Just Another Cliché Transmigration Story (JACTS)

The world was a crushing weight, a dark, watery prison. Le Xiao thrashed, her lungs burning, the silk of her qipao heavy with the pond's cold embrace. She remembered Lian-er's playful whisper, the blindfold, the sudden shove. There was no one. Only the indifferent gurgle of the water and the fading hope that her cousin would save her.
Then, darkness. A vast, echoing emptiness. And then, a searing pain, a blinding light, and a voice. Cold. Demanding.
"You're awake."
The words were strange, foreign, yet they pierced the fog of her pain. She tried to move, but her limbs felt like lead, her head throbbed with a relentless rhythm. What was this place? This cold, stark room? And who was this man, a towering figure with eyes like chips of ice, staring down at her with an intensity that made her very soul tremble?
