Chapter 1: The Omnipotent System

Beneath the parasol tree, a figure garbed in ancient male attire, hair bound in a coronet, sat on the grass, leaning against the trunk. His eyes stared vacantly at the sky, his mind a muddled fog.

Utterly bewildered! Yes, this person was the protagonist of our tale, Hen Quexi! Even now, Hen Quexi had no idea how she had come to be in this world. The last thing she remembered was finishing a game and then going to bed.

Upon opening her eyes, she had become the “son” of the Hen family’s patriarch, Hen Ruochén—his only child, with an unknown mother, raised by a single parent.

It was said that this body had once been a prodigy, but after she awoke, she was nothing but a good-for-nothing. She possessed no memory of cultivation; even if there was power within her, she had no idea how to use it. She had tried learning cultivation methods, but no matter how she attempted to activate her energy, it was as immovable as a stubborn stone.

A month had passed since her arrival in this world, and Hen Quexi had finally pieced together her circumstances. She was in Jiuxiao City, a third-class border city of the Sky Maple Empire—one of the four great empires of the Celestial Spirit Continent. The Hen family was the city’s second most powerful clan.

This was the Celestial Spirit Continent, not Earth—another world where equality was not a given. In such a world, might made right. How was Hen Quexi, powerless even to truss a chicken and forced to masquerade as a man, supposed to survive?

Hen Quexi was at her wits’ end. Now that she was a useless waste, everyone in the Hen family—save her nominal father—looked upon her with colored eyes, their gazes full of disdain.

Fortunately, her true gender had yet to be discovered; otherwise, she would not even be able to step outside her home.

Depressed beyond measure, Hen Quexi jumped up, raising her fist to the endless sky and shouted, “You wretched heavens! Even if you didn’t ask my permission and forced me to transmigrate, I wouldn’t complain. But couldn’t you at least throw me a protagonist’s halo? Now I’m nothing but a waste! You might as well have left me in my old world!”

“Huh? What’s this?” As she cursed the heavens, she noticed a strange symbol had appeared on the back of her hand, which she’d been waving at the sky.

Hen Quexi peered closer. The more she looked, the more familiar it seemed.

“Wow! Isn’t this the circle logo of TX?” TX had monopolized QQ, games—everything. Even with poor eyesight, she could recognize that emblem anywhere.

But why had she never noticed this thing in the past month? Why was it appearing now? Driven by curiosity and delight, she examined the symbol as if she’d stumbled upon buried treasure.

No matter how she fiddled with it, the symbol remained firmly embedded on the back of her hand, refusing to budge.

“My hand is raw from rubbing—why isn’t anything happening?” Hen Quexi’s lips twitched in frustration. She’d nearly rubbed her skin off, her eyes brimming with tears, but the symbol remained unmoved.

A lightbulb went off in her head. “Wait—maybe it needs a magic word? Mummy-mummy-boo…” Full of anticipation, her eyes sparkled as she even formed a ritualistic hand gesture. But the symbol remained obstinately unchanged.

“…One last incantation—Open Sesame!”

“Ouch! My goodness!” As soon as Hen Quexi uttered the words “Open Sesame,” a burst of golden light erupted from the center of the TX symbol on her hand, dazzling her vision.

She squeezed her eyes shut, tears nearly spilling out. Her head spun, stars danced before her eyes, and with a thud, she collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

It was only in that moment that Hen Quexi realized it wasn’t that the heavens had denied her a protagonist’s halo—she simply hadn’t noticed the treasure on the back of her hand.

Money isn’t everything, but without it, you can do nothing.

As soon as she lost consciousness, her mind’s eye was flooded with a dazzling row of golden characters, so bright they nearly blinded her. She reached out and felt them—they seemed to be made of pure gold, and she couldn’t help but swallow hard.

“Gold!” Her eyes instantly reflected golden coins. Just looking at those radiant characters, she salivated uncontrollably.

Though she had transmigrated and become the Hen family patriarch’s sole heir, her monthly allowance was only five silver coins. (One gold equals one hundred silver, which equals one thousand copper.) Confronted with such a pile of gold, even someone indifferent to wealth would covet it.

“Hey, hey, where are you going?” As she salivated, the ten or so golden characters began fading away. Hen Quexi lunged in an attempt to grab them, shouting in dismay.

But no matter how she protested, the gold vanished, and she fell heavily to the ground. Only then did she look around and take in her surroundings. “Where am I?”

No sooner had she asked than a voice answered, “Your sea of consciousness!”

“My sea of consciousness? How did I end up here?” Hen Quexi’s eyes went cross-eyed with confusion. Just then, a system interface appeared before her, accompanied by lines of tiny explanatory script.

Dazed, she leaned in for a closer look—and suddenly everything became clear.

In her mind appeared the Universal System! Just as the saying goes: money isn’t everything, but without it, you’re powerless. Here, everything was transacted in gold coins—as long as you had gold, you could obtain anything.

Cultivation, techniques, elixirs, skills, knowledge…

Seeing this, Hen Quexi could hardly wait to enter the system. The room inside was empty, with blank shelves all around, and a huge screen in front of her.

On the display: Elixirs, Techniques, Weapons, Armor, Books, Daily Necessities…

She randomly selected the elixir category, and in a instant, countless pills from novels and games appeared—Essence Cultivating Pills, Barrier-Breaking Pills, Nine-Turn Golden Pills… She drooled uncontrollably.

The techniques were the same, ranging from the lowest to the highest tiers. But after looking them all over, Hen Quexi didn’t buy a single one. Why? She couldn’t afford them.

All she possessed in this world was thirty-seven silver coins, and here, even the cheapest item was priced in gold. Hen Quexi was on the verge of tears.

Beside the screen was a thermometer-like gauge, displaying a zero—no gold coins at all. Naturally, her cultivation was nonexistent, not even enough to qualify as a one-star martial artist. In other words, Hen Quexi was currently weaker than a ten-year-old child. Dizzy and despairing, she collapsed…

On the Celestial Spirit Continent, by the age of ten, one was typically at least a one-star martial artist; by thirty, it was common to reach the peak of three stars, even without training. Yet Hen Quexi wasn’t even at the first star…

The cultivation ranks were: Martial Apprentice, Martial Master, Martial Spirit, Martial General, Martial King, Martial Emperor, Martial Ancestor, Martial Lord, Martial Sage, Martial Monarch, Martial God. Each rank was divided into nine stars.