[Not a fast-paced, face-slapping tycoon novel. No showing off or slapping faces. Slow burn. Romance. Both male and female leads are growth-oriented. Enter at your own risk!]
One yuan per second?
Really? Just breathing and you earn money?
Poor for half her life, Zhang Fan never imagined that one day such good fortune would fall upon her.
She had awakened the God-tier Tycoon System!
In the office, her boss’s face was covered in fleshy lumps, spit flying as he berated his employees like they were less than dirt.
But at this moment, Zhang Fan felt as though heavenly music was playing in her mind:
[Ding!]
[Detected that the host has worked diligently yet remains impoverished. The “Super Subsidy System” has been specially activated for the host!]
[From this moment on, the system will grant the host one yuan per second!]
[This is a beginner-level subsidy. If the host wishes to upgrade, you may select an upgrade mission upon the next system awakening!]
[The subsidy takes effect in real time with no side effects. Please use it with peace of mind, host!]
“Zhang Fan, are you even listening?”
Boss Huang Daren stood with his hands on his hips, his bulging eyes looking like they might pop out of their sockets.
Even more prominent than his eyeballs were the dark circles under his eyes that nearly hung to his chin. You’d think he was exhausted from overwork, wouldn’t you?
Yes and no!
The work that wore him out so badly was certainly not at the company.
“Zhang Fan, you’re a veteran employee. Work requires brains, not a uterus! Don’t think that just because you’re a woman, you can coast by at this company!
If that’s your attitude, then get the hell home and put your uterus to good use making money!”
These words again!
Zhang Fan clenched her jaw. She desperately wanted to slap Huang Daren across the face.
This crappy company—she’d been here since graduation. From an intern’s salary of fifteen hundred, she’d worked fifteen years, and her pay had barely crawled up to eight thousand.
Eight thousand—in this era of skyrocketing prices, if it were just her alone, it might barely be enough to scrape by.
But she had to send half of it to her parents’ bank card every month!
Four thousand yuan—not because she volunteered, but because Huang Daren forced it.
One salary, deposited into two bank cards—even the finance department wanted to curse when they heard about it, but Huang Daren, as the boss, just went ahead and did it.
It wasn’t out of kindness, nor because he had any familial connection to Zhang Fan’s parents.
He just did it to show off—to show off that he was the boss, that he controlled his employees’ lives and deaths!
The whole thing started when Zhang Fan’s parents tried to marry her off to a widower whose wife had died, for a bride price of four hundred eighty thousand yuan.
Zhang Fan refused, so her parents came to the company to make a scene.
When Huang Daren saw this, he thought—how could he let this stand? He had to step in and settle the matter!
And so it began—every month, half of Zhang Fan’s salary was forcibly deposited into her parents’ account.
Four thousand yuan—after deducting social insurance, medical insurance, and rent, she didn’t even have money left to see a doctor!
But to keep her parents from causing more trouble, to smooth things over, she could only pinch her nose and endure it.
Her sacrifice and forbearance, however, did not buy her the peace she wanted.
It was as if Huang Daren had received some kind of signal—that Zhang Fan was made of clay, to be bullied at will.
From that time on, for how many years now, Zhang Fan’s salary had never increased, yet her workload kept growing.
Now, she was nearly forty.
Because of her family situation, she had never dated, had no personal life. Every day was the same two points on a line—rental apartment and company. If she wasn’t at work, she was working overtime.
The labels stuck to her grew more numerous: older single woman, brother-supporting fanatic, overtime maniac…
Yet the money in her pocket grew less and less. Prices were rising, her salary wasn’t—which was the same as a pay cut.
But she didn’t dare change jobs—one day without work meant no money for rent, no money for food.
If she switched jobs and her parents didn’t receive their money, they would cause an earth-shattering uproar, making you wish you could just die on the spot!
Fortunately, she had made it through!
As long as this system that had awakened in her mind was real, her true life was about to be reborn!
Pulling her thoughts together, Zhang Fan took out her phone and opened her e-account. At that moment, her balance had just updated—one yuan had been added, and then it changed again…
One yuan per second, no mistake!
With this money, why would she still go to work?
That life-sucking job—whoever wanted it could have it! That humiliating bullshit—whoever wanted to swallow it could swallow it!
With money in hand, she was going to reclaim her childhood, her youth—everything!
She was going to fall in love with passion and abandon, and live life to the fullest!
“What the hell is your attitude?”
Huang Daren snatched her phone and slammed it hard on the table. The already battered device shattered into a spiderweb of cracks on the screen.
“You’re playing with your phone during a meeting? You’re fired. Get the hell out!”
He barked at her like she was a dog, fully expecting Zhang Fan to cower and grovel like she had every time before, saying all the right words to appease him.
But times had changed! Something he could never have imagined had happened right under his nose.
“First, I was not playing with my phone!”
Zhang Fan’s cold, sharp voice cut through the air. Meeting Huang Daren’s slightly startled gaze, she raised her thin, gaunt face: “To avoid making mistakes at work, I make it a habit to record video and audio!”
With that, she swiped across the cracked screen and opened the video recording:
“Second, I made no mistake! The document was changed exactly as you instructed—I have the recording to prove it!”
She stepped back, dodging Huang Daren’s attempt to grab her phone again.
“Third, I accept your termination! Please pay me the compensation I’m owed under labor law—that is, according to my years of service, one month’s salary for every full year worked!”
Counting from her internship, Zhang Fan had been at this company for nineteen full years. At a salary of eight thousand, that meant she was entitled to one hundred and fifty-two thousand yuan in compensation.
That was what she could actually get on paper. But recently, Huang Daren had been keeping a mistress, and his monthly spending was running too high. Afraid his wife would find out, he’d been diverting part of the payments through Zhang Fan’s salary.
On the finance department’s payroll, Zhang Fan’s salary was listed as eighteen thousand!
Given her long tenure and her position, that pay rate was perfectly normal.
Calculated on that basis, the compensation would be three hundred and forty-two thousand yuan—more than double the actual figure!
And that was what she rightfully deserved!
Riding a bicycle to a bar—save where you should, splurge where you should!
Even if she had the God-tier Tycoon System and got paid just for breathing, what rightfully belonged to her would never be handed to someone else for nothing!
Zhang Fan stared at Huang Daren without flinching: “Please notify finance right now to settle my salary and compensation! I believe you know the law better than I do, so you should also know exactly what my compensation should amount to.”
“You—”
Huang Daren hadn’t expected Zhang Fan to suddenly grow a backbone: “You’re trying to extort me?”
He looked her up and down with disdain—this woman closing in on forty. How dare she have this kind of nerve?
Without a job, without income, wouldn’t her parents skin her alive?
“The moment you take this money, it goes on your record. You’ll never find a better job for the rest of your life!”
Huang Daren’s eyes issued the warning: You’d better behave yourself!
But Zhang Fan just smiled. “This is a perfectly legitimate compensation claim. If you insist on calling it extortion… I can ask the boss lady to come over and judge for herself!”
At the mention of the boss lady, Huang Daren’s face darkened instantly. Today’s Zhang Fan seemed a bit harder to handle, didn’t he?
“Fine! That was my slip of the tongue just now. You’re a long-time employee of the company—you know I have a foul temper.”
With that, he pulled Zhang Fan aside and said in a low voice, “I’ll give you a raise—two hundred more every month, paid straight into your account!”