PS. This will not follow the exact story of the Wandering Earth and some Terminology will be different.

Chapter 1: The Wandering Earth

『The Wandering Earth World』

Jingdu, Underground City No. 3.

In a room of less than 10 square meters, there was a bed and a set of table and chairs, which was quite bare.

“Uh!”

Lying on the single bed, Chu Xuan felt as if his brain was mush.

Dazed, he forced his eyes open and looked around.

It was cramped.

It felt oppressive.

The space was claustrophobic.

Miscellaneous charts and a few plant pictures were taped to the walls.

Where was this place?

His heart fluttered with panic as he wondered if he had been kidnapped, because the environment was completely unfamiliar and a strange smell permeated the air.

The air was murky.

There were mottled stains on the ceiling.

The sight exuded a sense of decay.

But what would anyone gain from kidnapping him, since he was not rich, and they would not harvest his kidneys, right?

He hurriedly checked his body.

Thankfully, there were no scars, and his kidneys were safe for now.

“Huh?”

Suddenly, Chu Xuan froze.

He looked down and saw faint calluses on his hands, which explained why it had felt uncomfortable when he checked a moment ago.

Although he was a corporate drone, he had never worked to the point of getting calluses.

He hurried out of bed, went to a mirror, and was dumbfounded.

This joke had gone way too far!

The face was unfamiliar, a bit handsome, and unnaturally pale, and the dark circles made him wonder how long he had stayed up.

He was trying hard to recall his last memory.

“Hiss!”

All of a sudden, Chu Xuan’s body went stiff.

His head throbbed as a flood of memories surged in, and unfamiliar images and words poured into his mind one after another.

An underground city?

Planetary engines?

Helium flash?

Mango-flavored dried earthworms?

…

It took him a full 10 minutes to digest all of this information.

“Transmigration?”

At this moment.

Chu Xuan finally understood what had happened, and his head buzzed as he wondered if he should crack open a bottle of 1982 Wanglaoji to celebrate.

It was not just transmigration.

Moreover, it got worse.

He landed in a world that gave him a headache.

The Wandering Earth!

Exactly!

It was the world where humanity blew up the Moon that had accompanied them for countless ages and fled together with their wreck of a planet.

When he watched the movie back then, he wanted to ask how big the Moon’s psychological shadow must have been.

Bah!

No, what mattered now was the size of his own psychological shadow.

In short, it was huge.

“…”

Chu Xuan gave a wry smile and felt like crying without tears.

What a scam!

He transmigrated just a few months before The Wandering Earth 2 opened, which felt like a colossal miss, and the events of part 1 were only a bit more than 1 year away now.

He looked at the calendar.

January 15, 2074.

There were only 1 year and 1 month until the Jupiter Crisis, namely February 15, 2075.

What should he do?

He was going to be finished.

Good grief!

Putting the distant Jupiter Crisis aside, just adapting to life now already gave him a headache, even though dried earthworms were very nutritious.

If he had a choice, he would embrace Earth’s junk food without hesitation.

He missed 996.

He missed the mortgage.

He missed the car loan.

At least in his previous life, things were different.

He had a car he could drive and a ventilated house he could live in, whereas now he did not even have a motorcycle, let alone a car.

Everything was public property of the United Government!

Everything was for The Wandering Earth Project!

996?

In this world, it was truly a blessing and a life so good he did not even dare to imagine it.

According to the regulations, this was how things worked.

The entire world had only 1 public holiday on New Year’s Day, and although each underground city naturally had its own festivals, they basically did not get time off.

Han Duoduo was in class even on the first day of the Lunar New Year, which said it all.

As for a two-day weekend, that was even more unthinkable.

It was 7 days a week.

They attended classes every single day.

Even the retirement age had been abolished.

For that very reason, things were like this.

In the film, Han Zi’ang was still driving an ore hauler in his 70s, and the thought that he had to work until he died left him quite helpless.

After thinking for a long time, Chu Xuan gradually accepted reality.

“Phew!”

He let out a long sigh and decided that agonizing over it was meaningless.

Life was never lived by fretting but by moving forward.

The body’s original owner was unlucky too.

He died young of overwork and sudden death, and Chu Xuan took over his body.

…

10 minutes later.

After getting his emotions in order, Chu Xuan left the room, which was not his home but a break room with the workplace right next door.

The original owner had the same name as him.

He was a university student doing a project internship.

He would not graduate until mid-next year.

Universities in The Wandering Earth had very high standards, and under a species-wide crisis many majors were canceled with the focus placed on science and engineering.

Therefore, things changed.

Any university graduate here was, in their field, no less capable than a pre-Cataclysm PhD graduate.

Some were even better.

They had been truly selected from thousands and had crossed a single-plank bridge, and during several years of university almost every day was fully scheduled with no real holidays.

Each of them worked with extreme diligence.

The original owner wore himself out precisely this way.

In addition, the education system was different from his previous world.

It implemented 7 years of compulsory education.

There were 4 years of elementary education.

There were 3 years of vocational training.

After that, only the standouts could attend university, which was not only hard to get into but also strict in its output, and idlers simply could not graduate.

The working age was much earlier than in his previous world.

After vocational training came 2 years of internship and then formal employment at age 16.

That was right, 16, because here 16 counted as adulthood.

Basically, they had to start interning at 14.

As for Han Duoduo being in class at the start of the movie?

Heh!

If you looked closely, you would notice that while she was in class a screen at the upper left clearly displayed a line of text.

『Golden Age Experience Course』

Exactly.

It was like visiting a museum to see an ancient academy, where you sat cross-legged, bobbed your head, and chanted a few archaic lines.

That was an experience course.

It was not a regular course.

It was arranged every year only so the past would not be forgotten.

…

Chu Xuan went next door.

There was a multi-level farm of over 100 square meters, and the original owner majored in botany with minors in astrophysics and microbiology, making him an academic ace.

But because he pushed himself too hard, he ended up pushing himself to death.

In fact, there was more to say.

He normally wore a life-monitoring wristband that could warn of sudden death, and with a medical clinic not far away it was easy to save him.

However, the original owner found it annoying because the life-monitoring wristband kept beeping at him, and he used to be young.

Pulling an all-nighter felt like child’s play.

Even if the band beeped all night, it was fine.

Therefore, he made a mistake.

While thinking late into the night yesterday, he felt it disturbed his thoughts and temporarily turned it off.

And sure enough, that was what happened.

The health issues accumulated over a long time exploded all at once.

…

After making a round and combining it with the memories in his mind, Chu Xuan began to verify that knowledge, since he would depend on it to make a living.

Inside each incubator, something remarkable awaited.

The plants were thriving.

Through the glass, he could also see plump earthworms beneath the soil, which were a popular commodity in the underground city and counted as a minor luxury.

They were not a staple food.

After all, there were limits.

Even if it was earthworms, with hundreds of thousands of people in the underground city eating 3 meals a day, how many would it take to feed everyone?

In daily life, people ate synthetic food.

Synthetic rice.

Synthetic noodles.

Although they looked similar, they did not taste as good as before the Cataclysm.

Moreover, they were not eaten often, because most of the time people ate food blocks.

As for meat, that was another matter.

Pork, beef, and mutton existed but production was low, and only on special days could one eat some non-synthetic meat.

Generally, underground cities distributed it on New Year’s Day once a year, in limited amounts per person that were gone in a few bites.

As an underground city in China, there was Spring Festival, so on the first day of the lunar year the Neighborhood Committee usually handed out dumplings.

As for non-synthetic meat in daily life, the most common was still earthworms.

“Sigh!”

Looking at the plump earthworms, he felt a bit hungry but could not raise any appetite, and his gaze shifted to those plants.

It was a pity that he could not eat them.

This was his research project… high-fat rapeseed.

It could be pressed for oil and used to extract vitamins, had many uses, and was also one of the raw materials for synthetic meat.

Eaten raw, it actually tasted pretty good with a hint of oily fragrance.

However, his project concerned boosting plant yields.

If he ate it indiscriminately, the conclusion would be straightforward: zero yield increase.

If he submitted data like that, he could kiss graduation goodbye.

He felt depressed.

He could look but not eat.

At least touching it should be fine, so Chu Xuan reached out.

『Ding! Resource Check-In System activated!』

Author’s Note–

↓

『1. The novel’s background differs from the original!』

『2. After the Lunar Crisis, the United Government launched the Isolation Plan and sealed automated mobile equipment, and MOSS was also detected and had its permissions locked, similar to being confined in the Navigator Space Station, and it was not an omnipotent predictor of the future but simply had strong computing power!』

『3. The Jupiter Gravity Crisis has serious bugs, and perhaps the director did not expect a sequel at the time, so many settings in movies 1 and 2 conflict, which is why the author chose a compromise!』