XX News
"At 16:32 on September 25, 2018, a fire broke out in Purple Bamboo Community, Mountain City. The accident caused one death and multiple injuries. As of now, the fire has been extinguished."
"The deceased, Zhao Xuan, male, 26, unemployed..."
A few wisps of lingering smoke still rose from Purple Bamboo Community in Mountain City. Nosy uncles and aunties gathered beneath an apartment building, pointing and chatting animatedly.
"Old Li, who died?"
"Seems like it was a man. Heard he was only in his twenties and unmarried. What a tragedy."
"What a pity. His parents must be heartbroken."
"Yeah."
The uncles and aunties shook their heads and sighed repeatedly, their faces full of sympathy.
Yet high above them, in a dimension ordinary people could not see, the subject of their discussion stared blankly at everything below.
"Huh? What? Ha?! What the hell is going on?!" Zhao Xuan floated in the sky with a dumbfounded expression, using a string of meaningless words to convey his current feelings.
Only an illusory body remained of him. By "common sense," this should have been a soul body, but Zhao Xuan had no time to care about his condition. He only wanted to know how exactly he had died. He had only taken an afternoon nap, so how had he suddenly died?! This was way too abrupt! Heaven, what the hell?!
As he listened to the uncles and aunties below, Zhao Xuan's dumbfounded expression gradually turned to shock, then utter speechlessness.
"How did it explode while charging? Was it the computer that exploded, or the phone...?"
Zhao Xuan's first thought was not of his parents, but how he had died. After all, he was an orphan.
Frowning, he asked suspiciously, "Could some bastard have tracked down my address, killed me, and staged the scene?"
But after thinking about it, he felt that was unlikely. Although he was a highly skilled hacker, he had never done anything truly wicked. Even when he had broken into the database of the U.S. National Security Agency, he had done so quietly without disturbing anyone.
Before long, Zhao Xuan stopped speculating, as though he had finally noticed his current state.
"Something's wrong. Why am I getting higher and higher?" Zhao Xuan glanced downward, and his vision went dark. The crowd below looked as tiny as ants.
He tried struggling for a while, only to find that he could not move at all. It seemed as though something in the sky was pulling him upward.
Thus, Zhao Xuan flew higher and higher. Everything around him turned into a vast expanse of white, with faintly crystalline white currents swirling through it.
Having already given up struggling, Zhao Xuan tried to find amusement in his misery. He hoped he might fly out of Earth and see the vast starry universe, but gradually, he realized something was wrong.
The crystalline white around him slowly began to emit rainbow-colored streams of light. Far above his head lay a patch of rosy clouds, from which auspicious, necklace-like auras descended, holy beyond measure!
Zhao Xuan froze for a moment, then joy spread across his face.
"Could it be that I still have a chance to go to Heaven?" Zhao Xuan looked around, secretly rejoicing.
But in the next moment, the distant rosy clouds above suddenly made a sound like shattering glass. A pitch-black crack, visible to the naked eye, rapidly spread open, and within it flashed purple divine lightning.
His expression stiffened, and Zhao Xuan cried out, "Supreme Purity, Jade Emperor, Buddha, spare me! I didn't know you were calling for me... Aren't we supposed to go underground after we die? Why are we going up to Heaven instead?"
Yet no matter what Zhao Xuan said, the black crack continued expanding on its own. Zhao Xuan was swallowed into it, his soul battered by the Purple Heaven Divine Lightning.
"Ah, it hurts!"
As though it had heard Zhao Xuan's scream, the expanding black crack abruptly paused. In the next instant, the crack that had already spread apart melted away like ice and snow. Like a shattered mirror restored, everything around it instantly returned to normal.
Somewhere unseen, two consciousnesses met...
"Tongtian, did we just cause trouble?" An unruly voice asked hesitantly.
"You monkey, it was clearly you who lost control of your power and shattered the Reincarnation Pond. How can you drag me into this?" A dignified young man's voice replied sternly.
"Tch, don't you know what you did?" The first voice scoffed disdainfully.
"Uh... It seems something touched my Purple Heaven Divine Lightning... Heh, why am I arguing with a junior like you? I'll go repair the Reincarnation Pond first. Let's call it a day, so that old man won't nag us."
A figure appeared beside a Reincarnation Pond. Frowning, he glanced at the once-sacred pond and muttered, "Why is this stupid pond so fragile?"
He walked over to the Reincarnation Pond and looked inside. The pond, once swirling with flowing light, was now a murky chaos.
The young man clicked his tongue twice. "Chaos actually seeped in. Hm? There's even a person in there? Interesting. If not for the absence of Purple Heaven Divine Lightning's aura, I wouldn't have noticed. He actually managed to survive a couple of breaths in Chaos. Interesting."
The young man smiled. Without a care, he casually reached into the Chaos, scooped up a soul wrapped in divine power, and tossed it into another Reincarnation Pond before swiftly vanishing from the spot.
Zhao Xuan was miserable. His head spun terribly. Just moments ago, he had been tormented half to death in some inexplicable place, and in the blink of an eye, he had inexplicably begun spinning again.
Zhao Xuan fell into the Reincarnation Pond, where the young man's remaining divine power and the pond's laws continuously wore away at each other.
The scenery before his eyes rushed past at incredible speed, blurred beyond recognition. In the next instant, Zhao Xuan's vision went dark again...
(P.S. Reader's note: The early part was written rather casually and got too wild. I never expected it to get signed, so there may be some bugs. Please excuse them.)
Before you continue