1 Chapter 1: Jason Taylor

'Fuck my life' screamed Jason as he crashed his fist into the walls of his bathroom.

Needless to say, he was in a very bad mood, again. He just got lectured by his boss for 2 straight hours just because he made a small mistake in his data entry. 'I fucking made more than 10000 entries this week. How petty can a person be to scream at me for two hours just because I put a Miss instead of a Mr. for one person? What am I a machine?' He complained inwardly.

Truth be told, he just wanted to kill that fat-faced boss of his. Or rather, feed him an immortality potion and boil him in a necromantic brine for an eternity. How great would that be? He snickered in his mind while relishing the thoughts of his boss screaming inside a pot filled with oil.

His daily routine was probably the most mundane routine one could have as a corporate slave. Wake up at 7 AM, push his way into a metro fighting a crowd of people who shoved each other like savage barbarians, reach office only to be greeted by the fat face and the sadistic smile of his boss, and then spend the entire day entering data into the database from countless forms. The same thing continued day in and day out.

As the warm shower continued to fall on his head, Jason Taylor sank into his past. He was probably what many people would call the burden of the earth. The only skills he knew were how to make noodles and work like a robot. His academics were pathetic. He barely passed his school with minimum passing marks. He had a college degree, but it was a mercy degree which he had obtained after five years in a three years course.

He never had any friends, forget about girlfriends. The closest contact he ever had with a girl was in college, and that was when he was pranked by some of the juniors when he was in his fifth year. Even though it was an accident and it was he who was the victim of the prank, he was deep in trouble when the girl and her friends filed charges of sexual assault against him. The college administration extended no help to him, as in their eyes he was just a piece of garbage. When the police came to arrest him, he had to plead like a dog in the middle of the streets to the girl and her friends for forgiveness so that she would take back those false accusations. Only after 3 hours of humiliation did they retract the case, but he still had to pay the girl five hundred dollars which were all the money he had saved during his part-time job.

This was the first time when Jason realized how cunning and cruel the world was. No one cared about anyone else. There might have been some good people somewhere in the world, but at least he had never encountered any of them.

'Ah, that is not entirely correct' he thought. His thoughts started going back to the old man at the orphanage. He was the only person who had a favorable image in his eyes. He would give him delicious food which left him refreshed and energized every time he ate them. The old man would also give him special treatment by heavily punishing anyone who fought with Jason at any time.

He still remembered how much he cried when the orphanage was shut down and he was transferred to another orphanage. The new orphanage owners told him that the old man was a heretic who practiced black magic and was burnt to death, however, he did not believe them.

"We will meet again." Those were the words that he heard in the old man's voice the night before he vanished. Soon after that, he found a creepy maroon-colored tattoo of a skull on his chest next to his heart.

Initially, he panicked. The tattoo won't go no matter how much he tried to scrub at it. He felt that the old man was really responsible for that mark and he was in deep trouble. But he could not find any solution. No matter who he tried, no one other than him could see the maroon skull tattoo. Soon he started treating the tattoo as nothing special as there was nothing odd about it apart from its presence. And anyway as he could do nothing about it even if he tried, he decided to ignore it altogether.

His favorite pastime was reading wuxia novels. He was deeply fascinated by the concept of cultivation and read every novel he could find. Often, he would imagine himself as the main character of a novel and replay the novel in his mind, thinking how he would bring the entire world to its knees and have a huge harem of ladies with whom he would travel the entire universe.

"Tring Tring" Suddenly his chain of thoughts got snapped as he heard the doorbell ring.

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