“Thank you for calling EasyNow Financial, where your dreams can’t wait! This is Lucas speaking. How can I make your day brighter?”
Lucas had said that same line tens of thousands of times to the point that he could turn off his brain and let his body move on autopilot.
He said it to a man financing a jet ski over twenty-four months. He said it to a woman who had bought a wedding dress on installments, then a divorce lawyer, then a second wedding dress. He said it to college students, grandmothers, their grandchildren, their children’s children, and one very confused parrot that somehow learned how to press redial.
And when the payments stopped coming, he called them back with a different script.
“Hi there! This is Lucas speaking. This is a friendly reminder that your account is past due. We truly value you as a customer; please be advised that the late fees have been applied.”
Smile while you say it. The customer can hear your smile, believe it or not.
Even when they shout abusive words towards you, even if they cry and ask for an extension, even if they threaten to find you and kill you; just keep smiling.
It’s either you fight back and lose your job, or you keep your mouth shut, keep smiling, and please them as if you’ve been kissing asses your whole life.
Just keep smiling.
That was rule number one in the training manual.
Sometimes you don’t even care anymore and stopped caring a long time ago, and try to upsell those people you find especially annoying.
“I’m so sorry my father’s husband’s lover’s sister-in-law’s niece’s grandpa-uncle died; I can’t afford to pay this month’s fee for the RcNugget maker.”
“I’m so sorry. I understand your frustrations, but the more you delay your payment, the more your interest will accrue, and you will keep getting calls. On that note, we have a buy-one-take-three deal on an automatic AI-powered matcha whisk for only 999 dollars! Yes, you heard it right! Only 999 dollars. If you buy it now, you get a 3% discount, and you can also pay through our Buy Now, Pay Later mode of payment; no down payment needed! ☺️”
“WHEN I FIND YOU I’M GONNA PUT SOME DIRT IN YOUR EYE, LET ME SPEAK TO YOUR SUPERVISOR! NOWWWWWW!”
Between calls, Lucas read. On his thirty-minute lunch break. On the train. In the bathroom stall where his manager couldn’t find him. He read NovelBins, hundreds of them, about cultivators who rose from trash on the side of the road to immortals who killed demons and gods, who slapped the faces of hundreds of arrogant young masters, who found ancient grandpas living in rings, and legendary treasures at the bottom of every cliff with their jade beauty harem, which I thought for a long time were women who have green skin.
In those stories, the protagonist never paid for anything.
The treasures were free. The inheritances were free. Heaven-defying techniques fell into their laps because the world had decided they were special.
Must be nice, Lucas thought at two in the morning, on his fourth straight overtime shift, as the fluorescent lights hummed overhead and his vision shrank to a single blinking cursor.
“Thank you for calling EasyNow Financial, where your dreams can’t—”
His forehead hit the keyboard.
The call timer kept running for three more hours before anyone noticed.
* * *
Sixteen years later, Qian Fan stood in a courtyard full of nervous teenagers, holding a bingo card that existed only in his head.
[Arrogant young master brags.] Empty.
[Crowd sucks in a breath of cold air.] Empty.
[Someone gets called trash.] Empty.
["Do you know who my father is?"] Empty.
[Mysterious old man.] Debatable.
‘Sixteen years of living in a cultivation world, especially as a member of one of the Five Great Families of Wutong City, and I have not found ring grandpas lying on the ground, nor has a system popped up and told me that I have the One-shot Pentakill system that gives me the ability to one-shot five arrogant young masters and kill five at the price of one. Not once have I seen a single jade beauty who practices the Extreme Yin Physique and has a Resting Bitch Face (RBF) all the time without a single emotion on their face.’
Morning sunlight spilled across the ancestral courtyard of the Qian Clan, gilding the gray roof tiles and the ancient wutong tree at its center. The tree was older than the clan itself. Its broad leaves shimmered faintly with spirit qi, and if you stood beneath it long enough, the air tasted clean and sweet, like rain on warm stone.
Legend said a phoenix had once landed on its branches. Legend also said the clan’s founder had once been the strongest and richest man in Wutong City.
Both legends were very old.
These days, the Qian Clan ranked fifth among Wutong City’s five great clans, which was a polite way of saying last. The red paint on the pillars had faded to the color of weak tea. Cracked jade tiles had been patched with ordinary stone. Even the wutong tree looked tired.
Still, today the courtyard was packed.
Every sixteen-year-old in the clan stood in neat rows, dressed in their best robes, fidgeting and whispering. Parents crowded the edges. Elders sat on a raised platform beneath the tree. And at the front, on a pedestal carved with coiling dragons, rested the Testing Stone: a smooth, milky crystal the size of a watermelon, humming so softly you felt it more than heard it.
Today was the Awakening Ceremony. That’s right, Awakening Ceremony. The one readers of NovelBins are all too familiar with, where a kid from an unknown background suddenly gets all the colors of the rainbow and becomes the genius of the academy type of thing. That Awakening Ceremony.
For sixteen years, the children of the clan had done nothing but temper their bodies. Horse stances at dawn. Push-ups until their arms shook. Then, after that, do the tasks that the clan gave out to the clan youth to earn contribution points.
After a long day came the medicinal baths that smelled like boiled socks. Only after today, once the Testing Stone revealed their talent, would the clan decide who deserved to be taught real qi cultivation.
The rules were simple. Just place your hand on the stone; left, right, or both—all of it works. Then the Testing Stone glows. The color decides your future—in the clan and in the real world.
Gold meant Heaven Grade, a genius. Purple meant Earth Grade, exceptional. Blue meant Mystic Grade, promising. Green or white meant Yellow Grade, ordinary.
And if it barely glowed at all, well.
Qian Fan had read this chapter a hundred times. He knew exactly how it went.
‘If there is a day when my golden finger comes, it will be today. Though for a long time I’ve already given up on it. Even if it’s a grandpa stuck in a ring, a box, a flat-screen TV, JUST GIVE IT TO ME.’
“Stop fidgeting,” his mother whispered.
Liu An was a small woman with worried eyes and hands that were always a little red from work. She had been smoothing the same wrinkle on his sleeve for ten minutes.
“I’m not fidgeting,” Qian Fan said.
“You’re thinking. On you, it looks like fidgeting.”
Beside her, his father, Qian Hou, beamed like a man at a festival.
“Don’t worry about the result, son. Whatever color it is, we’re proud of you.”
“Even gray?”
“Especially gray! Grey is a very dignified color. Hmm hmm.”
His mother elbowed his father in the ribs.
“Don’t jinx your son’s results!”
Qian Fan smiled. In his last life, the only thing waiting for him at home had been a dying houseplant. In this one, he had two ordinary, decent, slightly anxious parents who ran a small stall in the market and argued about the price of rice.
He had decided long ago that this was a very good deal—one that he wouldn’t trade for any other.
On the platform, a gray-bearded elder rose and cleared his throat.
“The Awakening Ceremony of the Qian Clan will now begin! Elder Qian Zhuo will supervise the Testing Stone.”
A thin old man in a faded robe shuffled forward and lowered himself onto a stool beside the pedestal. He folded his hands over his belly, nodded once to the crowd, and closed his eyes.
Within a minute, he was snoring.
A few parents exchanged pitying looks. Everyone knew Elder Qian Zhuo. He had been stuck at Early Foundation Establishment for forty years, which was why the clan gave him every job nobody else wanted. Supervising the stone. Sweeping the library. Counting the cabbages.
Qian Fan studied him for a moment.
An old man, forgotten by his clan. Stuck at the same level for decades. Always asleep.
In any novel, that was a hidden master.
In real life, Qian Fan thought, that’s just a guy who likes naps.
He left the square empty.
* * *
“Qian Wudi, step forward!”
The crowd stirred as a tall young man swept toward the pedestal. His white robe was embroidered with silver clouds, a jade ring held his hair in place, and he held his chin so high it was a small miracle he didn’t walk into the three.
Behind him, four lackeys shouted in perfect unison.
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!”
Qian Wudi. The only son of Qian Wanjin, the most powerful man in the clan’s main branch. Body Tempering 8th layer, the highest of their generation.
On the platform, Qian Wanjin sat with his arms folded and a satisfied smile half-hidden in his thick beard. He wore a ring on every finger, and he surveyed the courtyard the way a landlord surveys a building he owns. Beside him, his wife, Sun Jiao, fluttered a silk handkerchief.
“Show them, my precious treasure!”
Qian Wudi pressed his palm to the Testing Stone.
The crystal flickered. Then a soft blue glow rose from its depths and spread across the surface, steady and clear.
“Mystic Grade!” the gray-bearded elder announced.
The crowd murmured approvingly. Blue was good. Blue was respectable. In a clan this size, blue meant a bright future.
Qian Wudi turned to face the courtyard and flung his arms wide.
“Did you all see that?” he shouted.
“Heaven-shaking!”
The crowd hesitated.
Then someone gasped. Then someone else. Then, pushed along by pure social pressure, the entire courtyard sucked in a breath of cold air at once.
A leaf drifted down from the wutong tree.
Check, Qian Fan thought. The crowd sucks in cold air.
“I am only half a step from Qi Condensation!” Qian Wudi declared.
He was not. He was a full layer and a breakthrough away. But nobody corrected him, because his father’s rings were very large.
Check. Arrogant young master brags.
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!” the lackeys roared again.
Young Master Invincible is invincible, Qian Fan translated silently, and bit the inside of his cheek very hard.
* * *
The ceremony moved on. A few greens. One white. A pale blue that made a girl burst into happy tears and her mother faint.
Then the gray-bearded elder’s voice dropped half a tone.
“Qian Xiaotian, step forward.”
The courtyard went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with respect.
A thin boy walked to the pedestal. His robe was clean but patched at both elbows. His shoe had been resewn so many times that the stitches formed a pattern to the point it’s enough to call it Theseus’ Shoes. His face was pale, and his jaw was tight, but his eyes, Qian Fan noticed, were steady.
Whispers rippled through the crowd.
“Body Tempering 2nd layer at sixteen…”
“His father was Qian Lingyun, you know. The one called the Millennium Genius.”
“What a waste.”
“Is his mother still bedridden?”
Qian Fan knew the story. Everyone did.
Sixteen years ago, Qian Lingyun had been the pride of Wutong City, the greatest genius the Qian Clan had produced in a century. Then he married a mysterious woman named Shangguan Yue, whose family no one could find on any map. One night, strangers came to the clan. There was a battle. The sky above the city burned for an hour.
By morning, Qian Lingyun was gone.
His wife was left with a wound that never healed and a newborn son. The clan’s fortune collapsed soon after.
Tragic backstory, Qian Fan counted. Missing genius father. Sick mother from a mysterious family. Poor. Bullied. Low talent.
He looked at the thin boy standing alone in front of the stone.
Ah, he thought. That one’s the protagonist. If there’s ever a protagonist here, Qian Xiaotian is the only one who clears the list.
Qian Xiaotian placed his hand on the Testing Stone.
Nothing happened.
One second passed. Two. Three. Then, deep inside the crystal, a faint gray light flickered like a candle in a draft and went out.
“Ungraded,” the elder said with a flash of disappointment and pity in his eyes that immediately fixed itself.
For a heartbeat, the courtyard was silent.
Then the laughter began.
“Gray! Not even white!”
“Trash talent, just like they said!”
“The genius’s son is a waste of rice!”
Check, Qian Fan thought, with no pleasure at all. Someone gets called trash.
Qian Wudi laughed the loudest.
“Cousin Xiaotian, don’t be sad! Not everyone can be heaven-shaking. The clan will always need someone to muck out the stables!”
His lackeys howled.
“Young Master Wudi is invincible!”
Qian Xiaotian’s hands curled into fists. His face went pale, then red, then pale again. But he didn’t shout, and he didn’t cry. He bowed stiffly to the elders, turned, and walked back to his place.
As he passed, Qian Fan caught a glimpse of his expression.
It wasn’t despair.
It was the look of someone quietly adding up everything the world owed him.
Yep, Qian Fan thought. Definitely the protagonist.
* * *
“Qian Fan, step forward.”
Nobody reacted.
Not a single head turned. Not a single whisper rose. Several people didn’t even pause their conversations. Qian Fan was a side-branch kid with ordinary parents, ordinary results, ordinary talent, and a face so forgettable that one of his aunts called him “Qian Fang” for three straight years.
He was fine with that.
Tens of thousands of phone calls had taught him one important lesson: the customer who gets noticed is the customer who gets targeted.
Although Qian Fan finally gets to cultivate in this world, he wants to do it in peace and cultivate on the sidelines.
He walked to the pedestal. Elder Qian Zhuo snored. The gray-bearded elder was squinting at his list.
Qian Fan laid his hand on the Testing Stone.
It was cool and smooth, and it hummed against his palm. He felt a gentle tug, as if the stone were tasting him.
A green light rose from its depths. Not bright. Not dim. Not flickering. Just a clean, steady, perfectly average green.
“Yellow Grade,” the elder said, and wrote it down without looking up.
That was it.
No gasps. No laughter. No cold air. Somewhere in the back, someone yawned.
Qian Fan lifted his hand and bowed.
Body Tempering 4th layer, he recited to himself. Yellow Grade. Completely average. No one will ever look at me twice.
Perfect.
He glanced at his parents. Liu An had both hands pressed over her heart, as if she might cry from relief. Qian Hou was giving him two enthusiastic thumbs-up.
“Green!” his father shouted.
“Hmm. Hmm. Very dignified!”
Qian Fan smiled and started to walk back toward his place.
Across the courtyard, Qian Wudi was still bragging. Qian Xiaotian was staring at the ground. On the platform, Qian Wanjin sipped his tea like a man who owned the morning. And beneath the wutong tree, Elder Qian Zhuo shifted on his stool, smacked his lips, and went on sleeping.
It was exactly how the novels always began, Qian Fan thought. Somewhere in this courtyard, a legend was about to rise. The trash would become a genius. The arrogant will be humbled. Treasures would rain from the sky.
And none of it would happen to him.
He had made his peace with that long ago. He was the background character. The cousin in the crowd. The guy the author forgot to name.
He would live quietly, help his parents at the stall, and stay far, far away from the protagonist’s blast radius and cultivate in peace.
That was the plan.
He took one step.
Then a voice spoke from somewhere inside his skull.
It was bright. It was bubbly. It was warm and polite and endlessly, relentlessly cheerful.
And he knew it.
He had heard that exact tone tens of thousands of times, coming from his own mouth.
[Ding!]
[Host compatibility confirmed!]
[Thank you for choosing the Buy Now, Pay Later System, where your dreams can’t want!]
Qian Fan froze mid-step.
A translucent blue panel unfolded in front of his eyes, invisible to everyone else. Tiny golden coins sparkled along its edges like confetti.
[System activated!]
[Congratulations, Host! Your current rank: Beggar. 😊]
In the middle of the ancestral courtyard, surrounded by his entire clan, Qian Fan felt a cold bead of sweat roll down his spine.
Oh no, he thought.
I know this script.