Howling, I held my head in both hands as I stared at the screen. The words "Game Over" flashed across the scene that was darkening with blood, indicating my death. An option appeared for me to resp.a.w.n in five seconds, but I ignored it.

Instead, my eyes were drawn to the chat screen. Mocking messages filled my view, with the enemy team taunting me.

"Ha ha ha, NOOB."

"Weak. L2P."

"Get rekt!"

It wasn"t just the opposing team, though. My teammates were spamming me with angry messages.

"Wtf r u doing?!"

"If u don"t know how to play, gtfo."

"Dun drag us down!"

"Ugh!" I growled, feeling the frustration well up inside me. Shaking my head, I left the game, leaving my teammates to fight an increasingly uphill battle. To be honest, my departure wouldn"t make much of a difference. My incompetence was handing the opposing team too many points in terms of kill count.

They were right. I was causing my team to lose with my inept play.

Why the f.u.c.k did they group me up with such high-level players anyway? I grumbled to myself, cursing the matchmaking system. The game should fix that and put me with players on my level. Bronze league players should be placed with other bronze leaguers. There was no point pitting me against diamond league gamers unless they wanted every game to be a one-sided ma.s.sacre that boosted the ego of these elitist "hardcore" gamers while crushing the self-esteem of "casual" gamers. Then again, the possibility that these guys were Smurfs looking for an easy time and having a laugh over destroying newbies was high.

Pushing my gla.s.ses up my nose, I exhaled deeply before switching the game off. Grudgingly, I abandoned the attempt to get at least one win after a ten-match losing streak. It seemed that I was not destined not to win even once today.

b.l.o.o.d.y f…!

"I should go cool off."

After slamming my fist on my desk, the resulting pain cleared my head a little. Rubbing my temple, I sighed again and rose to my feet. The heater hummed in the background, but it was still a little chilly. Winter had descended upon Cheng Shi City with a harsh embrace, and even with the heater at full blast I could still feel her chilling touch.

But I"ve no choice…

I had run out of snacks and drinks. I needed to run to the convenience store a few blocks away from my apartment to replenish my supplies. Chocolate and c.o.ke were great for keeping me awake while studying, and munching on chips while watching anime was a guilty pleasure. Glancing at the clock, I realized I had spent a little too much time on the game. I had been obsessed with getting at least one victory that I had lost track of time.

This doesn"t mean I"ve given up! I"ll get back at you guys tomorrow, I swear…you had better watch out!

Even as the thought crossed my mind, I knew it wasn"t possible. Those hardcore gamers spent countless hours every day gaming and honing their skills to the max. I only spent three to four hours gaming a week. Sometimes I didn"t game for months at a time, too caught up with homework and studies. That was the fate of being a university student. And not just any university student – I was a graduate student chasing a PhD.

In other words, I had even less time for games…

Good thing I finished my a.s.signments and readings earlier today, or I"ll be in trouble.

Having been raised by my father, I had inculcated a habit of finishing my homework and duties before gaming. It was just an impulse, sheer discipline. Gaming or watching anime came as a reward to finishing my studies. It was just that simple. If anything, I was at least proud of my iron will that resisted all temptations to detract away from my studies.

I didn"t apply for graduate student because I was lazy and easily distracted, after all.

Since I"m planning on writing the popular culture paper on web novels tomorrow, I need to stock up on bottle iced coffee or c.o.ke…anything with caffeine. Chocolate would be nice too…

Locking my door, I stepped out of my apartment and proceeded downstairs. Shielding my eyes, I squinted at the bright morning sun. Oh, c.r.a.p, I forgot to sleep. After finishing my homework at around 3am, I spent the next 3 hours gaming (and getting my a.s.s kicked), and before I knew it, dawn had arrived. Good thing my cla.s.ses were in the afternoon, which meant I could grab about 4 hours of sleep before noon. After I watched today"s anime episodes, of course…

"?"

My planning was interrupted by an unusual sight. As I strolled to a stop at the traffic light junction, I spotted him. An old man hobbling across the junction despite the pedestrian crossing clearly being red. Perhaps he was color-blind. Actually, I wouldn"t be surprised if he was blind. His eyes were veiled by dark shades and he was poking at the front with his wooden walking stick. I didn"t know they made sticks out of wood like that anymore. These days everything was made out of plastic. Even football fans, particularly my fellow supporters of Blackburn Rovers.

Normally I wouldn"t even have noticed, but this particular old man stood out like a sore thumb. For one thing, he must have emerged from some backwater rural farm somewhere and fell behind modern fashion. I swear, if he wasn"t just randomly wandering about the streets of Cheng Shi City, he looked like a character out of a historical drama.

h.e.l.l, he behaved like one. The way he walked seemed to indicate that he was a fish out of water. Clearly he didn"t understand how traffic light signals worked.

And that was dangerous.

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!!!!

An irate driver honked his horn at the old man furiously and swerved out of the way in time, carving a beautiful arc around the pedestrian that would have made any Formula One driver proud. Flashing a finger at the oblivious old man, the driver then continued to speed forward without any other incident.

However, the old man wasn"t out of danger yet. I told you earlier, didn"t I? I got hit by a truck, not a car.

Said truck was barreling forward right after the car vanished out of sight. While the truck driver wasn"t as rude as the previous car driver, he neither possessed the skills nor a light enough vehicle maneuverable to pull off what the other guy did earlier. Evidently he hadn"t read enough Initial D or something. Tires screeched as he slammed on the brakes, but the truck wasn"t slowing down fast enough, its ma.s.sive momentum hurling itself forward lethally at the old man.

And the old man still didn"t notice the danger, blissfully plodding on at his maddeningly slow pace with that stupid stick of his.

"HEY!"

Before I knew it, my body had reacted and I threw myself at old man. I succeeded in pushing him out of the way in time, but not before I felt a sickening crunch. The next thing I knew, the sky had flipped itself up and was spinning around, replaced by the ground, which was subsequently taken over by the sky again. Then a sharp pain surged through my body as I slammed into the ground and skidded several meters across the road.

"Ugh…"

I let out a groan, feeling fiery hot agony flare through my body. I couldn"t move my limbs. They seemed twisted at an unnatural angle, and I could vaguely feel my blood pooling beneath me. Gasping for air, I felt something stab through my chest and strangle my throat. Perhaps the tremendous impact had broken my ribs, which were now rupturing my lungs.

In any case, it didn"t seem that I had long to live. With one final shudder, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to sink into the cold darkness of oblivion.

*

And that was how I found myself in line, waiting behind a snaking queue that was hundreds of people long. The line was so long that it stretched past the bridge, which was several miles long, and spilled over to the coast where it began.

This was going to be a long wait.

I watched the people who were ahead and behind me. There was a very faint quality to them, almost as if they were transparent. Their complexions were ghastly and inhumanly white, but that was probably because they were no longer quite human. None of them had legs – all of them were floating a foot or so above the ground or bridge. Dressed in white hospital gowns, the majority of them wore forlorn, downcast expressions as they bowed their heads gloomily.

Noticeably enough, the vast majority of the people in the queue were old, with a few of them actually being so old that they were literally ancients. There were a few young ones, a few middle-aged ones, and many kids, but their numbers were dwarfed by wizened, wrinkled seniors with white hair and ghostly airs of resignation. Several of the kids were looking around dumbly, unable to believe where they were.

I didn"t blame them. Just a day ago, if someone told me I was going to die, I would have laughed it off. Yet here I was in the underworld, queuing upon a bridge. Not just any bridge, mind you. The Naihe Qiao or Bridge of Helplessness. At the end of the bridge was a ma.s.sive gate, and guarding the gate was an ancient lady.

Standing right in front of the ma.s.sive, red double doors, the old lady was scooping tea out of a bubbling cauldron and handing it to the ghosts in line to drink. One by one, the ghosts in line accepted the cup, albeit with bitter expressions on their faces, drank the liquid before walking through those gates and disappearing from the underworld forever.

"Heh, so did you kill yourself too?"

A ghost my age elbowed his way to my position, earning himself a few glares from otherwise patient and tolerant seniors. He must have spotted someone from his generation in the long line, and wanting to alleviate the tedious boredom of standing in the queue with nothing else to do for days, he decided to fight his way toward me. I wondered if I should be touched.

However, one of my veins twitched at his rude question.

"Of course not…"

Then I blinked and calmed down as I recollected on the events that led to my death.

"…technically, you"re not wrong."

In a way, I did end up killing myself, after all. I sacrificed myself to save that old man"s life, even though I knew it would lead to my death. Now that I calmly thought about it, when the guy put it that way, he wasn"t mistaken at all.

"I know, right? Living is horrible."

The guy threw an arm over my shoulder. I flinched and tried to pull away, but he held on tightly. What was wrong with this guy? Why was he acting all friendly with me? I was pretty sure I didn"t know him and had never met him before in my life.

"I"m Xiang Si," the guy introduced himself without me asking. "I was being bullied in school, and driven to suicide by those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds…you know what I"m talking about, right?"

"Uh, sure…"

While I did experience bullying at the hands of several of my cla.s.smates, it was never so bad to the extent I was driven to kill myself. But I didn"t have the chance to tell Xiang Si that, for he was already launching into a long rant.

"This world sucks. If only the human race will all die! If only there"s a way to destroy the world! I"m tired of living in this world."

"We"re already dead," I reminded him. "We"re no longer in that world. We"re in the underworld."

Xiang Si plainly ignored me.

"Most people are alive only because it"s against the law to kill them." he cracked his knuckles. "If I have it my way, I"ll allow people to execute motherf.u.c.kers for being motherf.u.c.kers without needing to wait for the police."

Wow, the edge…I was bleeding just from listening to him speak. This guy reminded me of all those edge lords on the Internet. Just my bad luck that I had to run into one of them in h.e.l.l.

"Anyway…" Xiang Si stared nervously ahead. I hadn"t noticed when he was speaking, but it seemed that my turn was drawing nearer and nearer. The few hundred in front of me had been reduced to mere dozens. I guessed I would be through the gates before the day was done. Lucky me. But Xiang Si didn"t seem to think so. "You know what that tea is, right?"

"That"s soup," I corrected. "That"s Grandmother Meng. She serves the Mi Hun Tang or Soul Bewitching Soup. It"s supposed to bewitch your soul and cause permanent amnesia, wiping out all memories of your current life."

"I know what that means," Xiang Si snapped. Oh, really? Then why the f.u.c.k were you asking me about it? "After we drink that soup, we forget everything and we walk through that gate to get reincarnated."

"Yeah." I stared longingly at the red gates, whose interior stayed teasingly out of sight. "I wonder what kind of family I would be born into."

Xiang Si stared at me as if I was mad. I stared back at him, suspecting that he was mad.

"Why the f.u.c.k would you want to be reincarnated?"

I shrugged. "Why wouldn"t I?"

"You want to return to that f.u.c.ked up world? To get abused again? To get tortured and looked down by everybody, then driven to suicide again? I already have enough of living. I killed myself to escape living in that messed-up world! Of course I don"t want to go back there!"

I nodded in feigned understanding. I did have several of those thoughts occasionally, but only in the heat of the moment. But when I calmed down, I realized how juvenile those edgy thoughts were. Perhaps Xiang Si would finally realize what a fool he was making himself out to be when he came to his senses. Behind, an old man snorted.

"The younger generation is so weak these days. Can"t even take something like that, and start crying all over the place."

"Shut up, geezer!" Xiang Si rounded on him. "It"s your fault that the world is so screwed up right now! All because of people like you!"

"Hey…" I spoke up, trying to bring Xiang Si"s attention away from the poor old guy, who looked as if he was going to flare up and fight. "That"s enough. I understand your pain, but don"t take your anger out on other people."

Xiang Si turned on me, his nostrils flaring. He grabbed me by the shoulders.

"Friend, let"s go. Let"s get out of here before they force us to reincarnate. I"m never going back to that world!"

"Uh, good for you. I"ll stay in line."

Like h.e.l.l I was going to run off and give up my spot after queuing for what seemed like several days.

"Are you crazy?!"

Xiang Si was shaking me violently now. Dude, you need to take a chill pill. I tried to brush his hands off and stumble away.

"You want to go back and live in that world?! That crazy, f.u.c.ked up world?!"

"Look," I growled impatiently. "I don"t know what kind of experiences you had, but this is a chance for a new life, one that might be free of abuse, of…"

"Hah!" Xiang Si snorted. "I have lost faith in the human race. All humans are evil. Don"t delude yourself. If you get reincarnated, you"ll just suffer again."

Wow…this edgy guy was really on edge.

"I"ll take my chances."

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d looked like he was going to slap me. "Why did you even kill yourself in the first place?!"

I smiled at him pleasantly. "I sacrificed myself to save an old man from getting hit by a truck. It was worth it."

Xiang Si looked as if he was the one who got hit by a truck. He staggered back, shocked at what he deemed was my betrayal, then jabbed his finger at me and began raving and ranting.

"Traitor! f.u.c.ker! You lied to me!"

"No, I didn"t…"

As usual, Xiang Si interrupted me and refused to listen to what I had to say.

"I hate you! It"s people like you that f.u.c.ked up the world! Go reincarnate and get driven to suicide again! I hope the world ends while you"re still in it!"

With that, he sprinted off.

I watched after him in exasperation, then decided not to pursue him. Whatever that idiot wanted to do was completely none of my business.

Xiang Si didn"t get very far. Suddenly, two gigantic demons descended from the murky, cloudy skies and landed on either side of him. Their grotesque, grinning visages bore down on the hapless teenager, causing him to shriek. Despite the fella p.i.s.sing his pants (or gown), the two demons mercilessly s.n.a.t.c.hed him up and carried him toward the gate. Xiang Si"s struggles intensified as he sought to free himself, but the demons" grips were too strong. I watched their ma.s.sive gruesome figures, fiery red skin that stretched over their heavily muscled, humanoid torsos, and shuddered.

"Let me go! I don"t want to be reincarnated! I don"t…!"

I caught one last glance from Xiang Si, the fool actually pleading me for help. I rolled my eyes and turned away. This was for his own good.

Come to think of it, while Xiang Si told me his name, he never asked me for mine. The guy was so self-centered and self-absorbed in his own misery that he didn"t care about anybody except himself. No wonder he wasn"t interested in listening to anyone but himself. Ironically, he blamed others for deceiving him when he was the one who interrupted them before they could explain fully.

"Serves him right," the old guy behind me muttered.

I watched coldly as the demons forcibly pinned Xiang Si down on the floor for Grandma Meng to pour the soup into his mouth. Xiang Si choked and tried to spit it out, but he couldn"t. He wept, wailed and gnashed his teeth, but then the effects of the Soul Bewitching Soup took effect and he suddenly slumped down, slack-jawed and hollow-eyed. The demons hauled him to his feet and threw him through the slightly ajar gates.

I definitely didn"t want to be manhandled like that, so I behaved myself as best as I could until it was finally my turn. When I finally stepped up to the fuming, bubbling cauldron, waiting for Grandma Meng to give me my cup of soup, she suddenly frowned and consulted the list she had in her hand.

"You"re Fei Wu, right?"

"That"s right, ma"am.

"…your name is not on the list."

"Then why do you know my name?"

Grandma Meng raised an eyebrow, but then realized that was a good question. She smiled good-humoredly.

"I know the names of every ghost who walks the Bridge of Helplessness." She raised the list. "But your name is not on the list."

"Uh…so what do I do?"

Grandma Meng shrugged. "For one thing, you don"t drink my soup."

"But, Grandma!" I protested hotly, not wanting to go through this whole ordeal again. "I"ve been waiting in line for almost seven days! You can"t do this to me!"

"Yes, I can," Grandma Meng replied coolly. "And I"m not your grandma."

"Hey!" one of the ghosts shouted callously behind me. "You"re holding up the line! Just get lost!"

"And go where?" I glanced upward, half-expecting the giant demons to appear out of the sky and escort me somewhere. At least that would be much preferable to leaving me in eternal limbo, wandering around the underworld for eternity.

"Hmm, about that…"

Grandma Meng stopped stirring the steaming stew in her cauldron and placed a wrinkled, bony finger on her chin as she pondered thoughtfully. I half-wanted to just throw myself between the gates, but I dismissed that desire, knowing that the demons would just appear out of nowhere and grab me before I could.

"In cases like this, it means that you"re not dead and your soul somehow mistakenly ended in the underworld by mistake. So you"ll have to go by that gate."

I blinked and stared as Grandma Meng pointed at a much smaller gate by the side of the gigantic red gates that led to reincarnation. It was brown and green, and looked a lot more furnished and taken care of than the gigantic red ones.

"…where does that lead to?"

Grandma Meng shrugged. "As compensation for accidentally taking you to the underworld when you"re not supposed to die yet, we"ll give you something as a token of apology."

"Give me what?" I asked nervously. Grandma Meng smiled enigmatically.

"You"ll find out when you walk through those gates."

Ah. I think I knew what this was all about. I had read about this in web novels before. Compensation for taking my soul when I wasn"t supposed to die yet…in other words, they were going to make it up to me by allowing me to reincarnate not in Earth but another world! A medieval fantasy world with swords, magic and monsters! I was going to be reincarnated in the body of an adventurer or magician! That must be the "token of apology"! That was also why they weren"t going to take my memories. Adventures in other fantasy worlds had a requirement that the reincarnated main characters preserve their memories of Earth so that they could make use of their modern scientific knowledge and education for unfair advantages in a medieval world!

"Thank you very much, Grandma!"

"Well, it was our mistake, after all." Grandma Meng shrugged and went back to stirring the contents of her cauldron. "And stop calling me grandma."

I bowed gratefully for one last time before I sprinted toward the small gates. The brown gates automatically opened, as if welcoming me, and I plunged into it eagerly.

The next thing I knew, my consciousness was swamped with darkness, and as the celestial forces moved to reincarnate me in a brand new world, I knew nothing.