Chapter 1: Life is like a scrap manuscript, and ghosts are going to rot

Pain.

There was no heart-wrenching awakening like that of a protagonist in a shonen manga, nor was there any heroic declaration before a tragic sacrifice.

It was merely a raw, physical, dull ache, as if someone were using a rusty spoon to scrape at the blood vessels in his wrist, bit by bit, trying to hollow out those thick, metallic-tasting fluids.

Tunzuo—no, at this very moment, our story’s protagonist was still just an obscure, failed junior writer on Blue Star, going by the screen name “Jiyu.”

“It’s so hard to write…”

Jiyu lay on the moldy floor of his rental apartment.

His left hand hung limply in the air, the blood from the slit on his wrist already drained and scabbed over into a dark, brownish crust.

His right hand drooped toward the floor, the index finger still twitching slightly, as if, in his subconscious, he was still tapping away at a keyboard.

Beside his right hand lay a piece of glass stained with blood.

Jiyu’s vision gradually blurred.

The ceiling above him looked like a pool of murky, stagnant water, slowly blurring and losing its color.

On the computer screen, the Word document titled “Radiant Life” remained at Chapter 327.

The cursor blinked at the end of the final line, like a mocking eye.

“In the end, it was abandoned after all…”

Jiyu muttered to himself as he lay on the floor.

It was not because dying was too painful, but because dying was too exhausting.

The life of this body had been composed of countless drafts rejected by editors.

A mediocre beginning, a bleak and lusterless record of school life, followed by a repetitive, meaningless office job after graduation.

He had saved up a little money to pursue his dream of becoming a writer, only to realize he didn’t even have the qualifications to be a struggling web novelist.

There was no rags-to-riches turnaround, no wealthy family waiting for him to marry in, let alone a hidden identity as a billionaire.

Even this major life event, suicide, felt cheap and shabby.

There was no tragic suicide note, no sentimental farewell.

He hadn’t even splurged on decent sleeping pills; he had simply used a piece of broken glass to slit his wrists and then laid on the floor, waiting for the blood in his body to drain away.

Just like the stories he wrote, it was abrupt, hasty, and lacked any aesthetic appeal.

“I just want to find a bed and lie down forever…”

Jiyu’s consciousness began to dissipate.

If he could live his life over again, he never wanted to work hard ever again.

He didn’t want to be a corporate slave taking a meager salary while being bossed around by others.

He didn’t want to be entangled in complicated social relationships only to be ridiculed, and he didn’t want to slave away for his ideals and life anymore.

He just wanted a good night’s sleep, a deep, dark slumber where he didn’t have to care about anything.

Sleep until the end of time, sleep until the universe ended.

“Even if… I become a clump of green algae… or… a puff of air… just as long as I can get a good sleep…”

One second before his consciousness fell into an eternal night, Jiyu made the final wish of his life.

There was no system notification sound, no glorious golden light, only the sound of his landlord pounding on the door outside, and the calls of street vendors from below.

The chaotic noises grew more distant, more blurred, and finally, returned to a dead silence.

—

The pain disappeared.

Replacing it was a sense of weightlessness.

It felt as though he were soaking in warm amniotic fluid, or perhaps wrapped in a bundle of soft cotton.

Jiyu—or rather, the consciousness that carried Jiyu’s memories—felt himself floating up and down, like a feather dancing in the wind.

“Is this… heaven? Or hell?”

Jiyu “opened” his eyes from the darkness.

It was pitch black.

Surrounding him was a gray chaos, with only the occasional flash of green electric arcs, looking like the static flickering on an old television screen.

Jiyu tried to move his “body.” Good, no arms or legs, no torso.

Jiyu could feel that he was like a puff of mist, a shadow.

“Ugh…!”

Memories regarding his new body flooded in like a tide, or rather, the instincts left behind by this new vessel.

This was neither heaven nor hell; this was the depths of the ruins in the Granitnuo Forest.

And Jiyu had become a ghost—a weak, newly born ghost that hadn’t even managed to solidify its form, a so-called wandering spirit.

“A ghost, huh…”

Jiyu sighed silently in his heart.

Was this considered getting his wish granted?

After all, as a ghost, he didn’t need to eat, sleep, work, or write.

In that sense, it didn’t seem so bad.

It was just… why was he so hungry?

The intense hunger didn’t come from an empty stomach, but from his entire soul screaming for energy.

“I want to eat…”

His instincts drove Jiyu to search for food, but within the flood of his ghostly instincts, Jiyu stubbornly retained a trace of that “lethargy” that belonged uniquely to humans.

“What a bother…”

Jiyu complained in his consciousness.

As a ghost, Jiyu’s current way of moving relied on floating, but right now, Jiyu felt that even controlling this mass of black mist was a massive burden.

“Couldn’t you just deliver the food to my mouth…”

The moment this unrealistic thought popped up, the surrounding air actually fluctuated.

A clump of spores emitting a faint magical light drifted toward Jiyu; they were the seeds released by the [Ghost-Light Mushroom], a common plant in the forest.

Tunzuo opened his “mouth”—or rather, a slit opened in the pitch-black mist—and swallowed the spores in one gulp.

How should he put it? The taste and texture were no different from eating a candle.

“Disgusting.”

Jiyu shook his body and commented.

As a ghost, he should have been excited because it was his first successful hunt, but right now, Jiyu only felt exhausted.

The source of this exhaustion wasn’t physical, but a bone-deep sense of world-weariness.

“Jiyu” had died in that moldy rental apartment.

What survived was a gloomy, ghost-like remnant of Jiyu’s memories, an idle ghost that had inherited all his past negative emotions, and even found the prospect of “living on” to be a nuisance.

“Oh well, at least I’m technically alive again…”

The small ghost shrunk the mist of its body, curling into a ball in the corner of the ruins, like an ostrich trying to hide itself.

“I’ll just find a place to lie down and have a good sleep.”

He had no grand ideals, no one he needed to pursue; he just wanted to be a lazy slacker lying around.

Right now, Jiyu only wanted to find a corner in this unfamiliar otherworldly realm where no one would bother him, lie down like a puddle of mud, and slowly rot away.

However, just as Jiyu was preparing to drift off into a deep sleep, a strange fluctuation pierced through the stone walls of the ruins and entered his range of perception.

His black mist curiously stretched toward the direction of the wave.

The true form of the source was quickly revealed to Jiyu.

It was a drop of crimson blood, a drop emitting terrifying pressure, yet it made Jiyu feel inexplicably familiar.

The power contained within that drop of blood made the shadows and black mist inside Jiyu tremble with excitement, crazily driving Jiyu to go forward and devour it.

Jiyu frowned miserably—if he had eyebrows.

“I don’t want to move…”

Jiyu dragged his black mist body forward unwillingly.

“Is it really that hard to just be a lazy, useless slacker?”

Although he complained, his body moved honestly; he floated up because his instincts told him that if he didn’t eat that drop of blood, he would likely starve to death.

Having been reborn into this world, Jiyu had become a contradiction of someone both afraid of death and afraid of trouble.

With no other choice, he drifted slowly toward the blood, full of reluctance.

The pitch-black mist and shadows passed through broken stone pillars and bypassed collapsed statues.

Finally, Jiyu stopped beside a broken stone tablet and looked up at the blood drop floating in the air.

The blood drop emitted an eerie red light in the air, and the space around it was slightly distorted, as if even time and space couldn’t bear its weight.

“This thing… is it edible?”

Jiyu stopped in mid-air as he floated toward the drop.

His body, composed of black mist and shadows, trembled slightly.

It wasn’t out of excitement, but fear.

As a cautious corporate slave in his past life, Jiyu’s first reaction to the blood wasn’t “a pie falling from the sky,” but “a trap falling from the sky.”

“It looks very dangerous… I guess it’s something left behind by some bigshot?”

Jiyu frantically weighed the pros and cons in his heart.

If he ate it, he might die; the energy contained in the blood was too violent, and there was a chance it would blow his soul apart.

But if he didn’t eat it, he would starve to death.

The feeling of being hollowed out from the depths of his soul was becoming more intense, making Jiyu want to curl into a ball in agony.

“I hate making choices…”

The ghost named Jiyu paced back and forth in place, looking just like an otaku lingering at the entrance of a shopping mall, hesitating whether or not to buy a limited-edition figurine.

“What if this is poison? Eating it might turn me into a monster… Besides, what if eating it leads some bigshot to come collect a debt…?”

Jiyu, as a ghost, didn’t want to cause trouble; he just wanted to find a place to sleep.

“Should I… just forget about it?”

Jiyu tried to turn around, wanting to escape.

But that hunger from his soul immediately gnawed at him like ten thousand ants, leaving him unable to float away.

“Waaaah, I’ll eat it, I’ll eat it, okay? Stop being hungry…”

Physiological needs finally overcame his reason.

Jiyu floated in mid-air, his eyes, formed from black mist, fixed on the blood drop.

“Screw it… death is death either way, I’ll bet it all!”

Jiyu took a deep breath—if ghosts could breathe.

“I’ll just lick it once first. If there’s a problem, I’ll spit it out.”

Jiyu scrambled for a reason to boost his courage.

With a sense of being resigned to his fate (mostly), he moved closer to the blood drop, bit by bit, tentatively.

One centimeter.

Five millimeters.

“I hope this isn’t some weird curse-blood…”

Jiyu prayed silently in his heart.

Finally, Jiyu tentatively opened his “mouth,” incredibly carefully, using only the edge of his black mist to lick the contour of the drop.

There was no explosion, no curse, only a warm and sweet energy that flowed through his entire being along his tongue.

“Huh?”

Jiyu was stunned.

“It’s actually quite tasty…”

That sense of hunger was immediately alleviated by more than half.

“Since it’s fine…”

After confirming there was no problem, Jiyu’s courage grew.

He opened his mouth and swallowed the remaining blood in one gulp.

The moment he swallowed it, it melted on his tongue.

The instant he devoured the blood, a scorching heat flow rushed through Jiyu’s entire body, or rather, his entire soul.

Energy.

Terrifying, immense energy.

Jiyu felt his black mist body begin to expand and darken, and the originally blurred outline gradually became clearer.

Under the wash of that terrifying energy, Jiyu’s consciousness gradually began to become hazy.

“So sleepy… I want to sleep…”

As Jiyu was about to drift into a hazy coma, a voice entered his soul.

It was an ancient language, or rather, a brand inscribed in his bloodline.

The owner of the blood had left a name within it.

A name symbolizing the end and the beginning, symbolizing the shadow and the void.

“…Tunzuo?”

Jiyu repeated the name given to him by the owner of the blood within his hazy consciousness.

It sounded like a villain, or perhaps like a protagonist destined to shoulder a lot of trouble.

“Can I refuse…?”

Tunzuo’s lazy instinct resisted.

He didn’t want such an edgy name.

If he could, he would have preferred to be called “Zhang Wei” or “Wang Jianguo,” the kind of pedestrian names that would vanish into a crowd.

“I want to be called… ‘The Ultimate Lazy Bug’…”

Jiyu’s consciousness weakly issued a final protest, but the energy was too powerful; it forcibly branded this name deep into Jiyu’s soul.

Tunzuo Otis—The Shadow of the End.

“Sounds terrible…”

Tunzuo complained softly in his heart, but as the energy settled, increasing drowsiness assailed him.

His consciousness was losing its grip.

“Full… time to sleep…”

The ghost named Tunzuo curled into a ball in the shadows of the ruins, like a cat that had eaten its fill.

Tunzuo didn’t know who the owner of the blood was, nor did he know what kind of forbidden object he had accidentally swallowed.

He only knew that he was sleepy, warm, and too lazy to move.

As for what would happen tomorrow? That was a problem for tomorrow’s Tunzuo.

For now, he just wanted to be a lazy ghost floating in the ruins.

“What a bother…”

This was Tunzuo’s final complaint before falling into a deep sleep.

Afterward, the black mist and shadows merged completely into the darkness, as if they had never existed at all.