Xinyi Continent
Outside Pingchang City stood the Sword Forging Manor.
In an old house beneath the Mountain Villa, the sound of a rooster crowing rang out early in the morning.
"Big brother, it's time to get up and eat. We have to go up the mountain to forge swords, or we'll be punished again."
The girl looked seventeen or eighteen. Her name was Ning Jiaojiao. Her skin was as fair as jade, and her sweet features were set off by a round face with a hint of vacant cuteness. Yawning, she reached out and pushed open the door.
Inside, a man sat on a chair, maintaining a bronze sword forged from melted copper coins.
She was a little surprised and said with a grin, "Big brother, you're polishing your sword again?"
"The road to the Sword Forging Manor isn't safe."
As Ning Zheng spoke, he put away the sword, then rubbed Ning Jiaojiao's head and took out a small bamboo dragonfly. "This is a toy for you. Since I'm going out today, give me a blessing and help me save up some good luck?"
"Sure thing."
Ning Jiaojiao knew her big brother was a little strange. He asked for a blessing every day.
Although she had no idea what it meant, as long as she nodded, she would get tasty food and fun toys.
The transaction was complete. Deducting the target's Luck Value for today.
Luck +100
Feeling the points arrive, Ning Zheng nodded in satisfaction.
He had come to this world more than ten years ago. The moment he was born, he discovered that he possessed a special ability:
He could see other people's luck.
He could also become a Luck Merchant and buy and sell luck with others.
An ordinary person's Luck Value was ten points, while Ning Jiaojiao's luck was clearly more than ten times stronger than an ordinary person's.
As for the purchase price?
The two parties set the rules, and both acted willingly. Wasn't exchanging one bamboo dragonfly for one hundred Luck Value perfectly reasonable?
And what use was the luck he obtained?
As long as someone was lucky enough, they could be almost omnipotent.
It was rather like making a wish with the Dragon Balls.
Whatever one wished for would come true. As long as one had enough luck, heavenly treasures and cultivation manuals could all be picked up by chance.
Even if an invincible expert descended to kill him, he could spend his accumulated Luck Value, and a super meteorite might happen to fall from the heavens and crush the opponent to death.
"Big brother, play games with me in the yard today."
Ning Jiaojiao skipped into the middle of the yard, looking extremely happy. Suddenly, she turned her head, her expression turning icy as an eerie girlish giggle came from her mouth.
"Be serious, all right? Hehe. If big brother isn't serious, big brother's flavor should be pretty good too."
As Ning Jiaojiao spoke, she spun and hopped around lively. Suddenly, she went plop and fell flat on her back, all four limbs in the air. Her head abruptly exploded, splattering blood all over the yard, while white feces flowed from inside her skull.
"Ah! Ah!"
Then a black crow swept across the sky. A lump of runny droppings happened to land right inside her muddy, ruined head.
Adding insult to injury.
Ning Jiaojiao was, as always, having a run of rotten luck today.
Ning Zheng had long since grown used to it. He frowned and scolded her, "Jiaojiao, you unlucky child. I told you not to turn around and talk while walking, and you fell again."
"Ugh~ Big brother, don't look. I'm so ugly right now." Ning Jiaojiao covered her face shyly as her exploded head squirmed rapidly and returned to its original state.
She did not notice anything unusual. Climbing to her feet, she patted the dirt off her body and said with indescribable eeriness, "Big brother, help me take a look. It feels like something crawled inside. My head hurts, and it feels itchy inside."
Ning Zheng, of course, knew what it was.
Bird droppings had gotten inside.
If he did not stuff bird droppings into her head every day, she would never have become so simple, stupidly cute, and muddle-headed—so easy to control and bully.
Under normal circumstances, she was a terrifying monster that would constantly ask her big brother to "play."
Therefore, he had to make sure her luck was extremely bad every day. She had to trip while walking, have bird droppings fall on her head, remain dazed and confused, and have everything go wrong. Only then would she not harm him.
Name: Ning Jiaojiao
Race: Merfolk hybrid
Status: Vengeful Ghost (dead for 107 years)
Today's Luck Value: 5/105 (possessed by the God of Misfortune)
"Pick it up."
"Oh."
"Pick it up."
"Hehe~"
"Good girl."
After giving his unlucky adopted sister her daily dose of affection, Ning Zheng left the house.
Outside was an alley paved with bluestone. Moss spread everywhere, filling it with green vitality, while wisps of dampness drifted through the air. Most people had already risen to work the fields, and the rice paddies were full of farmers planting seedlings with stiff, vacant movements.
A crow perched on the eaves, locked in a standoff with a stray cat beneath the roof.
Even today, more than a hundred years later, the people of this village still had not realized that they were dead. Day after day, they repeated the lives they had led while alive.
Thirteen years ago, young Ning Zheng had been kidnapped and sold to the distant Sword Forging Manor, where he lived like a slave, hammering iron.
A little over a year later, unable to endure it any longer, he escaped down the mountain and hid in this Spirit Manor.
The Sword Forging Manor on the mountain had been established by a group of powerful demonic cultivators.
Using an evil formation, they had refined the lives of the people from several villages below the mountain into resentful souls, creating a Spirit Manor surrounded by tens of thousands of Vengeful Ghosts—a strange natural protective formation.
Ning Zheng had only survived because his "luck" was good enough. For any other slave who fled down the mountain, this Spirit Manor covering the land meant certain death.
After fleeing down the mountain and searching through the Spirit Manor, he discovered that this little ghost girl lived alone and possessed the highest Luck Value—105. Thus, he decisively became Ning Jiaojiao's big brother and hid in her home.
This place was filled with the lingering resentment of the dead, left behind in the Mortal World. They had no sense of self, only basic logic.
According to Ning Zheng's investigations, these creatures were all incorporeal resentful spirits. Yet they seemed able to turn corporeal by eating flesh and blood, like stuffing a hollow bubble doll full of bloody mud.
It was truly bizarre.
After that, he figured out the logic behind her killing.
She was simply a lonely ghost who wanted her big brother to play with her. Before her illness acted up, she had been a vacant yet lively good little sister. He also discovered that she had suffered a childhood trauma involving bird droppings while alive—contact with bird feces drastically weakened her strength—so he had found a way to restrain her.
Remnants of this kind of evil thing were heavily influenced by psychological trauma. Once one found the thing they had feared in life, their strength would plummet.
By now, he had even begun raising her as a household pet.
For no other reason than this:
She was obedient, easy to train, and followed her big brother's orders as long as she did not go berserk.
As long as he controlled her ferocity every day, she was extremely safe.
What others feared, he greedily coveted.
Day after day, Ning Zheng absorbed his little sister's Luck Value, along with that of the neighbors, and had become the village's number-one bully.
By now, the villagers would often trip while walking down the street, step into pits, break their legs, or have their brains explode.
Thanks to the selfless contributions of his fellow villagers, Ning Zheng had amassed a huge fortune. He could finally begin trying to establish a foothold in this world.
"Good morning, Uncle Chen. You're taking Aunt Li to plant rice seedlings so early again."
At that very moment, he carried his Bronze Sword on his back and exchanged greetings with the villagers around him, who moved stiffly like puppets, as he made his way toward the Sword Forging Manor.
Along the way, he picked some wild fruit, wiped it with his sleeve, and ate it for breakfast.
Although he was nominally going to work forging swords,
in reality, he was hiding in a corner beneath the mountain, cursing the Demon People in the Mountain Villa.
Where there was a will, there was a way.
Just yesterday, the Demon People in the Sword Forging Manor had also suffered terrible "luck" and died in an internal conflict.
All thirty-two of them.
Every day, Ning Zheng had secretly cursed them to turn against each other. Thus, through misunderstandings caused by all sorts of coincidences, they grew wary of one another. In the end, after five years, their internal strife became increasingly severe. They finally started fighting in earnest and, with exceptionally "good luck," perished together.
His expenditure over those five years totaled more than thirty thousand Luck Value.
That also let Ning Zheng understand just how terrifying his ability was.
He was merely a minor blacksmith, yet he could truly ignore cultivation levels and realms and curse powerful cultivators to death from across the air!
"Using the Luck Value collected from the villagers to attack the Demon People on the mountain counts as avenging the villagers and my adopted sister, too."
His thoughts returned to the present.
The sun was bright.
Walking into the morning mist, Ning Zheng spent more than an hour making his way along the mountain road before a Sword Forging Manor came into view.
He stood at a distance and used Qi Observation across the air. There was no powerful Luck Value inside the Mountain Villa, so it should be safe.
Ning Zheng carried his sword and pushed open the shattered main hall. He walked around, silently counting the heads of those lying on the ground.
"The Manor Lord is dead."
"The Vice Manor Lord is gone, too."
"They must have fought brutally yesterday."
It was the first time he had "killed" someone, yet Ning Zheng felt no discomfort. Instead, a cathartic satisfaction rose within him, and his breathing quickened slightly.
"At last... they're all dead!"
"Serves them right. Good riddance. Good riddance!"
Looking at the bloody scene covering the ground, blood surged through Ning Zheng's head. He was tense and excited, but not the least bit afraid or frightened.
Blood covered the ground. On the eaves and in the mud, the cultivators' corpses bounced and writhed like tentacles, buzzing as black flies swarmed around them.
Even though he had seen it many times, Ning Zheng still could not help letting out a breath of foul air. "The cultivators of this world really do have tenacious vitality."
Their consciousness had died, yet their bodies still refused to perish.
It was absurd.
Over the course of the following noon, Ning Zheng cleaned up the writhing corpses one by one, putting them all into a large vat.
Name: Ning Zheng
Race: New Human
Spiritual Root: Shadow
Realm: First Stage of the Five Bodies Realm
Luck Status: 15 (All Things at Peace), base value is 0, currently adjusted to consume 15 per day.
Stored Luck Value: 200983
Unlike ordinary people,
his daily base Luck Value was zero. His fate had no fixed number and was filled with variables.
Thus, he consumed fifteen points every day to ensure he possessed a certain amount of daily luck and remained safe.
Huff!
He let out a deep breath, finished putting all the corpses into the large vat, and laboriously covered it with a stone lid, as if he were finally expelling all the gloom that had built up inside him.
"Huff! The old grudges are settled. It's time to use my accumulated luck to seek a heaven-defying opportunity! Help me set sail and rise into the sky, and let everything begin anew."
When his eyes opened again, Ning Zheng had already arrived at a gambling table surrounded by dense fog. Bubbles floated all around him, each seemingly containing a person's life.
It was the mysterious Luck Table that existed somewhere beyond the veil, where he traded Luck Value with others.
Luck Value -200000
He shoved forward fiercely, sending the vast majority of his round Luck Value chips tumbling ahead like mountains collapsing one after another.
Going all in was a form of wisdom.
He spoke toward the empty seat across the table:
"I need an opportunity that will let me steadily, safely, and permanently harvest other people's Luck Value."
His thought settled.
Across the gambling table, the scene slowly blurred.
It seemed that he had pried open a certain Fate Thread, triggering a chain reaction. Three great opportunities capable of changing his destiny appeared before his eyes, each shining with blinding radiance.
1. The embryonic form of a disaster cultivation technique that transformed its wielder into a plague god, sucking in the Luck Value of all living beings. Wherever it walked, cities would suffer calamity; wherever it crossed water, rivers would dry up; wherever it entered forests, the trees would wither.
2. A strangely dressed ordinary man carrying a mysterious Immortal Dao Fruit descended after tearing through the void. His daily Luck Value remained fixed at 5,000, and he could be enslaved and made to feed someone his Luck Value.
3. An unknown sword-forging auxiliary Server that could provide unlucky little blacksmiths from another world—people who worked tirelessly and harvested Luck Value.
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