Opening Move: Slaying the Little Demon Sky Blood Crow

Opening Move: Slaying the Little Demon Sky Blood Crow

"Everyone has a few moments in life when they feel they have seen the gates of heaven open. I waited seventeen years, and at my lowest point, the gates finally opened."

Lin Li stared at the backs of his classmates in front of him and sighed softly.

"Are there lions hidden in your eyes too?" His deskmate, Bai Bufan, turned to look at the suddenly crazed Lin Li and mocked him. "Lu Mingli, could you trade a quarter of your lifespan to get me a girlfriend? Someone like Jiu De Mai would do.

"If that's asking too much, then don't trade for anything at all—no other meaning, I just want to waste your lifespan."

"Bufan, between us now lies a thick and sorrowful barrier." Lin Li turned toward Bai Bufan. There were no lions in his eyes, but there was lofty compassion.

Bai Bufan rolled his eyes and clasped his hands. "Lord Treant, please continue losing your mind. I haven't memorized tomorrow morning's English vocabulary yet, so I need to keep cramming. Farewell."

"Foot fetishist. Disgusting." Lin Li shook his head disdainfully.

It took Bai Bufan, who had already turned away, three seconds to realize that Lin Li had actually insulted him. He whipped back around. "Does cramming count as a foot fetish?! Apologize to that idiom! Also, what did foot fetishes ever do to you? Apologize to Arknights players too! Finally, apologize to me for wasting another precious minute of my life!"

"I won't apologize. I prefer Azur Lane."

"I'm very interested in having a fierce debate about XP with you, but not during Evening Self-Study. Once I survive English class tomorrow, you'll pay for your ignorance." Bai Bufan sneered, then turned away and threw himself back into his English textbook.

Lin Li took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, suppressing the excitement in his heart.

He had not suddenly lost his mind.

Just now, he had activated a system. Those words had come straight from his heart.

This kind of thing had truly happened to him.

This was a system that could lead him to the pinnacle of life. After observing everyone else's reactions, he had confirmed that, at least in this classroom, he was the only one who had activated one.

Lin Li was nervous and thrilled. If he were not in a classroom full of people, his hand would probably have reached downward already as he began to hum softly.

After joking around with his deskmate, Lin Li had calmed down somewhat and formally began examining his system.

Loading 99%...

It had not finished loading yet, and Lin Li waited so excitedly that he wanted to sing and dance.

Twenty minutes later, the progress had not changed.

Lin Li continued waiting excitedly.

Forty minutes later, it still had not changed.

Lin Li waited with a frown.

Sixty minutes later.

Lin Li waited with a peaceful smile, as if he had entered sage mode and seen through the mortal world.

The four elements were empty. Amitabha. He had no worldly desires.

Motherf—

Binding complete.

Congratulations, you have successfully bound the Ascension System. This system will guide and assist your growth, helping you gradually develop in this unfamiliar world and become supreme!

May your mother be healthy.

Just kidding. This old monk was returning to secular life first.

Fine, very ambitious! That was how it should be! So what if the wait was a little long? Good things should be like this.

Like something originally priced at 33.9 yuan that got discounted to 32.9 yuan. Did that mean the merchant was stingy? No, it proved it was such a good product that they could only knock off one yuan.

The long loading time represented how much it contained. Its value was comparable to the fingers of Little Fugui, the God of Cooking who laughed wildly.

It could not possibly be a bug, right? What a joke.

The illusory image before him changed into the initial UI.

It was very simple: Status, Shop, Inventory, Tasks.

He tapped Status.

Name: Lin Li

Age: 17

Physique: None

Passive Abilities: None

Active Abilities: None

System Currency: None

It was a very simple introduction, and the contents were cleanly filled with "none."

The system probably did not count ordinary abilities. Lin Li had some talents, after all—or perhaps those talents simply had not been recognized.

But this did not discourage Lin Li. Instead, it made him even more excited—if none of his existing abilities had been recognized, did that mean only supernatural powers were counted? Did that not prove the system would grant him superpowers?

Thinking of the system's opening words, "become supreme," he could become Superman in the modern world! To Lin Li, that was far better than those systems that gave money or power.

He tapped Shop.

Unlock after accumulating 300 System Currency.

It seemed this door could not be opened from this side for now. Lin Li opened Inventory instead.

As expected, it was completely empty. Still, Lin Li felt somewhat disappointed, since he had hoped the system might give him something like a newbie gift pack.

It was fine. Having a system was already great enough, Lin Li comforted himself.

Apparently, getting something for nothing was not the point of this system. Lin Li fixed his gaze on Tasks and prayed that the system's missions would not be too difficult.

Having entered the Cultivation World, even a mortal body should possess the ambition of a great swan. Sweep away the demons of the world, starting now!

Task triggered!

Task One: Kill ten Little Demon Sky Blood Crows that frequently appear around your village and attack and hunt villagers.

Reward: Physique Improvement: Spiritual energy absorption speed increased by 100%; System Currency ×50.

"..."

Lin Li crossed his hands beneath his nose.

Silence.

Something was wrong. No, not just wrong—nine out of ten parts wrong.

Lin Li patted Bai Bufan on the shoulder. Once Bai Bufan looked over, he asked sincerely, "Bufan, I have a friend who just downloaded a game. For his beginner mission, the system told him to kill ten Little Demon Sky Blood Crows, but he has no idea where to find them. What should he do?"

"Have him ask the nearby NPCs." Bai Bufan shrugged.

"Hmm..."

As expected of a good brother. They thought alike.

"My friend just tried that option. The NPCs apparently don't know either." Lin Li's expression once again approached sage mode, neither sorrowful nor joyful.

"Then it's one of those disgusting forced map-exploration games. Your friend should hope the map isn't too big." Bai Bufan waved his hand.

The map probably was not that big. Just 510 million square kilometers—and that was without counting the outer space DLC.

Lin Li continued focusing on the system.

It was not as though there was no guidance at all. The mission had said that those blood crows appeared around a "village."

Lin Li was at school, the county's top high school. It had nothing to do with a village.

"..."

Lin Li felt that he had to face one thing. He could no longer deceive himself.

His gaze locked onto the phrases "Having entered the Cultivation World" and "in this unfamiliar world" from the system's opening message.

He looked out the window. The classroom was on the Second Floor, so there was not much scenery. Just as usual, there had been no spiritual energy revival.

It was the ordinary world he had lived in for seventeen years.

"Heh—" Lin Li took a deep breath.

Could it be...

Had he missed a transmigration step? The more Lin Li thought about it, the more certain he became that this was the case.

What kind of creature these days dared to frequently appear and hunt humans? Any creature with guts would have long been shot to pieces by humans wielding truth.

But...

If he had not transmigrated, then this mission should be impossible to complete, right?

If he could not complete it, then the Shop could not be activated, and he could not claim the rewards...

Then what use was this system?!

No, once he got dementia in old age, he could pull it out at any time to check his age and name.

His children would never have to worry about their Father forgetting his own name again. Wow, he really was a genius!

That instantly made him not... even more fucking miserable.

Lin Li tapped through every system interface, but he could not find a transmigration option.

"Brother System?"

"Customer service?"

"After-sales support?"

"..."

"Father?"

"If you don't reply, I'm sending Earth's coordinates to the Trisolarans!"

Lin Li tried many methods, but in the end, he confirmed one thing—the system was not alive.

What a backward, low-grade system. Could it not even come with an AI?

Could the loading failure earlier really have been caused by a bug?

Silence. Painful, unbearable silence.

"Bufan, do you know which nearby road has the most dump trucks?" Lin Li turned his head mechanically.

Maybe it was not too late to transmigrate now.

"How would I know that? What are you trying to do?" Bai Bufan asked, confused.

"I want to make a video. In it, I'll hide in the bushes and suddenly jump out in front of a dump truck when it comes by, scaring it half to death. There don't seem to be any content creators doing that online, so I should be able to go viral." Lin Li gave a miserable smile.

"..."

"Do you mean viral as in cremated?" Bai Bufan gave him a thumbs-up, then looked at his deskmate with amusement and curiosity. "What's wrong with you? You look constipated."

"I'm falling apart," Lin Li said honestly.

"Nothing is impossible to get through. Go home tonight and beg for some derivatives. Once everything's derived, it'll be fine." Bai Bufan offered a perfunctory consolation. From his perspective, Lin Li had suddenly become like this within the past hour, so it could not be anything serious.

Probably just those few days every month that men had.

"You wouldn't understand. This is the despair of being only one dump truck away from reaching the pinnacle of life—if it would just run me over." Lin Li sighed.

The system was right before his eyes, yet he could not use it.

"No, I think I understand. I've fallen apart too, and it was just recently." Bai Bufan's expression turned weathered as a gloomy, melancholic aura radiated from him. "Last weekend, I finally found a video I really liked. But just as I was about to reach the peak, the internet lagged. The screen froze on the male lead's eyeless face.

"I gambled everything and used all my strength, but I couldn't hold on. I blew my load.

"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!!

"Even now, I still can't accept it! That arrogant, damned bastard—I'll never forgive him for the rest of my life!"

Since it was still Evening Self-Study, Bai Bufan merely clenched his fist and lightly pounded the desk, though his face looked slightly ferocious.

"..."

It had to be said that Bai Bufan was a genius at comforting people. Lin Li suddenly realized that he was not quite so devastated after all.

Sigh. After all, what he had lost was only something he had just gained. Rounded off, he had merely been toyed with for two hours.

Lin Li could not possibly gamble on a dump truck letting him transmigrate. That would be too stupid.

But after such emotional ups and downs, it was unrealistic to settle down and study again. He decided to do nothing, empty his mind, and wait for school to end.

After sleeping, everything should feel a little better.

However, a blind mosquito buzzed over with its irritating sound and landed on Lin Li's hand.

The classroom was on the Second Floor, and there had always been plenty of mosquitoes in summer.

I'm already this miserable, and you still want to suck my blood?

Why not suck Bai Bufan's blood instead?

If this had happened earlier, Lin Li might have been willing to treat every mosquito present and let them drink to their hearts' content at Bai Bufan's expense, sharing in his joy. But now, enough was enough! Lin Li kept his left hand still and pretended to scratch his head with his right. Then, with lightning speed—

Smack!

A corpse lay in his palm. Since it had not managed to suck much blood, there were no obvious bloodstains.

Just as Lin Li was about to ask the student in front for a tissue to wipe his hand, he froze.

Killed Little Demon Sky Blood Crow (1/10).

Huh?!?!