Insufficient balance

  The narrow and winding Naihe Bridge spans the River of Forgetfulness, leading to the depths of the ethereal clouds. The ghostly spirits, with feet that do not touch the dust, drink a bowl of Meng Po's soup, and step onto the unpredictable path of reincarnation.

  In the depths of the clouds, there is a kind of invisible suction force. Once the ghost steps onto the bridge, it can no longer turn back and can only drift forward like moths flying into flames.

  Just then, a very loud voice shouted: "I'm lodging a complaint! I must lodge a complaint!"

  As the sound came, a handsome young man walked over from the other side of Naihe Bridge. His hair was slicked back with pomade, looking neat and shiny. He wore a white suit with many sequins on it, looking like a pop star who had just stepped off the stage.

  "Bang!" A bowl of fragrant and thick Meng Po soup fell to the ground, and the wrinkles on Meng Po's face seemed even deeper. She muttered and sighed: "For the ninth time, for the ninth time, this scourge has come back again."

  That star-like ghost, followed by a pair of ox-headed and horse-faced men, the ox head's eyes were wide open to the limit of cow eyes, while the horse face's face was pulled longer than a donkey's face, all because Zheng Shaopeng, who had been designated as a refused visitor, came back again.

  His legend of nine deaths and eight rebirths began when he fell off the cable car on his way to Nan Cang Mountain, but before falling, he held up a three-year-old girl, accumulating good deeds, increasing his lifespan by three years. However, the unlucky Ox-Headed Horse-Faced hurried back to attend the City God's daughter's wedding banquet and didn't wait for him to fall into the mountain valley before hooking his soul away.

  When they woke up from their drunken stupor and found out they had arrested the wrong person, Zheng Shaopeng's physical body in the mortal world had already been cremated. To avoid responsibility, they could only bribe Judge Cui to send him back to the mortal world, letting him borrow a corpse to return to life and exhaust his three years of mortal lifespan.

  Who would have thought... within a year, he actually came back to life eight times, none of which lasted more than two months. Speaking of which, Magistrate Cui was quite good to him, sending him into the body of a wealthy Wenzhou businessman who had just drowned in his first life. This rich man owned four clothing companies, with assets worth 300 million, and was 68 years old, but his wife was only 28 years old, and he had three beautiful mistresses, all younger than his wife, the youngest being only 18 years old, wasn't that enough for him?

  The question is...... this rich man did not drown in the river, nor did he drown in the sea, but drowned in the bathtub, and was drowned alive by his beautiful and charming wife while taking a bath.

  Zheng Shaopeng's hair stood on end as he watched the soul hovering in mid-air, waiting to possess him. He was then pushed by Ox-Head and Horse-Face into the body of the recently drowned billionaire, but he couldn't enjoy this good fortune.

  Within two weeks, he understood the entire operation of the company and then allocated one-third of the property to the wealthy man's wife who was abandoned and his two abandoned sons, and the rest were donated in every possible way.

  A month later, Mingming saw that he had died and come back to life, and was staring at his beautiful wife with a strange gaze all day, scaring her out of her wits. She took a fruit knife and kept stabbing him repeatedly. When the Ox-Headed Horse-Faced Guards arrived after hearing the news, they also felt it was a bit disgusting to let that battered corpse come back to life again, so they had no choice but to take him back to the underworld.

  Zheng Shaopeng would not say that he was disgusted by the old man's body, where the hard parts had become soft and the soft parts had all become hard, so he deliberately sought death. As a result, Judge Daoren racked his brains and sent him to the body of a deputy mayor who had just died of illness.

  The 48-year-old deputy mayor, who is considered young and vigorous, lives in a high-end ward with tubes inserted all over his body. The scene was bustling when he first entered the hospital, but since the doctor in charge told the organization to prepare for his funeral, it has become deserted.

  Zheng Shaopeng never thought he could become such a big official, but he really wanted to make something of himself. However, he couldn't bear the idea of having an older woman, almost as old as his mother, as his wife.

  So he stayed in the hospital all day, just not wanting to go home. When he found out that this deputy mayor was actually one of the corrupt members, he finally let out a big sigh of relief.

  He gathered a pile of evidence and sent it to the Provincial Discipline Inspection Commission. When the organization was severely investigated, he was honorably and actively killed by his former accomplices.

  No one is perfect, Zheng Shaopeng could only sigh, why can't there be a young and wealthy, handsome and elegant, charming and refined, jade tree in the wind of a dashing young nobleman?

  Uh... actually, it's not that there aren't any, but rather the young people who meet these conditions have super strong bodies and appetites, so he'll have to wait a bit longer to possess one.

  It's not easy to let him reincarnate into the body of a handsome and elegant red song star who is famous in Hong Kong and Taiwan for the eighth time, it can be considered as fulfilling his wish, he should stay well for these two years of life.

  Unbelievable... unbelievable... He actually came back from the dead again. Not to mention poor Judge Choi, even Ox-Head and Horse-Face were about to go crazy.

  Zheng Shaopeng let out a huge sigh of relief, but soon after possessing the body of this famous singer who had just passed away due to illness, he was horrified to discover that this beautiful young man who drove countless girls crazy was actually a homosexual, and what's more, one who played the passive role.

  Those two burly young men who accompanied him in dance often harassed him, and when he refused to approach them, the resentful eyes made his scalp explode. This kind of residual flower and willow body...... I am a seven-foot-tall man, starving to death is a small matter, losing dignity is a big matter!

  Zheng Shaopeng thought angrily, and then... when the company arranged for him to participate in a charity performance on the mainland, this 'big star who had just recovered from a serious illness' 'accidentally' fell off the stage, hitting the back of his head on a stone the size of a popcorn kernel, and thus a wisp of soul resentfully rushed to the underworld once again.

  In the grand hall of the underworld, it was quiet and still. On the dark and solemn eight immortal tables were stacked documents as high as a person, but there was no sign of Judge Cui. The ox-headed and horse-faced demons looked around and walked towards the eight immortal tables.

  An old-fashioned eight-immortals table had a display similar to a computer on it, and half of the body was exposed under the table, as if someone was crawling under the table.

  "Your Honor, what are you doing crouching under the table?"

  Chui Panguan crawled out from under the table, wearing a red ancient official robe, with two peach-leaf-like ribbons on his black hat, somewhat resembling a seventh-rank county magistrate on stage, with eight-character eyebrows, small eyes, and a wrinkled little face that looked like a folded bun, looking rather comical.

  The old man saw that it was them, and with a worried expression, he sighed: "Alas! It's still this 'plague to death - cracked skin' system. Since using it, the efficiency of our work in the underworld has indeed improved, but after using it for a few months, I have to reinstall it again. Now, even with my eyes closed, I can operate every installation step with ease."

  "What's even worse is that the system has been malfunctioning, with constant crashes and automatic restarts. I've heard that many ghosts have exploited loopholes in the system to travel through time and space to ancient times to become breeding horses at the Wheel of Rebirth Temple under Judge Zhang Hong. These people, they say, are striving for a higher position, but didn't do anything bad in their past lives, so why are they rushing to be reincarnated as animals? Being a breeding horse is such hard work, it's just incomprehensible, really incomprehensible."

  The cow-headed ghost smiled wryly and thought to himself, "Forget it, the old man is too old-fashioned, he doesn't even know what a stallion is, let alone...". He changed the subject and asked, "Is there something wrong with the system? Do you want me to help you fix it?"

  Choi Pan-guan shook his head and said, "This time the problem is not big, but after booting up, the hard drive light flashed wildly for half an hour before allowing me to operate, I was so bored that I almost fell asleep."

  Ma said with a hum: "Our domestic operating system is not bad, why did we have to invite a foreign designer at the beginning? I heard that Yan Junwang and Western Yan Junlu Xi Fa Wang are negotiating, asking them to send the original designer Bi'er Geiwa to upgrade the operating system as soon as possible."

  Choi Pan-guan shook his head and said, "No way, I heard that the City God has gone on vacation to the mortal world, his name is not in the Book of Life and Death, and he hasn't finished his vacation yet, so no one can find him. Now we can only hold on like this. Ah, didn't you guys apply for a leave? What are you doing here?"

  "Sir, that... that guy who doesn't want to live has come back again. He's only lived one year of his three-year lifespan and has already died nine times. You'd better think of a solution, or he'll end up meeting King Yanluo on the road. If King Yanluo finds out, it'll be disastrous."

  Choi Byeon-gwan's face turned red with rage, he hastily sat in front of the computer and frantically typed away, then stared at the screen with wide eyes, pretending to be silent. His horse-like face became tense, and he quickly leaned in, saying "What's wrong? What's going on?"

  "There's nothing wrong, I just need to reinstall my computer again. The system is too trashy and this is a dead processor, it runs super slowly!"

  The ox head listened and touched its horns without saying a word.

  After a while, Judge Cui's face suddenly changed and turned pale. If he hadn't been wearing that big red official robe, the ox-headed and horse-faced demons would have thought he was a ghost prisoner who had escaped from prison, and they would have sent him back with a set of shackles.

  "What's wrong, sir? Can't even run away from all this system garbage?"

  Choi Pan-guan's whole body trembled, pointing at the screen in dismay: "It's all over! We're doomed! If only I had known earlier, I wouldn't have tried to help you cover up this mistake. I should have just reported it directly to Yan Jun and said that you were operating irregularly and mistakenly hooked someone's soul. Alas, now we're really in trouble!"

  Ma's face puffed out a loud snort, and he said resentfully: "What's so pitiful about it? It's just running back eight times in one year. At worst, I'll run back sixteen times in the remaining two years. I'm willing to do that, let's see who can rely on whom."

  Magistrate Cui wept, his face covered in grief: "No, no, you see, adding the time he was wrongly accused, he has died nine times now. Each time it was due to doing good deeds that he met his demise... so... so...", Magistrate Cui took a deep breath and gritted his teeth, saying: "He is now a ninth-life good person."

  "What is a 'jiu shi shan ren'? What does that mean?" Niu Tou asked, bewildered. The judge's words were too profound, and it was really making people somewhat perplexed.

  "If he were sent back to the world of the living now and died again after doing good deeds, then he would be a virtuous person for ten lifetimes and escape the cycle of birth and death."

  "Ten generations of good people? Jump out of the cycle of life and death? What does it mean?"

  Choi Pan-gwan slapped his thigh and said: "That's it... he has become a Buddha."

  The ox-headed and horse-faced deities simultaneously opened their mouths wide in shock, saying disbelievingly: "No... is that right? Becoming a Buddha can't be that easy, can it?"

  Choi Pan-guan sighed twice and said, "Sometimes becoming a Buddha also depends on the right opportunity. Guanyin Bodhisattva was about to become a Buddha when the Buddha was preaching and transmitting the Dharma to his disciples, but just then a great disaster occurred in the human world. The Bodhisattva said, 'I will not become a Buddha until all sentient beings are saved!' As a result, she missed her chance, and although her divine powers were greater than those of all the Buddhas, she could not be called a Buddha."

  Manzang'er listened and couldn't help but put his palms together, saying: "The Bodhisattva has a kind heart, no wonder people call him Great Compassion and Great Mercy. Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva said 'I will not attain Buddhahood until the hells are empty!', just like Guanyin Bodhisattva, although they have not attained Buddhahood, in my heart, they are true Buddhas."

  Choi Pan-gwan sighed, "Even the Great Compassion and Great Mercy cannot save you. My troubles are over today, all because of the decline of worldly trends and the degeneration of human hearts. The Buddha's intention was to guide people's hearts, three hundred years ago on Spirit Mountain, he made a grand vow that if ordinary people could persist in doing good for ten lifetimes, they would attain Buddhahood immediately. If they were allowed to do good and die once more, they would become Buddhas. The Buddha's divine powers are vast and great, surely he can see through the secrets within, wouldn't that be a leaky trap?"

  Niu Tou Ma Mian was also stunned after hearing this, and said in a daze: "This... how can this be? This damned scoundrel, we couldn't bear to let him smash into pieces, so out of kindness we collected his soul ahead of time. Who knew the Book of Life and Death would suddenly change again? How can this be?"

  Suddenly, the cow-headed man turned his eyes suspiciously and said: "That's not right, sir. When he borrowed a corpse to return to the world of the living, in order to repay these three years of life, we bribed Meng Po not to let him drink the soup, so no matter how many times he died, it should only count as one life, why did it become nine lives?"

  Choi Pan-gwan sighed and said: "System vulnerability......"

  Niu Tou Ma Mian was stunned for a long time before saying in unison with extreme grief: "I hate Bi Er Gai Wa!"

  Chui Panguan was pacing back and forth in the grand hall, when suddenly he furrowed his brow, looked around with a sly gaze, and beckoned Ox Head and Horse Face to come before him. Stroking his whiskers, he smiled sinisterly and said: "Hmph, since the computer loophole at Judge Zhang's place in the Wheel of Rebirth Hall can allow ghosts to traverse time and space, I've thought of a plan. If we can arrange for him to go back in time to ancient times to borrow a corpse to return to the world of the living... Heh heh heh..."

  The cow nodded its head and said strangely, "What's the big deal? What if that bastard builds a bridge or repairs a road, and accidentally hits his head on a small stone and dies again, wouldn't that still fulfill the promise of ten lifetimes of good deeds?"

  "Hahaha... Judge Choi made a sinister smile: "The Buddha's vow to become a Buddha in ten lifetimes was 300 years ago. If someone is reincarnated 300 years ago, even if he dies 100 times, he will not be included in the conditions for becoming a Buddha in ten lifetimes, hahaha..."

  Niu Tou Ma Mian listened and applauded together: "Great, the master is indeed a man who has become more mature with age... uh... is becoming more dignified..."