In a pitch-black room, a silhouette could be vaguely seen in the darkness, curled up in a corner.

Suddenly the door was opened, letting a bright ray of light into the room. The girl that was tied up in a corner seemed to react to the light, lifting up her head in the direction of the door to show her porcelain-skinned face. Her eyes squinted as if she were adjusting to the light, and her pillowy lips pursed slightly. Even though she was disheveled and her clothes were dirty, it still couldn’t hide her beauty like a diamond in the rough.

A split second later, she lowered her gaze again, hiding the indifference in her gaze.

The woman outside the door walked in, and her smile seemed extremely ominous under the lighting.

This was the eldest daughter of the Gu family, Gu Xijin. She was known far and wide for having a keen intuition in finance, and every choice that she had made on the behalf of the Gu family would bring it up to another level. In the three years she had taken over as the head of the Gu family, she was hailed by everyone in the scene as a genius that brought her family to glory from a second-rate family to one of the best in the world.

Not only that, her works of art were circulated in the art world as ones that would go down in history. All of her oil paintings were all kept as treasures in international exhibitions, and even the most talented artist in Hua Xia was infatuated with her because of her talent... She was the perfect daughter of the Gu family that countless people fawned over!

Thinking of this, Gu Xiqiao scoffed and started to laugh so hard that she almost cried.

This lady in front of her was her sister from a different mother, and they were quite close... Well at least that’s what she thought.

The day she joined the Gu family, she knew that she was an illegitimate daughter. She didn’t have Madam Gu’s favor especially when she stood out, so Gu Xiqiao continued to lower her presence as she hid behind Gu Xijin, helping her older sister step onto the heights of life.

The world only knew the eldest daughter of the Gu family, but none of them knew that all of her feats were sourced from the illegitimate daughter.

In the eyes of the general public, Gu Xiqiao was just a stupid girl that wasn’t talented in anything.

Meanwhile, Gu Xijin was widely praised as the perfect successor of the Gu family and a one-in-a-million genius.

Gu Xiqiao didn’t care about what the world thought of her. She was easily moved by acts of kindness towards her, and because Gu Xijin had always treated her well back when she first joined the family, she had always helped her sister without a single complaint.

She put in all of her blood, sweat, and tears into helping the Gu family reach the heights that it was at now, but now they were going to sacrifice her for the sake of Gu Xijin!

She was thrown away like a disposable tool!

Hilarious... How hilarious!

"Why?" Gu Xiqiao suddenly stopped laughing and fixed Gu Xijin with a questioning gaze.

Gu Xijin slowly crouched down and looked at Gu Xiqiao’s hands. The latter originally had a pair of beautiful hands with lithe fingers, but were now twisted and mangled as a result of torture.

"The Gu family has been taking care of you for such a long time, don’t you think you should repay us?" Gu Xijin glared at her, before covering her mouth with her hand as her expression turned mocking. "It’s me and Xia’s wedding day tomorrow, but I can’t calm down unless I get rid of you first, see?"

Perhaps it was because she thought that Gu Xiqiao didn’t have any chance to see the light of day ever again, Gu Xijin didn’t even bother to hide her malicious intent.

She had always been afraid that her cover might be blown, and that everything she had right now would not belong to her anymore. The world only knew how glamorous her life was on the surface, and not how she tossed and turned every night plagued by nightmares, and the only way she could rest well was by getting rid of Gu Xiqiao!

Not to mention the latter had prepared a proposal that was enough to last the Gu family another ten years!

Now that the Gu family was already at the top of the country, Gu Xiqiao had lost her usefulness.

"Don’t you know that I hate this indifferent expression of yours? What is there to be so proud about, you’re just a dog that our family picked up out of pity!" Gu Xijin lifted her leg and stomped on Gu Xiqiao’s hand, trampling it mercilessly until her hand started to bleed again. "Our family doesn’t keep any useless scum! You should see it as an honor to be seen by that person!"

The door then closed heavily, and the room returned to darkness.

Gu Xiqiao didn’t make a single sound, and her expression hadn’t changed at all.

She looked out of the window that let in a minuscule ray of light for a moment, before smiling mockingly at herself. There weren’t so many whys and hows, where there?

It was purely because no one cared for her.

She thought they did, but it was only a facade under Gu Xijin’s meticulous planning.

That night, the Gu family mansion was razed to the ground, and Gu Xiqiao was reported to be dead, and according to the official reports, they couldn’t even get her corpse. To this, everyone only looked on coldly, before returning their attention to the eldest daughter and the greatest lady in N City, Gu Xijin.

What came next, however, was beyond everyone’s expectations.

The Gu family was suddenly involved in a severe financial crisis, and while the eldest miss of the Gu family tried to turn the tide, she ultimately lost to a small company without even putting up much of a fight.

This was news that truly caused the discussion around the Gu family to grow even further, and at this point everyone had realized that something was wrong. Why did the eldest daughter of the Gu Family become useless as soon as the second daughter died? Did she feed all her genius and talent to some pigs?

Soon after, proof that the eldest daughter of the Gu family had been smuggling illegal goods and bribing people in high places and even more unspeakable acts, and was punished with life imprisonment.

The once glorious Gu family was reduced to dust in such a short time that no one could react.

Gu Xiqiao stood in the air as she looked at the scene before her, waving away the scene of the outer world that she saw reflected through the Void Mirror.

She stood deep in thought in the void. She knew that she was dead for a fact because she was the one who set herself on fire, but she hadn’t thought that she would retain her consciousness after death. Once she died, her soul was trapped in this endless void and she was unable to leave.

Thinking of this, she waved her hands and made a wooden table and chair appear in front of her. A pile of books and ancient tomes were piled messily on the table, and she picked one out of the pile to read.

There wasn’t any night or day in the void, and just an endless supply of books and scrolls on many different topics. She didn’t know how long she spent in this place before one day, a cold voice rang in her head.

[Conditions have been met. Now activating the system...]

When she reopened her eyes, she saw a young and beautiful face looking back at her in the mirror.

Her waxy and flowing hair cascaded down to her chest as her downcast eyelashes fluttered. Further down was a perfectly angled chin and supple cherry lips. Her young age masked her overly lovely features somewhat, but the basics of a beauty were there.

Gu Xiqiao closed the faucet and lifted her head slowly to show a pair of clear and untainted eyes, blinking slowly as she calmed her wave of emotion.

[Welcome back, Beauty Qiao!]

"Yes, I’m back, aren’t I?" Gu Xiqiao pulled out a paper towel to dry her fingers one by one, her tone somehow sounding dry and hoarse despite her young age.

The system turned into a human form, and propped its chin on its hand.

[Beauty Qiao, are you going to unlock your missions?]

"Yes."

[Ding! Successfully unlocked daily missions! Successfully unlocked random missions! Successfully unlocked hidden missions! Successfully unlocked Level 0 System Shop! Congratulations to Beauty Qiao!]

Gu Xiqiao kicked the flip-flops off of her legs lazily and chose a cotton skirt for herself, her pale, doll-like legs contrasting the bright colors of the carpet below her.

A plain cotton one-piece dress and a pair of simple canvas shoes suited her unexpectedly well, and as she stared at her reflection in the mirror the coldness in her gaze slowly receded.

Today was the first of May on year 15, which was also the day of Gu Xijin’s adult ceremony. Gu Xiqiao walked down the stairs slowly towards the party that was being held on the floor below.

The crowd of young men and women all stopped in their tracks as the young lady walked down the stairs, their gazes being attracted to her as the hall plunged into silence.

Her head was tilted slightly as she made her way down, her hair covering her face so that it only showed a beautiful side profile and porcelain skin. She only wore a simple cotton dress, but it only served to make her even more attractive, and for a moment, everyone had the image of flowers blooming along with her steps.

Gu Xijin who had been the center of attention earlier frowned unnoticeably before putting on a well-practiced smiled and walking over to the younger girl, hooking their arms familiarly and introducing, "Everyone, this is my new younger sister Gu Xiqiao."

The focus of that sentence was on the word ’new’.

Once they heard Gu Xijin’s introduction, the crowd had a collective moment of realization, their gazes changing from that of admiration to something more complex.

The news that the Gu family had received an illegitimate daughter with great fanfare last month had become the laughing stock of the high society. They all looked at her like a wild hen that had barged into a group of phoenixes, and compared with the eldest daughter of the Gu family that was well educated and beautiful, she was like an ugly duckling.

The people said that she was a real-life Cinderella, but all she had was just a pretty face.

How could she be compared with them, who had been taught and educated well ever since they had been born?

Once they saw the real deal, quite a lot of them stepped forward to make small talk with her, but Gu Xiqiao only smiled and with a slight shake of the head to stop them from talking with her any further.

A young woman at a side in white close saw this and scoffed, before tugging at Gu Xijin’s clothes gently. "They’re only talking with her because she’s your little sister. She’s just an illegitimate b*tch who doesn’t have any worth other than helping you wear your shoes, how dare she be so high and mighty!"

She didn’t suppress her voice, so naturally everyone heard.

Gu Xiqiao’s smile didn’t even waver as she held a cup of wine in her hand, and as she saw Gu Xijin walk towards her, the sound of the system rang in her mind.

[Warning! The system has detected that Gu Xijin’s affection towards you is -48.]

[Affection level: Enemy]

[The system has automatically marked this person as red, proceed with caution!]

She lowered her head, her hair covering her expression momentarily as she smiled deviously for a moment.

Her crystal clear eyes seemed to suddenly be clouded with a complex emotion, and she only squinted her eyes with a mock-smile as she raised her cup towards her half-sister. "Happy birthday, sister."

After she said so, she put down her wine cup and left.

Her tone was clear and gentle but filled with a frigid coldness, and was a far cry from her gloomy and depressed demeanor. Was this really that Gu Xiqiao?

Gu Xijin hadn’t reacted for a moment, and just let the younger girl walk out of the front door just like that.

The white-clothed young woman whispered at the bunch of rich kids, and because it had been uncommon to see such a pretty and delicate girl they immediately followed after Gu Xiqiao. Strangely enough, no matter how they walked, they couldn’t walk out of the main entrance.

Was something supernatural happening to them? A chill ran up the spines of the rich kids.

"Huh, that’s strange..." The bunch of rich kids shook their heads and only thought that they just had too much to drink, looking at the thin silhouette walk further and further away.

To not be able to get to know such a beauty was quite a shame.

Gu Xijin gripped on the wine cup until her knuckles became white as she looked at their collective expressions of disappointment. The day Gu Xiqiao was accepted into their family, she already knew that this illegitimate younger sister of hers would be trouble. That being said, she only had a pretty face, and in this world, people like her could only become playthings.

After thinking of this, Gu Xijin’s loosened her grip on the cup, but the frost in her dark gaze remained.

The young woman next to her couldn’t help making comments on the situation. "Xijin, you’re being too nice to that so-called younger sister of yours! Look at that vixen, who knows what Grandpa Gu thought when he brought her back..."

Gu Xiqiao’s origins weren’t a secret, and a lot of the people that were at the party today knew about it. She was the daughter of a porn star and was raised in the countryside. She seemed like a country bumpkin who hadn’t even learned the basics of the four arts—Music, chess, calligraphy, and painting.

"There’s nothing to be afraid of anyway, she’s just a stupid girl from the countryside. We’re going to let her know that N City is completely different than that ditch she came out of!" The young woman continued.

"..."

Yes, N City was completely different from what she imagined, and she had already learned that at the cost of her life. Gu Xiqiao smirked and looked back at the grand building with a mocking gaze, and the building was plunged into chaos.

"Xijin, what’s wrong with your clothes!"

"Ahhh!!!" A piercing scream rang out from inside of the room.

Gu Xiqiao stretched lazily and walked away with a cold expression. Making clothes tear telepathically was quite a handy skill to have if she said so herself.

The servants that saw her knew that the family had accepted an illegitimate daughter, and this young girl didn’t seem to even have any gratitude toward them. She was either gloomy or depressed every day like her pet died! They stared at her with disgusted gazes as they quickly made their way into the room.

How would they understand the difficulty of a child that appeared suddenly in a place that she didn’t belong at, and under the deliberate rejection of the family and having to deal with death threats all day, how strong would she have to be to maintain a sense of morality and survive?

Gu Xiqiao didn’t really mind the habit of the servants that sucked up to Gu Xijin and stepped on her because she was already used to it.

And so, she calmly left the suffocating building.

But still, it was unbelievable that she came back to this point in time when she first arrived at the Gu family, back when she was eighteen years old.

Gu Xiqiao stopped in her steps and raised her hands without being able to wait any further, and looking at her beautiful and slightly callused hands. She was so ecstatic that her hands had been returned to their original state that she started chuckling softly. Not everyone was this lucky, after all.

Suddenly, a piercingly bright ray of light shone in her direction.

[Warning! Danger incoming from three meters in front, please dodge in 0.01 seconds or use 1 point to buy a Dodge Card!]

A long, skidding sound of wheels screeched in the dead of night.

The driver rushed down from the car quickly, his heart raised to his throat seeing the girl on the street. He had been rushing to the airport, and he had chosen this road because this road was usually scarce with passersby. He didn’t see anyone when he turned a corner, so when the girl suddenly appeared in his field of vision he was caught off guard. He stepped on the brakes as quickly as he could but the car still bumped into her.

But he was sure that the car hadn’t been fast enough to impact her so much, and he had his headlamps turned on so brightly. She wasn’t scamming him, was she?

The driver was stunned and confused by the sudden turn of events.

Gu Xiqiao came back to her senses and looked at the driver’s gaze, not saying anything as she stood up slowly. If one only looked at her expression, they would have never known that she had just been in a car accident.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry at this system that was temporarily only good for acting cute. "Why did you only tell me that there was danger when the car was right in front of me? Are you sure you’re not confusing me with some supernatural being that can dodge cars in a hundredth of a second?"

[Mistress, I’m still a weak Level 0 system! As long as Mistress does missions often and levels me up, something like this would never happen again!] The system pouted sadly as if she were disappointed with itself too.

"What are you useful for then?"

Gu Xiqiao squinted and looked at this car that appeared in front of her all of a sudden. Was she really that unlucky that she couldn’t even dodge?

The system that was being looked down upon: [...]

Her back was ramrod straight and her long and pale legs were exposed in the air. Her knees had been injured and were still bleeding profusely, and in the wound, there seemed to be some small pieces of gravel and sand caught in her wound. Because of the contrast between her pale skin and the gashing wound, it seemed abnormally serious.

The driver checked on her injuries with the help of the headlamps, and he was shocked at how severe they looked.

The girl looked like a ghostly apparition in the light, and her beautiful, delicate features only served to further enhance her unearthliness. Her piercing gaze brought with it a cold aura, and it made the driver pause from the intimidation.

Then, he took a second look and saw how young the girl he bumped into was, and how clear and bright her eyes were, befitting of someone of her age.

He rubbed his eyes and realized that this girl didn’t seem like someone that would scam him like this. To scam another person in the rich district was a stupid thing to do in the first place...

After a series of thoughts, he walked back to the car and had a short discussion with the person sitting in the back seat, before deciding to bring this girl to the hospital.

Gu Xiqiao tried to lift her legs, and with the slightest bit of force, an excruciating pain tore up her legs. She was a girl from the countryside that had lived a rough life, but her adoptive mother had never neglected her and had never made her too more work than was necessary either, even giving her the chance to learn skills from the old man that lived nearby. She was considered a spoiled child by the standards of the countryside, so she felt pain from being injured so suddenly too.

But no matter how painful it was, it wouldn’t be half as painful as having her fingers mangled and trampled upon.

Gu Xiqiao’s gaze was still calm and collected as she calmly analyzed her current situation. This road that they were on belonged to the rich district, which meant that taxi drivers or suspicious vehicles wouldn’t be let in, and so she didn’t think much of getting in the car.

The moment the door closed, a strong wave of mental power pulsed in her direction, and her face immediately went pale.

She had been in the virtual space for a long time, and in her time reading the endless scrolls, she knew of some special martial arts that could hone such an ability. The mental power that attacked her at this moment was even stronger than hers that had been through two lives.

At that moment, she could only feel an unprecedented impact and a pain that threatened to tear her head open!

If this person used even one sliver more of mental power, she would definitely become an idiot from getting her mental energy damaged.

The system spirit that was hiding in the virtual space widened its eyes incredulously, before finally reacting and raising its hands in Gu Xiqiao’s direction, casting space isolation on her quickly.

As she felt the pressure on her recede like the tide, Gu Xiqiao relaxed slightly, but still kept her guard up.

The passenger on the back seat suddenly lifted his head, and his gaze seemed to pierce through the darkness towards Gu Xiqiao. The girl couldn’t feel it because of the space isolation that the system spirit cast on her.

The car arrived at the hospital quickly, and Gu Xiqiao practically scrambled down from the car in cold sweat. She was still not used to this sort of near-death experience.

The driver saw her wobble unsteadily towards the hospital, so he quickly went to help her.

After they both left, the rear window of the car rolled down to reveal a lithe silhouette.

The man was wearing a clean white shirt, his slightly upturned eyes glinting with a frigid coldness. It was hard to know what he was thinking just from his expression, but his lips were slightly pursed, and just from his side profile in the darkness, it was easy to see that he was quite handsome.

With a smooth movement of his lithe fingers, he closed the book that he had on his lap and opened the car door, stepping into the night.

It was already night time, so the doctors from the outpatient department had mostly gone off duty. The driver Old Zhang quickly took out his phone and dialed a number, and in a few minutes, a team of doctors came rushing in.

These doctors had always been proud and self-important since when were they at the beck and call of a mere driver?

Gu Xiqiao watched calmly as the doctor picked out the gravel in her wound with a pair of tweezers, not thinking more about receiving help from these mysterious people. They were only passersby that would never be able to meet each other again after this, after all.

But she didn’t expect the driver to ask for a way to contact her family.

Gu Xiqiao lifted her head and fixed Old Zhang with a clear gaze, her jet black hair resting on her shoulder and making her seem meek and demure. "It’s fine, just a small wound. I’ll be able to get myself home later."

Call the Gu family? Su Wan’er probably wanted to choke her to death, Gu Zuhui hadn’t even looked her in the eye since she joined the family, and Gu Xijin acted like she cared, but wanted to get rid of her anyway. If they received the call, it would probably further serve the ’Gu Xiqiao is a harbinger of misfortune’ agenda that they had going on. They probably wouldn’t even send a servant to help her out.

Under the lights, the girl seemed especially pale and fragile like a porcelain doll, and with how thin she was, she seemed quite sickly.

Before Old Zhang could reply, the nurse that was helping to wash her wounds couldn’t help but speak. "How could you not tell your parents after being hurt like this? You probably fought with your family didn’t you, young lady? I understand having a rebellious phase, but please go home and apologize alright? Parents are always like that, but you must know that they mean well. It’s hard enough to work day in and day out, so don’t worry them so much..."

And so the nurse continued nagging on and on, to the point where Gu Xiqiao could feel a migraine coming on.

Were nurses nowadays all so passionate?

"My mother is dead." Gu Xiqiao glanced at the nurse. "My father doesn’t have the time to deal with me, either."

"Ah, I’m sorry." The nurse paused in her nagging, realizing that she said something that she shouldn’t have. As she made up the details of a familial soap opera in her head, she gave Gu Xiqiao a pitying look. "Then you..."

Gu Xiqiao’s expression was as calm and collected as always, but she was silently organizing her thoughts. As soon as she came back to when she was eighteen, she was given an unreliable system and was hit by a car as soon as she stepped out...Was there something wrong with her luck?

She was quite caught up on this and reached to massage her temples gently.

The nurse thought for a bit and decided to continued speaking. She was a nurse in-training and still hadn’t had much experience in dealing with patients, so she decided to advise this ’lost lamb’ from her so-called justice.

But didn’t she know that her self centered sense of justice was the same as stabbing a knife into one’s heart?

Old Zhang couldn’t keep watching anymore and decided to stop the young nurse from speaking.

Before he could do anything, however, he heard a creak coming from the entrance, and a lean, tall man made his way into the room. As he walked, the room itself seemed to freeze with an invisible pressure.

The nurse felt a chill run up her spine, and she unconsciously clammed up and worked faster on cleaning the wound, before shivering and making a break for it.

Only after the door was closed did she look up at the sculpture-like silhouette.

He stood there silently, his aura so sharp that it seemed to be able to cut the air around him, giving off pressure to everyone that looked at him.

From this angle, the man had sculpted features and was quite handsome. The elegant angle of his eyebrows seemed to melt away the frost in his demeanor, highlighting a warmth to his features that made him even more alluring.

The young nurse was quite stunned, having never seen such a good-looking man in her life.

Jiang Shuxuan saw that her wound had already been treated and checked on the report that the doctors wrote on her, his thick eyebrows furrowing slightly like a single ripple on a calm lake. His gaze deep in thought but covered with a layer of frost, and even if he wasn’t angry it was hard to maintain eye contact with him.

After a while, he handed the report to Old Zhang and asked him to get the medicine from the dispensary.

Old Zhang seemed to want to contact the girl’s family because it wasn’t proper to leave such a young woman at the hospital by herself late at night, but she was quite stubborn and didn’t give him any information.

He had been worried about Mr. Jiang that had been waiting downstairs because it was his duty to send him to the airport, and it would have been hard for him to withstand the consequences of failing his mission. Now that Mr. Jiang came up by himself and didn’t seem to blame him in the slightest, he calmed down quite a bit and went to get the medicine for her.

When there was no one else left in the room, Jiang Shuxuan looked at Gu Xiqiao with a frosty gaze.

After a while, he asked, "Who are you?"

Jiang Shuxuan’s gaze was piercing, and it seemed to have the power to see into a person’s very soul.

He knew that his car hit her, but it was never in his calculations. When he was in the car, he couldn’t sense that anyone was in front of the car even with his strong sensory ability. This girl’s mental power was quite raw and strong too, to the point where even he was wary of her.

With the mental power that she had, she was leagues more talented than all of those children in his family. Perhaps those people knew that he was interested in such things, so they made this girl appear in front of him?

It wasn’t impossible, and so he couldn’t help but start to observe her and size her up.

When a cold voice rang out from above her, and Gu Xiqiao lifted her head and looked at the man that was asking her with a confused expression.

Her gaze was as innocent as a newborn child, like a clear creek in the woods.

Jiang Shuxuan didn’t know what to say all of a sudden, and coughed into his fist lightly to hide his sudden awkwardness. He felt a little guilty for suspecting a girl with such a pure gaze, and so his first impression of her was renewed. "I wanted to say that if you don’t want to go home, you can come to stay at my place for a few days."

It was quite common for children to fall out with their parents, but for such a meek and gentle child to choose to run away from her home, how terrible would it have had to been for her to make such a choice?

Gu Xiqiao raised her eyebrows and was about to refuse, before feeling a shadow envelop her along with a loss of gravity.

Before she could react, she had already been carried up princess-style easily by the man.

She raised her head a little startled, but from her gaze, she could only see his well-defined jaw. This person must have been used to having his way that he didn’t even give her a chance to refuse.

That being said, the warmth hidden in his dark orbs spoke no lies.

Gu Xiqiao pursed her lips slightly before lowering her head in defeat, hiding away her emotions.

The person in his arms was practically a light as a feather, and even a rifle was denser than she was. Jiang Shuxuan frowned as he thought about the reports he saw earlier—A weak constitution, anemia, a slight concussion, and serious wounds, wasn’t that too severe for someone for her age?

How was she treated at home?

Gu Xiqiao was still spacing out before the system sounded out in her mind.

[Ding! The system has detected that this man is a respectable young man with good intentions! He has been added into your Friend List by default.]

A friend list? As soon as she got this new skill, she immediately closed her eyes and examined this new friend list that appeared in the system space.