A hundred lifetimes of torment. In every one, I was trapped in the mire of depression and the coldness of the world: fragments of my parents’ arguments, the dull ache of bullying at school, the indifferent looks of relatives. They had long since worn “being alive” down to a numb routine. Born frail and quiet, I was the shadow in a crowd that no one noticed. Then, when I was nine, a recurring nightmare tore open a sliver of light: a white-robed disciple bowed before me, saying that I had once been the foremost of the Nine Immortal Kings. Because I possessed a peerless divine weapon, the Immortal Emperor and four Immortal Kings had joined forces to hunt me down, condemning me to endless reincarnation.
This life coincided with an age swept by torrents of information. Planes cut through the clouds, phones connected the world, yet the “cage of dust” imprisoning me never disappeared. I clung to the one lifeline I had, a place in the top five of my grade, hoping that the college entrance exam would free me from the chains of my upbringing. But just as I began to feel a little warmth in high school, the nightmare started again: the cleaver of a bleached-haired thug in an internet cafe, the cries of a girl being dragged away, and the trembling of the chubby kid beside me as he clutched my sleeve. All at once, they shattered a hundred lifetimes of numbness.
So my immortal bones had not yet gone cold. Even a wisp of their former power would not let bullying unfold before my eyes. And the answer to reincarnation did not lie in some ethereal immortal realm, but in the courage to stand together, in reaching out from the depths of despair, and in the warm glimmers of human kindness offered from the darkness. In this life, I will no longer accept being a prisoner of reincarnation. Carrying the lingering warmth of my immortal bones, I will shatter the shackles of depression and tear apart the web of fate. From this earthly hell, I will carve a path beyond reincarnation for myself and for those by my side.
