A Dumbass System You Deserve to Have
"Auntie Xie, Auntie Xie, are you home?"
Madam Xie was cooking in the kitchen. Hearing the call, she came out with her spatula and called toward the courtyard gate, "Who is it? Is that you, A Sheng?"
The boy outside the gate shifted the bundle of firewood on his back and met Madam Xie's eyes. "A carriage came to the edge of the village. The people look rich, and they're asking the villagers about you. My mother was worried, so she sent me to let you know."
"Rich people?" Madam Xie frowned, then smiled at A Sheng. "All right, I know. Hurry on home. You're still young, so carry less firewood from now on. If you have to, make a few more trips. Be careful not to wear yourself out, or your mother will worry."
"All right, Auntie, I'll be going." A Sheng's figure disappeared from the courtyard gate.
Only then did Madam Xie's brows draw together again. She looked outside and muttered to herself, "Rich people? Who could it be?"
The farmhouse courtyard was small. Xu Xi stood by the window practicing her handwriting and heard everything happening outside as clear as day.
She calmly poked her head out and called, "Auntie, if you don't get back to the kitchen, the food in the pot is going to burn."
Madam Xie came back to her senses and hurried into the kitchen. "Oh no, my red-braised pork!"
"Host, host, quick, quick, quick! Change your clothes. The people from the marquis's residence have come to fetch you." An exceedingly cheerful voice rang out in Xu Xi's head, accompanied by a bout of bouncing around, as if someone were dancing with joy inside her brain.
Xu Xi didn't even blink. She remained utterly calm as she practiced her handwriting, her brushstrokes steady as a rock, without a trace of agitation.
Five days ago, she had been in a car accident in the modern world and transmigrated into a book called A Happy Life in Ancient Times. She had become a supporting female character with the same name as hers, and this fucking idiot of a system had come along with her.
In the novel, the supporting character Xu Xi had grown up in a commoner's family. Her father was a poor xiucai, and her mother was sickly. The family had scraped by on the money her father earned writing letters for others and her mother earned doing embroidery. Then, when she was thirteen, her father died of illness, and within a few months, her mother followed him, worn down by grief and exhaustion. Left an orphan, she was taken in by her uncle and aunt in the countryside, where she lived under their roof as a village girl.
Less than a year after she moved to the countryside, people came from the Marquis of Suiping's Residence in the capital, saying that the supporting character was the legitimate daughter of the marquis's second branch, and that years ago she and the child of the Xu family's eldest madam, Lady Lin, had been switched at birth.
After returning to the residence, the supporting character knew nothing of music, chess, calligraphy, or painting, and her clothes and manner of dress were terribly rustic. The noble ladies looked down on her, and even her birth mother disliked her. She suffered every kind of bullying at the marquis's residence and among the noble ladies, and her reputation was very poor.
She wasted her years away until she was eighteen without securing a good marriage. In the end, with no other choice, her birth mother married her off to a notorious wastrel rumored to have a taste for the pleasures of the cut sleeve. After the wedding, Xu Xi was scorned and tormented by her husband and his family. Later, the Marquis of Suiping's Residence backed the wrong side in the struggle for succession and had its property confiscated. Her husband's family promptly divorced and cast her out, and she died a miserable death of cold and hunger on a snowy day.
The system, whose full name was the "Wisdom Leads You to a Happy Life (Partially Impaired) System," believed that the supporting character had been unhappy because she wasn't intelligent. She couldn't play music, play chess, write calligraphy, or paint; she wasn't proficient at reading, writing, or dressing herself up; and her talents weren't outstanding enough. That was why she had met such a tragic end.
The system had been damaged while passing through a black hole in space-time and didn't know where it came from. It knew only that if it changed the supporting character's life and achieved the goal of "Wisdom Leads You to a Happy Life," it could repair its impairment and recover its memories.
Thus, as it fell into the Milky Way, it selected Xu Xi, who had the highest IQ and held a doctorate, from among people who had died at the same moment in different times and places. It brought her into the system and into the book to change the supporting character's life.
After learning all this, Xu Xi wanted only to curse: Fucking idiot!
Had the supporting character really met such a tragic end because she couldn't play music, play chess, write calligraphy, or paint, and wasn't talented enough? What kind of logic was that?
If the supporting character had possessed enough emotional intelligence, a sufficiently resolute character, self-respect and self-love, and had actively taken charge of her own fate, she could have lived a wonderful life even in adversity.
Xu Xi knew she had died in the car accident in the modern world. Since she couldn't go back anyway, she was quite willing to live in the supporting character's place. As for how she would walk that path, neither the system nor the plot of the book could decide that.
She would show the dumbass system what "character determines fate" meant!
"Little Xi, I'm going out to take a look," Madam Xie called from outside the window.
"All right," Xu Xi called back, then calmly continued practicing her writing.
"Host, hurry and pack your things. Do your hair and change your clothes. Don't let the people from the marquis's residence look down on you." The system bounced around in her head again.
"Shut up!" Xu Xi shouted in her mind. "Bounce around again and I'll kill myself."
The system: "..."
Seeing that the system had finally gone quiet as a chicken, Xu Xi was very satisfied.
Sure enough, the rash feared the ruthless, and the ruthless feared those who didn't care if they lived or died. That saying made damn good sense.
She and the system were bound together, their fates linked. If she were a little weaker, she would surely be pushed around by the system; but since she wasn't even afraid of death, the system could only back down!
See? Character really did determine fate!
Having finally finished filling a sheet of paper with practice characters, Xu Xi put down her brush and stepped back to examine it. Just then, a ding sounded in her head, and the system announced, "Host's wisdom +1."
Although Xu Xi disagreed with the system and believed that talent and happiness were not directly proportional, she couldn't deny that there was a difference between having talent and having none. Talented people had an easier time becoming winners in life.
A clamor arose outside the courtyard gate.
Xu Xi held down her writing with a paperweight and went outside, just in time to see someone rush in, shouting, "Sister, someone from a marquis's residence in the capital is here. He says you're their young lady."
This was Madam Xie's eldest son, Xu Chongwen, who was a year older than Xu Xi. He attended a private school in the county and happened to be home for his ten-day break. Besides him, Madam Xie also had a daughter named Xu Xue, who was thirteen this year.
Before Xu Xi could speak, the village head and the clan elders escorted a middle-aged man who looked like a steward inside. Madam Xie followed, along with a slightly plump woman in her early fifties and two maids. All four newcomers wore silk and satin. The man had a jade pendant hanging at his waist, and the women wore gold and silver ornaments in their hair. At a glance, they were entirely different from the villagers.
Everyone fell silent for a moment when they saw Xu Xi standing in front of the main room. The clan head recovered and hurriedly said to the middle-aged man and woman with respect, "Steward Liu, Matron Ruan, this is Miss Xi, the young lady who was switched at birth with the one in your residence."
"Ha ha, she really does have an exceptional bearing. She's completely different from the likes of us who scratch a living from the soil. She truly is worthy of being the eldest young lady of a marquis's residence," the village head said with a hearty laugh.
Everyone nodded and voiced their agreement.
The village head wasn't entirely flattering her.
The original owner had grown up in town. She was the only child of her xiucai father and her mother, who had doted on her in every way. Apart from learning a little embroidery, she hadn't had to do a thing. Later, after her parents died and she returned to Xu Family Village, her uncle and aunt hadn't made her work either. Naturally, she had been raised delicate and tender, with snow-white skin.
On top of the original owner's good looks, Xu Xi had spent many years studying. Her scholarly air and the composure and confidence of a modern person gave her a distinctive bearing of her own. Merely standing there, she was enough to make people's eyes light up.
"Host, host, wisdom really can lead you down the road to a happy life! Ha ha..." The system bounced around excitedly in Xu Xi's head, and even seemed to turn a few somersaults.