[Goddess Development System]
The day before the school term began, the Affiliated High School once again came alive with activity. The school gate was packed with luxury cars, and students, parents, or hired workers sent by wealthy families bustled through the campus, busy completing registration procedures and picking up course materials for the new semester.
As the top international high school in Dongjia Province, its student body was famously wealthy and elite. Yet, it enforced strict rules that even ordinary high schools might not have—for instance, on registration day prior to the start of term, even if a student could not attend in person, someone had to complete the procedures on their behalf.
Having been apart for the entire summer break, students gathered in groups of three to five, discussing where they had traveled or studied abroad, breaking into cheerful laughter every now and then.
Inside a vacant small demonstration classroom in the International Department’s Second Teaching Building, however, a brawl was underway.
To be precise, a gang of people beating up one person.
Gao Zhuo, the leader of the gang, was furious about how the fight was going. Last semester, he had mocked Xu Fuguang several times without getting much of a reaction. Encountering him again today on registration day, seeing that the guy wouldn’t even spare him a glance, he called over his cronies and dragged Xu Fuguang in here. He never expected that Xu Fuguang—who usually seemed quiet and was known to have a heart condition—would throw hands without a word. Furthermore, he was such a capable fighter that the four of them failed to gain any advantage over him.
With a loud clang, someone lost their temper and lunged with a chair. Xu Fuguang dodged, but the chair leg still grazed him, and blood instantly welled from the wound. The attacker had clearly acted in the heat of the moment; seeing blood, he froze on the spot, and his companions panicked slightly as well.
Yet Xu Fuguang, as if feeling no pain despite his injury, swung back and landed a punch right on the guy’s face. He then bypassed everyone, grabbed Gao Zhuo in a tight grip, and using his momentum as he stumbled, yanked Gao Zhuo by the hair and slammed his head into the corner of a desk.
Xu Fuguang had only transferred to this high school in the big city last semester. Due to his illness and various other reasons, he had indeed maintained a low-profile philosophy of keeping the peace and avoiding conflict whenever possible. But these past few days, his temper was already flare-hot. When Gao Zhuo dragged him into the demonstration classroom and shoved him around, he figured if he endured this any longer, he might as well become a monk.
“Goddess Development System successfully bound. Please confirm, User 2586,” a wildly ill-timed, adorable voice suddenly chirped in his ear. “Detecting that User 2586’s current behavior does not comply with Goddess Standards. Please correct it promptly~”
Xu Fuguang heard it, but acted as though he hadn’t. He had heard that first part countless times over the past few days, but the second part was new—and hearing it made him… even more furious.
After several heavy thuds, Gao Zhuo wailed in agony as blood instantly trickled out from between his roots. The sight acted like a terrifying signal: the others who had been grabbing at Xu Fuguang were instantly spooked. The atmosphere in the room shifted abruptly from a brawl to a hostage rescue.
Amidst the shouting and screaming, Xu Fuguang held Gao Zhuo’s head in a death grip, his eyes so fierce it looked as though he truly meant to take a life. A week ago, he had suddenly begun suffering harassment from this cute, repetitive voice. At the same time, information was downloaded into his brain, telling him that his life countdown had only xxx days remaining.
At first, he thought he had developed a mental illness, but trips to the hospital yielded no medical diagnosis. It left him unable to stop thinking: if all of this was real—then what had all his endurance and restraint for the sake of treating his illness been for?
It sounded like a cliché drama: he was a child swapped at birth, and only left his foster parents to rejoin his biological ones a little over half a year ago. As for the catalyst, he had suffered a sudden heart attack during his second year of middle school; after being rushed to the hospital, routine tests revealed he shared no blood relation with his family.
The Xu family was quite ordinary, living in a small city under the jurisdiction of Dongjia Province. Both parents were teachers—one in high school, the other in primary school—and while their life wasn’t opulent, it was peaceful and harmonious.
In this day and age, tracking down biological parents wasn’t difficult as long as no abandonment or trafficking was involved. What came as a surprise was that the Xie couple, who had given birth in the same hospital back then, had achieved considerable business success over the years. The Xie family seemed proactive about taking back their biological child. Furthermore, the heart defect diagnosed in Xu Fuguang had no direct cure at the time, and medical facilities in the big city were undeniably superior. After several negotiations, Xu Fuguang was ultimately sent back to live with the Xie family.
When he first arrived at the Xies, despite many things feeling unfamiliar, Xu Fuguang remained optimistic. His only goals were to get his condition under control early, adapt to the environment, work harder in the future, and strive to support the parents on both sides.
That was until Xie Can, the other protagonist in the mix-up, reappeared outside the Xie family’s door shortly after returning to the Xu family. Crying, Xie Can threw himself into an embrace with the Xie couple he had lived with for over a decade, saying he couldn’t bear to sever the bond of affection built over so many years.
With the Xie family’s wealth, raising an extra child posed no real burden. For reasons unknown, the Xu family didn’t fight hard to keep him either. In short, Xie Can managed to stay. Based on their birth times, he was half an hour younger than Xu Fuguang, thus becoming Xu Fuguang’s younger brother in name.
Xu Fuguang actually had no objections to this. He felt little sense of belonging to the Xie family, and having had a large group of friends back at his old school, what was one more brother?
However, before long, he realized that Xie Can viewed his very existence as a thorn in his side. Everything was done subtly, with no open, knife-out conflicts, but no matter how thick-skinned Xu Fuguang was, he wasn’t an idiot: the small groups at the new school making trouble for no reason, the subtle exclusion from peers among the Xie family’s relatives, and Xie Can’s compulsive need to outshine him in front of outsiders every single time.
Xu Fuguang had always been a straight shooter. Upon noticing these things, he brought them up with the adults a few times, hoping his guardians would have a serious talk with Xie Can to give him a sense of security and boundaries, rather than constantly stirring up unnecessary drama.
Yet every time, the Xie couple would simply reply: “You’re overthinking it, Fuguang. Your brother is so obedient; how could he possibly do something like that?”
Afterward, Xie Can would indeed restrain himself for a while before slipping right back into his old habits. Over time, Xu Fuguang saw through their attempts to paper over the cracks. As for the reason, he could guess the clues from the things Xie Can occasionally couldn’t resist bragging about—setting aside the emotional bonds built over years of raising him, compared to Xu Fuguang, who grew up in a small town and was plagued by illness, Xie Can had been raised with immense financial investment in his education, carrying the extraordinarily vast ambitions of the Xie couple.
Fortunately, Xu Fuguang wasn’t starved for love. The behavior of his biological parents only left him feeling disappointed for a brief moment. As long as he could get his illness treated and hold out until he became independent, he didn’t mind reining in his temper and playing along. After all, if Han Xin could endure the humiliation of crawling between someone’s legs, what did enduring this brief moment matter?
But now, someone was telling him that he was about to die.
‘By what right?!’
“Goddess Development System successfully bound. Please confirm, User 2586.”
The cute broadcast voice repeated itself twice more, mingling with the shouts of “Holy shit, holy shit!” and “Are you trying to kill someone?!” from the others. Xu Fuguang was finally shoved back, nearly stumbling, but without a second’s delay, he picked up another chair and hurled it toward the group.
Amidst the shouting and screaming, the cute voice was completely out of the loop and suddenly said in a daze: “User 2586 signal obstructed. Switched to Smart Mode.”
Right after, a very cybernetic mechanical voice chimed in, its tone flat and unbothered: “No signal obstruction detected. User 2586, do you require assistance?”
Whoever just came online, Xu Fuguang still ignored it—he was far too busy. Since a fight had broken out, he had to beat these guys into submission once and for all. Or better yet, everyone could just die together; since he didn’t have long to live anyway, why not take a few down with him?
He didn’t react, but the system—whatever it was supposed to do—had a huge reaction. In just a few seconds, the air before his eyes suddenly distorted and trembled, accompanied by a string of beeps: “Scanning—User scan result: Carbon-based lifeform, Male. Testing—Cellular test result: Carbon-based lifeform, Male. Worldview network loading—Loading complete. User 2586 determined gender: Male.”
Xu Fuguang: ?
‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Is this system actually dumb as hell? It only noticed something so glaringly obvious just now?’
The noise in his ears vanished the next second after the result was determined. ‘Fine by me,’ Xu Fuguang thought as he swung the chair. ‘It’s finally scrammed.’
The chair whistled as it cut through the air. A large portion of Gao Zhuo’s shirt was stained red as he sprawled on the ground, dodging in utter disgrace. He was completely concussed from the impact, in pain and furious, but still remembered to hurl threats: “Aargh—Fuck, you’re still coming at me?! Are you insane, Xu Fuguang?! Believe it or not, I’ll call the police… I’ll fucking destroy you! Aargh—”
Seeing that the gang was only dodging and didn’t dare fight back anymore, Xu Fuguang was exhausted and finally stopped. He was still somewhat out of breath, but his voice was eerily calm: “Great. You’d better call the police or kill me. I have a heart condition, so I can get released on bail for medical treatment. Unless you kill me right on the spot, the moment I find an opportunity, I’ll murder your whole family. I know where you live—No. 18 Linyin Road, right?”
He then turned to the others: “Or I could just kill all of you right now and get the death penalty. I might even get off with just excessive self-defense. Either way, I don’t lose.”
He tossed the chair aside and slowly walked forward, asking the few people before him: “Wanna try?”
He was dead serious. The few people, either sprawling or sitting on the floor, were all frozen in place. They were just teenagers in high school from a big city who usually only dared to bully people with verbal taunts. When a fight drew blood, their instinct was to panic; where had they ever seen a setup like this?
Gao Zhuo was equally dazed. He stared up blankly: the teenager standing still before him was very thin and still panting, but his posture was straight as a die. As he stepped closer, he didn’t even lower his head, his downward glare half-hidden behind bangs soaked in sweat.
There was dead silence, leaving only the thudding sound of their hearts pounding like war drums.
“Beep!”
Only one person heard a different cute voice in his ears at that moment:
“Congratulations to the user for unlocking the hidden achievement—’Foolish men, kneel before this Queen’s pomegranate skirt this instant!’—Detecting that up to three targets achieved this goal simultaneously! Congratulations to User 2586 for receiving the Platinum reward: ‘Eyes unforgettable at first sight’, and 666 Mall Coins. The Mall has been unlocked for you concurrently. Our goal is: Devastatingly breathtaking beauty!”
Xu Fuguang: “…?”
System: “!”
Xu Fuguang’s extreme thoughts instantly collapsed under the absurdity. ‘What absolute bullshit did I just hear?’
“N-No need for that… That, uh, Brother Xu… it’s not worth it for you either. There’s no CCTV here, so we won’t… Brother…”
A slightly trembling, exceptionally dry voice from below pulled Xu Fuguang’s attention back. He glanced down to see that the other three, including this person, were now all hiding behind Gao Zhuo. Their faces were pale as sheets, huddled together in a tight ball. Because they were shrinking back so much, they were practically in a kneeling-sitting position.
‘Kneel before me? Under my pomegranate skirt?’
Xu Fuguang: ‘Is this thing out of its mind?’