Drunk, I picked up a strange phone and casually sent a message: “Want a Hua Zi cigarette?”
The Celestial Court erupted: This thing can actually connect directly to the Heavenly Dao?
From then on, I became the most powerful personal shopper in the Three Realms, trading spicy strips for immortal pills and game consoles for magical treasures.
Until one day, Erlang Shen messaged me: “Boss Niu, get me some more of that addictive stuff… you know, ‘videos.’”
I grinned and sent him Three Years of Cultivation, Five Years of Practice Exams. “Do the practice questions first. Then we’ll talk.”
All the immortals in the Celestial Court burst into tears, and the Jade Emperor slammed his dragon desk: “Get that menace up here and recruit him at once!”
Niu Shengli, known to everyone as Boss Niu. The “Boss” part was about as genuine as tea that had been steeped eighteen times. At that moment, he was slouched on a greasy plastic stool at Lao Wang’s Barbecue, with three empty beer bottles in front of him and a fourth half-finished. The early-summer breeze carried a mix of cumin and exhaust fumes, leaving his forehead shiny and his heart hollow.
“Damn, what a life…” he muttered, then let out a loud belch. That day, his balding manager had pointed at him and sneered, “Niu Shengli, this is as far as you’ll ever get.” That evening, the woman he’d been set up with heard he had no house or car and was just a nobody at some tiny company. She made an excuse to leave before she’d even finished her coffee. He was in his thirties, and his life had become a joke.
