"Come on, Ye Feng! Leave the mother alone, she's your mother-in-law for god's sake!"
Shaking his head in disappointment, Jack slammed his phone on the tabletop, instantly killing it in the process. Tapping the screen several times, as usual, life happened—and he just lost his phone.
"Damn it!! Ye Feng!"
Thirty years old and minimum-waged, Jack looked older than he was supposed to be. Taking a big breath in the burger joint's huge kitchen, he started working on his cleaning shift—extra work to pay for his hobby: reading cultivation novels.
'A Rod that Can Pierce the Heaven.' This was the novel he was reading, where the protagonist Ye Feng killed the villain's mother—who was also the mother of the villain's sister and his third wife.
"Sigh! I thought I picked a pure smut with that title, but it turned out to be a rage-bait novel."
Brooming in front of the dirty glass door, Jack muttered. It was a cultivation novel about an arrogant man who gets a rod in the mountains while training, becomes so overpowered that he goes on a killing rampage, and pokemoning women left and right.
"Ye Feng doesn't even have a shred of morality. Even that villain was better than him."
Throwing the novel's thoughts to the back of his head, he concentrated on the work at hand. He had enough money now to get a refurbished tab, although he might miss some chapters of the current novel he was following.
As he hummed a tune, cleaning became a bit fun—or maybe he was just thinking about the first female lead, described as so beautiful and detached from the world that he loved that character.
Beeep!
A sharp horn, even from inside the glass door, was the last thing he heard before seeing a massive truck breaking the door into pieces and crushing him in the process.
'Why did I finish this book again?'
His life ended in confusion. The last thing he saw was how detailed the headlight was. The pain he felt seemed reasonable because this would be the last time he felt anything, so this much intensity felt just right.
"Ah~ Perfect Blur."
A calm yet gentle voice woke Jack up. He was still in a trance; his brain was not braining anymore.
"Are you Japanese?"
"No, Confucius, idiot."
Almost instantly, the pain was gone—replaced by the brightest white ever. In front of him, seated on the ground or maybe in the sky, was a sage-looking person. He had a long white beard and hair tied in a bun.
After hearing the first line, Jack had to ask if this person was Japanese or not. If he wasn't a cultivation-novel reader, he might not even get what the hell "Confucius" meant—the word that this old man just uttered.
After taking another sip from his steaming teacup, the old man finally looked at him and pointed in front of him, as if offering him a seat on the mat, which was embroidered with dragons.
"Yeah, you did."
"But I… alright, I get it. But I thought I would see Jesus after dying."
"He's busy today—and you're in luck. If he got you, he would've sent you to heaven. I'm not like that. I have a Gacha Roll to decide your character—and boom, you go Isekaid."
"Character? Don't I have to choose a world first?"
"Oh! That? That's why I'm here, actually. You were already selected by a higher force than even me, so you have no choice in that section. Character is where you have a bit of flexibility."
"By the way, how's my English? I learned it recently."
Jack, hearing an American accent from a godly Chinese person, was shocked. He wasn't sure of anything at this point. He felt like his life was a joke.
"Oh! See? I can't even read your thoughts because you're going to a higher place—so you'll have to tell me what you're thinking."
"Why is my body intact?"
"Oh, that? It's to make you comfortable. Would you like to have a soul form?"
Surprisingly, the god-man was very human. Jack felt comfortable around him. He even took a bitter tea from him, and after sipping it, had to pretend it was good. Even after dying, acting polite was normal—or maybe it was just him being human. Fakeness and pleasing others ran deep in him.
"So, a Gacha. Are you comfortable with roulette? It's common in your country."
"Yeah, sure. But what if my luck is very low and I get a weird character? And by character, you mean I'm going inside a novel?!!"
"All I can say is—you get another chance in a higher dimension."
The sage pulled out a roulette from nowhere and placed it between them. The tea table vanished without a trace. Smiling, the sage handed two balls to Jack.
"One for your character, another for a system. The system is a gift from me. You've been very calm—the last woman was a 'Karen' from your world. She almost ripped my hair off."
Jack was impressed with this person. He gave off the feeling of someone who's always online and watches rage videos, but getting a reward for just being decent was a nice feeling. On Earth, being decent only gives you shit.
"Go for the system first. If you get some fate-altering system, that might help you get a nice character."
Confucius, who was standing beside Jack, smiled with a very motivated smile. Jack nodded his head and looked carefully inside the roulette. It was full of names, like a mini world. He looked at the big marble sized ball in his hand, unsure how it would work.
Trusting the smiling person beside him, he threw the ball. It reacted as soon as it left Jack's hand, glowing red and shrinking smaller than an ant as if to match the roulette inside. It specifically rolled into the black part, which might be the system segment.
[Ding!! Dramatic Heavenly Map System has been activated]
A huge gong popped Jack's dead ears, echoing through the heavens. Jack, with his mouth open, could only blink. The pure shock on his face wasn't even there when he was dying.
The glowing panel in front of him seemed to break his brain. Reality was now settling in—that he really died. He was going somewhere else. He would never see Earth again. Although he had no one waiting for him, he still felt like crying, but all he could do was breathe in panic.
"Congratulations. Now throw the character ball."
"I… I don't want to. The sound… it's too much."
"Brat… here."
The sage-like smiling man instantly got enraged. He pushed Jack's hand with enough force that the ball slid across his palm and went into the roulette.
[Ding!! Congratulations! The Character 'Shen Yuan' is selected. Title: Heavenly Villain.]
"N… Noooooooooo!"
"Bye-bye."
With a gentle push on his chest, Jack disappeared from the place in an instant—as if space itself ate him alive, or dead. The whole atmosphere returned to absolute silence and stillness… until the sage pulled out an iPhone from somewhere and scrolled TikTok.
The first video was an orange-haired dude in a blue suit.
"Chaina, Chaina, Chaina, Chaina."
"Tch."