Arterial bleeding leads to death within ten minutes. Brain death occurs in six minutes. Cardiac arrest results in sudden death after thirty seconds.
He didn’t know how much time had passed—perhaps ten minutes, six minutes, thirty seconds, or just an instant.
Zhao Meiyou opened his eyes to find himself smothered under an enormous skirt.
What was this place? His gaze first fell on a snow-white thigh, flesh-colored stockings creeping along the skin up into the depths of the skirt. Higher still was the face of a young woman, a cigarette filter clamped between her lips as she propped one foot on a stool to touch up her makeup.
The room was lined with mirrors everywhere, crowded with people. Elaborate hairdos sported vibrant feathers; bare feet, lace-up corsets, pearl necklaces draping bare arms, eyelids slathered in thick black kohl… A breast suddenly slammed into him, like a massive star plummeting from the heavens. Zhao Meiyou quickly steadied her. This was clearly a woman deep in her cups; her spilled glass drenched his head and face before she slumped against his shoulder and started vomiting.
Zhao Meiyou was a regular at the playhouse. By his reckoning, this seemed to be a women’s dressing room.
But the atmosphere was worlds apart from the playhouse. Those kaleidoscopic mirrors, the silver spoons and sugar cubes on deep green glasses, the frenzied music drifting in from outside—the soaring chords, the drunken violinists, the drumbeats brewing a red storm. It was a can-can tune.
Zhao Meiyou draped the drunken, thrashing woman over a coat rack. With no time to ponder why everyone around him—a room full of women—seemed utterly indifferent to his presence as an outsider, he lifted the curtain and stepped out. Like a fleck of cigarette ash, he melted instantly into the riotous palette of colors.
Beyond lay a vast dance hall. The second-floor boxes were packed. Painters swigged their drinks while scribbling feverishly in sketchbooks, capturing the stage ablaze with flames and diamonds. The dancers whirled out from behind glass doors—stamping, kicking, spinning—before hurling their massive skirts high, their pointed toes thrusting straight toward the chandeliered ceiling. Amid the manic uproar, glimpses of flesh flashed; a goatee-twirling gentleman twirled his cane, a whitefaced clown capered, the velvet-coated string section played on. A woman flung herself backward, her neck arcing like a drawn bowstring. The final high note burst forth, like a juice-laden red sun exploding across the teak floorboards. Silk petticoats soared into the air, whipping up a multicolored frenzy.
Someone pressed a glass into his hand, as if Zhao Meiyou were just another night owl out for revelry in the dance hall. Sensing his bewilderment, the man kindly demonstrated how to drink it: He placed the silver spoon laden with a sugar cube over the glass, drizzled water over it to dissolve the sugar, and let the sweet syrup filter into the liquor. The result was a Bohemian absinthe.
The blue-green liquid shimmered like a woman’s eyeshadow; diluted with water, it turned a cloudy milk-white, exuding a fierce anise scent.
Absinthe. The can-can. Zhao Meiyou scanned his surroundings. He thought he knew this place now.
He had seen its like before—not in the playhouses of District 33, but in old films, holographic photos, and antique paintings. The can-can had started as a dance among the working class before sweeping the music halls. It featured a signature high kick, legs snapping up to nose and ear level. Can-can girls practiced by hanging balloons above doorframes and puncturing them with their heels.
The dance was born of scandal and gossip. The girls wore shiny stockings and drawers, flashing them with every skirt-flip.
A bouquet of roses suddenly appeared before Zhao Meiyou, followed by wads of cash stuffed into his waistband. The crowd surged in ecstasy, as if an entire dressing room had crashed down from the sky, scattering stockings and garters everywhere.
After some indeterminate time, a figure shoved through the throng and stared at him. “Zhao Meiyou? Xi Shi?”
“Hey, Noble Consort.” Zhao Meiyou was already more than a little tipsy. He raised his absinthe glass with a grin. “How come you’re still looking like that?”
“That’s what I wanna ask you! What’s your deal?” The Lead Actor was his usual rotund self, shoving people aside left and right. “Been looking everywhere for you. How’d you end up a woman?”
“No clue.” Zhao Meiyou rolled with it. He glanced down at his chest. “That’s how it was when I noticed.”
He hefted the pair of soft mounds on his chest. “I even ducked into a bathroom for a look. Gotta say, the change is thorough—from top to bottom…”
“Save it.” The Lead Actor looked like he wanted to slap him dead. “You’re adapting just fine. Already knocking ’em back.”
Not just drinking—he was swimming in attention. In this curvaceous, fiery body, Zhao Meiyou had even rummaged in the dressing room for a corseted dance dress. Men being men, a crowd now mobbed the bar, queuing to buy him drinks. He was a dead ringer for a femme fatale.
Zhao Meiyou slipped away in a lull and followed The Lead Actor out of the hall. Beneath the night sky spun a massive red windmill. “I was about to pick a cute one and take her for a spin if you didn’t show.”
The Lead Actor: “Zhao Meiyou, try acting normal for once, thanks.”
“This is normal thinking, isn’t it?” Zhao Meiyou eyed him oddly. “You saying you wouldn’t?” He cupped his soft mounds again, thrusting them at The Lead Actor like a pair of plump eggplants. “Bros before hoes—wanna go first?”
The Lead Actor’s hand rose, then fell. He held back, straining. “I don’t hit women.”
“But seriously, what’s going on with me?” They stood under a gas lamp as carriages clattered by on the street. “We’re in a site, right? Those guys buying me drinks—are they real people?”
“You can treat ’em as real.” The Lead Actor said, “Site A173 is very hospitable to humans. Its fidelity to the real world is extremely high.”
Zhao Meiyou pointed at the gas lamp overhead. “The real world?”
The Metropolis had upgraded its power grid countless times over. Gas lamps were antiques even black markets struggled to procure, yet here they lined the streets. Looking around, from clothes to food to housing to transport, nothing matched the real world. How was this “extremely high fidelity”?
“I wasn’t finished.” The Lead Actor went on. “The world presented in Site A173 is a reality humans once possessed.”
Before the words had fully left his mouth, The Lead Actor pressed two fingers to his lips and whistled sharply. A cab pulled up at once. “Get in.”
Zhao Meiyou settled into the back seat. Outside the window streaked scenes from centuries past: four-wheeled carriages jostling along, coachmen in uniform capes perched atop the cabs, swaying oil lamps at their sides. Street cafés sprawled in the open air; violet-hued buildings stretched into the distance. Men and women sat together, smoking, savoring oysters. Now and then a tavern door burst open, spilling out a raucous pack of drunks—like a barrel of sunflowers dumped into the cool night. The crowd swelled as they drank and belted songs, the air growing ever hotter, until the midnight damp chill turned to sweltering summer night.
Zhao Meiyou twisted to peer out the rear window. On the horizon, stars wheeled in spirals, the full moon twisting into a vast vortex. “…I’ve seen patients draw this in the hospital.”
The Lead Actor grunted from the front. “Right. Van Gogh’s Starry Night.”
“We’re in late 19th-century Paris now, Montmartre Hill. That dance hall you came from? The famous Red Mill.” The Lead Actor continued. “The last quarter of the 19th century—known in history as the Belle Époque.”
In this Parisian Belle Époque, haute couture emerged, phonographs and film projectors spread. The city’s nights brimmed with salons where poets traded recitations for meals. Montmartre Hill teemed with artists like stars in the sky. They guzzled absinthe, that hallucinogenic anesthetic, driving Verlaine to shoot Rimbaud, Wilde to tumble drunk into tulips, Van Gogh to slice off his own ear.
No doubt, it was a golden age. Cubism, Fauvism, Surrealism and more avant-garde movements brewed in the bars, shaping centuries to come. Half a century later, Sartre and Beauvoir would meet at the Flower God Café, existentialism roaring to life as Hemingway crossed the Atlantic to crash on the floor of 74 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.
In this final quarter of the 19th century, they rode a cab along the Seine banks—an utterly surreal scene, for automobiles weren’t mass-market yet; carriages were still the height of fashion. Yet the riverside men and women took the bright yellow sedan in stride. A bold youth even rapped the window, offering beer and smokes.
The Lead Actor eyed him via the rearview. “Ease up on the booze. Long road ahead.”
Zhao Meiyou gazed at the nightscape beyond the glass, moist river breeze wafting in. Was it midwinter or midsummer? Some huddled in heavy mink coats; others waded barefoot into the water. “You still haven’t answered my question.” He rapped the front seat. “How’d I turn into a woman?”
“Every archaeologist gets a unique ability in a site.” The Lead Actor said. “Given your state, yours is probably Transformation.”
As the name implied. Zhao Meiyou glanced at his current body and abruptly shut his eyes.
The Lead Actor: “What nonsense are you up to now?”
Zhao Meiyou: “Trying to give myself a dick.”
“Go ahead and try.” The Lead Actor said. “If you manage it, you ain’t a woman anymore. See if I don’t beat you senseless.”
Whether it was The Lead Actor’s threat or not, Zhao Meiyou’s attempt failed. “This power’s kinda glitchy, huh?”
“Practice makes perfect. More site runs, and you’ll get the hang of it. Pros can turn into all sorts of things—even air.”
“So what’s yours, Noble Consort…?” Zhao Meiyou trailed off, then blurted, “Shit!”
The cab suddenly veered out of control, smashing through the riverside railing and plunging into the Seine.
The expected drowning never came. It was like passing through a cool mist. Now they cruised a bayside boulevard—no longer the Paris Seine, but a seaside lined with grand white villas in Georgian colonial style. A pier jutted into the bay, and across from it, under the starry sky, a faint green light flickered.
The cab splashed through a fountain toward a blaze of lights: a magnificent villa. Their yellow taxi, once a surreal oddity, now looked downright shabby amid the Lincolns and Rolls-Royces.
Revelers spilled from the villa like fireworks bursting in vivid streamers. Someone lobbed a cocktail bottle skyward. Women’s skirts had shortened to bare high heels and calves; corsets vanished for tube dresses glittering with sequins and fringe. Most sported ear-length bobs, smoky eyeshadow; some even wore cigarette pants and brogues.
Fireworks exploded in mid-air. Then a massive chandelier came swinging out of the doorway like a pendulum, smashing crystals across the floor, two acrobatic dancers still dangling from it. The crowd burst into screams and laughter. A convertible roared past like a hurricane, its seats crammed with at least a full soccer team’s worth of passengers—all young people in Ivy League uniforms. The car wobbled wildly before plunging headfirst into the fountain.
Zhao Meiyou peered out the car window. A man dressed like a banker handed him a cigar. He sniffed it. “Excuse me, what is this place?”
“What place is this? Did you sleepwalk here?” The man burst out laughing. “Miss, this is Long Island!” He pointed into the distance. “New York’s right over there!”
Zhao Meiyou pulled back inside and asked The Lead Actor, “Where’s this now?”
“Didn’t you study history?”
“In the Metropolis’s records of human civilization, the 22nd century is almost entirely lost,” Zhao Meiyou said. “My term paper back then was on the Metropolis city chronicles—but that was after 2265.”
The Lead Actor gestured at the revelers all around them. “Gossip columnists, movie stars, Broadway directors, Sicilians—this is America in the 1920s, the historical Jazz Age.”
“Looks like we showed up late.” The Lead Actor eyed the luxury cars pulling away one after another. “The party’s just wrapping up.”
“Whose party?” Zhao Meiyou asked.
“Looks like your literature degree didn’t do much for you either.”
“What’s literature got to do with it?”
The Lead Actor gave him a look like he was an idiot and pointed toward the distant pier, to a green light glowing across the shallow bay.
“This is Gatsby’s party.”
Zhao Meiyou rummaged through his memories for a moment. “I’ve heard of the book, but I never read it.”
The Lead Actor fiddled with a dial on the control panel, switching radio stations. Moments later, a deep male voice boomed from the car speakers—
“In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since…”
“That’s Apollo 11,” The Lead Actor said. “July 16, 1969—the first time humans set foot on the moon.”
This was humanity’s golden age of space exploration. The “space fever” would last for years. David Bowie smeared himself with red paint, donned high heels and a silk gown to play the androgynous alien Ziggy Stardust. Guitarists smashed their instruments in bars. Record labels teamed up with radio stations, broadcasting Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles… This was rock ‘n’ roll’s gilded era too.
The scenery outside the car window blurred by in a rush—from countryside to plains, plains to desert, desert to city. They passed through golden age after golden age. Time and space had lost all constraints here, like tumbling down a rabbit hole. Maybe there was some spider-like higher-dimensional creature in the trunk. But who cared? The taxi breezed past a toll booth, a Coca-Cola vending machine gleaming brightly.
They crossed into the city over a grand bridge. Bubbles of light and shadow floated around them. The skyscrapers lining the streets were plastered with billboards, like colorful code dissolving into the night. A geisha in white face paint stepped out of a black sedan, her vibrant kimono swirling as she bowed slightly in front of the Kabuki theater.
“This is Ginza, Japan, 1980,” The Lead Actor said. “The peak of the famous bubble economy.”
Another good era.
The taxi turned into a narrow alley, the aroma of street food exploding in the air. Zhao Meiyou noticed the roadside billboards had switched to traditional Chinese characters. A plane roared low over the high-rises, power lines crisscrossing everywhere. Hair salons were packed. Women sat under hemispherical perm machines. Rotating neon signs cast red and blue glows on the glass windows. Young people crowded a disco hall, glued to a TV as a wuxia flick ended, its Cantonese end credits song still playing.
The Lead Actor passed some bills out the window and took two bowls of stir-fried noodles. “This is 1990s Hong Kong.”
The noodles came in white foam takeout boxes. Zhao Meiyou snapped open a pair of disposable chopsticks. “Not getting out for a stroll?”
“Today’s just to get you familiar with the process. We can wander around next time.” The Lead Actor told the cab driver, “Take the Xizhimen Bridge, then into the Second Ring Road.”
The taxi pulled up in front of vermilion gates. Towering palace walls loomed. Across Chang’an Avenue lay the world’s largest public square. The Lead Actor wolfed down his noodles and hopped out. “We’re here.” He rapped on the back window. “Get out.”
Zhao Meiyou pushed open the door and got hit in the face by the dry northern wind. The 33rd District was perpetually overcast and cool; he rarely felt this knife-edge chill like strong liquor. “Where’s this?”
“Beijing, 21st century.” The Lead Actor gazed at the majestic palace complex ahead. “Tonight’s the Forbidden City’s first snow of the season.”
They climbed to a corner tower. Deep red palace walls stretched out through the snow, the blazing city lights beyond them, silent vastness within. Zhao Meiyou pulled out a cigarette, thought better of it, and put it back in his pocket. “What a fine era.”
“Everything you saw today was a fine era.”
“I should go back and brush up on history from the 19th to the 21st century,” Zhao Meiyou said.
“Illiterate.” The Lead Actor shot him a glance. “Just so you know, humanity’s first two world wars both kicked off in the 20th century.”
Zhao Meiyou paused.
“These were the two centuries when human civilization started spiraling out of control,” The Lead Actor said. “From the First Industrial Revolution to the Third Technological Revolution—budding in the 20th, gestating in the 21st—human civilization peaked in the 22nd. As for what came after, the Metropolis doesn’t have records, but you’ve heard of the Orion Arm War.”
Zhao Meiyou watched the distant snowfall for a moment. “Still feels like a good era to me.”
This was still an age when people could gaze up at the stars. Astronauts played saxophone on space stations. There were so many golden years to reminisce over. People built cyberpunk futures in electronic dreamscapes. The grand palace walls hadn’t crumbled yet. Mountains and lakes weren’t just strokes of holographic ultramarine. Rome hadn’t sunk. Poets weren’t extinct. On nights when people wanted to dance, they danced. The real Mona Lisa was still safe in the Louvre, before the fire destroyed it.
“I just thought of something,” Zhao Meiyou said suddenly. “Can all past eras be called golden ages?”
The Lead Actor let out an ambiguous hum.
All the dull, boring presents would one day become glittering pasts. And those pasts had once been wildly dreamed futures.
The Lead Actor pulled a face mask from somewhere and clapped it over his head, striking a pose. Snow swirled through heaven and earth as the old man on the city wall began in a drawn-out laosheng melody, singing a siping diao: “I strike the wooden horse with a bang, summoning servants to bring tea and wine—”
This was a duet between the Zhengde Emperor and Sister Feng from Wandering Dragon Plays Phoenix, usually sung by sheng and dan roles. The Lead Actor played both parts, starting with the stately laosheng in siping diao, then switching to a coy dan voice in xipi flowing water: “The moon bends bright over the world—tell me, soldier, where’s your home?”
Zhao Meiyou found it amusing and couldn’t resist chiming in with a laugh. “We soldiers live right here under heaven’s dome.”
“Enough of that,” Sister Feng huffed. “Does anyone not live under heaven? You telling me you live up in the sky?”
The Zhengde Emperor teased back, “My home’s different from everyone else’s.”
Sister Feng’s eyes sparkled. “How so?”
The Zhengde Emperor swept his sleeve dramatically toward the thickening snow on the glazed tiles. “I live right here in the Forbidden City—”
They bantered through the whole scene. The Lead Actor removed the mask and looked out at the snow-draped city. “Zhao Meiyou, you’re right.”
“This really is a good era.”
![My Husband is a Drama King [Book Transmigration]](https://i1.wp.com/dobynovels.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/transmi.jpeg?resize=151,215 "My Husband is a Drama King [Book Transmigration]")
