Underworld System Department
“Intern employee Lu Yuning.”
“Here.”
“You’re Lu Yuning?”
“Yes.”
Lu Yuning stood there nervously, looking at the personnel officer sitting behind the desk in front of her. Today was the new recruitment session for the System Department.
Originally, the Underworld had only the Quick Transmigration Department. Later, the Quick Transmigration Department split into two branches under the Heavenly Court. One responsible for handling missions in the Great Thousand Worlds, and the other for missions in the Small Thousand Worlds.
The old employees of the Underworld’s Quick Transmigration Department had all benefited from this transfer opportunity, leaping from ordinary dead souls waiting for reincarnation in the Underworld to official civil servants of the Heavenly Court, enjoying eternal life.
And now, all the souls in the Underworld knew that if they wanted to change their fate, entering the Quick Transmigration Department was the best choice.
However, recruitment for the Quick Transmigration Department had also become far stricter. A whole series of assessments were required, and the number of openings was extremely limited. It was so competitive that people could barely survive it!
Lu Yuning had originally been an overworked office slave in 23rd-century modern society. After suddenly dying from overtime at work, she arrived in the Underworld. Once they checked the merits and demerits of her past life, she learned she would need to wait in line for reincarnation for two thousand years.
So she started looking for work in the Underworld to support herself here.
Nowadays, the mortal world did have special institutions that helped living family members burn paper offerings for their deceased relatives to use in the Underworld.
The problem was… Lu Yuning had no family.
She was an orphan. She had lived for thirty-five years without ever finding out who her biological parents were.
But now, it no longer mattered. Lu Yuning had stopped caring long ago.
After living in the Underworld for a full three hundred years, she had finally managed to pass the Quick Transmigration Department’s examinations and earned an internship slot.
Yet at the very last moment, she learned that recruitment for the Quick Transmigration Department was already full.
However, for those like her who had passed the assessment and were only waiting to begin as interns, there was still one new opportunity.
After three thousand years of existence, the Underworld had finally decided to establish an entirely new department, the System Department.
Its purpose was to develop a mission system that would replace the original intelligent housekeeper and enter mission worlds together with task employees, supervising their behavior within those worlds.
And today, Lu Yuning had come for the official interview.
To select the most suitable employees, the Underworld’s Human Resources Department had specially arranged for officers to personally interview them.
Lu Yuning was terrified that the officer in front of her would reject her.
If that happened, she would have to spend another three hundred years preparing for the exams all over again.
At this rate, wouldn’t she still fail to get in even by the day she was supposed to reincarnate?
That would be way too miserable!
Just thinking about it made her feel suffocated.
After living in the Underworld for so long, Lu Yuning knew that only by becoming an employee of the System Department or the Quick Transmigration Department could she finally have stable pay and benefits.
Otherwise, even working as a food delivery worker in the Underworld was so brutally competitive it made you want to die all over again.
It was seriously too intense!
The officer interviewing her raised his eyes and gave her a brief once-over. He nodded slightly, then smack!! stamped a bright red seal onto her file.
“Congratulations. You passed the interview.”
Lu Yuning: ???
That was it?
That simple?
Still stunned, she took the file he handed over, along with an identity plaque, ancient-looking, dark black, with a faint cyan glow shimmering across its surface.
“Go over there to complete your onboarding procedures. After that, you can head to the dormitory. Tomorrow, your official induction training will begin.”
Only then did Lu Yuning snap back to her senses. She bent over repeatedly in thanks.
“Thank you, thank you so much.”
The officer only smiled faintly, waved his hand, and let her leave first.
Lu Yuning went to the onboarding office on the other side and completed the employment procedures. The identity plaque that the HR officer had handed her instantly turned into a streak of cyan light and disappeared into the space between her brows.
“All done. You can go arrange your dormitory check-in now.”
Lu Yuning hurried over…
After being busy for most of the day, Lu Yuning finally moved all her belongings from her temporary rented place into the dormitory.
This was the employee housing inside the System Department. There weren’t many people living here yet, and each unit had a one-bedroom, one-living-room layout. The decoration was warm and cozy. Looking out the window at the sunset and blue sky that looked no different from the human world, Lu Yuning finally felt her heart settle down.
But not long after, she discovered with great sorrow that joining the System Department wasn’t exactly easy either!
That pre-employment training before officially starting work. Was that seriously real?
Was it really okay to bully souls like that?
To sum it up in one sentence: it was hard to describe.
Even Lu Yuning, already a dead soul herself, felt that kind of training was simply too inhumane to souls!
Still, she gritted her teeth and endured it. In the end, she officially became an intern employee of the System Department and was assigned a brand-new system fresh from production line: System 009.
It was something like a virtual pet. It could project screens in the void and also display its own virtual form!
Before Lu Yuning even had time to properly get familiar with the still only basic-intelligence System 009, the task team leader had already urged them to hurry up, draw lots, and select their missions.
Taking a deep breath, Lu Yuning pressed the draw button.
Very quickly, the lot she drew appeared before her eyes:
Era Cannon Fodder Series.
The task team leader nodded. “Alright, go back to the mission room and start your task. Next.”
Lu Yuning: …
Just looking at the mission name already didn’t feel very promising!
Unfortunately, she didn’t have one of those soul-bound personal storage spaces, so she could only head to the mission room nervously.
Because all the systems in the System Department were newly manufactured, they had to stay inside the mission room when carrying out tasks for now. There were dedicated technical staff and medical personnel responsible for monitoring the state of their souls.
If anything went wrong, the mission could be terminated immediately.
This was also for their safety.
The mission room assigned to Lu Yuning matched her system number, 009.
Following the instructions from the staff, Lu Yuning lay down inside the mission pod in the room and closed her eyes.
In an instant, she arrived in a virtual mission lounge.
This would be the place where she selected missions from now on.
System 009’s virtual form was a round little white bear. At this moment, it floated adorably in midair, looking simple and cute as it asked Lu Yuning, “Intern employee Lu Yuning, would you like to select a mission now?”
Lu Yuning nodded. “Yes.”
“Alright. Displaying mission list.”
009’s voice wasn’t stiff or mechanical at all. Instead, just like its virtual appearance, it sounded soft and cute, which immediately improved Lu Yuning’s mood and eased much of the nervousness in her heart.
She looked at the mission list displayed in midair and realized that every mission title was written in the format of The Counterpart in XX Story!
Lu Yuning instantly understood.
So the Era Cannon Fodder Series she had drawn was actually made up of worlds from novels!
Well, maybe not just novels—it could also be film or television dramas. They had already been introduced to this during training.
These worlds were gradually born because of the love and obsession of book fans or drama fans, eventually forming stable Small Thousand Worlds.
Now that Lu Yuning understood the nature of her future work, she felt much more at ease. She pressed random mission selection.
Immediately, one mission popped up:
The Cannon Fodder in a Fortune Child Story
Lu Yuning raised her brows slightly, clicked Enter, and System 009 immediately activated the mission entry procedure…
In the blink of an eye, Lu Yuning had already arrived inside the mission world.
1960, Hong’an Brigade.
Hong’an Brigade had originally been called Hong’an Village. After the people’s commune system was restructured, because the village had a large population and covered a wide area, it was directly made into an independent brigade.
Under the brigade were ten production teams. Each team was divided into ten groups, and each group contained ten households.
This time, Lu Yuning had transmigrated into the Lu family of Group Six, First Production Team, becoming Lu Yuning, the youngest daughter of the third branch of the Lu family.
The moment she entered the mission world, she instantly received the entire plotline of this world.
This was standard for all Small Thousand World missions of this type and had been established after multiple reforms by the Quick Transmigration Department.
Previously, it hadn’t been like this at all.
Back then, they would only be given the mission objective, and the task employee had to improvise everything themselves. If they performed well, the mission would be completed. If they performed badly… Well, GG.
The plot of this mission was actually from an era novel called The Beloved Lucky Child of the Sixties.
The female lead was Lu Yuxin from the neighboring family.
Oh, right.
In Hong’an Village… no, Hong’an Brigade, the surname Lu was a major clan surname. Nearly half the people here were relatives from the same family genealogy.
Of course, after five generations of separation, they were relatives in name only. Whether they were actually close depended on how people got along with each other.
Back to the main point.
The female lead, Lu Yuxin, was the beloved lucky child in The Beloved Lucky Child of the Sixties.
And the original host?
She was the unlucky counterpart from the family next door.
The more spoiled and cherished Lu Yuxin was at home, the less favored the original host was.
This was how the plot presented it to Lu Yuning.
As for what the truth was, she would have to observe that herself.
The point in time she had transmigrated into was when the original host was five years old.
This time node should have been especially important to the original host, which was why it had been set here.
For missions of this type, the original host who issued the mission request did not necessarily share the same name as the task employee.
However, to make it easier for task employees to function in the mission world, the Underworld had methods to change the original host’s name to match the task employee’s.
Or rather, what the task employee saw was her own name, while the people in the original host’s world still saw the original host’s real name.
There was no need to go into too much detail about all that.
In short, every original host in the mission worlds Lu Yuning would transmigrate into from now on would be “sharing the same name” as her.
As for those original hosts who were able to issue missions, most of them possessed some merit. They used that merit in exchange for the chance to make up for the regrets of their previous lives.
That was how these missions came to exist.
Some missions were also meant to resolve the resentment lingering in the original host’s soul, allowing them to reincarnate more peacefully.
For the mission Lu Yuning had accepted this time, the original host did not carry much resentment. She simply had great regrets, so she used her merit to make up for them.
Afterward, through dreams, she would be able to see the life trajectory created after the task employee completed the mission. That would count as fully resolving the regrets of that lifetime, allowing her either to reincarnate peacefully or to continue living her already reincarnated life with peace of mind.
After understanding the mission plot, Lu Yuning calmed herself and prepared to complete the task.
The original host’s mission objective was:
To be the protagonist of her own life for once, and live out her natural lifespan.
Lu Yuning thought, That sounds pretty simple.
System 009 reminded her:
【Intern employee, I must remind you that this is your beginner mission, with the lowest difficulty. But please do not let your guard down. If your mission completion rating does not meet the standard, then this beginner mission will be considered a failure. At that point, you will have to return for pre-employment training before coming back to do missions again.】
The moment Lu Yuning thought about that soul-crushing pre-employment training, she immediately shuddered.
No!
She absolutely had to complete this mission properly!
【Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.】
【Very good. Then this system will now enter sleep auto-monitoring mode. Intern employee, from now on, you’ll be relying on yourself! Good luck!】
As soon as it said that, System 009 completely disappeared!
Lying on the small bed, Lu Yuning opened her eyes and looked around at her surroundings. Then she peacefully went to sleep.
She was still a child right now.
First, she should get some proper sleep. Everything else could wait.