In the darkness, nine enormous gates radiating dazzling light stood majestically at the far end of his vision.
Long lines stretched before each gate, slowly advancing toward them.
Fang Hong walked among the crowd, utterly bewildered.
Where is this? How did I get here? Didn't I fall asleep in my dorm while staying up late to write my dissertation?
Under the influence of a certain blogger, his adviser had recently been cracking down hard on dissertations.
He remembered staying up late in his dorm to work on his dissertation. Exhausted, he had put his head down in front of his computer for a quick nap, only to wake up in this dreamlike place.
He looked around blankly and discovered that his line contained men and women, young and old. Everyone seemed to be wearing a mask, their faces utterly expressionless. Their movements were stiff and slow as they trudged woodenly toward the enormous gate, making his skin crawl.
He tried to speak but could not make the slightest sound. When he pushed and pulled at the others, they showed no reaction either. All he could do was let the crowd carry him forward.
I must have been under too much stress lately to have a dream like this. This is pretty terrifying... All right, wake up!
Fang Hong tried to suggest this to himself, yet he also had a vague sense that his mind was far too clear, unlike how he usually felt in dreams.
Something's wrong!
He tried several methods, but none woke him up. Gradually, an ominous thought arose in his mind.
Fuck! Did I drop dead? Is this the underworld?
I haven't even had time to delete the browser history on my laptop...
He hurriedly squeezed past the people beside him and reached the edge of the line. One look made his heart jolt.
The line was walking along a winding bridge. There were no railings, and beneath it lay unfathomable darkness. A single glance left him so dizzy that he nearly plunged headfirst over the edge.
In the distant darkness, only the nine towering gates shone with dazzling, cold light, guiding them like lighthouses.
He retreated to the middle of the line and continued following the crowd.
Are we rushing off to be reincarnated?
As Fang Hong pondered this, he could not help feeling some regret.
He was a biology doctoral student at one of China's top Project 985 universities, with a very clear plan for his life-find a university job after graduation, devote himself to research, marry and have children, and enjoy life.
In a person's lifetime, earning a respectable income and society's respect in a field they excelled at and loved was already no easy feat.
After so many years of diligent study, he had finally been about to see the dawn. Being abruptly logged out and made to start a new account was rather hard to accept.
As a biology doctoral student, he had always believed in the idea of "accumulating life over lifetimes." Whenever the topic came up, he could talk at length with ease, and his adviser had criticized him for it many times.
His current predicament plunged him into deep thought once more.
According to the law of mass-energy conservation in physics, the universe's total mass-energy has remained conserved since the Big Bang. Matter doesn't disappear; it merely transforms between material mass and energy...
All macroscopic matter humans have observed, from stars and planets down to living species, air, and rocks, is essentially made of quarks. Quarks form protons and neutrons; protons, neutrons, and electrons form atoms; atoms combine into molecules; and molecules form macroscopic objects...
The vast majority of fundamental particles originated in the first few seconds after the universe's birth. Everything in the universe is a constant recombination of fundamental particles. After humans die, their bodies decompose, their atoms return to the soil and atmosphere, and plants absorb them to form new life. The entire process is merely fundamental particles breaking apart and recombining.
After stars die, the elements scattered by supernova explosions coalesce into new celestial bodies. Every atom that makes up Earth came from the recombination of particles from earlier generations of stars.
Mass-energy is conserved throughout the entire closed universe. Even what black holes swallow will, according to the theory of Hawking radiation, be continually radiated outward as particles, ultimately returning the swallowed mass-energy to the universe.
Fang Hong's thoughts wandered far and wide. He examined the people around him curiously, squeezing one person's arm and touching another's shoulder, and found them no different from real people.
Consciousness arises from the brain. After the brain dies, does consciousness disappear with it, or does it continue to exist?
If the brain is like a CPU and a memory card, consciousness is a complex string of program code. It seems that after the CPU and memory card lose power, the code remains on the memory card; it simply can't run anymore...
In my current situation, some unknown force must have brought my "code" here. Like gravity and relativity, this force is one of the universe's fundamental rules.
He felt he had grasped some sort of truth, but unfortunately, he could not share it with anyone.
The crowd on the bridge advanced slowly. After an unknown length of time, Fang Hong finally reached the enormous, radiant gate.
The gate was filled with white light, obscuring everything. As the people ahead stepped inside, they immediately vanished.
Fang Hong had no choice but to follow the crowd into the towering gate.
Endless white light filled his vision. The people around him suddenly disappeared, leaving him alone.
Amid the snowy whiteness ahead was a conspicuous little black dot. Curious, he walked toward it.
Strangely, this white world seemed to have no laws of physics. The moment he thought of going to the black dot, he found himself right before it.
A long black table and two chairs.
A beautiful woman sat in the chair opposite him, wearing a black skirt suit, stockings, and black high heels with red soles. With her hair pinned up and glasses on her face, she looked like a young, capable office professional.
"Mr. Fang, congratulations on becoming a transmigrator."
A professional smile appeared on the woman's face. Her voice was clear and pleasant. "I'm your transmigration consultant, employee ID Bi Xiao Tian Jia Zi Jiu. You may call me Little Nine."
As she spoke, she extended a hand, gesturing for Fang Hong to sit.
"A transmigrator?" Fang Hong sat down across the long table with an odd expression, his gaze settling on several stacks of playing-card-like cards on the tabletop.
The beautiful consultant was toying with one of the stacks in her fair, slender fingers. At his question, she explained:
"That's right. You can think of Earth as an enormous biological culture dish. Certain human individuals sometimes develop a 'unique trait,' and those who possess this trait are transmigrators."
Fang Hong nodded, quickly accepting this reality, then asked, "Has my body in the real world died?"
The beautiful consultant shook her head and explained patiently, "No. You're merely the 'unique trait' that split off from that body. He'll continue functioning normally according to his existing physiology."
"That's good." Fang Hong breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back in his chair, his tone relaxing. "In other words, I'm essentially a duplicate of myself now, and neither of us can sense the other?"
"You could put it that way." The beautiful consultant adjusted her glasses.
Fang Hong asked curiously, "What were those nine glowing gates I saw on my way in?"
The beautiful consultant set down the cards and said with a smile, "Those are Reincarnation Gates, existences beyond our comprehension. They're also passages to larger culture dishes. Behind each Reincarnation Gate lies a different spacetime governed by different rules of the Heavenly Dao."
Understanding dawned on Fang Hong. "Like parallel spacetimes-Western fantasy, futuristic science fiction, Eastern fantasy, that sort of thing? Then what category does the one I entered fall into?"
The beautiful consultant considered this for a moment, then said earnestly, "By your classification, this place should lean toward cultivation."
"I usually quite enjoy reading xianxia webnovels, so adapting after transmigrating shouldn't be much of a problem," Fang Hong said, taking things as they came.
"You really do have a good attitude."
The beautiful consultant smiled softly and pushed all the cards in front of her toward Fang Hong. "All right, Mr. Fang. According to the standard transmigration procedure, you need to choose one of these Fate Cards at random. It will determine your initial identity template after transmigration."
At her words, Fang Hong carefully examined the cards on the table. Every card bore the same exquisite pattern.
"Miss Nine, could you give me a hint about which one's better?" After looking around, he leaned forward and asked in a low voice.
The beautiful consultant smiled and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Fang. We have workplace rules and can't give transmigrators preferential treatment. Besides, to be honest, I'm not very clear on what these Fate Cards contain either."
"All right, I'll do it myself." Going by instinct, Fang Hong reached into a pile of cards and picked one. When he turned it over, he found its reverse covered in a black coating.
"You need to scratch it off to see the contents." The beautiful consultant considerately took a small scraper from her pocket and handed it to Fang Hong.
"Thank you."
Fang Hong took the little scraper and scratched away the coating, his face full of curiosity.
"This feels just like playing a scratch card..."
Beneath the coating, several lines of text appeared.
[Name: Fang Hong] [Identity: Born into a cultivation Aristocratic Clan, currently sixteen years old. Father is a Golden Core cultivator; mother is a Foundation Establishment cultivator.] [Talent: Seventh-Rank Spiritual Vein] [Fate configuration: Heavenly Virtue Nobleman, Golden Carriage, Yang Blade, Xianchi]
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