Chapter 1 - Beginning

As all his memories came back into his mind, Jing Yang looked back at the black stone bridge. He already couldn't remember clearly how many times he had walked over the bridge, perhaps already over a thousand times, but at least several hundred. Every time the cycle ended, he would always come back here, walk over the black stone bridge, and then remember everything.

"Sire." A black-robed man formed from the mist respectfully saluted to Jing Yang.

"Hades." Jing Yang turned his head, looking at the man. "Really bothering you to come receive me every time. How many times have we seen each other?"

"This is my 1365th time coming to welcome Sire. Sire, please follow me back to the palace to rest a little." Hades led the way after he finished speaking.

Jing Yang's memory only went back to when he finished his first reincarnation and came to this place. Besides remembering his own name being Jing Yang, he couldn't remember anything else, and then he began the seemingly endless reincarnations. Every time, Hades greets him with a very respectful attitude, so he thought that before his first reincarnation his identity should be not general, only that he had forgotten. Otherwise why would Hades, the master of the Underworld, be respectful to him for no reason.

In Hades's palace, there is a courtyard especially prepared for Jing Yang. Every time he finished a reincarnation, he would rest a little in this courtyard before going to the next reincarnation.

The weariness in Jing Yang's mind was getting more and more intense. He already didn't want to keep reincarnating to one world after another. Even if his soul flies away and scatters, that would still be better than endlessly reincarnating.

When Hades came back to invite him to go reincarnate again, Jing Yang refused and instead asked Hades how to scatter his soul.

Hades looked at him in shock, "Sire wants to scatter his soul?"

"I am really tired of it, I no longer want to keep on reincarnating."

"Even though Sire has already reincarnated over a thousand times, after every reincarnation you won't have any memory of it, so even though Sire feels weary now, after the memory fades you will again have a new life."

Jing Yang dispiritedly and listlessly leaned back on the armchair. "I remember that when I first started reincarnating a few hundred times, I could always live to over 80 years old. But in the most recent few hundred worlds, every time I have a shorter lifespan. This time, I didn't even live to 15 years old when I came back. Thus, even though every reincarnation I don't have the previous memories, but in the depths of my soul, I can remember this type of weariness. If I keep reincarnating like this, I'm afraid that I'll have to come back right after I come out of the womb. What's the significance of reincarnating like this?"

"But…" Hades hesitated a little. "Sire's life essence isn't in your soul right now. Even if I am Hades, I still have no way to help Sire scatter his soul."

"Why should you lie to me?" Jing Yang smiled. "In fact I have already felt it. You letting me keep on reincarnating definitely has a reason. Is it that as long as I don't reincarnate, my soul would dissipate?"

Hades's complexion changed and he didn't respond to his question, but from his silence, Jing Yang confirmed his theory.

"Sire, I have been entrusted with someone's commitment to borrow the Dao to have Sire reincarnate in the Underworld." Hades said with a solemn expression. "Outside the 99 heavens, there is someone waiting for Sire to go back."

"This is not the first time you've said this to me, I'm already tired of hearing it. You help me give that person a message. Since I already don't remember who he is, I also don't want to go back anymore. You let him know that he no longer has to wait for me."

The first time Jing Yang said he no longer wants to reincarnate, Hades said that there is someone waiting for him outside the 99 heavens, and as long as he reincarnates enough times, he can return to outside the 99 heavens. He doesn't remember what it is like outside the 99 heavens, but hearing this name it seems like a pretty grand place, where the residents are people who look down on all living beings and stand at the peak of the universe, otherwise known as immortals.

He also doesn't remember who is constantly waiting for him to go back. At the beginning, he was pretty curious and thought that no matter who it is waiting for him, it wouldn't be good to have him wait there in vain. But as he kept reincarnating again and again, he saw more lives and appearances and became accustomed to the vicissitudes of life. As he saw more, he became more indifferent to it. In this world, there are no feelings that are not eroded by time. As long as time passes, every emotion fades.

Hades saw Jing Yang's resolute attitude and didn't keep persuading him. He invited Jing Yang to rest well in the courtyard and left alone. Jing Yang was indifferent, since he needed to kill time anyways. He just didn't know how long he would have to wait until he can finally scatter his soul.

The Underworld has no daytime or nighttime, instead constantly being gloomy dusk. Most of the time, Jing Yang lay around in the courtyard, and when he was bored of lying around he walked around the courtyard. Don't know after how many days, just when he was tired of strolling around his courtyard and wanted to expand the range of his walks, Hades came back to see him.

"Sire." Hades cupped his hands in salute to Jing Yang.

"Hades? You this…" Jing Yang thought that Hades had already given up persuading him to keep reincarnating, letting him stay in the courtyard to wait for his soul to scatter. He didn't think that Hades would come to see him again.

"If Sire is already wearied of endlessly reincarnating, I have something here that can let Sire go back to outside the 99 heavens. Don't know if Sire is willing to give it a try?"

"Since you have a way to let me return, why wouldn't you let me try it earlier." Now, Jing Yang is already indifferent to going back to outside the 99 heavens, since he doesn't remember it anyways.

"This method wasn't possible before, but now just happens to be possible. There's one thing I need to tell Sire, if you don't keep reincarnating, your soul actually won't dissipate, but instead will scatter into different worlds and each wisp of soul will carry out a different life. Then this will continue back and forth, and after a long time, not only will there be no way to recover Sire's soul, but time and space would also become chaotic."

Jing Yang seriously and solemnly looked at Hades. "You don't want to come frighten me like this in order to make me keep reincarnating."

"I don't dare fool Sire. In fact, Sire definitely can't keep borrowing the Dao to reincarnate anymore, or the consequences would be the same."

Jing Yang closed his eyes to contemplate for a moment, and then opened his eyes to ask "What is this method that you mentioned?"

Hades took out a piece of jade. "This jade can send Sire to different space-times and let Sire no longer have to come to the Underworld to borrow the Dao to reincarnate."

Jing Yang took the jade, and right when his finger touched it, his heart suddenly ineffably shook. Looking at the half mutton fat jade and half black like ink jade in his hands, his heart moved. "This jade seems to be a little familiar."

"This jade was entrusted to me to give you by the person who is waiting for you outside the 99 heavens." Hades said.

Jing Yang used his thumb to rub the jade, that type of familiar feeling made him unwilling to part with the jade. "Once I am sent to a different space-time, what do I do after that?"

"Sire's soul will enter into some person's body, just that the ending of each of these people will be somewhat miserable."

Hearing about the miserable ending, Jing Yang frowned and asked, "Your meaning is to let me experience calamity?" He definitely has no interest in the life of a cannon fodder.

"Really not so. This time when Sire goes to a different space-time, the circumstances are different. This time Sire will retain all of your memories, and can also change your own destiny."

"I can change my fate? This actually seems a little interesting. You're saying that I can change whatever I want?"

"This…" Hades hesitated a little. "This is not completely true. After Sire goes, you can change your own fate, but you can't change it entirely according to your own wishes. Instead, you need to help fulfill those people's desires. The more perfect your life is in the end, Sire will be able to receive a portion of the world's power. Once this power accumulates to a certain extent, Sire will be able to return to outside the 99 heavens."

Jing Yang nodded. "I understand your meaning."

Hades pointed at the jade in Jing Yang's hands. "The jade that Sire is holding has very strong powers and can give Sire a helping hand."

"Oh?" Jing Yang interestedly looked at the jade. "How do I use it?"

As if it could understand Jing Yang's words, once he finished speaking, the jade changed into a black and white light and flew into Jing Yang's brain.

Because of the sudden impact on his brain, Jing Yang closed his eyes. In his brain, an additional space appeared, in which countless data were rotating and then became a list of functions. He roughly swept a glance over the list, with so many powerful functions, if they can actually be used, even changing the fate of a world wouldn't be some difficult thing. But who was it who conceived of this, helping him make it so thoroughly.

"Why didn't the person who gave me the jade come see me in person?" Jing Yang asked.

"He said that if you ask about him to let me tell Sire that he misses you a lot, but he is unable to come see you because he has some difficulties that he hasn't been able to resolve. He will always be waiting for you, so he hopes that you can return earlier. At that time, you will be able to understand everything."

Jing Yang's curiosity was stimulated again. In the end, who is it waiting for him, who is it that must wait for him to go back? Is it his parents? Or other family or friends? Or is it his lover?

Thinking of lovers, Jing Yang suddenly remembered that in his over a thousand reincarnations, he had a lot of family and friends, but never had a lover. No matter whether he had lived until he was old, he was never in love with someone. Is this not strange?

Jing Yang asked Hades this, but Hades responded to him "Sire's previous reincarnations' fates were not arranged by the Underworld. We also have no way to know Sire's time of death, life course, and final ending, and have no way to control them. All of those fates were from your subconscious."

"I see." Jing Yang nodded and didn't keep asking. He felt that there would be a day when he will know everything.

Translator Notes:

[1] Sire – 阁下, could also be Your Majesty, Your Excellency, but Sire is shorter and I'm lazy…

[2] Hades – 阎王, decided to call him Hades instead of Yama

[3] life essence – 元神, no idea if this is what it really means…these soul related things are confusing

[4] 99 heavens – 九十九天外, actually when I read CFCS the first time, I had no idea what this meant, I thought it actually meant 99 days as in time, but heavens seems to make more sense. I guess the world has 99 heavens?

[5] mutton fat jade – 白如羊脂, an actual type of jade, also known as white jade

Actual random notes:

This author uses 说 a lot, which just translates to say/said, and I've been accustomed to not using that word basically at all. So in most cases I've just been leaving out the "said" part…Also I just reread this and my grammar i.e. present/past tense is getting really messed up here. I think I'll stick to past tense, since that's what I'm used to.

And after this I want to give massive props to all the translators whose work I have read before. This stuff is hard, man. I thought it would take max 1 hour, but it actually took me 1.5 hours to translate 3k Chinese characters into about 2k English words. I can't believe this usually only takes me 5-10 minutes to read. Though this is probably because when translating I've mostly been directly reading the Chinese raws with liberal use of Chinese Yabla (an actual godsend) so that I can understand the real meaning of the raws and then translate it directly instead of with MTL. So I guess this is actually translation instead of MTL? I should probably transition into using the MTL more then. But yeah this is only 3k Chinese characters. Idk what I'm gonna do with the 4k and later on 5k character chapters. This series has over 800k characters, kids. It's going to be a journey.

Also, I posted this basically directly after writing it up. I'll probably only do this for the first chapter though, and then after accumulating some chapters schedule those for regular releases. Idk if I want to wait for arcs to accumulate, bc some of these can get pretty long.