Chapter 1
Hoa Nghien had never known what color sunlight truly was.
In the fragmented, shattered memories of a thirteen-year-old girl, her entire world was confined to a damp basement reeking of mold, the curses that filtered through the ceiling, and beatings that never seemed to have an end.
Sticks.
Wounds.
The bone-chilling cold of the stone floor.
That was all she knew of life.
Ever since she had been old enough to understand the world around her, Hoa Nghien had always believed that she was an “unlucky child.”
Because that was what her cruel father had constantly drilled into her mind.
“You're the one who brought bad luck to this family!”
“Useless!”
“I should never have had you!”
Every time she heard those words, she could only curl herself into the corner, trying to make her body as small as possible.
The heavy iron basement door was like a boundary.
Beyond it was the world.
And on this side...
Was the place where Hoa Nghien was imprisoned.
The only thing keeping her from completely breaking down was her mother.
Her mother—Zhang Ngoc Lan—was a pitiful woman herself, constantly enduring her husband's beatings and insults.
Yet even when her body was covered in wounds, whenever night fell, she would secretly find a way down into the basement.
Just to hold her daughter for a little while.
Her thin, bony hands would gently stroke the girl's tangled hair.
“Don't cry... Be a good girl, A Nghien. Mommy is here.”
Those were the only moments when Hoa Nghien truly felt alive.
The familiar scent of her mother's clothes.
The warmth of her embrace.
And the soft lullabies she sang in a quiet, slightly clumsy voice.
All of them became the only light in the darkness of Hoa Nghien's world.
But then...
One day...
The familiar footsteps never came again.
There was no longer the quiet creak of the basement door opening.
No more voice calling, “A Nghien.”
Even the constant stream of curses that used to shake the floor above had disappeared.
The basement fell silent.
One day.
Two days.
Then many more days passed.
Hoa Nghien became so hungry that she could no longer feel hunger.
Her body had already been painfully small due to malnutrition, and now it grew frighteningly thin.
She curled up in the corner, both arms wrapped around her knees, desperately trying to preserve the last bit of warmth within her body.
Her breathing grew weaker.
Her heartbeat slowed.
The world before her eyes gradually blurred.
In her final moment, Hoa Nghien could remember only her mother's embrace.
“...Mom.”
The voice was so faint that it was almost impossible to hear.
Then everything sank into darkness.
The thirteen-year-old girl died in that cold, desolate basement.
No one knew.
No one noticed.
Except the world itself...
Which was beginning to change.
Just as Hoa Nghien's soul was about to disappear into the void, a thunderous explosion suddenly erupted.
BOOM—!
Space trembled.
The distorted walls of the basement twisted as though an invisible hand were crushing them.
Dark purple cracks spread through the air, resembling glass shattered by an enormous blow.
That was the day the Great Cataclysm began.
The Otherworld collided with Earth.
Two worlds that should never have touched were forcibly layered upon one another, causing the stable laws of reality to begin collapsing.
The basement where Hoa Nghien had died inadvertently became a spatial anchor.
A point where the two worlds intersected.
Mana from the Otherworld surged into reality.
It possessed no will.
It had neither good nor evil.
Yet that enormous source of energy touched Hoa Nghien's soul, which was already on the verge of fading away.
Once.
Twice.
Then countless streams of mana pierced through her soul, forcibly dragging it back.
Her body, which had already grown cold, suddenly trembled faintly.
A pale violet light flickered within her chest.
The life that had already vanished began to stir once more.
At the same time, something invisible seemed to be planted deep within her soul.
This was no longer simply resurrection.
It was a transformation.
The Otherworld's mana began reconstructing Hoa Nghien's body according to laws humanity had never known.
She still possessed the form of a human being.
But from that moment onward...
She was no longer entirely human.
A unique existence had been born.
No one knew how much time had passed.
Hoa Nghien's consciousness gradually returned.
The first thing she felt was not the bone-chilling cold of the stone floor.
It was warmth.
A soft embrace surrounded her entire body.
Warm.
Soft.
Safe.
The sensation was so familiar that Hoa Nghien's soul trembled.
She struggled to open her eyes.
Her heavy eyelids lifted only slightly.
What appeared before her was no longer the dark basement.
A brilliant red filled her vision.
Thick, soft fur.
A gigantic body.
And a pair of amber eyes gazing at her with boundless tenderness.
It was a gigantic bear.
But the reason Hoa Nghien wasn't afraid wasn't because the beast looked harmless.
It was because those eyes...
Were far too familiar.
They were exactly like her mother's eyes.
The girl weakly moved her lips.
“...Mom?”
The gigantic bear did not answer with words.
Instead, a gentle voice immediately echoed inside Hoa Nghien's mind.
“Yes.”
“Mommy is here.”
Hoa Nghien froze.
Her already-exhausted eyes instantly reddened.
“Mom...”
“Don't be afraid.”
The enormous arms tightened around her, carefully enough that they did not hurt her in the slightest.
“You've been asleep for a very long time.”
“Your body is still very weak.”
That voice was as gentle as it had been on those nights long ago.
“Sleep a little longer, A Nghien.”
“When you wake up...”
“Mommy will give you a strong and healthy body.”
But Hoa Nghien did not know that...
In order to say those words to her, her mother had already given up everything.
A few days earlier.
The man had gotten drunk again.
After another bout of violence, he tied Zhang Ngoc Lan up in the kitchen before staggering toward the staircase connecting the basement to the upper floor.
He only wanted to go upstairs and sleep.
But he did not know that the world outside had already begun to collapse.
The staircase before him had once been nothing more than an ordinary structure.
Now, it happened to lie directly above the intersection of two spaces.
All it needed was one small disturbance...
Crack!
A fissure suddenly appeared in the space above the stairs.
Before he could understand what was happening—
BOOM—!
Space exploded apart.
A terrifying force of attraction burst from the rift.
The man was dragged straight toward it.
“What the hell—?!”
His scream was instantly swallowed.
His body vanished into the rapidly expanding rift.
Then the entire house began to shake.
Tables.
Chairs.
Cabinets.
Every small object inside the house.
All of them were pulled toward the spatial fracture by an invisible force.
Zhang Ngoc Lan struggled desperately.
“A Nghien!”
But she could not free herself from the ropes.
A cabinet was torn from its place and hurled across the room.
Crash!
Everything before her eyes went black.
When Zhang Ngoc Lan regained consciousness...
Several days had already passed.
The house no longer resembled the home she had once known.
The floor near the staircase had warped and twisted like clay crushed by the hand of some gigantic being.
Spatial fractures still floated in the air.
She immediately thought of her daughter.
“A Nghien!”
Zhang Ngoc Lan desperately crawled toward the staircase.
“A Nghien! Can you hear Mommy?!”
There was no answer.
Through the distorted gap between fragments of warped space, she saw a small figure curled up in the corner of the basement.
Motionless.
Her heart seemed to stop.
“No...”
She kept calling her daughter's name.
“A Nghien!”
“A Nghien, answer Mommy!”
Her voice was hoarse.
But the girl remained completely still.
From time to time, objects inside the house were pulled through the spatial rift, crashing down into the basement.
A remote control.
A piece of cloth.
A cleaning rag.
One after another, they landed near the small body.
But Hoa Nghien did not react.
Zhang Ngoc Lan trembled as she stared at the scene.
A thought she desperately refused to accept slowly surfaced in her mind.
“...A Nghien.”
“Is my daughter... dead?”
She burst into tears.
Despair surged through her like a tidal wave.
She hated herself.
She hated her own weakness.
She hated herself for being unable to protect her daughter from that man.
And for the first time in her life, she hated this world as well.
Why did every misfortune have to fall upon an innocent child?
Why did her daughter have to endure all of this?
“I'm sorry, my child...”
Zhang Ngoc Lan choked on her sobs.
“Mommy was useless...”
“Mommy couldn't protect you...”
Just then...
The spatial rift above the basement suddenly expanded.
Boom!
An enormous wave of mana poured out.
Zhang Ngoc Lan looked up.
Within the chaotic purple light, she saw something floating beside her daughter's body.
A small figure.
Faint.
Translucent.
But that face...
It was Hoa Nghien.
Zhang Ngoc Lan froze.
“That is...”
“Her soul?”
She did not know why she could understand it.
But a mother's instinct told her that it was her daughter.
Violent mana poured into the basement, stream after stream wrapping around Hoa Nghien's soul.
Then a mechanical voice suddenly rang inside Zhang Ngoc Lan's mind.
[Special entity detected: Hoa Nghien.]
[Status: Awakening.]
[Warning: The host's body is in critical condition.]
[Requirement: A Guardian Beast is required to protect the host during the awakening process.]
Zhang Ngoc Lan looked around in confusion.
“Who's speaking...?”
No one answered.
The voice continued, cold and completely devoid of emotion.
[Scanning entities with a blood relationship to the host.]
[Confirmed: Zhang Ngoc Lan.]
[Conditions satisfied.]
[Blood relationship: Mother—Daughter.]
[Emotional bond: Extremely high.]
A brief silence followed.
Then the voice spoke once more.
[The Will of the World has presented a choice.]
[Zhang Ngoc Lan, are you willing to abandon your human body, transform into an Otherworldly creature, and become the Guardian Beast of the special entity Hoa Nghien?]
Zhang Ngoc Lan froze.
Abandon her human body?
Become a beast?
It was an insane choice.
But she only looked at the tiny soul being swept up by the raging currents of mana.
Her poor daughter had suffered enough.
She did not need to know what she would become.
She did not need to know whether she would ever be able to return to being human.
She only needed her daughter to live.
Zhang Ngoc Lan wiped away her tears.
“I agree.”
There was not even a hint of hesitation.
[Choice confirmed.]
[Transformation process commencing.]
The violent mana immediately surged toward her.
Zhang Ngoc Lan trembled in agony, but she did not retreat.
Her human body began to transform.
Her bones shifted.
Her flesh was reconstructed.
A layer of brilliant red fur emerged.
The woman's small body gradually grew larger and larger.
But before her consciousness was completely submerged in the transformation, she still managed to look toward her daughter.
“A Nghien...”
“Don't be afraid.”
“Mommy is here.”
Back to the present.
Hoa Nghien had been carried out of the basement.
Outside was an open stretch of land filled with chaotic currents of mana.
Mother Bear gently placed her down.
Hoa Nghien's small body immediately began to float into the air.
Zhang Ngoc Lan raised her head and gazed at her daughter.
She knew that the true awakening had only just begun.
The dense mana surrounding the basement suddenly began to fluctuate.
Crack... crack...
Countless pieces of pure ice began to condense in midair.
They emerged from beneath Hoa Nghien's feet and slowly spread upward.
Layer by layer.
Layer by layer.
Before long, her entire small body was encased in a layer of transparent ice.
A gigantic pillar of ice slowly took shape.
Twenty meters tall.
Approximately six meters in diameter.
Inside the freezing crystal, Hoa Nghien curled up as though she were peacefully asleep.
Her face was strangely serene.
But whenever Mother Bear looked at that thin, fragile body, pain still filled her eyes.
Her daughter was thirteen years old.
Yet her body was so small that she looked no older than a six-year-old child.
Mother Bear placed one enormous paw against the pillar of ice.
“Sleep, A Nghien.”
“This time... no one will ever hurt you again.”
The amber eyes of the giant bear gradually turned cold.
She turned her head toward the wasteland disappearing beneath the mist of mana.
This world had changed.
Creatures humanity had never known would soon emerge.
Dangers she had never imagined would come.
But none of that mattered.
Mother Bear would protect this place.
She would protect her daughter.
At any cost.
Without looking back, the enormous red-furred figure slowly walked into the mist.
She began patrolling the surrounding territory.
At the same time, the Otherworldly objects scattered throughout the area were gradually collected by her.
Some might contain mana.
Some might be valuable resources.
And some...
Might become the key to helping her daughter survive in this new world.
Mother Bear did not know how long Hoa Nghien would need to awaken.
A day?
A month?
Or perhaps a year?
She only knew one thing.
When her daughter opened her eyes again...
This world would no longer be the world she had once known.
And this time...
Hoa Nghien would not have to enter it alone.
