimately. He had seen it countless times in his dream, and he could almost feel the phantom weight of it on his shoulders, the memory of carrying it down from the mountain and setting it in place with his own two hands.
“This isn’t a dream!”
Shen Wei blinked, his heart seizing in his chest.
He shot upright, the thick blanket sliding from his shoulders. The entire room came into sharp focus.
The clay kang, a black wooden box at its foot, two worn blankets folded neatly on top of the box. Dim light filtered through the paper-pasted wooden window, and from outside came the clucking of hens being fed.
Shen Wei shook his head hard, then delivered a sharp slap to his own cheek. The sting was real.
It really wasn't a dream.
He was stunned.
How did a perfectly healthy young man from modern society wake up as a widowed old man in the countryside?
His wife was dead. That made him a widower, didn’t it?
And not just a widower. He had children. Sons, daughters… and grandsons and granddaughters.
Shen Wei scrambled clumsily off the kang and peeked through a crack in the door. In the courtyard, a woman in a coarse, long skirt was scattering feed for a flock of chickens.
The corner of his mouth twitched violently. He felt as if he’d been struck by lightning.
What the hell was all this?
He had time-traveled. He’d time-traveled into the body of an old man with a house full of descendants.
A house full of descendants!
A house full of descendants!
A volcano of resentment erupted in his chest.
He wasn't even married yet! Where did all these descendants come from?
No, wait. He wasn't some old wreck.
He was only thirty-eight!
Shen Wei sank back onto the kang, his mind racing. In a feudal society, people married young. The man in his dream had joined the army at fifteen, been sent home injured at sixteen, and married at seventeen. That meant this body was only thirty-eight.
In modern times, thirty-eight wasn’t old at all.
But to have aged ten years in an instant, for no reason… it felt horrible.
One moment, he was a young man of twenty-eight in his prime; the next, a thirty-eight-year-old grandfather. Shen Wei felt his heart might actually break.
“Dad, are you up? Breakfast is ready!”
A voice called from outside the door. It was his eldest son.
A twenty-year-old son!
How could he have a son that old? The urge to weep was becoming unbearable.
When there was no response, the young man pushed the door open and stepped inside.
“Dad, what is it? Are you thinking of Mom again?”
His eldest son, Shen Bowen, was a solidly built young man. Though only twenty, he was already the father of two children.
Shen Wei buried his face in the tattered blanket.
There was that old saying about the three joys of a middle-aged man: a promotion, a windfall, and the death of his wife. This body’s wife was gone. Was he supposed to count that as a blessing?
“No. You all go ahead and eat.”
Shen Wei didn't want to go out. He wasn't ready to face a house full of descendants.
But the moment the words left his mouth, his stomach betrayed him with a loud, rumbling growl.
Shen Bowen heard it clearly. “Dad, you’re hungry.”
A wave of despair washed over Shen Wei. He really, truly wasn't prepared for this.
He hadn’t even gotten married!
And now he had grandsons.
He wanted to scream, to smash something against the wall. In all the stories, the hero gets to be the son or the grandson, to start fresh. Why did he have to become the grandfather?
He would rather be someone’s grandson than anyone’s grandfather!
Heavens, he was hungry.
Cursing wouldn't fill his stomach. He couldn't afford to skip a meal; he was starving.
“You go out first. I’ll be there in a minute,” Shen Wei mumbled, his head still lowered.
“Alright, Dad. Hurry up!”
Hearing that he intended to eat, Shen Bowen’s voice became cheerful again, and he readily agreed.
Once his son had left, Shen Wei finally lifted his head from the blanket.
There was no avoiding it.
He had to face his house full of descendants.
Shen Wei let out a long, shuddering sigh.
He wasn't a lone man anymore. He had three sons, two daughters, two daughters-in-law, two grandsons, and a granddaughter. It was an enormous, impossible family.