The surrounding soldiers hurriedly fired arrows to block him, but since they were usually lax in training and the wooden bows allocated to Han soldiers by the court were of extremely poor quality, after two volleys, they failed to hit Albert Brooks and instead knocked down several of the white-uniformed men chasing behind him. They lay on the ground, clutching their wounds and wailing loudly.

Before the soldiers could draw their wooden bows for a third time, Albert Brooks had already charged up to them, cutting down two people in quick succession. Instantly, the crowd around him scattered with a loud commotion, leaving a large open space. All the soldiers were so terrified that they covered their heads and fled, not daring to look back!

The Xuzhou registrar Stephen Parker was also scared out of his wits. He desperately squeezed his legs against his warhorse’s belly, trying to escape the pursuit. The poor warhorse, carrying over three hundred jin of his weight, galloped toward the mouth of the alley. By accident, it stepped on the iron caltrops the soldiers had previously set, let out a mournful cry, and collapsed limply to the ground.

Stephen Parker was thrown so hard that stars danced before his eyes, and he scrambled to get up. Before he could even figure out which way his body was facing, Albert Brooks had already caught up. The tip of the blade slashed fiercely across his neck, thick as a bucket—“Pfft!”—and a jet of blood spurted more than half a zhang high.

Looking at Albert Brooks again, his whole body was stained red with blood, yet he didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. He stretched out his blood-soaked left hand and rummaged around Stephen Parker’s waist. “Where’s the equipment? Why is there only money left? Where did the equipment go? How come not a single item dropped?!”

Note 1: Fang and li were both units of urban household registration division in the Yuan dynasty. If someone in a certain place committed a serious crime of treason, the entire li, or even the entire fang, would be implicated.

Chapter 004: Where Am I

When people experience a sudden blow or something incomprehensible, they often instinctively numb themselves. In the autumn of 1351, Chris Brooks was just like this.

Before going to bed, he was still playing games at his computer, leading a group of online underlings to dominate the battlefield. When he woke up, he found himself lying on the ground, having become some Albert Brooks’s son! And a burly man, dressed in strange clothes and reeking of sweat, was peeing on his face! This was something that not even an uncle or aunt could tolerate!

However, when he instinctively grabbed a knife with the muscle memory left in his body and picked up the guy who was peeing on his face, the whole world instantly changed!

A strange environment, unfamiliar crowds, all speaking a bizarre dialect he didn’t understand, chattering endlessly at him. Some spoke harshly, some pretended to be pitiful, but their goal was the same: to make him let go of the man he had caught.

And these strangers didn’t even understand the most basic negotiation skills. Even if he let the man go, he would still end up dead. What was even more infuriating was that the nearly square-shaped, blue-eyed fat man even threatened him with the lives of other strangers!

What a joke—this was the most absurd thing Chris Brooks had ever seen since he could remember! In this strange world, these people were clearly all on the same side, and he was the enemy of them all. How could he possibly be threatened by such clumsy tactics?

At first, he thought someone was playing a prank, setting up a scene like in the movie “The Truman Show” to make fun of him. But after spending some time observing, he realized none of the strangers seemed to be acting, and the surroundings were far too realistic. Then, Chris Brooks numbed himself further by thinking he was dreaming. Everything before his eyes was a dream; as long as he found the difference between dream and reality, he could immediately wake up.

As a seasoned tech geek, his method was simple: test whether it hurt if he was shot by an arrow. If it hurt, the pain would wake him up. If it didn’t, then he really was dreaming and could wake up as usual.

Just as he expected, when the arrow hit him, it didn’t hurt. However, the people killed in the dream had blood that was a dazzling red!

Dreams have no color. Unless there’s another world inside the dream. When a person numbs themselves to the extreme, all their thoughts revolve around their assumptions.

So the dream became a game, and everyone else became NPCs. Only, the boss in the game didn’t drop any equipment after being killed!

It wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t a game—so where exactly was he?! Before Chris Brooks’s brain cells could come up with a fourth answer, shouts of “Catch the demon!” “Catch the demon and avenge Parker!” “Demon, put down your weapon and die quickly!” rang out behind him.

Immediately after, there was a series of sharp “thwack thwack thwack” sounds as three arrows whistled through the air from behind. Two struck the fat man’s corpse, and the last one hit Chris Brooks’s left shoulder.

“Ouch!” Chris Brooks jumped up in pain and yanked the arrow to the ground. He was bleeding, it hurt badly, and his head started to spin. There were no red or blue potions in his pocket! Across from him, the man he had just taken hostage and two others dressed similarly were trembling as they drew their bows. The rest, a ragtag bunch wielding wooden sticks and whips, followed behind the archers, shouting threats.

“Kill!” In that instant, Chris Brooks had no time to think about where he was. He leapt up and charged straight at Mr. Thompson, Mr. Sullivan, and another archer from the yamen.

A warrior against archers—close combat was the king’s way. Years of gaming had ingrained this habit deep in his mind.