Cheong had no idea who this On Bi-hu character truly was. Was he someone who had once followed his family’s ruthless ways, only to repent and wander, performing good deeds? Or perhaps he’d spent his life suppressing his family’s wickedness as the only restraint, building up virtue before squandering it on recent misdeeds? The karma scores she saw provided no certain answer.

Yet, the system of karma she roughly understood was bothersome. A mix of utilitarian and outcome-based reasoning, evaluating people by strict, unfeeling standards—it was effective, but it hardly appealed to her.

At the very least, however, a person …