Living Off a Girl in the Simulator?

[Central Plains, Central Region—Pill Region—Saint Pill City—son of a Trading Firm laborer]

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[Year 0: You were born into a laborer's family at the Cao Trading Company in Saint Pill City. Your father worked as a porter, and your mother helped in the kitchens. Your family was poor, but life was manageable.]

[Your parents were overjoyed at your birth, but your innate Soul Force was so powerful that you nearly shocked your birth mother to death during delivery.]

[Still, you knew none of this as an infant, because your memories from before birth had yet to awaken.]

[Year 1: Though your past-life memories had yet to awaken, your exceptional mental strength made you stand out. You could stand at three months, walk at six, speak at nine, and read by your first birthday. You became a minor celebrity among the Trading Firm's laborers: a genius baby.]

[The manager was fond of your quick wit and made an exception, tacitly allowing you to wander freely around the Trading Firm. This brought you into contact with low-level Alchemist apprentices who came and went, and you developed a keen interest in alchemy.]

[Year 2: Taking advantage of your age, you often lingered near the Trading Firm's storeroom and listened in as the Alchemist apprentices discussed medicinal ingredients.]

[By chance, you found a notebook that an elderly Second-Rank Alchemist at the Trading Firm had lost. Impressed by your cleverness, he let you help sort medicinal ingredients in your spare time and occasionally taught you the basics of identifying them and understanding their properties.]

[Thanks to your exceptional Soul Force, you displayed an astonishing memory and keen perception of medicinal ingredients, quietly surprising the old man.]

[Year 3: Your past-life memories finally awakened, and with your parents' permission, you began cultivating Dou Qi. The old Alchemist also formally took you on as an apprentice in name and began teaching you about medicinal ingredients systematically.]

[You progressed rapidly. In just one year, your Dou Qi cultivation reached the first stage. Under the old Alchemist's instruction, you learned to identify hundreds of common medicinal ingredients and grasped the basic principles of combining their properties.]

[Year 4: You trained hard, showing a tenacity unlike others your age. Within a year, you reached Three-Stage Dou Qi.]

[Year 5: You trained hard and reached the fifth stage of Dou Qi.]

[Year 6: You trained hard and reached the seventh stage of Dou Qi.]

[Year 7: You trained hard and reached the eighth stage of Dou Qi.]

[Year 8: You kept training hard and finally reached the ninth stage of Dou Qi by year's end. Even the chief shopkeeper heard of you. He came to see you in person, left you a precious Qi Gathering Powder, and raised both your parents' standing at the Trading Firm by three grades.]

[Only you knew your reputation as a genius was somewhat inflated. Your actual talent was merely average. Most of your progress came from having an adult's mind and working several times harder than your peers. That advantage would only shrink with time, leaving you so anxious that you wanted to spend every moment cultivating.]

[Year 9: You did not take the Qi Gathering Powder. Instead, you tried to condense a Dou Qi vortex on your own, but failed. Your Dou Qi fell back to the eighth stage. Fortunately, you had done it all in secret, so no one knew.]

[Year 10: You cultivated back to the ninth stage of Dou Qi. As you prepared to try condensing a Dou Qi vortex on your own again, you hesitated. After weighing the pros and cons, you took the Qi Gathering Powder and finally condensed the vortex, officially becoming a Dou Zhe!]

[Becoming a Dou Zhe at ten was enough to be called a genius even in the Central Plains. When word spread, countless people came hoping to take you as their disciple.]

[Your goal, however, had always been clear: you wanted to study under an Alchemist of the Pill Tower. You made no choice and simply told the Trading Firm's chief shopkeeper what you wanted.]

[The chief shopkeeper examined your Dou Qi attribute and burst out laughing with delight. He asked whether you would join the main family.]

[Only then did you learn that the Cao Trading Company was backed by the Cao Family, one of the Pill Tower's five affiliated families!]

[You naturally had no reason to refuse a direct path into the Pill Tower's ranks. After you agreed, the chief shopkeeper took you to the Cao Family estate.]

[There, you were made to take another Dou Qi attribute test. Then an old man came to test your Soul Force. Your results greatly pleased the Cao Family's leaders.]

[Cao Dan, the head of the Cao Family and a Seventh-Rank Alchemist, came in person and assigned a Fifth-Rank Alchemist to guide you in cultivation and alchemy. But before your appointed teacher arrived, a girl in red appeared and declared that she wanted to take you as her disciple.]

[Cao Dan explained with a helpless look that she was Cao Ying, known as the Cao Family Demoness. She was only two years older than you, yet had already reached Dou Ling and could refine fourth-rank pills!]

[You marveled inwardly at the outrageous talent of the Central Plains' top geniuses. Cao Ying's age also gave you a rough idea that you were probably the same age as Xiao Yan, the child of destiny.]

[You did not take Cao Ying's claim that she wanted you as a disciple seriously. You simply waited for Cao Dan to make arrangements.]

[Sure enough, after Cao Dan gave her what sounded like a lecture but was really an indulgent attempt to coax her, Cao Ying dropped the idea of taking you as a disciple. Instead, she proposed that you cultivate and study alchemy alongside her.]

[You figured the Cao Family Demoness was so gifted that she had few people her own age around her. More than a cultivation partner, she probably wanted a playmate. The head of the Cao Family would have a hard time refusing that.]

[Sure enough, Cao Ying wore Cao Dan down until he reluctantly agreed. Before he could say a few words to you, she pulled you out of the council hall and took you to the Cao Family storeroom.]

[There, Cao Ying handed you a high-grade Xuan Tier fire-attribute cultivation method and two mid-grade Xuan Tier Dou Techniques. She also gave you a Storage Ring filled with basic medicinal ingredients for practice, along with a medicinal cauldron.]