Upon opening my eyes, the first thing I noticed was clarity.

  Not of sudden understanding or insight. No, it was literal.

  I could see vividly, unmarred by the blur of age or the dim haze that had clung to me during my last years. The world in front of me wasn’t a dull shape of colors and movement anymore. Every grass and every grain of soil stood before me in perfect detail. As if my failing vision—long lost to time—had never abandoned me in the first place.

  I blinked, half-expecting the clarity before me to be nothing more than the final mirage granted to the dying—a comforting illusion conjured by a fading mind. Perhaps this was a regret I had long buried, surfacing now in my final moments. Or perhaps… it was some quiet truth my soul needed to witness before surrendering itself to finality.

  I looked around, and there I was—still bound to this plain, the same field where ascension had never been mine to claim… and yet somehow different from my final moment.

  The only other place, aside from that old wooden shack, that remained vivid in my memory. That shack had once been home—the place where my father waited, where warmth lingered despite the cold. But when he passed, and that chapter of my life closed, I found myself unaware that I was searching for something to take its place.

  And somehow, the Plain of Ascension became that replacement.

  Not by comfort. Not by safety. But by time, by presence… and by persistence.

  Like the shack, it was a place where I had bled, where I had wept, where I had lived—and where I had died in one way to another. A home all the same.

  I took a slow breath, bracing for the sharp, familiar pain that usually came with such a motion—the stiffness in my chest, the creak of tired ribs. But none came. The breath flowed through me easily, smooth and painless. At first, I was puzzled. Then I reminded myself: of course. This was just the final mirage, the last kindness of a dying mind.

  Naturally, my fading consciousness would conjure an image without pain.

  A final comfort one could say.

  With a faint smirk and a tone almost bordering on amusement, I thought, And next, I suppose… my limbs won’t tremble, my bones won’t ache, my back won’t hunch, and my left arm won’t be paralyzed.

  As if the illusion had taken my cue, I moved—slowly at first. No shaking. No aches. My spine straightened with ease, and my long-dead left arm stirred to life without resistance.

  It was all there.

  I looked down at my hands—youthful, steady, free of calluses and trembling. My body no longer hunched, no longer fragile. It was the form I had at twenty years of age.

  Strong enough to hope. Naive enough to believe. Determined enough to risk.

  As if I’d been granted the remembrance of youth—one last taste of the abled body I once used to take for granted. I felt whole in a way I had forgotten was possible.

  I looked around, unsure at first what this vision—dream, illusion, or whatever it was—was trying to convey.

  The longer I stood, the clearer it became. A familiar positioning. A familiar crowd. The sky above, painted in that same deep blue hue, the sun radiating warmth.

  I remembered this moment. Was this… my first attempt to test my fate? Yes. Yes, it was.

  The crowd of mortals stretched far and wide, just above the massive Golden Ascension Gate stood the cultivator—the one I came to know well.

  The declaration of his began, echoing across the plain, just as it had the first time and the last.

  The crowd surged forward, rushing to seize their destinies or be turned away by them. It was all the same. The same pacing. The same energy. The same fragile hopes suspended in a single breath. The first… of nine.

  And yet, I was being shown the mirage of my first time, in the version of the man who still believed the heavens might look kindly upon him.

  But why was I brought back here?

  Was I being granted leeway to relive something? To walk freely within this echo of the past? Or was I being asked to do something before this vision faded for good?

  I didn’t understand.

  For a moment, I simply stood in place. I watched as the mortals charge ahead, the Gate towering in silent judgment as they were either swallowed whole or denied outright.

  Then the thought struck me.

  Was this a chance to see the world as it might have been… if fate had been on my side?

  Surely not—that would be too cruel. However, given the nature of the heavens, such an outcome was not entirely out of character. And yet… I was drawn to the idea.

  Compelled, even.

  So I walked.

  I moved past the rushing tide of mortals, slipping between them. I neared the gate, but turned before reaching it. My feet carried me to the base of where he stood—the cultivator. His white robes flowing, arms behind his back, posture straight.

  And just like the first time… he did not pay attention to me.

  His gaze passed over the crowd with indifference. If this vision had taken place in any attempt after the second, his eyes would be locked on me. But this was our first meeting, and I was still a stranger to him. A roach for all he cared.

  Still, I couldn’t help but stare.

  For all the years I had lived beneath his shadow, I had never truly spoken to him. Something had always lingered in my mind when I looked at him. A strange curiosity. I had never asked it. But now… perhaps this was the time to ask the one question I had never voiced aloud when I knew this moment wasn’t quite real.

  So, I decided I would ask. I took a step closer, and called out in a calm, measured voice:

  "If all your cultivation were stripped away, would you still move forward with purpose?"

  Though he had remained unmoved through it all—from the pleading of the rejected, to the cries of pain, to the broken bodies collapsed before him—my question stirred something.

  His head turned slowly and deliberately. His gaze found mine.

  For a moment, he said nothing. It was as though he were studying me—not just the face I wore, but the question itself. Measuring its weight. Weighing the meaning that rested beneath it.

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  Perhaps he sensed it wasn’t the kind of question asked in admiration or challenge, but from a place deeper than either.

  He didn’t answer right away. But he didn’t ignore me, either.

  And then, finally, he spoke. A simple word.

  "Of course."

  I had expected that answer.

  The kind of answer spoken by someone too steeped in certainty. A man who had never truly been brought to his knees. Too full of pride to recognize it as such, yet too far removed from struggle to even grasp the question's weight.

  It wasn’t that he answered wrongly—but that he didn’t truly understand what I had asked.

  So I pressed further.

  “How would you have proceeded?” I asked, my tone still measured.

  He looked at me again, more focused this time, as if trying to discern what I was truly searching for. Then, without hesitation, he spoke:

  “I would have sought enlightenment through self-isolation—cut away all distraction, enter seclusion, and temper the mind and body through meditation and medicinal pills until the Dao revealed itself again.”

  I stared at him.

  Then blinked.

  Then I laughed.

  A hollow, worn-out sound of someone who had finally realized the man before him had never once touched the kind of despair I did.

  “That…” I said between laughs, “that is the most privileged nonsense I’ve heard in a hundred years.”

  He frowned slightly, not in offense, but confusion.

  And I understood now. Truly. He didn’t get it. How could he?

  He was born on a mountain so high, he couldn’t even see the dirt below, let alone know what it felt like to be buried in it.

  I've simplified my question so that he can actually understand it.

  I looked at him—right in the eyes—and asked,

  “If you were one of these mortals crawling beneath your feet, the ones denied by the heavens before ever taking a single step… how would you continue forward?”

  He fell silent for a moment—long enough to show he was truly considering the question by weighing the scenario and placing himself within it—until his expression hardened, and his response came not with cruelty or contempt, but with the same unyielding certainty he had expressed before.

  “If I were denied by the heavens,” he said, his voice cool and unwavering, “I would stop.”

  He looked me square in the eye, his tone level, factual.

  “I would not waste my years begging for a path that was never mine to open. I would not sacrifice my body, my time, or my pride chasing something the heavens themselves rejected me from.”

  “I would find the place that was meant for me—be it low or high, humble or irrelevant—and I would find satisfaction in it. Because wasting a mortal's short life on a path that denies you isn't strength.”

  He stepped forward, just enough to let his words settle like cold ash.

  “It’s delusion.”

  The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut.

  He simply answered true to his beliefs.

  He was the kind of man who saw the heavens not as an obstacle to be challenged, but as a master to be obeyed. To him, fate was not a chain—but a structure, a hierarchy of order and purpose. He had aligned himself with it, flourished within it, and in doing so, never once questioned its justice.

  He had answered with honesty—and in that honesty, he had shown me just how far apart we truly stood.

  He was my opposite.

  To him, fate was absolute. If denied, he would bow and find satisfaction elsewhere, accept the terms handed to him, live a life of peace beneath the heavens’ gaze.

  And I… I was not that.

  Where he found purpose in obedience, I had found it in refusal. He would live a full life, perhaps even a fulfilling one. While I choose to do the opposite out of stubbornness.

  Yet, I didn’t fault him for his belief. He was not cruel. He was not wrong. He simply followed the path carved for him—and walked it with conviction.

  Was there truly a right path and a wrong one? Of course there was.

  But only in the eyes of the one walking it.

  Right and wrong, truth and falsehood—those were judgments for the individual, not the collective. What brought peace to one might bring ruin to another. What felt like truth in his world would have been death in mine.

  Now, I truly understood.

  Back then, I had resented him—resented the way he dismissed my choice, the way he told me to follow the heavens' will as though it were the only path worth walking. But now… though I still did not agree with him, I no longer scorned what he said.

  A small smirk tugged at the corner of my lips.

  They say age brings wisdom—and they were not wrong.

  But what they don’t say is that it also makes you more stubborn. Not out of pride, but because the truths you’ve chosen to live by—especially when carried for as long as I have—start to root themselves deep. They become part of you. Not easily shaken and replaced.

  I looked at him, and for all our differences, I bowed my head in appreciation.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly. “For answering me.”

  I turned and began walking once more toward the golden portal.

  But then—his voice stopped me.

  “One moment,” he said, tone now laced with a curiosity that hadn’t been there before. “I have a question of my own.”

  I paused, glancing back over my shoulder.

  “If someone came to you,” he continued, “and asked you the same question—what would you tell them?”

  A small smirk tugged at the corner of my lips as I met his gaze with quiet certainty—I had lived the answer, felt every bone-deep consequence, and yet I knew it to be true, so I replied, "I’d tell them the same thing you did," because truth isn’t a matter of belief.

  It’s a matter of bearing it.

  Even now, after a lifetime of failure, of swinging until my body gave out, I knew this one thing:

  I would do it again a hundred times over, without hesitation.

  But never—not once—would I tell another person to walk the same path.

  Not because I was ashamed of it. But because I knew what it cost. Most wouldn’t survive it. Most shouldn’t have to. I would not rob someone of a full, satisfying life just to prove a point about defiance.

  Not everyone is meant to rebel. And not everyone is meant to kneel. That… was the truth.

  I was glad I had been brought back to this moment. This mirage—this echo of a time long passed—was more satisfying than I had expected. But something about it lingered too long. Held too still.

  I hadn’t moved on. Which meant that this illusion was truly about a timeline where fate was on my side. So, with a cautious heart, I stepped toward the Golden Gate—I lifted my hand.Just as I had done so many times before. My fingers reached out and pressed against the gate. And—just like before—they stopped.

  My palm met resistance. That same smooth, golden wall.

  Still a denial.

  The same as it had always been.

  What a sick joke.

  The heavens, it seemed, had a sense of humor. Even in a vision. Even in death. They couldn’t resist tormenting me one last time—dangling possibility before my eyes only to shut it again.

  I grit my teeth. And with everything in my lungs, I screamed into the sky:

  “SCREW YOU!”

  My voice tore through the air with raw anger. And then… something happened.

  In an instant, I felt it—a spark.

  A strange sensation bloomed in the center of my palm. And where my hand had once stopped at the golden wall, it now… sank. Not much, just a sliver. Like pressing into the weight of freshly fallen snow—resistance, but not rejection. The gate gave just the tiniest bit.

  My breath caught. And then—DING.

  The sound was unlike anything I had ever heard.

  And with it came a voice—not loud, but clear, impossibly clear, echoing within the space of my mind:

  [Fate-Defying System Activated.]

  [Fate interjection detected. Defiance in motion.]

  [Analyzing user information...]

  [Analysis complete. Revealing character sheet.]

  Before me, the space shimmered—light warping in front of my eyes, swirling with unseen energy. From nothing, an image appeared.

  It wasn’t like the floating message that had appeared before—brief flashes of text. No. This was vast in information. As though it were watching me as much as I was reading it.