"Where am I?" I asked myself.
It was dark—pitch black. The place I was in was cramped and wet, yet strangely comfortable.
Using my arms, I pushed, trying to create more space for myself. The moment I pressed against something, I heard a voice from outside where I was.
"He's kicking!"
"???"
I was confused, but as a seasoned novel reader—someone who would read literally anything—I quickly realized what was happening: I had been reborn. From the sounds outside, I was still inside my mother, not yet born.
Was I excited at the thought of being reborn? Somewhat. But I was more concerned about what kind of place I was being born into.
Frankly, I wouldn't want to be born into a struggling family. After all, I was someone who was born into a wealthy family in my past life, and changing lifestyle would be quite difficult for anyone.
Even when I was living with Grandma, I struggled to keep up with that lifestyle. She had to reprimand me most of the time for indulging in too much electronics. It was fun, yes, but it also left me restless.
Outside, I could hear muffled voices again. The same pair as before.
"You know," the woman's voice said softly, "I've been thinking of a name."
"Oh? Already?" the man replied.
"Yeah," she said. "I want to name him Gu Xue."
I stiffened at those words. It was the exact same name I had in my previous life—Gu Xue. And after listening for a while, I noticed something: they sounded just like my parents from before.
My mind began to race. Maybe it was just a coincidence, or maybe time had reversed back to when I was just being born… If it were the latter, I wouldn't know what to do. Spend time with Grandma? Spend time with my parents? I wouldn't know. Because in the end, it would all be the same monotonous life.
"Gu Xue?" The man sounded uncertain. "That… sounds like a girl's name."
"Maybe," she said. "But it feels nice to say, and it also sounds gentle."
There was a short pause before the man answered, "If you like it, then Gu Xue it is."
Time passed strangely after that. I couldn't tell how long I drifted in the darkness—minutes, hours, days—it all blended together into a quiet kind of waiting. Sometimes I'd hear their voices, distant but familiar. Other times, there was nothing at all.
However, as I waited in the dark, something appeared in my consciousness. It was something only I could see and hear. To see it, I didn't need to open my eyes—even while they were closed, I could enter my consciousness and view it. I don't know how I was doing it, but it was something I could instinctively do.
Inside my consciousness was a system, something most transmigrators had. From the moment I saw it, I knew time wasn't reversed and that I was truly in another world. As for why I had the same name as before, and why my parents sounded the same, I didn't know.
Inside my consciousness, a system floated in front of me. It was a simple shop system where you could sell items for a certain amount of points. With these points, you could buy practically anything.
Alongside the shop, there was also a discount tab where, every week, it would put 4 random things on sale. However, currently, the one on sale was a newbie discount that lasted for a month.
The things that were on sale were: an Innate Divine Body, Qi Refinement Pills, a Golden Core Cultivation Manual, and one Avatar in the Qi Refinement realm.
"So it's a cultivation world?"
Upon seeing the items, I was excited, but that excitement soon turned into dread. It was for a simple reason: I couldn't fight.
I hadn't gotten into a single fight, even when I was a kid. It wasn't because everyone was scared of me, but because I found fighting too troublesome.
But in a cultivation world where power is a must, I would need to fight.
In the end, I accepted my fate and opened the system once again, and inwardly, I sighed as I looked at the prices. "So expensive."
It was a weird thing to say, for me at least. I hadn't said those words in years—or at least, I don't think I ever had. In my past life, nothing was too expensive, not even relationships.
However, now that I had nothing and my points were zero, everything became expensive.
I chuckled at the irony, but soon let it go, as I could do nothing about it.
Even with the discounts, the cheapest of them cost 3,000 points—that being the pills. And currently, I have no points to spend, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to use them.
If I had the points, the only thing usable at the moment was the Avatar, which could be spawned anywhere within ten thousand miles of me. Not only that, even though the Avatar had a mind of its own, I could place my consciousness inside it and use it as if it were my body, with the only downside being that my personality would be influenced by the Avatar's personality.
I clicked the Avatar and viewed its description:
[Name: Avatar (1)
Grade: Qi Refinement
Description: A Qi Refinement Cultivator with a perfected Body refinement. It has no innate body and has the potential of a Golden Core cultivator.
Cost: 10,000.]
Looking at the number of points I would need to obtain, I could only helplessly close the system and go back to sleep.
Time quickly passed, and one day, I was suddenly woken up by a ding. It was a notification from the system.
Confused, I opened the system and saw a brand new prompt:
[Item: Storage ring
Value: 1000 (+14,000)
Would you like to sell? Y/N.]
My jaw dropped… Not literally, as I was still in the womb, but I soon felt something touching my mother's belly. It was rubbing the belly softly when I suddenly heard a soft, feminine voice. "Xue'er, be good once you're out, ok?"
"So it's Mom's storage ring…"
Mother continued rubbing her own stomach. "It shouldn't be long before you're out…"
"That's right… So forgive me for what I'm about to do. I promise I'll pay you back someday," I said inwardly.
Before she could remove her hands from her stomach, I pressed yes on the system panel. And soon enough, I heard a sharp yell from outside.
"Ahhh!! My storage ring!!!"