Chapter One: The Transmigrated Sorcerer

The midsummer sunlight streamed through the windows, flooding the classroom whose walls were mottled and peeling, making the already stifling space even hotter and more oppressive. The old ceiling fan groaned overhead, its burden almost too much to bear, and the monotonous, dreary voice of the Black female teacher at the podium combined to create a lullaby fit for the midnight hour, lulling everyone toward sleep.

Most of the students slumped in their seats, heads tilted and eyes dull, struggling to keep themselves alert. Some had already surrendered to the grip of slumber, their youthful faces lost to dreams. Amidst the crowd, the most striking figure was a Chinese boy, about sixteen or seventeen years old. Fragmented sunlight danced on his flaxen hair, and his nose was straight, his features sharp and handsome, though still tinged with youthful innocence; yet, a wild, maturing charm was beginning to emerge.

He stood in the corner, punished, trying to hold up a frame taller than most Chinese boys, yet fatigue clung to him like a shroud. Leaning against the wall, his eyelids drooped, as if he might doze off at any moment.

Ding ding ding...

At last, the clear sound of the bell broke the oppressive silence of the classroom. The listless boys and girls seemed to be doused with cold water, waking instantly, and the classroom transformed in a moment into the frenzy of a music festival, alive with noise and movement.

The Black female teacher, accustomed to such scenes, barely reacted. She uttered a terse "class dismissed," then, wobbling on seven-centimeter heels and swinging her ample hips, tottered out of the room.

In the spacious classroom, the only one unchanged was the boy half slumped against the wall, his face weary and exhausted.

Fatigue and drowsiness washed over Gu Zhongyan like a tide, drowning his senses and making it impossible to resist the urge to sleep. Even standing upright could not fend off his exhaustion. Without the support of the wall, he would surely have succumbed to sleep already.

In his haze, a voice sounded beside his ear, stirring his foggy consciousness for a fleeting moment.

"Sean? Sean?"

His eyelids felt as heavy as lead, and Gu Zhongyan summoned all his strength to force them open a crack.

Through the slit, he saw a white boy with freckles, looking at him with concern.

"Sean? Are you alright? Class is over."

Sean? Who was that?

The overwhelming sleepiness slowed Gu Zhongyan’s thoughts. It took him a while to remember—of course, he had crossed over again. Sean was the name he bore now.

The white boy before him was his current friend, Richard Reed.

Yes, this was not Gu Zhongyan’s first time crossing worlds.

Originally, Gu Zhongyan was nothing more than an ordinary working man in the Flower Nation, living a simple life, occasionally indulging in small dreams. Then, during a chance trip, an accident sent him into the world of Harry Potter, where he became a newly enrolled wizard in Hufflepuff House.

Yet he did not arrive at the start of the story, but after its end.

Crossing into the magical world, he found himself far less excited than he had imagined. Instead, what weighed upon him was a deep sense of displacement.

Everyone dreams of crossing time and space, reaching the pinnacle of life, escaping the drab, tiresome, even hated reality. But when truly transported to another world, the feeling of alienation, of being cut off from everything, repeatedly reminds you: this is not your world.

In that moment, Gu Zhongyan finally understood why so many elder Chinese who had found fame abroad yearned so fervently to return home.

From then on, going home became the most important thing in his life.

He threw himself into learning magic, studying magical objects, searching desperately for any way to return to his original world.

Many wizards remarked that he seemed more like a Ravenclaw than a Hufflepuff.

Gu Zhongyan, however, believed he was a born Hufflepuff. Or perhaps, most children of the Flower Nation were born Hufflepuffs—resilient, honest, fearless, never giving up, outwardly ordinary yet capable of extraordinary feats.

Filling the sea with stones, moving mountains one shovelful at a time—turning impossibility into reality.

His relentless efforts finally uncovered a way to breach the barriers between worlds.

In the end, he succeeded—and failed.

He poured everything into breaking the world’s boundary, only to find he had not returned to the Flower Nation he yearned for, but appeared across the ocean in New York, now a Chinese-American boy raised by Father Langdon Abbott of the church, Sean Gu.

At first, he thought he had simply landed in a different country.

But soon he realized things were not so simple.

Through the memories of his new body, he discovered that America was America—but not the America he knew.

Here existed the vast Stark Group, signing massive munitions contracts with the Department of Defense;

The Osborne Group, advanced in technology and devoted to biological regeneration;

The Daily Bugle, with a circulation in the tens of millions, claiming no secret could elude their reporters.

...

This was the Marvel universe, teeming with superheroes.

Like the wizarding world, the Marvel universe was a fantastical realm beloved by countless fans.

But compared to the fairy-tale magic world, the Marvel universe was absolutely the worst place to cross into.

In other worlds, one could avoid danger simply by steering clear of perilous plotlines.

But the Marvel universe was different. The real America already joked, "Freedom’s America, shootings every day," and the Marvel universe, with its super-powered heroes and villains, was even more hazardous.

Shootings, explosions, death, extinction—these were daily occurrences.

Living in the Marvel universe, especially in its epicenter, New York, ordinary people never knew when death might strike.

And these disasters could not be evaded simply by leaving New York.

After all, in later Marvel stories, calamities grew to planetary, cosmic, even multiversal proportions, leaving no place untouched by destruction.

For anyone, such a world was a tremendous challenge.

What unsettled Gu Zhongyan most was that, upon arriving, he had almost completely lost his magic.

Now, aside from Occlumency, he could not cast a single true spell.

In this dangerous world, losing magic meant surrendering his fate to chance. Whether to find his way home or simply to survive, regaining his powers was essential.

That was why, in recent days, he had been desperately trying to restore his magic, draining his energy until fatigue overwhelmed him.