In the cosmos, Luo Zhen had just finished drinking a scoop of palm from the river surrounding the Milky Way when he looked down at the lower realm where his lot had landed.
It was a city called Macau, in China.
Luo Zhen sighed.
It wasn't even a cultivation world. This mortal world was just ordinary. Apart from its advanced technology and a modern style that seemed to differ from the other worlds, there was nothing else special about it.
It had no Qi energy.
Obviously, the people who walked on this planet might not even have a deep understanding of spiritualism. Although they might know about Buddhas and gods, if they were told that humans are able to cultivate immortality and even attain godhood, perhaps such things could only be fantasies written on their papers in order to satisfy the amusements in their hearts.
How could his casual cast have ended up being that unlucky? Worse still, the candidate his lot had chosen… was on the verge of death.
How humiliating, Luo Zhen thought to himself. He wasn't overly fixated on the bet—the moment the stake of the gamble had been changed, his heart had ceased to be caught on a desperate edge trying to find a better candidate he thought could make him win.
Since the stake wasn't really a stake and more of a reward, he would not lose anything, even if he lost.
He was quite certain that even if he took the gamble seriously, he could never win—just like the other times. So he had only casually flicked his finger and thrown his lot down into the mortal world.
But he hadn't expected that it would be attracted by a dying man.
With a resigned sigh, he spoke, "Well, since fate willed it so, I will save his soul, and maybe he can continue to live in another body in another world."
So Luo Zhen sent down his divine light, snatching the soul before it could be dragged into the underworld.
That soul… was Chu Feng.
Life had finally smiled on him, and the wonders of the casino had just befallen him. But how could he have thought that those wonders would, in the long run, be the cause of his disaster?
A bat had suddenly hacked his brain from behind, and he fell. When he was dying, he had truly seen a light fall on him at the last minute, but he had not been in a stable state of mind to think about it.
Luo Zhen successfully saved the soul and dropped it into a cultivation world.
But then... things got weird.
Chu Feng's soul was like a disaster magnet.
When it had been successfully saved by Luo Zhen, and Chu Feng's soul had appeared in another world that was not Earth, it roamed the plane for a while and then…
It found a hunter and plunged straight into his body.
If that was all to it, it would have been fine. But this hunter was already facing jurisdiction in his local town and was labeled and scheduled for execution.
Talk about bad timing.
Chu Feng's soul had picked the moment of the execution to settle into the hunter's body, and just as it finished doing so, Chu Feng—who now had the hunter's body—opened his eyes. The world was strange to him, but what was stranger was his knees on the ground and his head on a platter.
What was going on?
Confused, he twisted his neck just as the cold blade of the executioner, gleaming with death, was raised in the air.
How could he not realize what was happening at that moment?
"No, no, no!"
His voice suddenly yelped, and through his helplessness, he wanted to shout, "No, no! You've got the wrong person!" But the executioner's axe gave no chance for the voice to leave his throat. Even if it did, who would believe his desperate ranting?
SWOOSH.
The blade of the axe cleaved down, and it was swift and cold—cutting cleanly through the neck of Chu Feng's newly acquired body.
How could the executioner have known that he had just killed a premature soul with his axe?
In the cosmos, Luo Zhen was just about to relax his body lazily on a large ball floating in the air. Drinking from the river around the Milky Way had been so refreshing that he just felt like napping for a hundred years. He yawned and opted to take one last glance to see how the soul he had just saved would fare.
Then, on the ball he had just climbed onto, his body suddenly stumbled and he fell, his eyes widening in disbelief.
"W-what t-the blazing hell!" he shouted. How could the soul he had just saved die again when it had just gotten another body? His body shook, and he did not dawdle as he once again sent down his divine light.
This was the second time he was doing so, and it was swiftly done before the soul could enter the underworld river.
Any attempt to save the soul after it had already touched the underworld river would greatly vex Yama, the god of the underworld.
But that wasn't the end.
This time, when Luo Zhen dropped the soul into another world, he traced the trails of Chu Feng's soul as it wandered the plane of the new world, and this time, it found a first Qi Refiner stage body.
But Luo Zhen's eyes almost popped out in the cosmos. This soul is an endless misfortune, he couldn't help but think as he watched.
The body Chu Feng had just acquired was a first-stage Qi Refiner servant's body that was bound to a wooden pole. Arrows were stuck in both his legs, and before him stood a young master who had just drawn his bow.
It turned out that the Qi Refiner servant was being used as a dummy target for the young master's archery practice.
When Chu Feng opened his eyes in this body, he was faced with another cold and cruel reality of life.
Miserable—he was just so miserable.
He wanted to give a heart-wrenching scream, but it instead came out as a muffled sound through the piece of cloth that had gagged his mouth.
Swish!
The young master released his arrow and it flew.
Chu Feng could only watch the cold gleam of the arrowhead that swished through the air and…
Puch!
It sank deep into his new body, piercing the heart in an instant.
"This is ridiculous!"
Luo Zhen's body was still shaking in the cosmos. The gods are higher beings, and nothing could easily shake their minds, but what Luo Zhen was seeing at this moment was beyond his understanding. He had never seen anything like it before.
He once again sent down his divine light for the third time. If the Yama King really knew this he was doing, they are going to have a fallout with each other.
But how could a single soul carry endless misfortune? He dropped the soul he had once again saved into another world. It shouldn't be like the other times, right?
Once or twice might have just been coincidence—the same could hardly occur the third time. But he watched and kept his eyes down, just in case.
Chu Feng's soul drifted in this part of the world, and what body did it find next? That of an old woman lying on her deathbed.
It could be said that this time was the shortest of the previous two times. Because while he was still in the process of integrating with the body—and while everything was still hazy in his mind—the old woman gave a final, peaceful sneeze.
And then, she passed away in silence, not realizing she had not died alone, but had taken a soul with her.
Chu Feng died again.
Luo Zhen in the cosmos: "!!!!!!!"
What concept was this? He was now totally convinced that the soul his lot had found was nothing good.
The reason he had saved the soul two times in a row previously was because of the lingering karma that still existed between them, but now, as he looked down from the cosmos, he really wanted to know how many times this wretched soul could be unfortunate.
That's the gods for you—they are always seeking and finding amusement wherever they can.
Luo Zhen chuckled this time and slopped his back onto the ball. He was now mentally prepared.
He swiped the air and thunder thundered above him, striking and popping the cloud-corns he just made to appear in a container.
He was ready.
With a relaxed appearance, he pointed down his finger and his divine light once again cascaded, saving Chu Feng's soul again.
Popping the readied cloud-corn into his mouth, he watched with enthusiasm—and Chu Feng's soul did not fail him.
It entered a drowning boy in the river, then after another save, it went into a fetus killed in a mother's womb before it could develop and be born…
This happened again and again, and Luo Zhen just kept rolling on the ball, laughing as he watched in amusement. No matter how many times he rescued Chu Feng's soul, it had a strange habit of only being drawn to bodies that were seconds from death.
Luo Zhen had already used his divine light nine times in a row.
Nine times!
If the Yama King really knew this, there would be an irreconcilable grudge between them.
But Luo Zhen just wanted fun—and he had found it.
"Poor soul," Luo Zhen muttered. Each time, Chu Feng had only been attracted to bodies that had no value to life—a hunter, a servant, an old woman, a drowning boy, a fetus, and several others just as forgettable. Not a single one of those bodies belonged to someone important. They were just minor lives, ending in minor deaths.
But among those bodies Chu Feng had possessed, Luo Zhen was intrigued by a certain old man whose heart had exploded mid-cultivation. Apparently, the man had been practicing a strange cultivation technique and had done something incorrectly in the process—or had been affected by Chu Feng's soul sudden intrusion, which caused the old man's heart to explode.
The old man did have a decent cultivation, anyway.
Luo Zhen sighed. He watched where the soul drifted next.
A leper. But this one didn't drop dead. It seemed that the tenth time wasn't going to happen, and his amusement was fated to end here.
He shook his head. It was good he had never taken the gods' gamble to heart—he could never win, not with a host as miserable as this.
If it had been his last remaining world at stake, he wouldn't have just casually tossed his lot away. He would've taken his time to carefully look for a promising talent—someone worthy.
Not this tragic magnet for premature death.
But now that fate had latched him onto this soul, even though he had rescued and watched for amusement, he had still partly saved it because he somehow felt a sense of responsibility. He couldn't just abandon the poor soul.
So nine times of pulling the soul back from the edge wasn't too much.
Finally, the soul had found stability in a leper's body that didn't drop dead on the spot.
Sure, the body was in rough shape—barely usable—but it was still alive. And that was enough.
Luo Zhen didn't care.
He only pointed a finger where he sat in the cosmos and sealed the memories of the previous nine times Chu Feng's soul had experienced, wiping away from the sealed memories the traces of the soul once possessing and dying in the bodies. He had done that because excessive mental overload would shatter Chu Feng's mind instantly when he awakened.
He also sent down a burst of energy into the leper's body that the soul now resides. It was just a reward for the entertainment he had just received. Even though it had been short.
Then, with an exhausted sigh, Luo Zhen resigned.
He had done enough.
Now, he had severed the karma between them, and each had no fate linking them together anymore.
Anyway, he had just lost out in the gamble between the gods.
He sighed repeatedly.
It was time to nap for a hundred years.