1 Warning! 4th Wall Breach!

It is said that the Gods play games with the lives of men. But what games they play, what rules do they abide to, what are the identities of the fated pawns ~ who knows? Best not to speculate.

Heavenly thunder rolled…

It rolled natural 20 for chaos.

| T̸̡̡̓h̵̖͗e̶̦̅ ̷͖̀Ó̶̼̐n̵̺̜͝e̶̖̣̽ ̷̭͐̔B̸̜̭̍̂ḛ̸̂̉h̶̥̍i̵̝̦̓n̶͎̊̀d̷̥̣͋ ̷̬͒Ḁ̵̽͜l̸̰̱̆ĺ̴͉̥́ | smiled, and moved its pawn across the gameboard of space-time. The session of this Cycle was bound to be entertaining…

---

A young man of illustrous lineage meditated calmly in the Orchard of Thousand Peaches. He sat in the lotus position, golden cultivator robes fluttering slightly in the gentle spring breeze, alongside countless pink peach blossoms. His face was stern, like a noble hero's, yet his features could only be described as being of a rare, androginous beauty. His blemishless, jade-like skin contrasted his lustrous ebony hair, like Ying and Yang. The daoist robes hung loosely around his chest, revealing muscles chiseled through sweat and thunder of tribulation. All the features of his countenance were pleasing to the eye, as if the Heavens themselves had sketched his portrait!

The noble cultivator slowly opened his dark eyes which spoke of intelligence and depth, as he took in the silence of the serene orchard. The breeze brought forth a sense of wonder and long-lost familiarity. The youth couldn't help but sigh in contemplation, as he pinched his nose with unspeakable grace. Wind's calm rustling came to a lull, as if to accentuate the heaviness of his tone. His first words upon finally coming back in his world were spoken with decision and gravitas:

"Enough! You are creeping me out already! What's with that description, Narrator? Look! I'm already getting goosebumps!"

...

A lesser man wouldn't have been able to perceive the minute motions of this young master as he shook ever so slightly, whilst sighing in resignation. "Looks like I will have to learn to live with this Old Geezer Narrator's voice inside my head now. " The young man frowned, furrowing his sword-sharp eyebrows, as he inspected his surroundings. Had any servants been the subject of his deep gaze, they would have fell to their knees and knowtowed 81 times, begging for their Masters forgivance. But there was no one around. He lay unperturbed and isolated, among the blossoming orchard.

"Ah, I see how it is. No wonder I found this whole scenery creepily familiar. It finally came full circle. I am back to my home world. How unexpected, to see it from different eyes now."

The noble youth considered his surroundings, and considered himself, before drawing a swift conclusion using his intuition as a seasoned cultivator.

"I have finally returned to my 23 year old body in my original realm. In a sense, it could be said that my body had never moved, only my soul experienced a long round-journey across the Samsara wheel of reincarnation". He nodded sagely to himself, pleased with the current explanation. "How many thousands of cycles have I gone through since then? I can hardly remember what even sent me on that hellish trajectory into the sea of souls, across the vastness of space-time."

He tried to remember events long gone, or rather, events of the future long passed. He had cultivated ardently, challenging the Fate of the Heavens and advancing to ever-higher realms and higher cluster of worlds! But in his ignorance, what he didn't know, was that bigger worlds housed bigger powerhouses! There was always a bigger fish, being of untold power which would mess with his fate and cause his long trip across the incarnation cycle.

'I can't hardly remember what happened in that world. I had cultivated to the top of the Celestial Realm, only to have my body disintegrated to atoms by the sneeze of a Primordial Void Dragon from 50000 light years away. Then those particles were scattered through space-time by that weird cultivator in his humming blue "Police Box" vessel. '

'If I recall correctly, some of my remains ended up on a distant, worm-infested desert planet, and people fought many battles and machinations to attain slivers of my essence which they called Spice.'

'In time, my essence coalesced into seven golden cores, which were collected by some group of muscular, spiky haired, shouting alien cultivators. They were quite ferocious.'

'Finally, when I was on the brink of restoring my body, that was when...that Evil... that Defiant Cultivator... used that cursed method that allowed one to reincarnate endlessly... '

The young, valiant man's very soul shuddered, and he almost fell into Qi deviation as memories of those times came flooding. Memories that were thought to have been locked away, memories that he tried to erase to no end.

"Curse you, Truck-kun Sect! I swear, if I meet another one of your practitioners, I will make sure their soul will be split to a thousand pieces and scattered across all realms!"

With baited breath and trembling arms, the young master slowly regained his grip on reality. Considering the big picture, his journey across Samsara appeared to have been kickstarted not by a single factor, but rather a whole series of implausible events. Coincidences, as one may call them. But he knew there was no such thing in this world. Someone way, way above his comprehension had toyed with his fate. Whom, and to what reason, he couldn't say.

What mattered was that it was done. He had gone through the whole cycle of reincarnation and kept some memories from all those past lives! Surely, his wisdom was beyond all sages in this world! His knowledge could rival the vast Records of Akashic! In this life, he would be unparalleled and soar through the Heavens!

"...Old Man Narrator, have you gone senile already? Do you really have no clue as to what I'm thinking and you are trying to bullshit your way through?"

[...]

Silence ensued. Nobody dared utter a word.

"Sigh. You really are out of your depths, Old Man. Just leave the rest of the exposition to me, will you?"

"First. My journey through the Samsara. I do not know what caused it, but I assume the Truck-kun sect is somehow involved. Having the experience of past cycles is both a blessing, and a curse. I retain fragments of those memories, of all those past lives. The oldest ones are the most fuzzy, the newer ones are more pronounced."

"I remember vaguely living as people, fish, plants, rocks, alien lifeforms, I was even a Dwarf Star once! I remember having built families, cherished memories, I lived my life until I was old and wrinkly, and I was content."

"Until my last reincarnation. When I came to \that plane\, my world was shook. At first, it was nothing special. A blue planet inhabited, with humans as its sole sapient species. Mortals, all of them. But one shouldn't underestimate them!"

"Their forbidden knowledge... it was maddening! What did they call it? Fiction! Books, Movies, TV shows, Graphic Novels, Anime, Manga, all those wretched mediums of unspeakable depth! I knew it was forbidden knowledge, yet it kept drawing me in, like a demonic technique.."

"And at the end of that life, what did I learn? That all my reincarnations, were just the subject of someone's imagination! Someone's fiction! In the eye of the inhabitants of \that plane\, our lives are mere entertainment. That revelation left me shook. And worse than the plague of existential crisis... it brought an acute and painful understanding of \tropes\ and \cliches\. Reading those forbidden tomes, I came to know, a simple truth: no matter the genre, no matter the medium; nothing was truly original. Everything was just repurposed, recycled, and at best, refurbished in a better setting. "

"But what if you lived in that setting? Could you escape from the fate of \tropes\ and bad writing? And this brings me to my second point of exposition. "

"F%#$ cultivation. F%#$ being peerless. F%#$ the Heavens. I refuse to be confined to the limits of my tropes! I just want to live a lazy life!"

...

"You can talk now, Old Narrator"

...

The young man stood up, staring resolutely at the sky. Despite uttering Heaven defying knowledge gathered from realms of higher existence, no tribulation cloud formed. Perhaps even the Ruler of the Higher Heavens was too shook to make a move!

Regardless, the young man didn't care about such meaningless individuals. Heavens? Huff, he scoffed. He had already breached the 4th Wall, what was some mere Heavens compared to that?

"Old Man, I have a name, you know! You should address me by said name, or the readers won't remember me."

The young man, who went by the esteemed name of Ley Lin, spoke in a deep commanding voice, as he made his way on his flying sword.