Chapter 7：Do You Want A Soul?

The sun was high in the sky, and sweat was pouring down his back.

By the time Huai Shi returned to his senses, he was standing in a field with shouts of 'hey!' and 'ha!' coming behind him. He seemed to be doing aerobics with the guy opposite him.

Before he could react, a leg kicked him from behind. A muscular man in a singlet pointed at him and scolded viciously, "Chen Bo, you wimp! Did you forget breakfast or something?"

With that, the man pushed Huai Shi's partner aside and settled into the right pose. "Come on, let's train." 

Huai Shi looked past his shoulder and read the slogan on the wall behind him.

"More Sweat Lost Here Means Less Blood Lost on the Battlefield."

He had yet to digest what was happening when his body seemed to move by itself. It faced the muscular man—no, the instructor, and rushed right at him.

Bam!

He took a punch right in the face.

Huai Shi's vision went black. It hurt so bad.

"Once more!" The instructor beckoned at Chen Bo with his hand.

It was only then that Huai Shi realized he seemed to be possessing someone else right now. He hovered over the man's shoulder like a ghost and experienced the feedback from this body without having any say in the matter.

He felt dazed, as though this was a dream, but the pain he felt was very real. The blows were not softened at all.

Bam!

The instructor grabbed his joints and threw him down. Huai Shi could feel every bit of his face smashing into the ground.

"Once more!"

Bam!

"Once more!"

Bam!

…

The scene changed over and over again. Amidst the shattered pieces of countless dreams, he seemed to experience the brutal hands-on teaching of several different instructors.

They seemed to have singled out this sorry sap that Huai Shi had possessed. They beat him up if his movements were not perfect, they beat him up if he was slow to react, they beat him up before mealtimes, and they beat him up right after they beat him up.

They ate, drank, slept, and beat Chen Bo up…

In this place that stank of body odor and feet, Huai Shi gave up all hope.

Finally, when Chen Bo became strong enough with his military boxing to exchange a few blows with his instructors, earning an upgrade from a noob to a slightly bigger noob, he ended up getting into a fight with a NEET while still studying in the police academy… so he was expelled!

He became a NEET as well!

Thank goodness, thank all the heavens above! Huai Shi was on the verge of tears now, because he could finally escape this endless loop of beatdowns.

What the heck was happening here?

Did he accidentally unlock a Super Beatdown System?

What he experienced in that whirlwind of pieced-up dreams next was practically indescribable. Huai Shi jumped from one identity to another, starting as an unlucky student that was constantly being beaten up in all sorts of ways by his instructors before he became a hooligan who fought others to the death with a cleaver in the middle of the day. Then, he became a guard that crouched in front of a brothel on the lookout for cops, before turning into a cursed pimp that invited guests to have a look at the girls every night. Finally, he was a bald middle-aged man attending a meeting…

That idiot really liked meetings, huh.

Seminars, research talks, conferences, tests, reports… He poured all of his effort and time into an infinite marathon of meetings…

The fragmented memories stacked on top of each other like a perilous tower of cards. When it reached the utmost limit, the whole thing came crashing down again into hundreds and thousands of pieces.

Huai Shi's consciousness was also torn to shreds. Hundreds and thousands of versions of him experienced hundreds and thousands of nightmares at the same time in a cycle that went on forever.

It felt like trying to download a galactic calculator into a computer that cost a hundred and fifty bucks. Finally, the intense workload seemed to make his brain strike a spark against the insides of his skull, and everything went up in flames.

All the nightmares shattered with a crash.

Huai Shi opened his eyes and panted harshly, sweat trickling down his face and sliding down the armrest on his chair before dripping to the floor.

The clock on the wall was still ticking away slowly.

Only five minutes had passed since he closed his eyes.

In that time, he had taken eighty to ninety beatings, gotten into dozens of fights, ended up in the hospital a few times, wandered around the prison yard for several hundred days, sent scantily-dressed young ladies into small pink rooms several thousand times… and had countless meetings.

He had practically run the gamut of society.

…

"That really was… hell…"

Huai Shi muttered blankly. He could not hold his body up anymore, so he slid off the chair and onto the floor.

As his mind spun and faded, he closed his eyes.

'Just let me die…'

For a second there, he felt as though he could see just how cruel his life would be from now on, and he made that sincere wish to himself.

Once he did, it joined the ranks of every other wish Huai Shi had ever made to himself.

—None of them were even remotely possible.

…

When he opened his eyes, it was already the next morning.

He was still lying on the floor, but his body felt much better, as though he had eaten some miraculous medicine.

Soon, he saw the IV needles in both his wrists. Okay, so it was some saline and glucose…

"You awake?"

All of a sudden, a crow's head poked up diagonally beside him and said happily, "We've cured your disease of chickening out at everybody you see!"

"...Well, thank you kindly for that."

"Oh, that's just what we doctors do. Don't sweat it."

The crow flapped her wings and flew to the table, sitting down with both legs hanging out. He had no idea where she found a cigarette, but she held it in one curled wing and smoked it like a real gangsta. However, the smoke she inhaled floated out again from under her feathers, making for quite the odd sight.

"So, how was it? Did you gain anything?" the crow asked.

"Does waking up alive count as a gain?"

Huai Shi crawled up from the ground crossly, but he did not dare to pull out the needle, so he had to sit back in the chair carefully. 

Only then did he realize he was no longer the same man he had been in the past— Now, he was a man with an attribute interface.

He immediately hastened to open the Book of Destiny, reading his statistics on the page.

After he tried his best to ignore the random 'Developing Stage' sidenote and the empty list of stigmata and divine seals, all that remained was the more comprehensible list of skills.

The Knowledge section encompassed both general knowledge and his education, but right now it was at an embarrassing LV3. He had not even completed high school yet, but he had already returned some of his lessons to the PE teacher.

Art, the part that represented his cello skills, was LV6, and that gave him some source of pride. He was already a pro at this, and if he wanted to increase his abilities even further, he would have to rely on 99% effort and that crucial 1% of talent.

On the other hand, that strange 'Premonition of Death' label was still greyed out.

Why did it feel more and more like a weird game now?

They would not ask him to whale, would they?

Huai Shi was vaguely worried.

After he tried out the system last night, Huai Shi finally had a basic understanding of these categories. According to the Book of Destiny's criteria, only abilities that he was familiar with and could use at will were listed as his skills.

The highest limit most people could achieve after a lifetime's worth of constant learning and practice was LV10. 

For most skills, the earlier levels were relatively easier, but just like in those pay-to-win games by those scummy developers, once you reached a higher stage, you would have to work several hundred times as hard just to progress even a little further. 

Similarly, some people may aim for the LV10 as their final goal, but to others, that could be just the beginning.

Huai Shi knew that very well.

It was just like holding two separate exam papers, both with a perfect score.

Sometimes, one's level could not determine everything. This was just a device the Book of Destiny was using to help him measure his capabilities more conveniently.

Though the journey felt long and endless, Huai Shi continued to read further until he realized that he had somehow picked up several new skills overnight.

[Combat – Basic Military Boxing]

[Reconnaissance LV4]

There was even the vaguely comedic [Illegal Operations Management LV3].

After that…

"Whoa!"

The crow exclaimed, "Why is your Copywriting skill at LV6 already?"

Huai Shi could not help but roll his eyes. "Well, duh. Why don't you try going for several hundred meetings in a row, and writing several hundred sets of meeting minutes and reports?"

Huai Shi did not really have much of an impression of the other skills. Take military boxing, for example. He only became a beginner at it through his one-sided beatdowns and other observations.

It was only when he wrote hundreds of minutes and reports that he truly wept tears of blood with every word in every line.

That night, his biggest gain was not learning how to fight like a soldier or stand sentry for the caps… it was how to make up the word count in an essay!

By now, he was even better than his teachers. He could stealthily add the entire Pacific Ocean into one of his updates, and he could stop each passage at exactly three thousand words, because writing more would mean losing out.

"You should remember this part properly, so that next time when you write a new record, you can just use this format again."

He patted the Book of Destiny he was holding and crossed his legs cockily, saying with a sigh, "If I use this to write novels, I'll strike it rich."

"Those who write novels never end up well," the crow said in his ear wistfully. "Many start going bald before reaching forty. I mean, look at that Butterfly guy, that Guo fella, and that Wandering something or another…"

Huai Shi shuddered.

He could not afford that, not at all, so he would just have to forget about it.

"Speaking of which…"

Huai Shi opened the book and flipped to the records at the back. The files seemed to have lost all their worth, and most of the writing had vanished, so there was only a blank form left.

"Why did these peoples' memories appear in the book?"

"Huh? Don't you know?"

The crow looked quite surprised, but she continued calmly, "The Book of Destiny is tied to you now, so it only records things related to you.

"I think it recorded these passages because you're the cause of their deaths, right?"

Huai Shi was stunned.

"Ah, I think there are actually more than seventy of these."

The crow said completely composedly, "Unfortunately, only four or five of them have enough active elementium, so they left behind the most vivid parts of their memory. There are fewer and fewer people with the ability to awaken their elementium these days, so you oughta thank them properly.

"..."

Huai Shi took a sharp intake of breath, feeling all the hairs rise on his body. He instinctively leaned back a little, trying to put some distance between him, the crow, and the book.

Soon enough, however, he knew that throwing the book and the crow into the ocean would not help.

It was probably because all those people from yesterday… were dead now, right?

They were all dead.

He was the only one left.

Even that thought alone was enough to make him shudder. It felt as though that blood-stained Vicious Ape was already standing behind him and smiling at him eerily.

After a long, long time, he finally calmed down and smiled bitterly. "Is it really that exaggerated?"

"Yes, it definitely is. Huai Shi, that's what this world is like. It's not as peaceful as you think. This sky, this earth, this country, this city… Everything is hiding a lot more things you've never seen before.

"—A truth no one can ever know, a border no one can ever cross, and a hell no one can ever see.

"If you keep wallowing in this narrow protective bubble that is the interior, you will never know the truth."

As though savoring the young man's stunned look, she asked softly, "—Huai Shi, do you want a soul?"