Chapter 1: I Am a Stranger

Meimu, nicknamed 'Doctor' in his dormitory, was a notorious underachiever.

This morning, after waking up, Meimu felt as if he were possessed. Scenes from Avengers 3, which he had watched not long ago, kept flashing through his mind. The images would burst forth unbidden, making him dizzy and disoriented.

Especially when his mind replayed the scene of that dashing sorcerer in the red cloak—the one who lost all vitality and faded away with the wind. For reasons he couldn't explain, Meimu felt as though something was lodged in his chest, leaving him deeply unsettled.

Just then, a sharp and resounding crash echoed above him.

"Holy—!"

A luxury sports car—clearly an expensive make—had crashed through the guardrail on the mountain road above his right. The entire vehicle soared off the road.

In that split second, Meimu was stunned.

With a thunderous crash, the car hurtled toward him, spinning before it landed, nose-first, seven or eight meters in front of him. Glass and metal fragments scattered like leaves in a storm.

Meimu stood frozen, utterly forgetting to dodge. He watched, dumbfounded, as the car—surely a Lamborghini—came to rest before him.

Then, with trembling relief that he himself was unscathed, Meimu caught sight of the driver’s face—a face both familiar and strange.

“Oh my god! Am I seeing things? Isn’t that… Stephen Strange?”

There was no mistake—the driver’s face was the spitting image of the superhero from Avengers 3, the very same Doctor Strange.

Stephen Strange was Doctor Strange in the movies.

Meimu’s first instinct was that the actor who played Doctor Strange had inexplicably appeared near his school, only to be involved in a car accident.

Mustered by a sense of duty to his idol, Meimu bravely approached, despite the risk of the car exploding.

A chill ran straight up his spine.

This Stephen was doomed. Unlike in the movie, where the airbag and seatbelt saved him, here he had been gruesomely impaled through the chest by a three-meter-tall iron fence post.

A fatal blow—no ambulance needed, a hearse would suffice.

The sight wrenched Meimu’s heart.

More oddly, he had the distinct impression that something had flashed before his eyes. The fence post was not in its original place, as if it had been hurled there by some unknown force.

As Meimu stood, still reeling, two dazzling flashes streaked past him. Before he could react, two strange figures appeared—dressed like agents from Men in Black, all in black suits, as though fresh from a cosplay convention.

They opened their mouths and spoke in English: "Who are you?"

Ah! They’re asking who I am?

"I am a stranger," Meimu replied at once.

The deeply ingrained instinct to avoid trouble took over. He didn’t realize that his poor English made him drop the final ‘r.’

Before he could process what was happening, one of the men switched to Chinese: "Are you the Doctor?"

"Yes, I am 'Doctor,'" Meimu blurted out, reflexively responding to his nickname.

"Fate is truly mysterious. Well then… it’s you."

"Ah!?" Meimu barely had time to react before a wave of pain overtook him and he lost consciousness.

In the haze, a voice rose in his mind: "From this day forward, you are Doctor Strange. Since he has died, and you have inherited his fate, let’s see what you will do in this universe. Go ahead—at worst, it’s just another complete destruction of the world..."

Wait! I’ve become Doctor Strange?

But Doctor Strange was both a world-class doctor and a genius! And I’m just a hopeless underachiever!

What kind of joke is this?

I barely got into the lowest-ranking private college. I didn’t even pass College English Test Band 2, let alone Band 6. Now my poor English has finally landed me in trouble.

As his consciousness drifted, the truth dawned on him: those mysterious men must have mistaken him for Doctor Strange because he pronounced "stranger" like "Strange," Stephen’s surname.

If that coincidence weren’t enough, he had also claimed to be "Doctor" in front of them.

Dammit!

His 'Doctor' nickname was only because he could instantly name any actress in a certain genre of Japanese film…

Lost in despair, panic, and unease, Meimu suddenly woke with a start.

His mind was in turmoil, battered by an onslaught of unfamiliar information—like being force-fed the entire "Five Years’ College Entrance Exam, Three Years’ Simulation" guide in three seconds.

At the same time, pain overwhelmed his body. His hands throbbed with agony, his left eye socket felt as if it had been struck by Tyson himself, his mouth was torn, and there was a deep gash on his thigh.

He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw were his own hands—wrapped like mummies, pierced through and through with steel pins.

His hands were held in splints, suspended in the air. The wounds writhed grotesquely with every movement, the mass of pins and supports making them look like something out of Frankenstein’s laboratory.

Damn! My two girlfriends are crippled!?

Oh hell, the pain!

Little Left! Little Right! How pitiful you are!

As a shut-in, a mere college student with only sodas for comfort and his hands as companions through countless lonely nights, the loss of both at once was devastating.

No, wait—there’s something more important.

That’s right! I’ve crossed over!

This is the Marvel universe—the one where New York explodes every other day, Hong Kong collapses, and the world ends three, five, or seven times a year.

Since this is Doctor Strange’s world, the Marvel timeline must be pretty far along—right after Captain America: Civil War, and not long before Avengers 3.

Which means, even if I do nothing, just hide away, there’s a good chance that when Thanos invades Earth, I’ll be turned to dust with a snap of the Infinity Gauntlet.

Shit!

The Marvel universe is terrifying—let me go home!

At that thought, sorrow overwhelmed him. Two tears of pain and despair slid down his cheeks.

"It’s all right! Everything will be fine, Mei!"

Huh?

Wait—something isn’t right.

Meimu painfully turned his neck toward the voice, and a blonde beauty came into view.

She wore a gray cotton smock, her face that of a movie star, with charming dimples at her lips. But her smile was forced, masking pain and exhaustion that shone through her eyes.

Her dark circles told Meimu she hadn’t slept in ages.

"Wait, what did you just call me?" Meimu asked in surprise, realizing he had replied in flawless American English.

"Mei, are you all right? Oh, you have a mild concussion. Can you understand me?" The woman’s voice trembled with concern. "Do you remember who you are? Dr. Stephen Mu Mei!"

A mysterious sense of resonance filled Meimu’s heart. Suddenly, he remembered—he really had crossed over.

That enigmatic and powerful being had played a colossal joke on him.

From the memories flooding in, he knew he had inherited everything of Stephen Strange’s in this world. It wasn’t a simple soul fusion, but more like the world’s correction.

Mu Mei was how his name, Meimu, would be rendered in English. In this world, he had an integrated identity: officially, his surname was Strange, but after his parents divorced in his rebellious youth, he had taken his mother’s surname—Mei, a Chinese name.

His ID read Strange, but his colleagues, out of respect, called him by his chosen surname—Mei, or Dr. Mei, Dr. Mu Mei, or simply Meimu as he preferred.

The woman before him was Christine Palmer, an ER nurse at Strange’s hospital—one who deeply respected his medical skills and shared a subtle, ambiguous affection with him.

"Meimu, do you remember who I am?" Christine asked.

"I haven’t lost my memory, Christine." The pain made Meimu’s answer a little curt.

He didn’t realize that his casual use of her given name brought tears to her eyes. She was touched and saddened. "You… you called me Christine? You never used to say my name like that."

Using someone’s first name, rather than their surname, was a mark of intimacy.

Meimu hadn’t meant anything by it; it was simply the habit of a Chinese soul.

Then, a strange phenomenon occurred.

Before his eyes, a phantom scale appeared—darkness on the left, light on the right.

The moment he called Christine by her given name, he saw the scale tip ever so slightly toward the light—by perhaps one percent.

Though the shift was tiny, he saw it clearly.

A crisp chime rang out as a genderless voice echoed in his mind: "Congratulations. You have triggered a change in fate!"

"Who are you?" Meimu asked in astonishment, realizing suddenly that his question wasn’t spoken aloud but voiced directly in his mind.

"You may call me the Scale of Fate."

"Scale of Fate?"

"That’s right. You can see me as an artifact that can grant your every wish, or as a cursed relic that will drag you into infinite nightmares until you fall to the deepest depths of hell. Life or death, blessing or doom—it all depends on the choices you make in this parallel world."

"Choices?" Meimu was both excited and fearful.

Excited because, apparently, the cheat all transmigrators dream of had arrived.

Fearful because this cheat might cost him dearly—or even kill him.

"So… do I get any benefits right now?" Meimu asked tentatively.

"No! Get lost—"