First Life Simulation

Although the numbers had not changed, he could clearly sense that the once-silent "Faith Pool" had produced an extremely faint yet undeniably real ripple due to the initial acknowledgment and "choice to intervene" of that person of great fortune in the distant land.

Like a small stone cast into an ancient well, it had not stirred up any waves, yet it had broken the absolute silence.

He stuck out his tongue and licked his slightly cracked lips, dry from dehydration. The corner of his mouth curled into an almost imperceptible arc filled with endless chill.

That curve held calculation, anticipation, and an icy sense of control, as though he were holding the threads of fate in his hand.

"Awareness has been established... The first move has been made."

He muttered soundlessly, his voice hoarse but carrying a trace of suppressed excitement.

"Come, Child of Destiny... Tang San!

Let me see what kind of... reality your 'trust' can bring me when you 'personally' witness your 'destined' tragedy and your 'possible' glory."

The young man in the dilapidated hut was named Fu Shiyan. He had changed his name himself; as for his original name, he had long forgotten it.

He was not of this world. His soul came from another world.

At the beginning of his transmigration, he had also held the expectations and ambitions of any other transmigrator, believing himself to be favored by destiny.

However, reality dealt him its most merciless blow—Martial Soul awakening, Blue Silver Grass, Innate Soul Power, level 0.5.

On the Douluo Continent, that practically amounted to a death sentence for his path as a Spirit Master.

To make matters worse, the small village where he had been born had briefly prospered after producing a Soul Ancestor. His family, as direct relatives of that Soul Ancestor, had also enjoyed several peaceful years.

But fortune and misfortune went hand in hand. That Soul Ancestor had been killed after murdering someone for treasure, and his enemy, a ruthless Fallen Spirit Master, had actually taken his anger out on the village and slaughtered it overnight.

That night, flames soared into the sky and screams filled the land. Only eight years old, Fu Shiyan crawled out from a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood under his mother's desperate protection, covered in blood and gripped by bone-deep terror. He had barely survived.

From then on, fearing pursuit by his enemies, he concealed his identity and struggled to survive at the bottom of every major city like a rat in a gutter.

He had been a beggar, a pickpocket, and a scavenger picking through the aftermath of Spirit Master battles. He had seen too much ugliness in human nature and too much cruelty in the world.

Eighteen years of hardship had worn that transmigrator, once full of fantasies, into a cold-hearted dreg of the lower class who would stop at nothing to survive.

He was twenty-six this year. Through only the crudest meditation techniques and the meager resources he occasionally stumbled upon, he had barely raised his Soul Power to level eight.

His Blue Silver Grass Martial Soul was nearly useless aside from helping him identify nonpoisonous wild vegetables in the wilderness.

He had thought his life would rot away like this.

Until three days ago, when the [Lianjia Chengzhen System] awakened in his mind.

The system's core was simple: consume "Faith Points" to turn fabricated "falsehoods" into "reality."

Faith Points came from others' "trust" in the fabricated content. The deeper their trust, the stronger they were or the greater their fortune, the more Faith Power they provided.

And those with great fortune were the most efficient "sources of Faith Power."

The 100 Faith Points from the beginner's gift pack were pitifully few.

They might have been enough to fabricate a small secret realm and deceive ordinary people, but the return on investment was too low, and Spirit Masters could easily see through it.

He needed a gamble that would yield enormous profits from a single investment.

So he set his sights on the gathering point of this world's fortune—Tang San.

Using 100 Faith Points, he had woven an exquisite lie: a virtual system named the [Life Simulator]. He had successfully "implanted" it into Tang San's mind far away in Holy Soul Village.

And he would become the Simulator's sole screenwriter and director.

Tang San's "trust" would become his only bargaining chip to reverse his fate.

"Tang San... Enjoy the 'future' I've prepared for you."

Fu Shiyan licked his cracked lips. His eyes flickered with the madness and chill of a desperate gamble. "Your trust will become the ladder I use to climb!"

At the summit of Holy Soul Village, Tang San's consciousness was abruptly dragged into a bizarre, dazzling vortex.

He felt as though he had become a ghost attached to another "himself." He could clearly experience all of that "self's" sensations and emotions, yet he could not make a sound or interfere in any way. He could only passively undergo everything unfolding before him.

(Simulation begins: Holy Soul Village, Martial Soul Awakening Ceremony)

He found himself standing in an unfamiliar wooden house, surrounded by several nervous yet excited children from the same village.

A man dressed in a particular uniform, called Deacon Su Yuntao, was guiding a strange fluctuation of energy.

Then, he felt heat in the palm of his "self's" right hand, and a small pale-blue blade of grass appeared out of thin air.

What is this? Tang San, attached to the body, was filled with astonishment. A plant... summoned from the body? Is this the special power of this world?

"Blue Silver Grass, a useless Martial Soul." The deacon's voice carried habitual indifference.

At that moment, he suddenly felt an entirely different stirring from his "self's" left hand!

A heavy force, carrying a cold and hard texture, gathered in the left palm.

His "gaze"—or rather, his perception—could not help following his "self's" body downward, looking toward his back. Through the obstruction of the child's small body, he vaguely "saw" an extremely blurry, pitch-black hammer-shaped phantom flash in the left palm before vanishing. His "self" instinctively clenched his hand tightly, completely concealing it behind his back and beneath his sleeve. Aside from himself—the observer and the simulated self—no one noticed.

The left hand! There's another one in the left hand! Tang San, attached to the body, was shaken to the core.

One person can actually possess two of these... "things" at once? He could not comprehend such a phenomenon at all.

Even more confusing events followed one after another.

The deacon took out a crystal ball for his "self" to test. The instant his "self" placed a hand on it, the crystal ball erupted with an incomparably dazzling light!

"In... Innate Full Soul Power?!" The deacon's cry was filled with disbelief.

Soul Power? Full Soul Power? Tang San, the observer, was even more bewildered.

Is that referring to the internal force I cultivate through the Mysterious Heaven Skill? The intensity of this light seems to correspond to the level of internal force I reached after just breaking through the first level. It seems this world really is as that system said—using this method to measure the strength of internal force? And there are even ranks?

Filled with doubts, his "self" returned to the Blacksmith Shop. His father, who spent all day drunk, merely cast an indifferent glance at the Blue Silver Grass appearing in his right hand and was about to lie back down. However, the simulated "self" said, "I think I have another Martial Soul!"—

A sudden change erupted!

Tang Hao's originally hunched and dispirited body abruptly stiffened, as if he had been struck by lightning!