Imperial Capital City.
A lavishly decorated carriage rolled down the street, ten guards flanking it on either side, an imposing sight from afar.
Inside sat a young nobleman in brocade finery. He drew back the window curtain, his eyes dull and spiritless as he watched the passersby drift to and fro.
More precisely, he was watching the karmic fortune hovering above each passerby’s head.
In the nobleman’s sight, not far off a middle-aged man hawked candied hawthorns along the street, a [5] floating above his head — business would be good for him today, it seemed.
Across the street, a young woman in a long skirt bore a [7] — this girl would marry into a fine family one day.
In the alley ahead crouched a beggar, unkempt and filthy, with a [0] hovering above his head… Well, you deserve to be a beggar. Is there a single wretch under heaven with lower fortune than yours?
The young nobleman, Li Xu, shook his head and sighed twice on the beggar’s behalf, then pulled out a bronze mirror and studied himself in it.
Reflected there, the karmic fortune above his own head read: [-4].
“That’s right.”
“The wretch with lower fortune than a beggar — that’s me.”
Li Xu forced a pale, feeble smile at the mirror, his whole body weak and breathless, looking for all the world like a man who might keel over at any second.
In fact, he had already died once, three days ago — only for his old man to drag him back from the gates of hell by sheer force, and in the process awaken his memories of a past life.
The instant those memories surfaced, Li Xu was struck dumb.
The world he lived in this life was, incredibly, a single-player game from his past life on Earth — one called Heavenly Mystic Continent.
Transmigrating into a game world alone wouldn’t have stunned him so badly. What truly left him gaping was his current identity.
Heavenly Mystic Continent was a game with multiple protagonists and multiple heroines; players could do whatever they pleased, with an absurd degree of freedom. But there was one core plotline: defeat the reigning Hegemonic Chancellor, Li Chunfeng.
Li Chunfeng was both the Chancellor of the current Imperial Court and the ultimate villain of Heavenly Mystic Continent. In the game, he held the entire court in his grip and plunged the world into chaos. To wipe out every sect that dared oppose him, he would stop at nothing — even setting off a war that swept the whole realm, drowning countless lives in ruin. Players could only clear the game by crushing the forces beneath Li Chunfeng’s banner.
And Li Xu’s identity in this life was, unmistakably, Li Chunfeng’s only biological son.
“Oh no — the ultimate final boss is my dad!”
Three days ago, Li Xu had clawed his way back from the brink of death — and the very first thing he did was refuse to accept the past-life memories he’d awakened.
Because according to the game’s plot as he remembered it, he was destined to be the first bit-part nobody in Li Chunfeng’s camp to be cut down by the plot protagonist — and cut down in a manner so gruesome it beggared description, torn limb from limb!
…
“Along with awakening my past-life memories, I picked up an ability: I can see other people’s karmic fortune values.”
“But what the hell good is an ability like that? Any living person — damn it, even a dog by the roadside — has higher karmic fortune than me!”
On the carriage, Li Xu suddenly spotted a mongrel dog in the distance with a [1] hovering above its head, and was instantly swamped by a bitter, humiliating realization: he ranked lower than a dog.
It had been a full three days since he’d gained the power to peer at others’ fortune. In those three days, Li Xu had never once seen a soul whose fortune dipped below his own [-4]. Even the lowest of the low — peddlers, porters, day laborers — scraped together a point or two.
And it was precisely because his fortune ran in the negative that Li Xu had been frail and sickly since birth, unable to set foot on the path of cultivation. A nasty illness every third day, a full-blown calamity every fifth — he survived only because his Chancellor father force-fed him vast quantities of rare herbs and heavenly treasures, barely keeping a thread of life in him, letting him linger on to this day.
“If I can’t rewrite this destiny chart of mine, can’t drag my fortune up out of the negatives and into the black, then with a body this weak… even if the plot protagonist never comes for me, I doubt I’ll last many more days. Who knows when I’ll just drop dead on the spot.”
Flipping through his past-life memories, Li Xu heaved a quiet sigh and lifted the cup of medicinal broth brewed from thousand-year ginseng beside him, taking a tiny sip.
A cup of thousand-year ginseng soup like that would fetch at least a hundred gold on the open market — revered by countless cultivators as a precious tonic. Yet poured into Li Xu’s belly, it bought him only two faint, barely-there wisps of vital energy.
“Second Young Master, we’ve arrived back at the Chancellor’s Estate.”
The Head Steward’s voice came from outside the carriage — Uncle Sun.
Li Xu set down the ginseng broth and rubbed his brow. His tone was lazy, tinged with impatience: “Uncle Sun, tell me — why has the old man suddenly called me back to the estate?”
Uncle Sun replied, “This old servant can roughly guess. Surely the Old Master has his own reasons.”
Li Xu: “…”
Isn’t that just stating the obvious?
A true masterclass in saying absolutely nothing.
Grumbling inwardly, Li Xu stepped down from the carriage. With Uncle Sun and the guards trailing behind, he strode through the gates of the Chancellor’s Estate.
Worth noting: half an incense stick earlier, Li Xu had been lounging in a brothel, listening to music and watching dancers — when Li Chunfeng abruptly dispatched Uncle Sun to summon him home.
Li Xu and his father did not have what anyone would call a warm relationship.
There was no mystery to it. What manner of world-shaking minister was Li Chunfeng? Power that gripped the whole court, reach that touched the heavens — among the common folk there was even a saying that without the Chancellor’s nod, no decree could leave the Golden Throne Hall. Yet his only son was a sickly good-for-nothing who couldn’t cultivate to save his life. It drove Li Chunfeng to utter despair, and every time he laid eyes on the boy he’d deliver a ferocious dressing-down.
And Li Xu was hardly the type to lie down and take it. The old man can’t stand the sight of me? Well, it’s not like I can stand the sight of him either!
I’ve got one lousy life to my name — who knows when it’ll snuff out. Why should I swallow your crap on top of that? I’ll just move into the brothel, get drunk and dream my nights away, live it up while I still can, and spare us both the aggravation.
Ah, what a true portrait of fatherly love and filial piety.
…
The interior of the Chancellor’s Estate was magnificent and grand, not much inferior to the Imperial Palace itself. Li Xu wound his way past pavilions and terraces until he reached his destination — the Chancellor’s Estate Study.
To put it without exaggeration, the Chancellor’s Estate Study was the equal of the Imperial Palace’s Imperial Study. The reigning Emperor of Great Yan was hopelessly addicted to cultivating immortality, and had dumped every important memorial and affair of state squarely into Li Chunfeng’s lap.
The moment he crossed the threshold, Li Xu’s eyes went straight to the middle-aged man behind the desk.
The man’s face was weathered and worn, wholly absorbed in reviewing the memorials before him. His bearing was steady, restrained — every inch the aging scholar. And above his head floated two golden digits: [55].
“As expected of Heavenly Mystic‘s ultimate villain — a fortune of [55] is simply unmatched. I’d wager the old man has the highest fortune under all of heaven!”
Li Xu sighed inwardly, then — as if by idle chance — flicked a glance at the stunning mature woman grinding ink beside Li Chunfeng.
Would that he hadn’t.
The instant his eyes landed on her, Li Xu froze stiff as a man struck by lightning.
Above that breathtaking woman’s head floated three symbols:
[???]
