The afterlife, as Yu Cheng discovered, wasn't the serene gardens of the Immortal Realms, nor the tranquil halls where ancestors watched over the living. There were no Ten Kings of Hell reigning over the underworld, no pearly gates or celestial choirs, and no wheel of samsara to carry him to his next incarnation. Instead, it was as if the cosmos had become a calligrapher's ink, spreading in wild, untamed strokes across the void—a swirling canvas of nebulae, pulsating with iridescent light and shifting hues beyond mortal comprehension. Time, a construct of the physical realm, had dissolved into a timeless now. He simply was, suspended in a sea of vibrant nothingness.
Then, a presence. Not a physical form, but a knowing, a vastness that enveloped him, pressing against his awareness with the weight of a thousand suns, yet gentle as a feather's caress. This, he somehow knew, was the Universal Entity—the cosmic janitor, the multiversal maintenance man, the...thing that kept everything from collapsing into itself.
"Well, this is new," Yu Cheng thought, attempting a nonchalant tone despite the awe that threatened to engulf him. "So, am I supposed to bow or something?"
The Entity, seemingly amused by his irreverence, responded not first with words, but with a subtle vibration that rippled through the void. Yu Cheng sensed a hint of...guilt? Regret? It was hard to decipher the emotions of a being beyond human understanding.
"Greetings, Yu Cheng," the Entity's voice resonated within him, not through ears he no longer possessed, but directly into his consciousness. It sounded...amused. "Your demise was...unexpected." The word "unexpected" hung in the void, dripping with a cosmic sheepishness. Information about the cause of his death began to flow into his consciousness, each detail settling into his awareness with a surreal clarity.
A ridiculous death, even by his standards. A cosmic hiccup, a stray neutrino dispatched by a black hole collision millions of years in the past, had snuffed out his mundane existence in a flash of celestial brilliance.
Yu Cheng, still processing the sheer absurdity of his death, chuckled, the sound hollow in the vast emptiness. "Unexpected is an understatement. Of course, my luck is so bad I get taken out by a stray particle from two black holes having a lovers' quarrel millions of years ago. Not a car crash, not a terminal illness, but a cosmic fender bender. How does that even happen?"
A cosmic cough reverberated through the void, the Entity studiously avoiding any mention of its own meddling with those very black holes millennia ago. Yu Cheng, sensing the shift, pressed on.
"Look, I'm not gonna lie," Yu Cheng continued, his disembodied voice carrying a hint of defiance. "This whole 'dying because of a black hole sneeze' thing is pretty messed up. Couldn't you have, like, reversed it? Sent the neutrino back to its sender?"
The Entity's response was vague, a cosmic shrug that spoke of limitations even it couldn't overcome. Rules, perhaps, or just a cosmic "oops" moment with no easy fix.
"Well, no use crying over spilled milk—or in this case, getting steamed like a dead pig in boiling water (死猪不怕开水烫)," he thought dryly, echoing a saying his grandfather used to repeat when faced with hopeless situations. "At least I get a do-over."
"So," he continued, ever the pragmatist, "what are my options? Ten thousand years of cosmic napping? A VIP ticket to Heaven's Bargain Mart, Cosmic Edition? Look, if reincarnation is on the table, I want a good deal. My last life was a cosmic blue light special, and not in a good way."
The Entity's amusement intensified, a cosmic chuckle rippling through the void. "Reincarnation is standard procedure. However, given the...unique circumstances..."
YOU ARE READING
This Hedonistic Young Master
FantasyAbstract "A man who gains power through pleasure, reborn in a life where pleasure is a sin." Yu Cheng didn't sign up for this-a life of noodles, endless shifts, and envy was all he knew. But one cosmic fluke later, he's reborn as Tian Hao 2.0, the s...
