"Where the fuck had I ended up?"
Wang Gang rubbed his aching, hungover head and surveyed the antique-style room.
As a fairly well-known expert in traditional Chinese scholarship, he often received invitations from wealthy business owners to advise them on their period-style interiors.
He swept his gaze around the room. The furniture was solidly built from fine materials, the furnishings elegant. Although the brushwork in the calligraphy and paintings was somewhat immature, it already showed promise.
Double-happiness characters decorated the walls, and the bed curtains were a festive red. The bedding covering him was smooth and silky-it was actually Suzhou embroidery.
"They even furnished it as a bridal chamber! Not bad. Someone knows their stuff!"
Wang Gang nodded, but a strange sense of familiarity rose within him.
He got out of bed, intending to take a closer look, then suddenly froze and stared blankly at his hands.
They were fair, with long, slender fingers-a very handsome pair of hands, but they were not his!
At least, his hands in this life had not looked like this!
He straightened to his full height and examined the room carefully. Seemingly remembering something, he bent down and opened the small cabinet beside the bed. Inside lay a thread-bound copy of The Analects.
Wang Gang went still, his eyes filling with disbelief. He carefully picked up the book and opened it. On the flyleaf was written:
"In the seventh year of Xining, while visiting friends in Gusu, I happened to meet my young friend Yukun. We conversed most agreeably, and I presented him with this book as encouragement.-Yichuan."
Wang Gang stumbled and fell to the floor, his face blank with bewilderment before it turned to joy.
Yukun came from the saying "jade comes from the Kunlun ridges." It was the courtesy name the academy head had bestowed on Wang Gang at his coming-of-age ceremony. Yichuan was the sobriquet of the great Neo-Confucian scholar Cheng Yi.
"Ha... hahaha!"
Emotion surged through Wang Gang. He wanted to laugh aloud, but his chest felt blocked, and all he could produce were meaningless, breathy sounds.
I'm back. They actually let me come back again!
"Heaven has favored me so!" Wang Gang murmured softly, his initial excitement and exhilaration gradually twisting into a savage expression.
He tore a double-happiness character from the wall, his eyes filled with hatred.
In his previous life-no, his life before last-he had been eighteen that year, placing third in the prefectural examination and making his name in a single stroke.
Jiangnan had always been a flourishing center of culture. Its qualifying examination was a hellish ordeal that selected one in a hundred; anyone who fought their way through was outstanding.
And no one believed Wang Gang, who had taken third place, would stop there.
Famous at a young age, from a prosperous family, handsome, and with boundless prospects.
For a time, people came in an endless stream to propose marriages, all of them distinguished local gentry. Ordinary wealthy households and merchants were not even qualified to approach.
Their thinking was simple: rather than wait until after the metropolitan examination and let those shameless people in Bianliang snatch a son-in-law from beneath the results list, they would strike first.
Yet Wang Gang turned them all down on the grounds that he was already betrothed.
After his parents passed away, his elder sister had arranged a marriage for him.
The girl was named Li Qingluo. Having seen her once in his youth, he had never been able to forget her, forever thinking of that lovely, otherworldly figure, imbued with the finest grace of heaven and earth.
Yet he had never imagined that this very woman would drag him into the abyss!
On his wedding night, he stumbled upon that bitch's illicit affair. In his panic, her lover accidentally wounded him grievously, and he died not long afterward.
But unexpectedly, Heaven took pity on him, allowing a spark of his soul to survive and be reborn more than nine hundred years later.
Drawing on his years of mastery in classical interpretation and essay writing, along with his knowledge of the Song dynasty, he quickly made a name for himself and lived quite well. Yet whenever he awoke from dreams at midnight, his hatred remained impossible to dispel.
In a novel called Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, he read about the people and events that followed his death.
That bitch had actually ended up dying together with her lover, which left him both gratified and furious!
The elder sister who had showered him with care had died. His kind, approachable brother-in-law had become a monk. His obedient, filial, hardworking nephew had gone mad!
The Wang family was finished, and so was the Murong family! They had become idle dinner-table gossip, a joke.
Yet he had never imagined that Heaven would now let him return again! Back to his wedding night, back to the night before he died.
There was still a chance for everything. Everything could still be put back on track!
Wang Gang put the book away, drew a long breath, suppressed the raging waves in his chest, and slowly began walking around the room.
He had painstakingly arranged everything in this room to welcome her as his bride. Every object reflected a special thought, yet now it all seemed steeped in irony!
He reached for the exquisite box on the dressing table. It was a gift from a close friend, a Seven-Treasure Intricate Box said to have been crafted by a master artisan in Dongjing.
Following his memories, Wang Gang's hands flew as he swiftly unlocked the box's mechanism, revealing seven little drawers intended to hold a woman's jewelry.
Wang Gang opened the last one directly. It held the key to the family storeroom. Giving it to her had signified entrusting her with managing the household, but now, she was not worthy!
The drawer opened. There was no key, only a small booklet.
"Five Gauze Light Smoke Palm. Heh!"
Wang Gang picked up the booklet, so furious that he laughed. Li Qingluo had brought all the martial arts manuals from Langhuan Blessed Land with her as her dowry.
With so many supreme arts from various schools available, she ignored them and treasured this third-rate technique instead. What profound devotion!
He could not be bothered to search the drawers one by one. Instead, he turned the box upside down and shook it. With a clattering cascade, pearls and jade ornaments scattered across the floor, a strangely shaped key among them.
Wang Gang put away the key, then opened the booklet again. He wanted to see just what was so remarkable about Prince Duan's woman-chasing palm technique.
Opening the booklet, he saw an illustration of a young woman. Judging by her face and figure, it was unmistakably Li Qingluo.
Wang Gang sneered inwardly. Duan Zhengchun certainly had his tricks. In the manual he gave Li Qingluo, he had drawn her demonstrating the technique. He probably had versions featuring other women too.
Reading on, he found that the woman in the illustrations did indeed demonstrate the technique. Her expressions varied-pouting or smiling, joyful or sorrowful-truly depicting Li Qingluo's every manner and expression.
Wang Gang forced himself to finish reading despite his disgust, feeling that this thing was less a martial arts manual than a means of flirtation.
He tossed it aside and was about to turn away when his vision suddenly blurred. A panel shimmering with multicolored light abruptly appeared before his eyes.
[Name: Wang Gang Reputation Points: 128765 Divine ability: Power of Space (available to learn) Martial arts: Five Gauze Light Smoke Palm (available to learn)]
Wang Gang froze. His golden finger had arrived just like that? Without much hesitation, he willed his consciousness toward the martial arts entry.
[Are you sure you wish to spend 50 Reputation Points to learn Five Gauze Light Smoke Palm?]
"No, no, no!" Wang Gang hastily made his choice. Even if he practiced such a third-rate technique until he died, he would never accomplish anything. Not even a dog would learn it. He then selected the divine ability entry.
[Are you sure you wish to spend 10000 Reputation Points to learn Power of Space?]
Holy shit! Such a huge difference! It must be amazing!
Wang Gang decisively confirmed his choice. At once, he felt a faint strand of Qi appear within him. The Qi followed his will, instantly constructing a space in his palm.
"So that's what Power of Space means!"
Wang Gang sensed the space in his hand, which could hold something roughly the size of a chicken egg. What use could this possibly be?
Looking back at the panel, he saw a plus sign had appeared after Power of Space and decisively selected it.
[Spend 10000 Reputation Points to upgrade?]
Confirm!
The space did indeed grow larger. It could hold a duck egg now.
Again!
[Spend 20000 Reputation Points to upgrade Power of Space?]
"Don't tell me it increases exponentially!"
Again!
[Spend 40000 Reputation Points to upgrade Power of Space?]
Again!
[Insufficient Reputation Points!]
Wang Gang looked at the remaining 48765 Reputation Points on the panel and the space measuring less than half a cubic meter, unsure whether he had gained or lost out!
"How do I get these Reputation Points? The next upgrade will probably cost eighty thousand. I'm still over thirty thousand short, but I only accumulated a hundred and twenty thousand across two lifetimes."
As he pondered, the door burst open with a bang, and a cool female voice rang out. "What are you doing!"
P.S. This book begins in the eighth year of Xining, while the plot of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils takes place roughly between the sixth and eighth years of Yuanyou, a gap of sixteen or seventeen years.
This falls right at the transition between Xining and Yuanfeng, during Wang Anshi's reforms, so later on, considerable ink will be devoted to officialdom!
The book involves the contention between Confucianism and Mohism, the debate over righteousness and profit, and the conflict between the New and Old Parties... the jianghu alone cannot support these intellectual currents! So please choose whether to read accordingly.
P.S. 2: If you dislike the chapters involving Li Qingluo, you can skip them directly. Altogether, they account for less than one percent of the chapters, yet many people see nothing but that!