After writing, “If it were me, I’d definitely make it to the perfect ending,” Lin Wanwan didn’t immediately start memorizing Tang poetry, nor did she open a search engine to look up how to make salt.
She stared at her notebook for a while, feeling that approach was far too disorganized.
Preparing for transmigration wasn’t something to cram for at the last minute.
Today, she might see someone strike it rich by making soap and rush off to study soapmaking. Tomorrow, she might remember that wounds in ancient times were prone to infection and turn around to research stopping bleeding, disinfection, and wound care.
Learning a little here and recording a little there might leave her knowing a bit about everything, but with nothing she truly knew how to use.
Besides, she didn’t even know what she ought to prepare in the first place.
If she transmigrated into a wealthy family, learning to farm might not be useful for the time being.
If she transmigrated into an age of war, memorizing more poetry wouldn’t buy her a single bite of food.
If she transmigrated into the body of a servant girl, those grand plans to make salt, produce soap, and open a restaurant might not even get off the ground before the household matron summoned her to empty the chamber pot.
At least in Lin Wanwan’s view, preparing for transmigration wasn’t all that different from conducting research.
She couldn’t jump to conclusions based on instinct.
First, she had to collect data.
Identify the patterns.
Then decide where to spend her time.
Lin Wanwan pushed the empty cup and snack wrappers aside, then sat back down in front of her computer.
Of course, she couldn’t find any genuine transmigrators at present.
The people online who claimed to remember a past life or to have visited another space-time told stories that grew more fantastical by the minute.
Some said they had spent thirty years in a dream. Others had merely been unconscious for a few minutes, only to wake up with an entire lifetime inexplicably added to their memories.
It was impossible to distinguish truth from falsehood in this material, much less verify any of it.
By comparison, the ninety-nine transmigration novels she had read this year at least each had a complete beginning, middle, and ending.
They were fictional stories and couldn’t be treated as genuine scientific evidence, but if the same settings appeared repeatedly in ninety-nine stories, perhaps they could still reveal certain common patterns.
Even if she took a step back, and failed to identify the actual conditions for transmigration, she could at least find out what situations novelists generally believed were most likely to send someone across worlds.
Ninety-nine novels.
Not exactly scientific, but they were the only transmigration samples available to her at present.
Lin Wanwan spread her notebook beside the keyboard and opened Excel on her computer.
When the blank worksheet appeared, she suddenly felt an inexplicable sense of formality.
It was as if a massive research project were about to officially launch in a bedroom at three in the morning.
In the first column, she entered: Title.
The second column was: Female lead’s age before transmigration.
For the third column, she had originally planned to write “Cause of death.” Her finger lingered over the keyboard for several seconds before she deleted those words and changed them to “Cause of transmigration.”
After all, not all ninety-nine female leads had necessarily died.
Some had merely lost consciousness.
Some had simply fallen asleep.
One had done nothing more than touch an antique mirror before vanishing completely the next second.
Categorizing every case as death clearly wasn’t rigorous enough.
Lin Wanwan silently applauded her own research attitude and continued creating fields.
Time of transmigration.
Location of transmigration.
Type of transmigration.
Identity after transmigration.
Whether modern items were brought along.
First person encountered.
She paused again after entering that one.
The first person encountered was actually very important.
If the first person she saw was a loyal maidservant, the female lead could usually obtain the original owner’s identity information quickly.
If the first person she encountered was an enemy, her starting situation would most likely involve getting slapped first or being forced to swallow a bowl of poisoned decoction.
If the first person she encountered was the male lead, then no matter how miserable the situation was at the time, the two of them would usually go on to develop a romantic relationship.
Lin Wanwan added another column after it.
Whether the first person encountered was trustworthy.
After thinking it over, she added one more.
Whether the original owner’s memories were obtained.
This was also crucial.
For some female leads, the original owner’s entire life would play through their minds like a movie the moment they transmigrated. Family relationships, love and hatred, old grudges—in short, everything loaded automatically.
Other female leads got nothing and could only pry information out of the people around them one question at a time.
The former was like receiving a complete set of account details directly.
The latter was like logging into an unfamiliar account with no password hint, one that might be locked at any moment.
The more Lin Wanwan thought about it, the more fields she added.
Whether the original owner was dead, and the cause of death.
Whether she became ill or injured after transmigration.
Whether others suspected her personality had changed.
Whether she possessed any special abilities.
Type of special ability.
Whether she quickly gained the protection of someone with a lofty identity.
She had originally wanted to write “Whether she encountered a Prince,” but ultimately decided that wasn’t rigorous enough.
Whether she successfully improved her life.
Whether she survived to the ending.
She dragged the mouse, and the table extended farther and farther to the right.
She had only meant to organize things simply, but somehow ended up creating a transmigrator survival survey with more than twenty columns.
Lin Wanwan stared at the entire row of fields, and for the first time, a trace of doubt surfaced in her heart.
Did a spreadsheet for analyzing transmigration novels really need to be this detailed?
The thought lasted only two seconds.
It did.
If she was going to do it, she couldn’t do only half the job.
She opened her reading list and began entering the novels from the first one onward.
The first was Title: The Legitimate Daughter Returns: Prince, Please Move Aside.
The female lead was twenty-four.
Cause of transmigration: car accident.
Time: Around 11:40 p.m.
Location: Intersection.
Type of transmigration: Body transmigration.
When she reached the “Identity after transmigration” column, Lin Wanwan paused.
With body transmigration, there was no original owner, and she didn’t have to take over anyone else’s family or grudges.
But that didn’t mean her circumstances would be easier.
Someone who appeared out of nowhere in ancient times, with no household registration, no relatives, and no way to prove where she came from, was suspicious enough all by herself.
Lin Wanwan thought for a moment before entering: “No household registration, no relatives, unknown origins.”
As for “Whether the original owner’s memories were obtained,” she marked it “Not applicable.”
The second was Title: The Discarded Consort in the Cold Palace Is Richer Than the Nation.
The female lead was twenty-eight.
She lost consciousness after working overtime for forty-eight consecutive hours.
Location: The company conference room.
Type of transmigration: Soul transmigration.
Identity after transmigration: A consort banished to the Cold Palace.
First person encountered: An elderly palace maid.
Trustworthy: Yes.
Original owner’s memories obtained: Partial.
The third was Title: The Blessed Girl of the Farming Family Has a Pocket Dimension.
The female lead was twenty-two.
She drowned while trying to rescue a child who had fallen into the water.
Type of transmigration: Soul transmigration.
Identity after transmigration: Eldest daughter of a farming family.
Special ability: Pocket dimension.
When Lin Wanwan saw the words “pocket dimension,” she fell silent for several seconds.
She entered “Yes” under “Whether she possessed any special abilities,” then added beside “Type of special ability”: “Contains a spirit spring, farmland, and a warehouse; supplies can be kept fresh indefinitely.”
That didn’t even count as a special ability anymore.
It was basically a fully stocked, never-unplugged supermarket carried around on her person.
She continued entering data.
The fourth: Fell off a cliff while mountain climbing.
The fifth: Transmigrated in a dream.
The sixth: Slipped in the bathroom and hit the back of her head on the floor.
The seventh: Was struck by a falling sign.
The eighth: Touched a jade pendant in an antique shop.
The ninth: An elevator malfunctioned while she was riding in it.
The tenth: Stayed up late reading a novel and woke up inside the book.
One entry after another filled the spreadsheet.
At first, Lin Wanwan simply recorded each novel’s opening exactly as written.
But by the time she reached the twentieth, she began to realize that these seemingly bizarre causes of transmigration could actually be recategorized.
Car accidents, being hit by a motorcycle, and being sideswiped by a bus could all be classified as traffic accidents.
Working overtime for too long, staying up late reading novels, and losing consciousness after gaming all night could be grouped under overwork or lack of sleep.
Drowning, falling into the water, and being swept away by waves at the seaside could all be categorized as falling into water or drowning.
Accidentally falling off a cliff, losing one’s footing and falling from a building, and tumbling down stairs could all be classified as falls from a height.
Cases where someone woke up in another world after falling asleep were placed under sleep transmigration.
Transmigration caused by thunderstorms, moonlight, or other abnormal celestial phenomena was categorized as unusual celestial phenomena.
Those involving an antique mirror, a jade pendant, or opening a particular book were categorized as antiques or books.
Cases involving clear suicidal intent were placed in a separate suicide category.
The remaining cases, whose specific causes couldn’t be determined, were temporarily grouped under unknown cause.
Lin Wanwan added a second tab at the bottom of the worksheet.
She renamed it from “Sheet2” to “Transmigration Cause Categories.”
First major category: Traffic accidents.
Second major category: Overwork or lack of sleep.
Third major category: Falling into water or drowning.
Fourth major category: Falls from a height.
Fifth major category: Sleep transmigration.
Sixth major category: Unusual celestial phenomena.
Seventh major category: Antiques or books.
Eighth major category: Suicide.
Ninth major category: Unknown cause.
After thinking it over, she added another column beside the categories: Whether death was confirmed.
An accident didn’t mean the female lead had actually died.
Some novels only described the sound of an ambulance gradually fading away, then jumped straight to ancient times in the next chapter.
Others explicitly described her heart stopping and resuscitation failing.
And some female leads merely blacked out, with no one knowing whether their bodies were still in the modern world.
If transmigration didn’t necessarily require death, then the method of death might not be the most important thing.
The real key might be what happened immediately before consciousness was lost.
Lin Wanwan recorded that thought in the notes column, then returned to the first worksheet and continued entering the remaining novels.
Car accident.
Lack of sleep.
Falling into water.
Falling off a cliff.
Sleep.
Thunderstorm.
Antique mirror.
Jade pendant.
Unknown cause.
The same words began appearing repeatedly on the screen.
Once arranged in a spreadsheet, the seemingly bizarre openings she had read about gradually clustered into several fixed categories.
It turned out that the ways the ninety-nine female leads transmigrated were far less varied than she had imagined.
Certain accidents appeared again and again.
Other categories appeared only a handful of times.
Staring at the increasingly full worksheet, Lin Wanwan felt for the first time that she might truly be able to find something in those ninety-nine novels.
At the very least, she would soon know—
which method appeared most often among those ninety-nine novels when sending a modern person into ancient times.
By the time Lin Wanwan entered the final novel’s data, the sky outside had begun to lighten with a faint gray-white glow.
She hadn’t noticed the time. She was focused only on the last entry she had just completed in the worksheet.
Ninety-nine entries.
All complete.
She first checked the category names, making sure she hadn’t split the same situation into two categories. Then she grouped “car accident,” “motorcycle accident,” and “struck by a vehicle” together under traffic accidents.
Next, she used formulas to count how often each category appeared.
One number after another appeared on the screen.
Traffic accidents were far ahead in first place.
Lin Wanwan stared at the number for several seconds, but felt none of the excitement that usually came with discovering a pattern.
The highest number of appearances didn’t mean it was worth trying.
Traffic accidents in novels were always written very simply.
Blinding headlights came straight at her.
The sharp screech of brakes rang in her ears.
The female lead’s vision went black, and when she opened her eyes again, someone was already kneeling beside her and calling her Miss.
What happened to her body after being hit, whether she was taken to a hospital, and whether people in the modern world confirmed her death were usually unimportant.
The story only needed the female lead to arrive safely in ancient times.
But reality wasn’t a novel.
After being hit by a car, the most likely outcomes weren’t transmigration.
They were broken bones.
A coma.
Or even death on the spot.
If the odds of successful transmigration weren’t one hundred percent, deliberately causing a traffic accident wasn’t called searching for a way to transmigrate.
It was called asking to die.
Lin Wanwan immediately added a column to the far right of the statistics table.
“Can this be attempted deliberately?”
She marked the traffic accident row: No.
After thinking about it, she changed the wording to make it more explicit.
“Must not be attempted deliberately.”
To keep herself from becoming too engrossed in the statistics later, she even gave the cell an eye-catching background color.
Next was falling into water or drowning.
Must not be attempted deliberately.
Falls from a height.
Must not be attempted deliberately.
Overwork or lack of sleep.
Lin Wanwan’s finger paused. In the end, she still entered: Must not be attempted deliberately.
She wanted to research transmigration, but she couldn’t possibly gamble with her life before even figuring out the conditions.
If transmigration required death as the price, she at least had to confirm first whether death was truly an indispensable part of the process.
What she needed to do now was find the method with the lowest risk and the greatest chance of working.
Lin Wanwan finished marking all the high-risk accidental methods.
When her gaze swept across the “Suicide” row, she paused for a moment but didn’t fill it in right away.
Instead, she shifted her attention to the other data.
There weren’t many cases left, but they were more intriguing than traffic accidents.
One female lead walked out of her house on a stormy night and then vanished from her original world.
The novel never mentioned her being injured or dying. It only said that when she opened her eyes again, she was standing in an ancient mountain forest.
Another female lead was visiting a museum when she reached out and touched a bronze mirror that had only recently been excavated.
A flash of white light suddenly spread across the mirror, and she disappeared from the exhibition hall.
Someone else suddenly fainted beneath the moonlight and woke up in a different body.
One female lead merely opened an unnamed ancient book. The writing on the first page began to flow, and the next moment she had entered the world within the book.
These people hadn’t been in car accidents.
They hadn’t fallen into water.
Nor had they fallen from a height.
At least in the novels, there was no evidence proving that they had already died before transmigrating.
Lin Wanwan filtered these entries out separately.
Thunderstorms and moonlight belonged to unusual celestial phenomena.
The antique mirror and unnamed ancient book, meanwhile, resembled some kind of transmigration medium.
They appeared unrelated, yet both pointed toward the same possibility.
Transmigration might not require death as a prerequisite.
She went back and checked the other cases.
Some female leads had merely fallen asleep.
Some had only been unconscious for a short time.
Some had even entered another world directly while still fully conscious.
Even if those stories didn’t explain in detail what happened to the bodies they left behind in the modern world, the women couldn’t automatically be categorized as dead.
Lin Wanwan wrote a sentence in her notebook:
“Transmigration may be related to death, but death may not be a necessary condition.”
After writing it, she read it twice more.
This was the first genuinely useful conclusion she had drawn from the ninety-nine novels.
As long as death wasn’t necessary, transmigration didn’t have to depend on a dangerous accident.
Perhaps there was a method that didn’t involve getting hit by a car, falling into water, or jumping from a building.
She still didn’t know what that method was, but at least she had found a direction.
Instead of prioritizing the most common methods, she should focus first on cases where the female lead’s death wasn’t confirmed, yet she still successfully transmigrated.
Below “Death may not be a necessary condition,” Lin Wanwan added another line: “Prioritize researching low-risk transmigration methods.”
After writing it, she turned her attention back to the screen.
She selected the category data and inserted a chart.
A pie chart quickly appeared in the center of the worksheet.
Traffic accidents occupied the largest slice.
The remaining sections were divided among overwork or lack of sleep, falling into water or drowning, falls from a height, sleep transmigration, unusual celestial phenomena, antiques or books, suicide, and unknown cause.
The accidents scattered across the openings of ninety-nine novels had, for the first time, been organized into clear proportions.
Lin Wanwan enlarged the chart and added labels to each category.
Traffic accidents.
Overwork or lack of sleep.
Falling into water or drowning.
Falls from a height.
Sleep transmigration.
Unusual celestial phenomena.
Antiques or books.
Suicide.
Unknown cause.
Looking at the statistical results on the screen, Lin Wanwan suddenly felt that transmigration was no longer just a setting casually glossed over in a novel.
Once all the cases were placed in the same spreadsheet, transmigration seemed to have genuinely become a phenomenon that could be broken down, compared, and studied.
Which methods appeared most often.
Which methods carried the greatest risk.
Which cases didn’t involve confirmed death.
Which conditions might recur.
If she continued organizing the data, perhaps she really could uncover a relatively complete set of transmigration patterns from these fictional stories.
Lin Wanwan moved the pie chart to the top of the statistics table.
Then she rearranged all the categories according to frequency, from highest to lowest.
Rows of numbers appeared on the screen.
Traffic accidents: 31.
Overwork or lack of sleep: 14.
Falling into water or drowning: 12.
Falls from a height: 9.
Sleep transmigration: 8.
Unusual celestial phenomena: 7.
Unknown cause: 7.
Antiques or books: 6.
Suicide: 5.
The nine categories added up to exactly ninety-nine cases, not one missing.
Lin Wanwan had originally thought that all she needed to do next was study the cases without confirmed deaths.
But when her gaze fell to the bottom of the table, she stopped.
Suicide: 5.
These five novels differed somewhat from the others.
Traffic accidents, falling into water, and falls from a height were all sudden accidents.
But these five female leads had actively ended their original lives after reaching the end of their rope.
One had been betrayed by the person closest to her.
One had lost her entire family.
Another was suffering from a serious illness and could no longer see any future ahead of her.
They gave up their lives in their original worlds, yet without exception, they opened their eyes again in another world.
Five times.
The sample size wasn’t large, but in those five novels, all five female leads had ultimately reached another world.
Based solely on the stories she had compiled, that was five cases and five successes.
Lin Wanwan stared at the number, her hand gripping the mouse without moving for a long time.
Of course, she knew this couldn’t prove that suicide would definitely lead to transmigration.
Novels only recorded the people who successfully arrived in another world.
Those who ended their lives the same way but didn’t transmigrate would never become the protagonists of transmigration novels in the first place, much less appear in her statistics.
From a research perspective, this was an unmistakable example of survivorship bias.
But even so, she still couldn’t completely ignore the five cases.
Because they at least showed that, according to the logic of transmigration novels, deliberately dying didn’t prevent transmigration.
Quite the opposite.
For those five female leads, death had instead become the dividing line between two worlds.
They hadn’t found the entrance while alive.
They had only reached another world after their original lives had ended.
Lin Wanwan lowered her head and glanced at the sentence in her notebook: “Death may not be a necessary condition.”
Not necessary didn’t mean completely unrelated.
Perhaps death wasn’t the only way to trigger transmigration.
But it might be the most thorough—and most irreversible—method.
She reopened the “Can this be attempted deliberately?” cell.
The cursor blinked in the blank space for a long time.
She had originally planned to fill in “Must not be attempted deliberately,” just as she had for traffic accidents, falling into water, and falls from a height.
But with her finger resting on the keyboard, she couldn’t bring herself to press the key.
In the end, she still entered, “Must not be attempted deliberately.”
After a brief pause, however, she added a sentence in the notes column beside it: “If all other conditions are confirmed, reassess as a last resort.”
Of course, she wasn’t going to use her life to test an unformed transmigration hypothesis right now.
She had far too much data left to organize, and she still didn’t know whether there was any genuine connection between the blood moon, thunderstorms, antiques, and death.
She simply hadn’t deleted those five entries.
Nor had she completely ruled out that dangerous possibility.
Because at that moment, a thought she herself didn’t want to examine too deeply rose quietly to the surface for the first time.
Death might not be the cause of transmigration.
But it might be the final door leading to another world.
Part Two | End