#I've never seen an author really linger in the trauma and despair and melancholy of 重生 like this book before and well. I'm kinda into it

[hunxi-after-hours]

Back when he really had been twenty years old in the body he wore now, he too, had been spirited, earnest, hot-blooded; overflowing with vigor, in the prime of his youth. At that time, he could easily carve out that drumming heart in his chest to hand to another person... But in that past life, he walked the long road to the end in an empty, heartless skin-shell, and for what? His heart— broken, rotted, disappeared; his body crippled, blinded, executed. Now, the heavens had returned a whole, unharmed body to him, but how could it return a whole, unharmed heart? He had once thought that Jiang Zhan was his heart, but he had been wrong. And now he no longer had even that wrong against him, nor had his heart returned — it felt as if, should he raise his hand to his chest, he could knock upon it and hear the echo of the empty cavity. There, it seemed a careless hand had filled in something that had no regard for happiness, satisfaction, or sentimental ties, something that did not know why it ached or what brought it joy, until all that was left was a bored, listless... hate, hate, hate. But was hate nothing more than emptiness? Maybe a life, at its end, was nothing more than emptiness: whether you had a heart or not, whether you loved or hated, you came to the end all the same. Your body would eventually cease to exist, so at the end of it all, what did anyone actually attain, truly achieve in this life? Long before he had died, he had said "never mind, forget it" — even when Cao Luan tried to rescue him, he no longer wanted to live. So why did the heavens want him to walk this path again, to do his failures all over? The human realm was a place of bitter suffering. Returning to it was like walking towards the center, the bitterness and suffering all around — borderless, ceaseless, endless.

— 《裴公罪》 The Crimes of Duke Pei by 书归 Shu Gui