Rivers of the Night - Chapter 33: Calm

Qin Xiaoguo was a successful chef working in the future era. A turn of fate brought her to the past, into a time of famine and uncertainty. Waking up one day, Qin Xiaoguo found herself face to face with a boy who acknowledged her as his mother.

Having transmigrated from the year 3024 to 42 BC, Qin Xiaoguo had traveled across a three-millennium time leap to the past. She was transported to a destitute place, and also became mother to a hungry, skinny boy at the same time.

Her only comfort to her new-found circumstances was a spatial ring that allowed her to transmigrate—giving her free access to food and other belongings from a different era.

After years of raising her son singlehandedly, Qin Xiaoguo had a surprise visitor at her door. It was a man claiming to be her husband, requesting to stay the night. Out of confusion and pity, Qin Xiaoguo let the self-proclaimed father of her child into the house.

A pill, a tiny capsule encased in a biologically harmless water-soluble shell; A shell whose very existence is a result of a century of research and technological advancement. A manmade synthesis of Chemicals and product of complex processes.

And in the end, a means to an end.

A way to deliver a concoction of other Chemicals for an agenda; Vitamins for nutrition, medication for treatment, or… perhaps more.

We trust that what we eat won’t do us harm, and trust that those who are responsible for its creation had the best of intentions. But in the end, it is difficult or perhaps impossible to truly tell what lies within a pill.

That is until one day I entered a research institution as a test subject. All I did was swallow a pill I was told to be a health supplement.

Bought it right away.

Many islands dotted the vast oceans of this world. However, some of the islands were a lot more sinister than the rest. Those islands, known as Nightmare Islands, were true nightmares to all but the strongest and most fortunate. Children were kidnapped and thrown on these isolated islands by the Nightmare Palace, forced to sign soul pacts with evil soul pets: Nightmares. These devils slowly devoured the souls of their trainers to grow stronger. If the children did not cultivate fast enough, their souls will be devoured whole, leaving only an empty husk behind.

Chu Mu, the protagonist, was an heir to the Chu Clan, but due to a plotted murder, he was thrown on the island, sentencing him to almost certain death. Dancing on the edge of life and death, he struggled to survive with a small Moonlight Fox he captured. When he finally escaped the devilish foremen on his island, he couldn’t help but let a breath out. But little does he know, the experience was only a beginning to a fated journey with his little Moonlight Fox…