The Ruins of Erlang Shen

My name is Li Erlang. I’m thirty years old. I worked myself half to death at a major internet company, losing my hair and wrecking my kidneys, then died suddenly and somehow became Erlang Shen. But being a god is a miserable business. My third eye is a quantum observatory that can see through space and time, yet it can’t heal my own body, which is on its last legs. I returned to my hometown to farm, only to find that the rice seeds passed down through my family glowed at night, with swirling galaxies hidden inside each grain. An ancient well showed me what I looked like three thousand years ago: clad in bronze armor, fighting alien mechs to the death. Beneath a ruined temple, a sinister bronze cauldron burst from the earth. A countdown flashed across it, ticking down to my death. Xiaotian Dog transformed into a stream of data and burrowed into my phone. Yang Chan wept in a quantum state. “Second Brother, the seal is about to break. The Orion fleet has reached the Kuiper Belt.” The gods and Buddhas watched coldly from the heavens. Taiyi Zhenren sat on a cloud, smiling. “Accept a perfect transformation, and you can become an immortal god.” I looked down at my hands, trembling from too many sleepless nights, and suddenly laughed. To hell with perfect transformations. To hell with an immaculate divine body. With this broken body, I raised my three-pointed, double-edged blade, aiming its edge at the gods and immortals above and the billions of warships beyond the stars. “Today, I, Li Erlang, will take all my flaws upon me, with this imperfect mortal body, and carve a way out for everyone in the world who isn’t perfect!” When the ultimate choice comes: become the one true god, or blow myself to pieces so that countless mortals can all become “Erlang.” What would you choose?