Passing the Buck, B-rank
[Age: twenty. Years of service: two. Generating trait...]
[Congratulations, you have obtained a trait: Fall Guy (C-rank) — any mistakes and resulting accountability within your unit or organization will ultimately fall on your head for no apparent reason. But each time you successfully take the blame, your physical constitution will improve slightly, and your ability to withstand blows will increase a little. After all, a weakling can't carry a pot this heavy.]
In that empty, white space, Lu Ping's face visibly turned green.
Just a moment ago, he had been full of anticipation for the new trait.
The next moment, the system had handed him a negative trait.
A downright negative trait.
He had only just crawled out of the mine and hadn't even found his footing, yet the system had strapped a black pot to his back.
As for the slight improvement to his constitution mentioned afterward, Lu Ping ignored it outright.
Any random pot could cost him his life.
What the hell good was that tiny improvement to his constitution?
A trait like this was actually C-rank? That rating had to be too high!
[Current trait slots: 2/3. Equip this trait? (Trait slots are not full; equipping is mandatory.)]
Lu Ping cursed eighteen generations of the system's ancestors in his heart.
He had to equip it.
If the trait slots weren't full, he couldn't leave them empty.
The people who set this rule were bigger bullies than those who wrote the one-sided contract clauses in his previous life.
At least he could call 12315 to complain about those clauses. Who could he complain to about this lousy system?
Equip it, then.
Lu Ping was already spent.
[Trait forcibly equipped: Fall Guy.]
[Currently equipped: Flattery (B-rank) / Paid Pooping (C-rank) / Fall Guy (C-rank).]
[Fall Guy's effect was immediate.]
[A pot of stock was knocked over in the kitchen.]
[The fat steward asked, "Who did it?"]
[Everyone looked at you.]
[The rice and flour in the storeroom went moldy.]
[The fat steward checked the accounts: "Who was responsible?"]
[The trail eventually led to you.]
[The second boss's concubine found a dish too salty.]
[The fat steward demanded accountability: "Who cooked it?"]
[You.]
[You, you, you...]
[It was all you.]
[Whether or not you had done those things, the blame was pinned on you, one thing after another.]
[Even if you hadn't been there, even if you had never so much as touched the stove, even if three people had seen someone else do it with their own eyes—the one who got beaten with the paddle in the end was always you.]
[But strangely enough, you didn't die.]
[Every time you were beaten, scolded, and punished by being made to kneel, you always managed to deliver a perfectly targeted piece of flattery at just the right moment, taking the edge off the steward's anger.]
[Even stranger, after you had been beaten a few times, you seemed to develop some kind of peculiar resistance.]
[After each beating, your body seemed to recover faster.]
[Although that slight improvement helped you very little.]
[One trait worked you to death, while another dragged you back from the brink.]
[The two traits formed a cruel yet comical closed loop.]
[At the end of the second year, while cleaning the kitchen's woodshed, you found a battered book beneath a pile of rotten firewood. Mice had gnawed away half of it.]
[Three characters could just barely be made out on the cover...]
["Body Tempering Instruction."]
[Your heart clenched sharply.]
[You didn't recognize the book. You couldn't even read all the characters used in this world.]
[You knew there should be cultivators in this world.]
[But "cultivation" was even further out of reach for you than quantum physics had been in your previous life.]
[Options appeared.]
[A: Open the book and try cultivating with the half-volume of the "Body Tempering Instruction."]
[B: Present the manual to the fat steward to earn his favor.]
[C: Tear the book into strips, fold them into paper frogs, and compete with the fat steward in the backyard to see whose frog could jump farther.]
Should he try cultivating it himself or hand it over to the fat steward?
Lu Ping hardly hesitated.
The fat steward's favor was a joke.
Cultivation was the beginning of defying the heavens and changing his fate.
What was there to hesitate over?
Right now, he was the livestock left over after everyone else had taken their pick in the kitchen.
If he could get his teeth into a bone, he would gnaw it, even if it was covered in mouse bites.
He chose A.
The text on the white background flickered.
Then lines of black text rolled out, half a beat slower than usual, with a rhythm that deliberately kept him in suspense.
[You opened the "Body Tempering Instruction."]
[It was an incomplete copy. The first three chapters were still legible, but large portions were missing from the fourth chapter onward.]
[The book recorded a basic cultivation method that used Spiritual Qi to temper the body, covering such core elements as drawing Qi into the body, circulating it through the meridians, and activating acupoints.]
[You tried to comprehend it.]
That line stayed on the screen for two seconds.
Then a line of cold gray text appeared, with no border at all, sticking out starkly in the very center of the white background.
[Comprehension failed.]
[Reason: Without guidance, with mediocre aptitude and insufficient information in the incomplete copy, you were unable to understand the core method of drawing Qi into the body.]
Lu Ping stared at the words "mediocre aptitude."
In his previous life, he had gotten a C on his performance review every year. In this life, even his cultivation aptitude was substandard.
So he had been born twice, and heaven's grading system had never changed.
[You did not give up.]
[You hid the battered book in the gap beside the third brick beneath the stove. Every night, after everyone had fallen asleep, you secretly took it out and read it.]
[You gnawed your way through it, character by character.]
[You couldn't understand it at all, but you kept gnawing.]
Lu Ping didn't feel anything in particular.
He had been in much the same state when cramming for finals in his previous life.
He couldn't understand it, but he forced himself to read it anyway.
The difference was that, in his previous life, the worst that could happen if he couldn't get through it was failing a course.
Now, if he couldn't get through it, he would die.
The text suddenly began to scroll faster. The black words on the white background poured out paragraph after paragraph, no longer popping up one line at a time but flashing by in whole blocks.
[Second year doing odd jobs in the kitchen.]
[You were still chopping vegetables, tending the fire, and scrubbing pots in the kitchen.]
[You were still stealing leftovers.]
[You were still gnawing away every night at the battered book you couldn't understand.]
[The Flattery trait remained in effect.]
[The fat steward's favor toward you remained stable at the "pleasing to the eye" level, and he occasionally gave you an extra half bowl of rice.]
[The Fall Guy trait remained in effect.]
[A pot in the kitchen broke, and you took the blame.]
[A crack appeared in the stove, and you took the blame.]
[The gang leader's hunting dog got diarrhea, and somehow, you ended up taking the blame for that too.]
[You were beaten forty-two times, and one of your bones was broken once.]
[Yet you were still alive.]
[You even felt that you really did recover faster from injuries than before.]
[Age: twenty-one. Years of service: three.]
[Generating trait...]
[Congratulations, you have obtained a trait: Passing the Buck (B-rank) — any trouble or thorny task pushed onto you can be perfectly passed on to someone else, and they cannot refuse.]
Lu Ping's attention snapped into focus.
B-rank!
It was the same rank as Flattery, and it was clearly something that could save his life.
[Current trait slots full: 3/3.]
[Currently equipped: Flattery (B-rank) / Fall Guy (C-rank) / Paid Pooping (C-rank).]
[Trait available for substitution: Passing the Buck.]
[Replace a trait?]