August 19, 2013, in the eastern part of Huaxia, Suzhou Province, Nailing City, Lianhu District.
It was nearly the end of August, the tail end of summer, but Nailing, known as the ‘furnace,’ was still sweltering.
The evening rush hour had begun, and Nailing’s sky was slightly hazy. The air, beneath the relentless flow of traffic, had become thick and sticky. The relentless cicadas sang in a ceaseless chorus, mingling with the blaring car horns, creating a discordant symphony that was irritating to the ears.
The story’s protagonist, Qin Zixin, or more bluntly put, a certain female devil, was feeling particularly restless.
Her body was frail, and the heat caused her to sweat easily. Her perspiration made the fabric cling to her sensitive, smooth skin. Her inexpensive, plain-colored T-shirt and linen pants hinted at a figure that was far too voluptuous for a 15-year-old.
She had just seen a message from Yang Qichao, indicating that her mother might already know about her skipping class.
She hurried under the shade of a tree, clutching a gray canvas bag. Inside were some memory sticks and lychees she planned to eat later.
Despite the weight of the bag, her generous assets bounced playfully, moving with each step. It seemed as if they might burst through the thin fabric at any moment, driven by a primal, genetic urge. Her hips swayed naturally, displaying youthful vitality, making her truly captivating.
Her loose-fitting clothes, worn in a way that made them appear form-fitting, accentuated her curves, making her look alluring and graceful. Her every movement seemed to promise something more, like a tantalizing tease. Her skin, as bright and smooth as jade, glowed under the dappled, yellowish sunset, appearing almost ethereal.
Wherever Qin Zixin went, she was the center of attention, especially in a place like Nailing. Many eyes were drawn to her alluring figure, and she could feel the desire in those gazes. But she was used to it, having experienced it countless times before.
Her figure hadn’t always been so striking, but since the second semester of her second year of middle school, her body had developed rapidly, like a balloon being inflated.
Before her development, this female devil’s favorite pastime was to cut her hair short and pass herself off as a boy, tricking infatuated girls from other schools. It was a bit of a wicked pastime, but she enjoyed it immensely.
Until she developed, that is.
Before her development, she was a delicate beauty, her charm undeniable even in her tomboyish ways. Though she fought with boys and teased girls, she was a visual creature, and her ‘tomboy’ persona still garnered many admirers and confessions from the boys.
However, since her figure developed, the number of boys daring to confess had decreased.
‘Damn those middle school brats, they haven’t even grown hair on their chins, and they think they can handle a woman like me?’
Qin Zixin thought bitterly, simultaneously looking down on the underdeveloped boys. She completely ignored the fact that she had just graduated from middle school herself, and inadvertently placed herself in the role of the experienced woman.
In reality, besides her figure, she was probably more immature than most of those boys. Her height, weight, and appearance didn’t quite match the image of a sophisticated woman.
At just over 1.6 meters tall, her face was charming, but her expressions were too lively, giving her a youthful appearance. Despite her impressive assets, she was lean everywhere else, weighing just over 100 pounds.
In other words, she was a large, mischievous female devil.
Feeling the sticky gazes around her, she unconsciously quickened her pace, her tight buttocks accentuating the curves of her ample thighs and nearly perfect legs.
Unlike typical girls her age, Qin Zixin possessed some masculine memories, allowing her to adapt to the strange changes in her life.
But these memories were just that—memories. They were unclear and couldn’t be verified, like a VR movie from ten years in the future. The immersive experience didn’t prove that it actually happened.
Did her ‘past life’ truly connect with her current one?
But Qin Zixin believed it wholeheartedly, convinced beyond a doubt.
In her past life, ‘he’ was a man, wealthy and well-connected, tall and handsome, with a commanding presence and striking features.
After graduating from a prestigious university, he quickly rose through the ranks of the bureaucracy, reaching the rank of minister in just over a decade. His love life was smooth sailing, with several mistresses on the side, and a childhood sweetheart who was the daughter of another official. From their innocent childhood to their adult life, their relationship was sweet and harmonious.
After marriage, his loving wife gave birth to a remarkably intelligent son, who showed a keen interest in medicine from a young age. By the age of ten, he was already enrolled in the youth class at the University of Science and Technology of China, bringing pride to his father. Every night, after passionate lovemaking, his wife would nestle in his arms.
Qin Zixin thought that in her ‘past life,’ she was truly a winner, the epitome of a successful man.
Women threw themselves at him, money was abundant, his wife was virtuous, and his son was a prodigy. His family and status were untouchable, even in the vast expanse of the internet.
It was almost too perfect!
But as they say, ‘Man proposes, God disposes.’ Otherwise, Qin Zixin wouldn’t have had such delusions.
At her son’s twelfth birthday party, one of his trusted subordinates winked and presented him with a painting from the Sui dynasty, depicting women enjoying the spring. The subordinate fawned over him, saying it was to cultivate the young master’s appreciation for art.
‘He’ always saw himself as a cultured gentleman and sensed that there was something hidden beneath the painting. He accepted it and placed it among the other gifts. After the banquet ended and he returned home, he found his wife and son already asleep. Curiosity got the better of him, and he took out the painting, spreading it on the floor of his study to examine the backing.
To his surprise, he discovered something hidden within. As he carefully cut into the backing with an envelope knife, he suddenly felt a blackness envelop him.
Her past life’s memories ended there, and her current life began.
But before the age of four, she had no memories of her ‘past life.’
In her earliest memories, she was a fatherless child, living with her mother, Tang Yuyu. Her father, who had already secured a job at a nearby hospital, vanished the moment she was born.
He was nowhere to be found, alive or dead.
Qin Zixin came from a single-parent household, the epitome of a single-parent family. Tang Yuyu never remarried, despite numerous suitors. But as the saying goes, ‘A widow’s door is never quiet,’ and Tang Yuyu, being exceptionally beautiful, had at least four suitors while Qin Zixin was growing up. But Qin Zixin never spoke of it, understanding the necessity of her mother’s actions.
Though Tang Yuyu never remarried, Qin Zixin didn’t lack a father figure in her life.
After turning four, a voice appeared in her mind, an independent consciousness that she could communicate with.
Qin Zixin gritted her teeth, remembering how glorious and successful ‘she’ had been in her ‘past life.’
The vast social disparity between her two lives—success and admiration in one, and a tight budget in the other—was stark. Soon, she would start high school, and her mother might already know about her skipping the cram school.
With the appearance of the voice in her mind, Qin Zixin slowly began to receive memories, or what she believed to be memories, of her ‘past life.’
At first, she was confused and aimless, but as she gained more memories, she became reckless and impulsive, her thoughts multiplying, often incorrect and one-sided.
She had many ideas, but they were frequently crushed by the voice in her head. For the sake of her own safety, and Qin Zixin’s, the voice forced her to follow a structured path, leaving Qin Zixin to vent her frustrations online and boast.
She called it the ‘System,’ and at first, it didn’t like the name, insisting on its independence. But over time, it grew accustomed to it.
It filled the role of a father figure in her life.
But due to certain coincidences, Qin Zixin met several like-minded friends in various online groups, and together, they started a pirated resource site, earning a bit of pocket money through traffic, ads, and pirated models.
Of course, her online friends knew nothing about her true identity.
They all assumed Qin Zixin was a middle-aged loser, unable to afford a high-end computer. Her current computer was pieced together from donations in the group.
There was no one poorer in the group.
Qin Zixin had only mentioned living in Nailing and never revealed any personal information. Mostly, she spent her time in a small group of about a dozen people, mostly venting and boasting. Her sarcastic comments and outrageous behavior often infuriated the others, but no one ever tried to uncover her true identity.
Her bitterness and outrageous comments had become her trademark, making her a modern-day Kong Yiji.
No one would bother to uncover the truth about a loser.
She often doubted the authenticity of her ‘past life,’ as it seemed like two completely separate worlds.
One world existed only in her memories, floating in the air. The other was the world she had known since birth, rooted in reality.
She couldn’t determine which was more real.
A whirlwind of complex emotions surged within Qin Zixin, but she quickly regained her composure. She planned to return home and play a new game to ‘relieve’ herself.
Bored during her walk, Qin Zixin mentally harassed the System again.
‘Stupid, stop bothering me.’
After hearing the mechanical voice in her mind, Qin Zixin remained unperturbed.
Over the past decade, she had discovered the System’s greatest use: teaching her to be a coward and focus on her studies. Online, as long as she didn’t do anything too outrageous, she was free to do as she pleased. As Qin Zixin grew older, her true nature began to show, and her increasingly mischievous behavior sometimes made the System unable to control her. At first, they argued, but now, the System would ‘shake’ Tang Yuyu to discipline her.
As for how a non-corporeal System could ‘shake’ a person, that was a mystery best left unexplained, unrelated to the daily life and experiences of a certain little brat.
Qin Zixin always believed she was unique, a ‘chosen one,’ as described in online novels. ‘Reincarnated’ characters were always chosen, with money and strange superpowers, like an invincible gold rod, time-stopping abilities, or a pocket watch that could control others. The young brat grew up reading such stories, filled with the System’s salty memories and incorrect expectations for her future. She stumbled and fumbled her way through middle school.
But life follows its own rules. Just as XX chromosomes can’t become XY, she couldn’t achieve her dream of being a ‘gun rider.’ Instead, she had become a top-grade beauty, her figure too alluring, surpassing even her mother and aunt in development, let alone her classmates.
She stood out like a sore thumb, destined to be the target rather than the shooter.
Though her stunning beauty made her tired of fending off admirers, even in her ‘past life,’ she hadn’t seen anyone as beautiful as herself.
In her ‘past life,’ she had many mistresses, not all of whom were exceptionally beautiful, but they were all above average. Compared to her current self, they seemed like commoners.
A vase isn’t always an insult; a beautifully crafted vase can be priceless, and Qin Zixin was just such a rare beauty.
Qin Zixin gracefully entered the small community where she lived.
The community, built in 1999, had a name that reflected the era: Happiness Garden. The community wasn’t rundown, with eleven buildings, each twelve stories high, and three apartments per floor. There were gardens, pavilions, and fitness equipment below, and the maintenance was decent, keeping the community from looking old.
Most of the residents were employees of the nearby Sixth Hospital of Nailing City, once given as a benefit to the employees of the Sixth People’s Hospital of Nailing City. When Qin Zixin’s father, as a recruited talent, joined the ophthalmology department, the hospital director personally gave him an apartment. There, he married Tang Yuyu.
But tragedy struck.
Qin Zixin was born, and her father vanished without a trace. He had been anxiously waiting outside the delivery room just moments before, but it was as if he had been erased from existence: her father had been deleted from this world.
The sudden disappearance of the family’s pillar left Tang Yuyu devastated. Seeing her loss of spirit, the hospital director, out of pity, didn’t take back the apartment. Later, Tang Yuyu, in gratitude, visited the director, and a few days later, he helped her open a night snack shop.
After the initial struggles, the lives of the single mother and daughter became comfortable.
At the age of four, Qin Zixin began to receive ‘past life’ memories, and one day, she realized: Why was her ‘past life’ son so precocious? Why did ‘he’ seem to be born with the ability to read and understand complex medical texts?
She had discovered a blind spot but reached an incorrect conclusion: her ‘past life’ son was her current life’s father.
The System didn’t dare speak, remaining silent as if it had died.
****