Do You Long to Have a Soul?

The blazing sun beat down, and sweat soaked their backs.

By the time Huai Shi came to his senses, he was already standing on a training field. Shouts of "Hah!" and "Hey!" kept coming from behind him, and he seemed to be doing some sort of calisthenics with the guy opposite him.

Before he could react, someone kicked him from behind. A burly man in a tank top pointed at him and cursed, "Chen Bo, you useless bastard! Didn't you eat?"

With that, he shoved Huai Shi's opponent aside and assumed a stance. "Come on, you and me."

Over the man's shoulder, Huai Shi saw the slogan on the wall behind him.

Sweat more in peacetime, bleed less in wartime.

Before he could react, his body seemed to move on its own, charging straight at the burly man before him—no, the instructor.

Bang!

Gate-Sealing Punch.

Huai Shi's vision went black as pain exploded through him.

"Again!" The instructor crooked a finger at Chen Bo.

Only then did he realize that he seemed to be in some bizarre possession state. Like a ghost clinging to someone's back, he could only passively experience this body's sensations.

Everything felt hazy, like a dream, but the pain was completely real, without the slightest discount.

Bang!

Another trip and joint lock. Huai Shi felt his face smash into the ground.

"Again!"

Bang!

"Again!"

Bang!

The scenes kept changing. Within those fragmented dream sequences, he seemed to repeat the process of being creatively brutalized by several instructors.

It was as though they had deliberately singled out the unlucky guy he was possessing. Incorrect form meant a beating, slow reactions meant a beating, almost time to eat meant a beating, just started training meant another beating.

Eat, sleep, beat Chen Bo...

Amid the stench of body odor and feet, Huai Shi had completely given up hope.

Not until Chen Bo could barely trade a couple of moves with several instructors using Military Boxing, transforming from a complete rookie into a slightly bigger rookie, was he expelled for getting into a fight with some idle members of society during police training...

Becoming a new idle member of society!

How very delightful, how very congratulatory. Huai Shi was almost in tears. He finally would not have to get beaten up anymore.

What the hell was this?

Had he accidentally obtained some kind of super getting-beaten-up system?

What followed was simply indescribable. Amid fragmented nightmares, Huai Shi's identity kept changing. From an unlucky trainee being creatively beaten up with Military Boxing by instructors, to a little thug carrying a machete in the sweltering heat to fight for his life, then into a doorman crouching by an entrance to watch for officers coming to crack down on vice and piracy. Next, he became a miserable pimp who greeted customers every night and introduced them to girls. Finally, he became a balding middle-aged man attending meetings...

That bastard really loved meetings.

Study meetings, seminars, inspection meetings, investigation meetings, report meetings... He had truly devoted his limited energy to an infinite number of meetings...

Those fragments continuously overlapped, piling atop one another like a precarious building. Once they reached their limit, they collapsed with a thunderous crash, splitting apart into hundreds and thousands once more.

Huai Shi's consciousness was dragged apart with them. Hundreds and thousands of versions of himself ran in parallel through hundreds and thousands of nightmares, cycling endlessly.

It was like a computer assembled for one hundred and fifty yuan overestimating itself and loading the workload of the Galaxy Computer. In the end, his rapidly working brain seemed to grind flames from the inside of his skull, burning everything to ashes.

All the nightmares shattered with a crash.

Huai Shi opened his eyes and gasped violently. Sweat dripped from his face, slid down the armrest of the chair, and fell onto the wet floor.

The clock on the wall was still turning slowly.

Only five minutes had passed since he closed his eyes.

He had been beaten eighty or ninety times, fought dozens of times, been sent to the hospital several times, stood lookout for hundreds of days, sent scantily clad young ladies into pink little rooms over a thousand times... and attended countless meetings.

It was practically a complete social experience package.

"What a... hellish experience..."

Huai Shi muttered blankly. Unable to support himself, he slid down from the chair.

In his daze, he closed his eyes.

Just let me die...

For one moment, he seemed to see the misery of his future life and made that wish from the bottom of his heart.

Then, it became just like every wish Huai Shi had ever made before.

—It had no chance of coming true.

When he opened his eyes again, it was already the next morning.

He was still lying on the floor, but his body felt far better, as though he had taken some miracle medicine.

Soon, he saw the IV needles inserted into both of his hands. Well, one bag of saline and one bag of glucose...

"You're awake?"

A Crow's head suddenly popped out from the side. Beaming with joy, it congratulated him, "We've cured your condition where you see everyone as pigeons!"

"...Then thank you very much."

"A healer's heart is that of a parent. Don't mention it."

Crow flapped its wings and flew to the table. It sat down with both legs crossed, rolled an unknown cigarette with one wing, lit it with practiced ease, and puffed away like a seasoned member of society. Yet the smoke it inhaled drifted out from beneath its feathers, making for an exceptionally strange sight.

"So, did you gain anything?" Crow asked.

"Does waking up alive count?"

Huai Shi climbed off the floor irritably. He did not dare pull out the IV needles, so he could only carefully lean against the chair and sit down.

Only then did he realize that he was no longer what he used to be. He was completely different from before—he was now a man with a status panel.

He hurriedly opened the Book of Destiny and examined his data on the title page.

Ignoring the inexplicable "Stress Period" label at the top and the completely empty Stigmata and Divine Miracle Inscription sections, below was the simple and easy-to-understand skill panel.

General Knowledge, representing common sense and education, remained at the utterly embarrassing level of LV3. He had not even graduated high school, yet he had already returned part of his knowledge to his PE teacher.

Art, representing his cello skills, was at the LV6 level that made him somewhat proud. He had reached the professional threshold. To advance further, he would have to rely on ninety-nine percent sweat and that crucial one percent talent.

Meanwhile, the inexplicable skill "Death Sense" was still gray.

It was increasingly starting to feel like some strange game.

It's not going to make me pay, is it?

Huai Shi felt vaguely worried.

After using it last night, Huai Shi had finally gained a preliminary understanding of its classifications. According to the Book of Destiny, only abilities that one had mastered proficiently and could use freely would be recognized as skills.

The highest limit an Ordinary Person's skills could reach through a lifetime of learning and constant practice was LV10, or level ten.

The first few levels of most skills were relatively easy, but like settings designed by the numerical planners of some shady game company, the higher one went, even the slightest increase required hundreds of times more effort.

And while level ten was the endpoint for some people, for others, it might only be the beginning.

Huai Shi understood that perfectly well.

It was like two exam papers that both received perfect scores.

Sometimes, levels could not explain much. They were merely a convenient measure provided by the Book of Destiny to help him assess himself.

Feeling that the road ahead was long and arduous, Huai Shi continued reading downward. Only then did he discover that overnight, he had gained several new skills.

Combat Military Boxing LV4

Reconnaissance LV4

And there was also a somewhat ridiculous Illegal Organization Management LV3.

Then...

"Holy shit?" Crow cried out. "How is your Copywriting skill already LV6?"

Huai Shi could not help rolling his eyes. "Obviously! Try holding several hundred meetings in a row, then writing several hundred meeting minutes and study reflections!"

Huai Shi did not have a particularly deep grasp of Military Boxing and the like. He could only learn the introductory stages through passively taking beatings and observing.

Only when writing those hundreds of records and reflections did he truly experience tears of blood in every word and bitterness in every line.

His greatest gain that night had not been learning how to perform Military Boxing or stand lookout for the police... It had been learning how to pad out word counts in manuscripts!

Now, he had even surpassed his predecessors. He could seamlessly pour an entire Pacific Ocean into one of his updates, while precisely splitting it into sections of three thousand words so he would not lose out by writing too much.

"You should make sure to record this part properly. In the future, write your reports according to this format."

He patted the Book of Destiny in his hands, crossed his legs smugly, and sighed. "If I wrote novels, I'd make a fortune."

"Novelists never meet a good end." Crow whispered sinisterly beside his ear. "Lots of them start going bald before middle age. Like that Hu something, that Guo something, and that wandering Jun something..."

Huai Shi shuddered.

He could not afford to provoke that. Better forget it.

"But speaking of which..."

Huai Shi opened the book and flipped to the appendix files at the end. Those files seemed to have lost all their value. Most of the writing had vanished, leaving behind only a monotonous table.

"Why does the book contain these people's memories?"

"Oh, you didn't know?"

Crow seemed quite surprised, but said calmly, "The Book of Destiny is now bound to you, so it only records things related to you.

"The reason it collected these fragments is probably because they all died because of you?"

"..."

Huai Shi froze.

"Ah, there are actually around seventy of them in total."

Crow said lightly, "Unfortunately, only four or five had sufficiently active Source Matter to preserve the deepest impressions from their memories. There are fewer and fewer people with the aptitude to awaken these days. You should thank them."

"..."

Huai Shi sucked in a cold breath, goosebumps rising all over his body. He instinctively leaned back, wanting to get farther away from Crow and that book.

But he quickly understood that even if he threw both the book and Crow into an ocean trench, it would probably be useless.

He finally understood why the military had suddenly arrested him and interrogated him so thoroughly.

It was probably because those people yesterday... were already dead, right?

They were all dead.

Only he remained.

Even thinking of that made him shiver, as though the bloodstained Fierce Ape were standing behind him, grinning viciously at him.

After a long, long time, he finally calmed down and gave a dry, bitter laugh. "Does it really have to be this exaggerated?"

"Yes, it really is this exaggerated, Huai Shi. This world is like that. It is not as peaceful as you imagine. This sky, this land, this country, this city... all hide far more than you have ever seen.

—Truths that absolutely cannot be known, borders that Ordinary People absolutely cannot cross, and hells that absolutely cannot be glimpsed.

"If you remain immersed forever within the narrow shelter of the Present Realm, you will never learn the truth."

She watched the boy's stunned expression with appreciation.

Then she asked softly:

"—Huai Shi, do you long to have a soul?"

I'm crying! They actually did something like this to him while he was asleep.

So sad. Is it really this hard to rise in the new book rankings now...?