[Would you like to make your first sale, Host? 😊]
Qian Fan looked at the boy by the wall.
Qian Xiaotian hadn’t moved. His face was still buried in his patched sleeves, and the thin strip of shade around him felt colder than the rest of the courtyard.
No, Qian Fan thought.
[No? 😮]
Not now.
[Host, our data shows that customers are most receptive during moments of emotional vulnerability! 😊]
Qian Fan’s jaw tightened.
It was true. Qian Fan knew it better than most people. His old company had printed that exact sentence in the training manual, right next to a cartoon of a smiling telephone.
“I’m so sorry that you think that you feel you are all alone in this world. One thing that helps with loneliness is entertainment and playing video games with friends or strangers on the internet. Just for 1,500 dollars, you can buy a Mediator Gaming Laptop with Mintel i9 with BTX 5370, and we have great news just for you! We have a special flash sale today, and you can get the Mediator Gaming Laptop for only 1199!”
Remembering his past life of trying to upsell vulnerable people made Qian Fan feel soulless in the past. When you try to stop upselling, you’ll get called to the supervisor’s office and get shouted at. You choose, Lucas. Either you do this, or you’ll get the boot. My team’s KPI have fallen because of you!
People’s emotions are being played with just because your boss wants to reach beyond his sales quota and KPIs for his team. What a soulless job.
Rule number two of sales, he thought. Never pitch a customer while he’s crying.
[That is not one of our rules.]
It’s one of mine.
The panel paused for a moment, as if it were writing something down.
[Noted! 😊]
Qian Fan turned and walked back to the courtyard without looking over his shoulder.
* * *
By sunset, the ceremony already felt like a strange dream.
Qian Fan’s side branch lived at the far edge of the clan compound, where the grand stone walls gave way to plain wooden fences, and the roofs sagged a little more with each rainy season.
Qian Fan’s home was a small courtyard house with three rooms, one crooked plum tree, and a kitchen that doubled as the dining room, the storeroom, and, during winter, the only warm place in the house.
Dinner tonight was rice porridge, pickled radish, and one boiled egg.
Liu An cut the egg into three pieces with the care of a surgeon.
Qian Hou immediately slid his piece into Qian Fan’s bowl.
“You need it more,” he said. “You’re growing.
“He’s sixteen,” Liu An. “He’s done growing.”
“Then he needs it for dignity.”
Liu An sighed and slid her piece into Qian Fan’s bowl too.
Qian Fan looked down at his porridge, now crowned with an entire egg, and felt something warm and uncomfortable in his chest. He pushed one piece back toward each of them.
“We’ll split it properly,” he said. “I’m not a young master.”
His father laughed. His mother pretended not to smile.
For a while, they ate in comfortable silence. The plum tree creaked in the evening wind. Somewhere down the lane, a neighbor was loudly scolding a chicken, and the chicken was loudly scolding back.
Then Liu An put down her spoon and took out the family money pouch.
Qian Fan knew that pouch well. It was a faded blue cloth with a knot his mother tied in a special way so she would know if anyone had opened it. She emptied it onto the table and began counting.
Copper coins. A small, sad hill of them.
Two silver taels, which she set apart from the rest like honored guests.
“The stall made forty-two coppers this afternoon,” she said. “Minus the rent for the space. Minus the radishes we didn’t sell.”
“I sold three clay bowls,” Qian Hou said proudly.
“You sold three clay bowls for the price of two.”
“The old widow Zhang was buying them. She has so many grandchildren.”
“She has four grandchildren, and one of them owns a teahouse.”
Qian Hou looked genuinely surprised.
“Really?”
Liu An rubbed her forehead.
Qian Fan watched them and felt the old part of him, the part that had spent a lifetime on the phone, quietly do the math. Forty-two coppers. A thousand copperas to one silver tael. Ten silver taels to a gold tael.
And a single low-grade spirit stone was worth a hundred silver taels.
His family’s stall would need years to earn one.
“The clan elders posted the new assignments,” Liu An said, sweeping the coins back into the pouch.
“Since you received a Yellow Grade, you’ll continue basic cultivation with the other side-branch children in the mornings. In the afternoon, you’ll help at the stall.”
“The stall,” Qian Fan repeated.
“Is that a problem?”
“No,” Qian Fan said. “No problem at all.”
For the first time in sixteen years, stall duty sounded like the best news he’d ever heard.
‘A way for me to reach my quotas without thinking of complicated plans.’
“Poor Xiaotian, though,” Qian Hou said quietly.
“Gray. At sixteen. And his mother’s medicine costs a fortune.”
“He came by the stall last month,” Liu An said.
“He haggled with your father for an hour over a single radish.”
“Fifty minutes,” Qian Hou corrected.
“And he had very good arguments. In the end, I gave it to him for free.”
“Of course you did.”
“He paid me back the next week,” Qian Hou added.
“One copper. Exactly>”
Liu An nodded. “People were whispering after the ceremony. They say the Su Clan won’t want to keep that engagement anymore. Poor child.”
Qian Fan’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth.
Engagement? Su Clan? A trash-talent fiancé humiliated in front of the whole clan?
He knew exactly what came next. Every cultivation novel reader did.
“Son?” his mother said.
“You look pale.”
“It’s the radish,” Qian Fan said.
* * *
That night, after his parents fell asleep, Qian Fan sat cross-legged on his narrow bed. Moonlight leaked through the cracked shutter and laid a thin silver stripe across the floor.
Through the thin wall, he could hear his father snoring. Outside, the plum tree scratched at the roof. The whole house was asleep except for him.
All right, he thought. Let’s open it.
[Wonderful! 🎉]
The blue panel bloomed in front of him. In its center floated a small wrapped box, tied with a golden ribbon, spinning slowly like a gift in a shop window.
[Novice Gift Pack]
[Congratulations on your first day, Host! We’re so excited to grow together! 😊]
Qian Fan reached out and touched it.
The ribbon unraveled. The lid popped open with a cheerful little sound, like a firecracker designed for children. A shower of tiny golden coins rained down across the panel and faded.
A list appeared.
[Items received:]
[Iron Hide Tempering Manual x1]
[Marrow Cleansing Pill x1]
[Bone-Strengthening Salve x3]
[Lesser Body Tempering Pill]
[Complimentary Towel x1]
Qian Fan stared at the last line.
A towel?
[Every customer deserves a premium experience! 😊]
He decided to come back to the towel.
With a thought, the first item appeared in his hands.
The Iron Hide Tempering Manual was a thin book bound in cracked brown leather. The cover was stained. One corner looked like a rat had tasted it and decided it wasn’t worth finishing. When he flipped it open, the pages were yellowed, and the characters were faded, as if someone had written them in weak tea a hundred years ago.
It looked like junk.
It looked exactly like the kind of junk that sat at the bottom of a market stall for years.
Appraise it, Qian Fan thought.
[Appraisal complete!]
[Iron Hide Tempering Manual]
[Grade: Mortal Grade, High]
[Effect: A complete Body Tempering technique. Strengthens skin, muscle, and bone together. Greatly accelerates progress through the Body Tempering Layers.]
[Market Value: 30 Silver Taels]
Qian Fan’s breath caught.
Thirty silver taels. His mother had two in the family pouch. At forty-two coppers a day, the stall would need two years to earn that much.
And it looked like something you’d use to wedge a table leg.
He picked up the next item. The Marrow Cleansing Pill was a lumpy gray ball about the size of a lychee, with a faint smell of wet dirt.
[Appraisal Complete!]
[Marrow Cleansing Pill]
[Grade: Mortal Grade, High]
[Effect: Purges impurities from bone and marrow. Improves cultivation speed.]
[Side Effect: Extremely unpleasant. 😊]
[Market Value: 20 Silver Taels]
Qian Fan slowly understood.
This was what every novel had been describing. The rusty sword at the bottom of a pawnshop. The dusty manual under a pile of scrolls. The pill that looked like a dung ball but turned a trash-talent boy into a genius overnight.
Somebody had to put them there.
Now that somebody was him.
He rolled the pill between his fingers. It was lumpy and gray and smelled like a riverbank, and it could make him faster, stronger, better.
He thought about swallowing it.
Then he thought about twenty silver taels.
Twenty silver taels were ten times what was in his mother’s pouch. Twenty silver taels was new clay bowls, a patched roof, meat at dinner for a month.
If he swallowed it, that money was gone.
He put the pill back into his inventory very quickly, before his ambition could argue with his wallet.
[Host, as a reminder, you may use any System item yourself! All System goods are tailor-fitted for the Host! 😊]
I know.
[Shall I—]
I know.
To distract himself, he tested Appraisal on everything else in the room.
[Appraisal Complete!]
[Pillows, stuffed with buckwheat husks]
[Market Value: 6 coppers]
[Appraisal Complete!]
[Clay cup, slightly chipped]
[Market Value: 2 coppers]
[Note: Host’s father would sell it for 1. 😊]
Qian Fan snorted and nearly woke the house.
The remaining starter items were exactly what they claimed to be. The Bone-Strengthening Salve was a greenish paste in little wooden jars that made sore muscles stop aching. The Lesser Body Tempering Pills were small brown beads that helped with training. Useful. Cheap. Worth a few dozen coppers each.
Good stock for a stall, he thought. Good stock for a Beggar.
Out of curiosity, he opened the Shop again, and this time he paid attention to the prices. The cheapest items available to him cost a handful of coppers. The best cost a few silver taels.
At the top of the page, in small, polite letters, was a number he hadn’t noticed before.
[Host Balance: 0 coppers]
Qian Fan looked at it for a while.
[It’s a journey, Host! 😊]
Yes, he thought. You mentioned.
* * *
The last item was the Complimentary Towel.
It appeared in his hands, fluffy and white and absurdly soft, embroidered in one corner with a tiny golden coin.
He looked at it for a long time.
Why a towel?
[You’ll understand when you need it! 😊]
That wasn’t an answer. It was a warning.
He put the towel away too.
Then he rubbed his eyes and asked the question that had been sitting in the back of his mind since the toilet.
One more thing. Can you scan me?
[Of course, Host! Beginning Host scan!]
A thin line of blue light swept down from the top of his head to his toes. It tingled like cold water.
[Scan Complete!]
[Name: Qian Fan]
[Cultivation: Body Tempering, 4th layer]
[Talent: Yellow Grade]
[Spirit Root: None of note]
[Spirit Bone: None]
[Bloodline: None]
[Physique: Completely Ordinary Body]
[Rarity: EXTREMELY RARE! Congratulations, Host! 😊]
Qian Fan read it twice.
Then a third time.
So you mean…nothing?
[Correct!]
How is “nothing” even extremely rare?!
[In this world, most young masters claim to have a special physique! A truly ordinary body is almost impossible to find! 😊]
Qian Fan thought about Qian Wudi. He was fairly certain Qian Wudi had announced at least two special physiques before breakfast.
So I’m rare because everyone else is lying?
[Exactly! Isn’t that wonderful? 😇]
Qian Fan lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
An ordinary body. No special bones for anyone to dig out. No mysterious bloodline for any hidden clan to hunt. Nothing any old monster would ever want to cut open.
He thought about it for a while and decided that actually, it was wonderful.
* * *
He was nearly asleep when the panel chimed again.
[Ding!]
The room lit up in soft gold.
[New Quest!]
Qian Fan opened one eye.
[Quest: First Sale]
[Sell an item to a Protagonist]
[Time Limit: 7 days]
[Reward: Starter capital + 1 free Lucky Draw spin! 🎰]
[Failure: The System will be very disappointed. 😊]
Beneath the text, a small golden line stretched across the dark room, through the wall, and out into the night, pointing somewhere toward the poorest corner of the Qian Clan compound.
Qian Fan didn’t need to ask where it led.
He looked at the line for a long moment. Then he looked at the manual in his Inventory. The one that looked like junk. The one worth thirty silver taels.
And he thought about a thin boy in patched sleeves who had once spent fifty minutes haggling over a radish.
Selling to a protagonist was one thing.
Selling to a cheapskate was going to be war.
[Timer started! 7 days remaining! ⏱️]