The coffee was too hot.
That was the thought that occupied Liang Yu's mind at 7:43 on a Tuesday morning as he walked across the pedestrian crossing, briefcase in one hand, phone in the other, scrolling through emails he'd already read twice. The ceramic cup had burned his tongue three minutes ago, and the taste of overpriced espresso still lingered, bitter and slightly accusatory.
He should have made coffee at home. Saved the four dollars. Avoided the burn.
The traffic light was green. The walk signal was white. He had the right of way.
The delivery truck driver—later identified as a fifty-three-year-old man named Chen Wei, who had been driving for nineteen years without incident—was checking his phone. A message from his daughter. She'd gotten into the university. He looked down for exactly four seconds.
Liang Yu heard the screech of tires. He looked up.
The grille of the truck was very close. Close enough that he could see a dead insect smeared across the chrome, wings still intact, preserved in dust and velocity.
He thought: That's going to hurt.
Then the world became physics. Bone and metal and asphalt in a violent equation that resolved to zero.
The last things Liang Yu experienced before the darkness:
The briefcase flying from his hand, papers scattering like startled birds.
His phone—two months old, still under warranty—shattering against the curb.
A woman screaming somewhere to his left.
The taste of blood, metallic and warm, mixing with the coffee that had finally stopped burning his tongue.
A strange, almost distant curiosity about whether anyone would water the basil plant on his windowsill.
Then nothing.
You have died.
The words appeared in darkness. Not spoken. Not read. Simply known.
*Cause of death: blunt force trauma. Time of death: 7:44 AM. Age at death: twenty-six years, four months, eleven days.*
Liang Yu—or whatever remained of him—floated in void. No body. No sensation. Just awareness, raw and disoriented.
Unmarried. No children. Parents deceased. One younger sister, estranged. Employment: junior accountant at a mid-sized firm. Hobbies: reading, hiking (infrequently), cooking (poorly). Net worth at time of death: negative forty-seven thousand yuan, student loans pending.
He tried to speak. Nothing happened.
Assessment: unremarkable life. Unremarkable death. No heroic acts. No significant legacy. No one waiting.
The words hung there, factual and indifferent. Liang Yu felt something like embarrassment. He'd always assumed—vaguely, distantly—that when death came, it would mean something. A car crash saving a child. A noble sacrifice. At the very least, a moment of clarity, a summing-up of a life well-lived.
Instead, he was being audited.
Processing complete.
Subject: Liang Yu.
Verdict: insufficient merit for reincarnation into higher planes.
Verdict: insufficient sin for descent into punishment realms.
Verdict: neutral. Eligible for recycling.
Recycling. The word should have terrified him. Instead, it just felt tiresome. Like being told his application had been lost and he'd need to fill out the forms again.
Then—a shift.
Something changed in the darkness. A presence. Hungry and ancient and deeply amused.
Interesting.
The voice was different. Not the flat recitation of the earlier assessment, but something with texture. Silk over steel. A smile you couldn't see but could feel.
A neutral soul. A blank slate. How rare.
Liang Yu tried to focus, to look toward the voice, but there was nothing to look with.
The Heavenly Dao has its rules. Its tidy little categories. Its balanced accounts. But rules have edges. And edges are where interesting things happen.
A pause. A sense of consideration.
I could use someone like you. Someone without pre-existing attachments. Without heroic delusions. Someone who understands—deep in that small, pragmatic heart of yours—that the universe doesn't owe you anything.
Liang Yu thought, very clearly: What do you want?
Ah. Direct. Good. I want to watch. I want to see what someone like you becomes when given a chance—and a push. The cultivation world is full of protagonists, you see. Heaven's favored children. Those born with destiny wrapped around their throats like golden chains. They're boring. They all make the same choices. They all follow the same paths.
Another pause. The amusement deepened.
I want to see what a villain looks like when he isn't born one. When he's made.
Something crystallized in the darkness. Liang Yu felt it forming—a connection, a thread of potential, a doorway.
You'll have a system. A guide. A source of power. But don't expect gifts. Don't expect shortcuts. The system rewards action, not existence. It rewards cleverness, not luck. It rewards risk, not prayer.
And sometimes— The voice dropped, became almost intimate. —sometimes it will ask you to do things that make you uncomfortable. That's the point. That's where the growth happens.
Or not. You can always refuse. There's always recycling.
The thread tightened.
Well, Liang Yu. The accountant who died for coffee. What do you say? Do you want to exist a little longer? Do you want to matter?
He thought about the basil plant. About his sister's face—he couldn't quite remember it anymore, just the shape of her anger the last time they'd spoken. About the truck grill, and the dead insect, and the four seconds that ended everything.
He thought: I wasn't finished.
The voice laughed—a sound like breaking glass and distant thunder.
No. You really weren't.