Jiang Yunxi had died.
Then she came back to life.
But how long she could stay alive—hours, days—was still unknown.
“Pain... it hurts so much!!!”
The moment Jiang Yunxi regained even a sliver of consciousness, she was engulfed by endless agony.
They said pain came in thirteen levels. Jiang Yunxi felt that what she was experiencing had to be level fourteen.
The emperor of all emperors.
It was like a massive truck was running over her body again and again.
A fragment of her memories from before she lost consciousness resurfaced.
“So death is this painful.”
She had thought it was a final burst of awareness before death and had quietly waited for her consciousness to fade away. Yet instead, her mind grew clearer and clearer.
“What’s going on? Wasn’t I already dead? Then how...”
“Has Miss woken up yet?”
“Not yet.”
Two unfamiliar voices reached her ears, and Jiang Yunxi froze.
What was this “Miss” business?
Didn’t they call people in hell things like this ghost or that ghost?
Did ghosts need to sleep too?
The next instant, those questions seemed to trigger some kind of switch. Her head throbbed, and a flood of memories came rushing in.
Just as she was about to sort through them, an excited voice rang out in her mind.
【Host, you’re finally awake!】
【Host, I’m your System Sprite.】
Caught completely off guard by the voice, Jiang Yunxi nearly had a heart attack.
She could practically see her great-grandmother waving at her.
【Host, aren’t you surprised? Delighted?】
【I checked your memories. I know you’ve always wanted a storage space and a system!】
A System Sprite... and it was hers!
She had bonded with a system. Did that mean she wasn’t dead after all?
After reading novels for so many years, Jiang Yunxi had seen people bond with systems before—but never ghosts.
What was more, although she had not yet had time to organize the memories that had just flooded into her mind, she had caught glimpses of them.
Those memories did not belong to her.
Memories that weren’t hers, plus a system... as a veteran web-novel reader, Jiang Yunxi arrived at one conclusion.
She had transmigrated.
【System, what exactly is going on?】
【How did you bind to me?】
【Am I still alive?】
System: 【Host, you died, but then you came back to life.】
Jiang Yunxi: The art of saying nothing had truly been mastered by this thing.
Her body hurt too badly for her to waste time bantering with the system, so she impatiently urged, 【Speak plainly.】
System: 【I am speaking plainly.】
Sensing the intense fluctuations in its host’s emotions, the system did not dare keep joking and hurriedly explained.
【When you thought that, since you already had terminal cancer and only had a few days left to live anyway, you might as well trade your life for someone else’s and chose to take a bullet for a Chinese soldier, you died.】
【Completely and utterly dead.】
Jiang Yunxi: 【Then how did I come back to life?】
【Did you save me?】
The System Sprite spoke rapidly.
【To be precise, it was the Chinese soldiers who saved you.】
【It was my first time carrying out a mission. Because I was inexperienced, I went to the wrong time and space and happened to pass over your world.】
The System Sprite’s tone was full of chagrin.
【Those soldiers were desperate to save you after you were critically injured protecting their comrade. Their urgency was so strong, and their magnetic field so intense, that it affected me.
Somehow, I ended up binding with you after your body died and your soul left it.】
【The Main System discovered that I had gone to the wrong time and space—and even bound myself to the wrong host—so it came to correct the mistake.】
Yet, bound by the merit of those soldiers, the military souls and accumulated merit of the entire Huaxia armed forces were protecting you. It couldn’t forcibly sever the bond.
If it accidentally caused your soul to scatter and vanish, the System Realm would have thoroughly offended Huaxia.】
You Huaxia people are not easy to provoke. Setting aside the ancient great powers, even the hosts bound to various systems over the years would form a considerable force if they joined together.
【The Main System had no choice but to make the best of a mistake and kick both your soul and me, your system, into this time and space.】
【The Main System said that hosts can be replaced, but the time and space cannot.】
The Main System had even secretly instructed it to keep a close eye on her and make sure she didn’t get herself killed.
With all that merit and the protection of Huaxia’s military souls, if anything happened to her...
Forget this little shrimp of a system—even the Main System wouldn’t get away unscathed.
Naturally, the system didn’t dare let its host know that. It was afraid she would become reckless, knowing she had nothing to fear.
And then...
Jiang Yunxi understood.
She was glad that, in that moment, she had followed her instincts.
She had traded what little life she had left for the soldiers’ safety, never expecting such an outcome.
She had been given another chance at life, and she even had a system by her side.
She believed that, back in the modern era, the country would not treat her family unfairly.
The money they had borrowed for her treatment should be enough to pay off, and there might even be some left for her parents.
Although she had an older sister, so her parents would not be left without anyone to care for them in their old age, this at least proved that she had not been entirely useless.
This deal, Jiang Yunxi felt, was an absolute steal.
From what the system had just said, she had also picked up some information: apparently, she had powerful backing.
Even the Main System did not dare offend it, much less this little system.
Perhaps, from now on, when she did things...
Fortunately, the system could not access every thought in her mind. Otherwise...
【Why does everything hurt so much?】
【You brought me into this body—did you harm its original owner?】
【If you did harm her, who would be responsible for that?】
With merit protecting her body and all this transmigration business, Jiang Yunxi was beginning to believe in such mystical matters.
If she had harmed the original owner of this body because of her arrival, would that karma fall on the system—or on her?
Surely it could not be her fault. She had not asked the system to place her in this body.
If anyone was to blame, it should be the system—or the Main System!
【Rest assured, Host. Before you entered this body, its original owner had already died.】
【This system is a law-abiding, upstanding system. I would never do something as cruel as taking a life without regard.】
Jiang Yunxi did not feel even the slightest bit embarrassed.
Such matters had to be made clear from the start, otherwise there would be disputes later on.
【Then how did the original owner die?】
【It wasn’t revenge, was it? Am I safe now?】
【My whole body hurts. Is it because the original owner was injured, or because my soul and this body are incompatible and rejecting each other?】
【Can my soul remain in this body?】
【And what kind of system are you?】
【Please don’t tell me you’re some kind of mission system or romance-conquest system.
Let me tell you, I hate doing missions most of all, and I hate having to pursue and win over someone even more.
I’ve been single since birth. I’ve never dated, I don’t know how to date, and I definitely don’t know how to win someone over.】
【If failing missions or being unable to conquer the target means I’ll be erased, then you might as well let me die right now.】
[So I won’t have to spend every day on edge afterward, worrying that one day I might fail to complete a mission...】
Relying on what she believed was her backing, Jiang Yunxi made her stance clear right away: she didn’t want to do missions, and she didn’t want to pursue or win over anyone.
Jiang Yunxi fired off so many questions in a row that she completely stunned the system.
Hadn’t she wanted a system very badly? Why was she being so picky the moment they bonded?
Hosts these days were far too difficult to manage. She was the worst host it had ever had.
The system was deeply relieved that, before the Main System had kicked it over here, it had worried that the host might fail her missions and die, thereby offending Huaxia. So it had modified the system core.
Otherwise...
The system’s silence made Jiang Yunxi’s heart skip a beat. Could the system she’d bonded with really be a mission system—or some kind of romance-conquest system?
Then she was doomed.
She might as well give up immediately.
Having read plenty of novels, she knew those two kinds of systems were complete traps. If you failed a mission or didn’t reach the required affection level, they’d shock you with electricity or strike you with lightning.
Someone like her would be finished sooner or later.
If she was going to die sooner or later anyway, she might as well die sooner and reincarnate sooner.
Maybe, with all that accumulated merit, she could be reborn in Huaxia. Eighteen years later, she’d be a fine young woman again.
【System, let’s unbind.】
