[Surname: Wu]
[Wu Zhen] has been loaded into the game.
After confirming the family surname, the logo for "Starting a Cultivation Clan from Zero" slowly faded away.
The next step was the beloved character creation phase.
Wu Zhen clicked into the character creation interface.
Then she discovered that nine out of the ten preset face models were uniquely ugly in their own ways, with only one being barely passable as normal.
But this normal face model cost money.
[Plain Female Face Model #3]
[Price: 1 Inheritance Point]
Looking at the mere two inheritance points she started with, Wu Zhen felt the urge to install mods for the very first playthrough for the first time.
But due to a peculiar digital purism, and considering the desire for a pure first-playthrough experience, she resisted.
After all, this was a generational family management game. She should unlock more detailed character customization options after earning more inheritance points.
As a player who would initiate an "ugly character purge" in her games, Wu Zhen spent one inheritance point without any hesitation and then moved on to background selection.
The options were as bland as ever. Wu Zhen scanned them and chose the [Person of Unknown Origin], which cost no inheritance points.
[Person of Unknown Origin: You arrived alone in this unfamiliar town. No one knows your past, not even yourself.]
[Bloodline: Mortal]
The impoverished Wu Zhen had no choice.
[Mortal: Work at sunrise, rest at sunset.]
The next page was for talents, all greyed out and equally unaffordable.
She skipped directly past these pages she couldn't afford at the start. Her eyes quickly scanned over them and finally found the option she wanted on the last page.
[Fateful Encounter - A Sliver of Immortal Fate: Immortals are mere legends to you, but, what if?]
— Priced at only one inheritance point!
This was the most cost-effective option Wu Zhen had seen so far, increasing the player's chances of finding cultivation clues while still a mortal, rather than having to save up inheritance points over several generations to enter the main storyline.
Even though the game description stated that "A Sliver of Immortal Fate" truly had only a 1% chance of triggering, this was a single-player game.
With enough save-scumming, she refused to believe she couldn't trigger this encounter.
Wu Zhen clicked confirm.
Soon, the scene of a human town unfolded before her eyes.
She first looked at her in-game character.
Dressed in drab, grey hemp clothes, with long, loose hair, and the clean, plain Female Face Model #3.
Surprisingly, it was quite pleasing to the eye.
Wu Zhen, who was extremely doting on her game avatars, shifted her gaze away contentedly and looked at the user interface on the side of the screen.
It displayed the character's basic information, such as Stamina, Hunger, and Lifespan.
Her first mortal character's lifespan was 80, with a starting age of fifteen. The members of her Wu family listed were only one: herself.
Obviously, this was a family management game, so the main storyline naturally involved family expansion. Therefore, the first guiding task prominently read: [Acquire a piece of land of your own]
[Task Reward: Ordinary Folk House x1]
Wu Zhen wandered around the town a bit.
Inheritance points could be exchanged for wealth, but for the sake of a decent-looking face, she was now penniless.
She couldn't afford any land in the town at all.
Wu Zhen attempted to forcibly seize a civilian house in the town.
Then she was swiftly apprehended by the local constables.
Wu Zhen: "..."
It happened too abruptly. Combined with the glaring numerical disparity, her game character—who was even skinnier than the average fifteen-year-old girl—was smoothly lifted up and tossed into the jail cell.
A three-day countdown promptly appeared in the top-left corner of the interface.
Unwilling to accept this, Wu Zhen tried to escape from jail and failed.
The player felt frustrated for a moment but quickly adjusted her mindset. She clicked the [Sleep] button and set the rest duration for three days.
The screen went black, then lit up again.
Wu Zhen opened her eyes and immediately spotted a rat scurrying by not far away.
She checked her Hunger value; it had risen to a very dangerous level. If she didn't eat soon, she would end this playthrough prematurely. However, looking around, there was nothing that could be considered food.
...Huh?
This game doesn't even provide food in jail?
She looked outside the cell and found no one there, eerily quiet, completely different from when she first arrived.
Since the three days were up anyway, Wu Zhen didn't dwell on it and began using [Trickery] on the cell door lock.
Though she didn't understand why a family game had such a skill, after her persistent efforts and countless failures, the [Trickery] skill finally leveled up to lv.2. She successfully picked the lock and left the cell.
After walking for a while, jailer NPCs finally began to appear.
But strangely, they seemed to be deliberately ignoring her. Occasionally making eye contact, they would hurriedly look away, beads of sweat slowly rolling down their foreheads.
Wu Zhen: "?"
She looked at the event log.
Amidst a list of "[Wu Zhen] used [Trickery]" messages were interspersed a few lines of the jailers' mutterings.
Jailer 1: That thing is finally gone. Hopefully, it didn't set its sights on me?
Jailer 2: Is this person possessed or something...? No wonder I felt uneasy when we brought her in...
Jailer 3: Probably haunted by something.
The more Wu Zhen read, the more confused she became. She went ahead and fully opened the [Events] window and quickly scrolled up.
Soon, she finally understood why these jailers treated her with such an avoid-at-all-costs attitude.
Because this game's freedom was too high, for the sake of player mental health and gameplay considerations, a defensive mechanism was passively triggered while the player used [Sleep] for time-skipping.
Thus, Wu Zhen watched helplessly as the event log recorded: [Wu Zhen] attacked [Giant Rat], [Wu Zhen] attacked [Ants], [Wu Zhen] attacked [Escapee Who Dug the Wrong Tunnel], and he fell into an awkward silence.
Still unwilling to accept it, she pulled up the game recording. The very first frame showed her game character, who had been lying on the ground as if dead, suddenly doing a kip-up and putting a chokehold on the escapee who had just popped up. After indiscriminately attacking everyone, she immediately fell back asleep, leaving behind terrified jailers. If there had been a weapon nearby, she probably could have even earned a first-kill achievement.
Checking the skill bar again.
Behind [Brawling] was a glaring lv.3.
Wu Zhen: ...Wow.
Hello there, "I tend to kill people in my sleep".jpg
Wu Zhen welcomed this mechanism of skills leveling up on their own with open arms.
After understanding the cause and effect, just before she stepped out of the jail, she saw a new line of dialogue pop up in the text box.
Jailer: Speaking of which, those beggars occupying the abandoned temple outside the city walls seem to be getting more and more lawless. Should report it after my shift ends...
Scene transition.
Wu Zhen immediately opened the map.
The town's surrounding map showed that there was indeed an abandoned temple not far outside the town. Because she had just obtained a [Clue], a small annotation appeared on the map: [Illegally occupied by a group of beggars].
Wu Zhen couldn't see the exact number of people inside, but her eyes were already gleaming with the light of a starving wolf.
Illegally occupied, you say?
Haha!
Your "Auntie Who Upholds Heaven's Justice" is coming!
.
Outside the town, in the abandoned temple, the old beggar was counting today's gains.
Perhaps because they had occupied this place for some time, passersby had learned that this dilapidated temple housed a group of beggars who forcibly demanded money and goods, and they began taking wide detours to avoid it. As a result, the beggars' takings had dwindled considerably.
He let out a dissatisfied "tsk" and was just about to tell his brothers to be more aggressive tomorrow when he keenly heard the sound of footsteps, neither too heavy nor too light.
He looked out through the broken window. The sky was completely dark now, and few respectable people would be wandering outside on a night like this.
So then... who was out there?
He made a gesture for silence. Before he could cautiously approach the window, the door of the broken temple was pushed open.
The old beggar's heart tightened, but the breath he was holding relaxed as soon as he saw clearly who was at the door.
His gaze swept over the newcomer, and he was about to say something when he saw the other person, maintaining that utterly unchanged expression, suddenly dart forward.
"Wha—"
Before he could even utter a syllable, he was slammed heavily to the ground, his head ringing.
"Big Brother!"
His several brothers jumped to their feet, staring in shock and uncertainty at the spot where the old beggar lay. Now, besides their big brother, there was also a girl of about fourteen or fifteen years old, dressed in coarse hemp clothing.
Her black hair was loose, and her rather unmemorable face showed no expression whatsoever.
Even when she lifted her eyes to look at them, it was the same.
The men felt an inexplicable tinge of dread, but it didn't stop them from grabbing their clubs and striking at the person before them. Two fists are no match for four hands; their numbers and the opponent's frail physique were their greatest confidence.
The uninvited guest indeed failed to dodge completely. Her evasive movements had a strange stiffness to them, and she took two solid hits. Almost visibly, a terrifying bluish-purple bruise spread across the injured areas.
Yet her expression still showed no change, as if she felt no pain at all. She pulled back her injured right arm again and smashed it down with heavy force.
Even when they all rushed her at once, they couldn't hold her down. That bizarre strength was just like being possessed by evil spirits!
The more they fought, the more cold sweat broke out on their bodies. Finally, one of them seized the right moment, mustered all his strength, and brought his club down hard on the back of her head.
Her movements abruptly stopped, and she fell heavily to the ground.
It seemed she had been successfully knocked out.
The three men, bruised and battered all over, finally breathed a sigh of relief. Exchanging a glance, one of them stepped forward, wanting to check her condition. But he saw the person who should have been completely still suddenly stand up in an extremely bizarre, contorted posture that defied imagination of how any force could be applied.
And, maintaining the state of being unconscious with her eyes tightly shut, she swung her fist once more.
The three utterly exhausted men: "..."
Just what kind of monster is this?!
Will this never end?!
.
When the screen lit up again, only the unconscious NPCs lay scattered on the ground.
Wu Zhen checked her own status.
The game character's bruises and sprains could fill a line in the status bar, but it didn't affect her being alive and kicking.
[Brawling] had happily risen to lv.5. She dragged those sparring-practice beggars outside the broken temple, then voraciously devoured the dry rations from their packs, lowering her nearly exploding Hunger meter to the safe zone.
Saved!
With the immediate crisis resolved, Wu Zhen put the remaining items into her inventory slots, opened the mini-map, and looked at the icon for the broken temple.
Now, the occupant listed in the icon's details had changed to the name [Wu Zhen].
[Quest - Acquire a Piece of Land for Yourself - Completed]
[Issuing Rewards]
Just as the event log popped up with the prompt, an utterly inconspicuous commoner's house sprang up from the ground, replacing the original broken temple.
The old beggar who had been thrown out of the temple happened to come to at that moment. Seeing this scene, his expression instantly changed, and he scrambled away in the night, rolling and crawling, muttering things like "It really was a ghost" as he fled.
Wu Zhen wasn't concerned with the NPC's whereabouts. She maneuvered her character to walk a circle inside the small house, then happily jumped up and down a couple times on the spot.
Step one of establishing a family, preliminarily accomplished!
