It was September, the season of autumn, yet autumn in the Northern Spirit Domain was still hot. Beneath the scorching sunlight, the trees in the courtyard remained lush and upright.
On the Spirit Gathering formation beneath a tree, a black-haired, black-eyed boy sat cross-legged, cultivating with his eyes closed.
"Phew..." As a wisp of white breath escaped his nose and mouth, the boy opened his eyes and stretched.
The Guiding and Pulling Method really did deserve its place among the seventy-two earthly fiend orthodox methods.
Guide the breath into harmony; draw the body into suppleness.
Breathe in and out, expel the old and take in the new.
While the others were still sensing earth spiritual energy, he had already laid his foundation and crossed the threshold, reaching the late stage of the spirit movement realm, just one step away from a breakthrough.
Su Qing pushed through his legs and rose straight from the stone platform. His gentle gaze swept over the boys and girls around him, who were still breathing rhythmically and sensing spiritual energy, and he clapped his hands.
"All right, everyone, that's enough cultivation for this morning. It's lunchtime. Going too far is as bad as falling short. Eat when it's time to eat, and cultivate when it's time to cultivate."
"Exactly." Another handsome, distinguished-looking black-haired boy stood up as well. "Sharpening your axe won't hold up your woodcutting. Come on, come on, let's all go eat."
"Hehe, we're just trying to work hard and catch up with you and Brother Mu, Brother Su." An earnest-looking boy in the crowd wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"Look at you." Su Qing laughed.
"If you're working this hard, should I ask Master Mo to double your holiday tutoring hours?"
At those words, the boy hurriedly waved his hands. "Don't! Brother Su, you're my brother! With your help, I'm about to break through to the spirit movement realm. I finally get a holiday to go home, and this time my dad will actually praise me."
The black-haired boy beside him laughed too. "All right, Su Qing. Let them off this time. They've had a rough month or so."
Su Qing curled his lip. "That's because they won't pull their own weight. Look how badly the West Academy has crushed them. Mu Chen, you ought to do something about it."
"But we have you, don't we, Grand Instructor Su?" Mu Chen teased back.
"Look at you." Su Qing chuckled.
"Come on, let's eat. I specifically asked the dining hall to make braised pork today. They're using Spirit Beast meat to nourish you."
"I think you're the one who wants it, Brother Su!" Everyone laughed and joked.
"What, isn't braised pork delicious? If you don't like it, I'll take it all. If I don't descend into hell, who will?"
"Eww!"
The boys headed toward the dining hall, laughing and roughhousing, radiating that energy unique to youth.
"You only broke through a couple of days ago. You haven't started cultivating a spiritual art yet, have you?"
After lunch, Mu Chen and Su Qing sat chatting beneath the shade of a tree.
"I'll be able to once I go home this time. Dad told me to come back after I broke through," Mu Chen said with a smile.
"Want to come home with me this time? Dad's been craving your braised pork so badly he could die. I really don't know how you make it taste that good."
Mu Chen bumped Su Qing with his shoulder.
"Next time. Next time."
Su Qing narrowed his eyes slightly as he spoke.
Those two gluttons...
Su Qing pillowed his head on his hands and leaned against the tree trunk. His eyes wandered aimlessly over the fading sunlight filtering through the leaves, countless thoughts drifting through his mind.
Come to think of it, I've been in this world for ages now...
In his previous life, he had been just an ordinary materials science undergraduate from the class of '11. After painstakingly switching fields for the postgraduate entrance exam, he had successfully landed a place at a prestigious Project 985 university.
After enrolling in September, he had met his kindly supervisor, as well as a pretty girl in his year.
Why did it turn out like this... All I needed was to put in a little more effort, and I could have coasted through life. I'd finally escaped that overwhelmingly male-dominated field and could try a sweet campus romance.
Two happy things coming together should have brought even more happiness. Why did it turn out like this instead...
Everything had happened just like that, as fleeting and unreal as dreams, illusions, bubbles, and shadows.
Transmigration really was just too ridiculous.
And everything that had happened was the fault of the Underworld Messenger managing the servers, who had entered the wrong name on the wrong server, executed the wrong command, and taken the wrong corrective measures.
All of Su Qing's data had been migrated from his original realm's server to this realm's server.
And because his original bodily data was incompatible with this realm's bodily data, a bug had occurred. The realm had automatically flagged his physical body as an error and disposed of it.
Fuck! His physical body had been erased outright, and his soul had automatically arrived in the Underworld, where he met the culprit.
As both the person involved and the victim, Su Qing had been very, very angry. After all, nobody could stay calm after eating hotpot and singing with a pretty girl they liked, only to find themselves in the damn Underworld in the blink of an eye.
Unfortunately, all he could do was rage helplessly.
The wrong operation at the wrong time had caused the error.
And the wrong corrective measures had made that error even more irreversible.
So he had raged helplessly, until at last he could only resign himself to accepting the Underworld Messenger's compensation and proposed solutions.
The Underworld Messenger had offered two options.
The first was, "Brother, since you're already here, why not make the best of a mistake? Just don't go back. Stay here and become an Underworld Messenger. Five social insurance plans and a housing fund, meals and accommodation included, immortality, travel on the public purse, blah, blah, blah..."
"To compensate you, you can go straight into the highest-level training program. You'll also get a high-rise apartment inside Fengdu's Third Ring Road. You'll never have to worry about food or drink in the world of the dead, and the work is easy and enjoyable, blah, blah, blah..."
It seemed there was nothing bad about it, aside from being a ghost.
But those seniors who had gone off to start businesses, then conned people out of sponsorships and labor wherever they went, had sounded just like that too.
Way too suspicious.
The other option was reincarnation.
"This realm was originally a looping projection realm. Everything in it is merely an illusion cycling endlessly through a fixed script, a closed loop that returns to its starting point no matter what."
The Underworld Messenger conjured a Möbius Strip in his hand as he spoke.
"But once you, an anomalous piece of data from a normal realm, were added here, a tiny crack appeared in that closed loop."
"And because that crack exists, it may be possible to open the closed loop and turn it into a normal realm."
"As long as you keep widening that crack."
The Underworld Messenger tore the Möbius Strip apart.
"If you reincarnate, you'll definitely end up beside the person who can influence this realm the most-in other words, the so-called protagonist."
"Everything you do will affect this realm, but the inertia of its closed loop will repair the effects of your actions, keeping events as close to their original course as possible."
"But as long as the changes you bring are large enough, their effects will outweigh that inertia. Once events veer far enough off course, the inertia will disappear."
"This realm will then be able to break its closed loop and become a normal, developing realm."
"If this realm grows into a normal realm-in other words, breaks free of its original historical inertia-all your data will be highlighted, since you were the one who changed it."
"Then we can find your original information among that previously scattered data. Analyzing it will give us the parameters of your native realm, and you'll be able to go back."
"As compensation, and to help you transcend this realm-as well as help myself fix this mistake-I'll provide assistance throughout your life in this realm."
"Of course, only assistance within my abilities. I definitely can't provide anything too outrageous, like an Immortal-Slaying Sword, but don't underestimate what I can do, either."
"I'll give you a mark. Once you've successfully reincarnated, you can contact me through it."
"Also, the body you reincarnate into will be fashioned by the earth and ordained by nature. Literally fashioned by the earth and ordained by nature."
At the time, Su Qing had chosen the second option without much hesitation... All right, he had actually thought about it for quite a while.
As for why? Isn't that obvious? I've already transmigrated. Who the hell still wants to go to work?
A cheat, and a way to get home...
An airtight reason.
Actually, the most important reason...
I haven't lived enough yet.
Travel on the public purse and a nine-to-five schedule really did sound wonderful. There was even a hundred-square-meter high-rise apartment inside the Third Ring Road of a top-tier metropolis.
Being a ghost didn't seem all that bad, either. He wouldn't even have to worry about "death" anymore.
But I really would rather keep living as a human.
Why? Maybe that's simply my obsession.
I just want to live, to live as a human. Staying in a cold, lifeless place like the Underworld would give me mental problems.
I want to live, openly and proudly, freely and without restraint-to live a better life!