Prologue: The Beginning

xx News

"At 4:32 PM on September 25, 2018, a fire broke out in the Purple Bamboo Community, Mountain City. The incident resulted in one death and multiple injuries. As of now, the fire has been extinguished."

"The deceased is Zhao Xuan, male, 26 years old, unemployed..."

Wisps of smoke still lingered in the Purple Bamboo Community. Onlookers, uncles and aunties who loved to gossip, gathered around a building, pointing and discussing the event animatedly.

"Old Li, who died?"

"Seems like a guy, right? Heard he was only in his twenties and not married. What a tragedy."

"What a shame. His parents must be heartbroken."

"Yeah."

The uncles and aunties shook their heads and sighed repeatedly, their faces full of pity.

But high above them, in a dimension invisible to ordinary people, the very person they were discussing was looking at it all with a bewildered expression.

"Huh? What? Huh?! Damn! What's going on?!" Zhao Xuan floated in the sky, utterly confused, expressing his current state with a string of meaningless exclamations.

All that remained of him now was a spectral body. By "common sense," this should be a soul, but Zhao Xuan had no time to ponder his current state. He just wanted to know how he died. He was just taking a nap, how could he suddenly die?! It was too sudden! Good heavens!

Listening to the discussions of the uncles and aunties below, Zhao Xuan's bewildered expression gradually turned to shock, and finally, to speechless resignation.

"How did it explode while charging? Wait, did the computer explode or the phone..."

The first thought that crossed Zhao Xuan's mind wasn't about his parents, but about how he died. After all, he was an orphan.

He frowned, a hint of suspicion in his voice. "Could it be that some bastard found my address, killed me, and then staged the scene?"

After thinking about it, he dismissed the idea as unlikely. Although he was a highly skilled hacker, he hadn't done anything truly heinous. He had even accessed the US National Security Agency's database quietly, without disturbing anyone.

After a while, Zhao Xuan stopped speculating, seeming to finally realize his current state.

"Wait, why am I getting higher and higher?" Zhao Xuan glanced down, and his vision went black. He felt like the people below were as small as ants.

He tried to struggle for a moment but found he couldn't move at all. Something in the sky seemed to be pulling him, drawing him upward.

And so, Zhao Xuan flew higher and higher, the surroundings turning into a vast expanse of white. A slight, crystalline white surged around him.

Having given up struggling, Zhao Xuan tried to find humor in the situation, hoping to fly out of Earth and see the vast cosmic galaxy. But he gradually began to notice something was wrong.

The crystalline white around him slowly began to emit colorful, flowing light. In the distance above, there was a patch of colorful clouds, from which divine, yingluo-like auspicious energy descended, looking incredibly sacred!

Zhao Xuan blinked, then his face lit up with joy.

"Could it be that I have a chance to go to heaven?" Zhao Xuan looked around, chuckling to himself.

But in the next moment, the distant colorful clouds above suddenly made a sound like shattering glass. A visible, pitch-black crack rapidly spread. In a fleeting glimpse, he could see purple divine lightning flashing within.

His facial expression froze. Zhao Xuan let out a yelp, exclaiming, "Sanqing Taishang, Jade Emperor, Tathagata Buddha, have mercy! I didn't know you were calling me... Don't we go underground when we die? Why are we going to the sky now?"

But no matter what Zhao Xuan said, the pitch-black crack continued to expand on its own. Zhao Xuan was engulfed by it, enduring the bombardment of purple divine lightning upon his soul.

"Ah, it hurts!"

As if hearing Zhao Xuan's scream, the expanding pitch-black crack paused. In the next instant, the enlarged crack dissolved like ice and snow, as if a broken mirror had been mended. The surroundings instantly returned to normal.

In the depths of the void, two consciousnesses met...

"Tongtian, did we just cause trouble?" a rebellious voice asked hesitantly.

"You impudent monkey, you were the one who couldn't control your power and shattered the Reincarnation Pond. How can you blame me?" a majestic young voice stated righteously.

"Tch, don't you know what you did?" the previous voice scoffed dismissively.

"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. That's all for today, so that old man doesn't nag."

A figure appeared beside a Reincarnation Pond. He frowned as he looked at the once sacred pond, muttering, "How could this broken pond be so flimsy."

He walked to the Reincarnation Pond and peered inside. The pond, which had been flowing with radiant light, was now a murky expanse of chaos.

The young man clicked his tongue twice. "So the chaos has surged in. Hmm? And there's still a person? Interesting. Without the aura of Purple Heaven Divine Lightning, I wouldn't have noticed. To be able to last two breaths in the chaos, that's interesting."

The young man smiled and, without a care, casually reached into the chaos. His divine power enveloped a soul, which he then tossed into another Reincarnation Pond before rapidly disappearing from the spot.

Zhao Xuan was extremely depressed, feeling intensely dizzy. One moment he was being tormented to death in a bizarre place, and the next, he was inexplicably spinning around again.

Zhao Xuan entered the Reincarnation Pond, the residual divine power of the young man and the laws of the pond constantly grinding against each other.

The scenery before his eyes blurred and rushed past at an incredible speed. In the next instant, Zhao Xuan's vision went black again...

(PS: Reader's notice: The early chapters were written playfully and were a bit scattered. I didn't expect to get a contract, so there are some bugs. Please bear with me.)