Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"Host, you hit a dead end again."

The window of the small inn above was open, and a man and woman's nasty sounds mixed with their conversation, easily piecing together the gist of an affair.

Xia Yinxi was silently losing it. How was it that every time he got lost, he stumbled upon a cheating scene? What kind of curse was this?

Just let me go home!!

Lost my bike and got lost—when will this crappy day end?

In the end, he grudgingly dropped fifty bucks on a cab to get home.

"My little scooter..." Xia Yinxi hugged his pillow, totally crushed. "I only rode it for two days."

"Why didn't you just go to the police..."

Xia Yinxi sniffled. "It's so late, cops are probably off the clock too."

He fell asleep crying. "I'm reporting it first thing tomorrow!"

The next day, the cops checked the security footage and could only see a man in a baseball cap dragging away his scooter. No way they'd find the guy or get the bike back. Xia Yinxi thanked them and walked out with a dark cloud over his head.

Before he even made it out the door, he saw someone parked by the roadside on a bike, looking down at their phone—looked like they were checking a map. Xia Yinxi took a closer look and suddenly shouted, "Officer... dude! That's my scooter!"

The guy freaked out and tried to run, but the officer on duty at the entrance reacted quickly. They both tackled him to the ground.

"That's mine! My scooter!" Xia Yinxi ran over and patted the rear box. "The back here was hit before, and there's a scratch mark underneath."

He pointed at the small chipped spot. "See, see? That's mine!"

Even without his proof, the pinned guy looked guilty as hell. The cops took him inside, had Xia Yinxi give a statement and sign, and couldn't help but marvel, "Kid, you're that damn lucky? Usually, stolen bikes or phones are a nightmare to track down."

Running into the thief right outside the station—that's rarer than winning the lottery.

"Heh, so can I take my scooter now?"

"Sure, sure. Be careful on the road. And remember to wear your helmet!"

Xia Yinxi grinned, put on his helmet, and immediately accepted a delivery order. "Sys! My luck's finally turning!"

"Host, you've been pretty lucky since you got here!"

Who else lands a three-thousand-yuan delivery order? Who else could stumble onto a gossip scene while lost?

"True, but it'd be better if I didn't get lost."

The system didn't dare say anything, but getting lost might not be about luck.

Xia Yinxi seemed to have been blacklisted by the app; no more food delivery orders were coming in, only courier and rush delivery ones. This time, it was a cat-sitting gig.

He bought the specified brand of cat food at the supermarket and, predictably, he wandered around for half an hour before finally reaching the client's complex.

But the complex had many buildings, not in numerical order. Xia Yinxi looked at Building 7 beside him, then at Building 26 on the order note, and stared blankly.

"Excuse me, miss, could you tell me where Building 26 is?"

"Over there, over there. Go down this path and turn north."

"Thanks, miss!"

Xia Yinxi took the path and pulled out his phone's compass.

System: "Host, you can't tell north from south either, huh?"

Xia Yinxi smiled. "Zip it."

But the path the lady pointed wasn't exactly north. Xia Yinxi looked around—Buildings 25 and 27 were right there, but Building 26 was nowhere to be seen.

...This is haunted.

"North, north, north..." He circled Building 27 on his scooter over and over. He even spotted Building 24, but Building 26 still didn't appear.

Xia Yinxi sighed, braced himself, and was about to call the client.

Right as he was about to hit dial, a sudden burst of meowing came out of nowhere, desperate and loud. Xia Yinxi followed the noise and found Building 26 behind a restaurant at the bottom of the commercial block.

How the hell did the developer hide a building here to save space?!

Who'd guess it wasn't part of the same building as the shops?!

The cat was already starving. The meowing he'd heard downstairs was the client's cat. Xia Yinxi apologized while opening the cat food. "Sorry, sorry, I'm late. Please, help yourself."

The cat cursed Xia Yinxi out with a flurry of meows, then dove into the food, burying its face in the kibble. Every few bites, it would look up and curse some more.

Xia Yinxi crouched on the ground, taking the cat's abuse. "Sorry!!"

The cat probably wouldn't write him a bad review, right?

He'd kneel and kowtow to the cat if he had to!

Leaving the client's place, Xia Yinxi reflected deeply. "I don't think I'm cut out for this job."

"...You finally realized."

"..." Xia Yinxi gritted his teeth and cursed the system. "Other than making snide comments, what else can you do?!"

Look at other people's systems!

"Sorry." The system had learned from Xia Yinxi to apologize first, since a smiling face doesn't get slapped. "I'll ask the higher-ups again..."

The client saw from their home surveillance the starving, meowing cat and the late-arriving Xia Yinxi. Unsurprisingly, they left a bad review, writing three hundred words demanding he be fired.

Xia Yinxi: "...QAQ!"

Sorry!!!

He shut down the order system and trudged home, gloomy-faced. This job was a dead end. What else could he do without a degree?

Suddenly, his phone received a text alerting him to a deposit of three million yuan. Then a WeChat message from Xia Yucheng popped up: Made some money on a new project. Spend it.

Xia Yinxi replied tearfully: Dad, you're my real dad.

If only he were really his dad, sob.

"Sys, I think money makes money the fastest." Xia Yinxi looked at the countless digits in his WeChat and bank balances. "I'll just buy some stocks. No way am I getting worked to death by a job."

Back in the day, Xia Yinxi always joked about someone inexplicably giving him two hundred million. He'd stash it in the bank for a year, return the principal, and live off the interest alone—enough to buy a house.

Now someone's actually giving him a ton of money for no reason, why the hell is he still delivering food and feeding cats?

He can't even read a map!

"Good idea, but whose stocks should I buy?"

"Buy your own family's stock!"

"Huh? Then won't your dad know you bought stocks?"

This hit a knowledge gap for Xia Yinxi: "Can the company see shareholders' personal info?"

"I don't know!"

"Look it up online!!"

But after searching forever, neither of them could figure it out. To be safe, Xia Yinxi only spent ten grand on a random stock to test the waters.

If it tanked, at least he wouldn't lose too much.

"Sys, I'm so tired." Xia Yinxi collapsed onto the bed. "How is this more exhausting than my actual job?"

"Host, you haven't rested since you transmigrated here—you've been on the move the whole time."

Xia Yinxi sighed. "Well, I'm in a rush to make money."

"Your parents are so nice to you. As long as you don't betray them like the original did, even if the real heir comes back, you should be fine, right?"

"But they're not actually my parents." Xia Yinxi rolled over and tapped a few replies to Song Baichuan on his phone. "And the real heir will definitely be pissed."

After lying there a bit longer, Xia Yinxi suddenly sat up. "Sys, in the plot, the original always had a crush on that arranged marriage partner since childhood, and that partner saw the real heir as his white moonlight, then proactively proposed to the original… Don't you think those three things make zero sense?"

So far, the only person he'd known "since childhood" was Song Baichuan. The arranged marriage partner couldn't be him, right? He seemed like a straight guy who's not too bright.

And what was the real heir's identity now? How did the arranged marriage partner and the real heir meet? And why did he proactively propose to the original?

The system was stumped, stammering a bit: "I… I'll go check the original novel again?"

Xia Yinxi: "…You still haven't figured it out?"

"Sorry, this book is way too long…"

"Then just hand me the book."

"Sorry, we have rules against that. QAQ"

Xia Yinxi rolled his eyes. He should be used to this useless system by now.

Anyway, making money was still the main priority. Xia Yinxi lay in bed playing a small game, ideas for making cash popping up one after another. Suddenly, a lightbulb went off, and he sat up abruptly: "Sys, what if I start streaming games?"

Live streaming makes money fast too!

The system never had a brain of its own: "Sure, host, are you any good at gaming?"

"Never played before in my life." Xia Yinxi downloaded a wildly popular MOBA game, played a couple rounds, then put down his phone.

"Forget it, delivering food isn't that bad either."

System: "…"

"But I can go a different route!" Xia Yinxi clapped his hands. "Other streamers are all skilled pro players, but I'm different—I'm a total noob."

"?"

So on a whim, Xia Yinxi got up, turned on his computer, picked a streaming platform he liked the look of, registered an account, and typed a random string of letters as his ID.

Screen-sharing and starting the stream went off without a hitch, but before the first game even began, someone in the chat was already calling him a noob. Xia Yinxi: "?"

Did a prophet just walk into his stream? How did they know he was a noob before he even started playing?

After streaming for a while and playing just two rounds, Xia Yinxi got yelled at by teammates in-game and roasted by the chat outside. He quit the game without a word.

"Money's hard to come by…" Xia Yinxi didn't finish the sentence. "I'm switching games."

This type of game wasn't for him—he doesn't kill.

So he switched to a chill open-world exploration game. Just the download took over half an hour, and people kept popping into the stream, asking what he was playing.

Xia Yinxi: "I'm teaching everyone how to download the game."

Chat: ? Are you crazy

Xia Yinxi: "…"

Why does everything he do get him roasted!

After following the tutorial through the prologue, Xia Yinxi frowned and tapped on the gacha screen, did a random ten-pull, and skipped the cutscene.

In an instant, golden light flashed up, and four gold card faces appeared on the screen.

Xia Yinxi kept skipping: "This game is so generous, drop rates this high?"

The moment he said that, the chat exploded. Five or six people wrote with the force of five or six hundred, flooding the screen with question marks.

"Wh-what?" Xia Yinxi leaned in to look at the chat. "What happened?"

「Your Sun」: Why???

「Dice」: Why!!!!

「East Wind Fine Rain」: NMD why???!!!

「Return Boat」: A life-draining pull???

「Brownie」: I admit I'm broken, you cold-hearted bastard, are you happy now? You're not allowed to play this game!!

「Wow」: Haha! Tomorrow I'm hanging myself at the game company's door /smile.jpg

「Mushroom Sauce」: Streamer says drop rates? This B-game, I'd have to pull till I die to get four golds

「Ahahaha」: I'd pull till I die /smile.jpg

Xia Yinxi: "…Wow."

Since when did his luck become this good?

The live stream audience was completely losing it over this once-in-a-lifetime lucky pull, and within less than five minutes, the viewer count jumped from just five people to over three hundred. The chat was flying by so fast it was dizzying, more than half were just question marks. Xia Yinxi tried to calm them down: "Might be the newbie protection period. Calm down, calm down."

「Brownie」: Why don’t I have a protection period???

「Chek Nao Nao」: Damn game company's sneaky ad, don’t try to fool me!

Xia Yinxi chuckled and, while completing a quest, saved up enough stones for one more pull, so he casually pulled.

The moment a golden light streaked across the screen, the live stream’s online count shot past two thousand.

「Your Sun」: WTF? I &￥%#@ his mom @￥ your dad ó&￥%

「Chek Nao Nao」: I ** you ** you ** this B game I *****

The chat was like a burst of fireworks. Xia Yinxi tried to calm things down: "Calm down a bit..."

Then came a stream of system mute notifications: [User Chek Nao Nao has been muted for five minutes. Reason: Uncivil remarks.]

[User Your Sun has been muted for five minutes. Reason: Uncivil remarks.]

「Brownie」: Good thing I held back the swear words. I'll hang myself at the game company's door tomorrow, knock your dad.

「Dongfeng Xiyu」: I'll hang myself at the game company's door tomorrow.

「Hello, Is Anyone Real」: Let's hang the game company boss at their own door tomorrow!

Xia Yinxi: "..."

That sounds pretty serious.

Did he turn his luck around after losing his e-bike...?

Xia Yinxi asked cautiously: "Sys, is this gonna cost me my lifespan?"

"..."