Just as Jiang Feng was regretting her impulsiveness and feeling utterly hopeless, the pain slowly began to fade. She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and looked at her wrist. To her astonishment, the cut from the fruit knife had already healed, leaving no trace of the injury.
After a moment of confusion, she figured it out. Thanks to her own reckless stupidity, she was now a vampire. Her body might be frail, but it seemed to have an incredible ability to heal external wounds.
To test her theory, she cautiously walked over to the window and tentatively stuck one arm outside. It was so thin, it looked like it might snap at any moment.
And then… she learned what people meant when they said, “If you don’t tempt fate, fate won’t come for you.”
“Ow! That hurts!”
The early morning sunlight fell across her arm. A searing pain hit her in an instant, as if her skin were being roasted over a fire. Jiang Feng sucked in a sharp breath, eyes brimming with tears as she yanked her hand back inside.
If the morning sun hurt this much, then after being blasted by the midday sun for a while, she’d probably drop dead on the spot. She had no idea whether sunlight could actually kill her, but she was sure it would at least knock her unconscious from the pain.
Maybe sunlight itself didn’t hurt that much. But this body was so sensitive to pain that it magnified every little ache dozens of times over.
I’m so screwed!
Jiang Feng covered her face and sank to the floor, utterly miserable. This was Earth, not some other world—vampires weren’t supposed to exist here!
If she got exposed one day, wouldn’t some bunch of mad scientists drag her off to dissect and experiment on her?
Right then, Jiang Feng really wanted to chop off her own hand! Why had she been such an idiot and made so many insane demands of this body?!
If she had a time machine, she’d go back to last night and slap the version of herself who’d been making wishes. Hard.
Well, this was just great. This body really was unbelievably pathetic. Its strength and stamina were absurdly low, it was ridiculously sensitive and pain-prone, and to top it all off, it came with the absolutely unacceptable label of “nonhuman.”
Weren’t vampires supposed to be superhuman? How come she’d ended up as a total weakling who was winded after jogging a few steps?
The only things she could still hope for were that her meekness and tsundere streak wouldn’t mess with her too. She was already a lost cause physically. If she was still meek on top of that, anyone could walk all over her.
Jiang Feng curled up on the floor with her arms around her knees, feeling deeply aggrieved. Her nose began to sting, and her eyes grew damp. It felt like she might burst into tears at any moment.
“N-no… I can’t be like this.” Jiang Feng wiped away the tears at the corners of her eyes, pressed her lips together, and said firmly, “Jiang Feng, you’re a man who stands tall beneath the heavens. How can you give in over a little setback like this?”
She took a deep breath and pushed herself upright, her body limp and weak. Then she tried her best to encourage herself. “Jiang Feng, if you’re still a man, you can’t give in just because your body’s at a disadvantage. You can get used to the pain and learn to endure it. You can strengthen your body with exercise. Believe in yourself! My fate is mine to decide, not Heaven’s!”
After all that self-brainwashing, Jiang Feng suddenly felt full of confidence about the future.
Jiang Feng got up and found a mop, then gave the blood on the floor a quick clean. But even this little task—which barely counted as physical labor—left her panting with exhaustion. The tiny mop felt like it weighed a thousand pounds in her hands.
“May 17, 2020, 9:12 a.m.”
The clock’s time was perfectly normal. It seemed only her body had changed; she hadn’t gone back to the past or traveled to the future or anything like that.
The biggest problem facing Jiang Feng right now wasn’t any of that weird stuff. It was something much more practical—and something she had to take seriously: how was she supposed to survive in this society?
This was twenty-first-century Chongguo. Without a legal, proper identity, she’d be unable to get anything done. She’d even get kicked out of an internet café. Though, looking as obviously underage as she did now, she probably wouldn’t be allowed inside one in the first place.
But when she dug her ID card out of her wallet, Jiang Feng was completely stunned.
“Name: Xi Feng
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: Han
Date of birth: April 4, 2006
Address: No. 666 Luoyu Road, Tianshui District, New Moon City
Citizen ID number: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”
Aside from her address and ethnicity, which were the same as before, every other detail had changed.
Her name had changed. Her gender had changed. Even her date of birth had changed. The photo, too, had gone from that of a twenty-one-year-old otaku to a white-haired girl who’d just turned fourteen—or at least, fourteen according to the birthday on her ID. Her actual age was another question entirely.
It seemed Lilian had at least been considerate enough to give her a forged, legitimate identity. Jiang Feng let out a small sigh of relief. At least she wouldn’t have to live as an undocumented person.
But then she noticed a distinct scratch from a key near the edge of the ID card. A bone-chilling feeling swept over her. Cold ran down her back to her spine, and she broke out in a sweat.
That familiar scratch made her realize in an instant: this was definitely the very same ID card that had been with her for years!
That meant Lilian hadn’t forged her a new identity. She’d replaced Jiang Feng with Xi Feng completely!
It was as if she really had been born as a girl named Xi Feng and had lived that way all her life—while Jiang Feng had never existed in this world at all.
This filled Jiang Feng—no, she was Xi Feng now—with a deep, instinctive dread. If the demon could replace her identity in everyone’s memories, then it could just as easily erase someone from existence without anyone noticing.
Could someone around her already have been erased, and she’d simply forgotten them?
The more she thought about it, the more terrifying it seemed. Xi Feng hurriedly forced herself to stop overthinking.
“W-wait a second. What about my job?!” Xi Feng cried out.
She’d been a fourth-year college student on the verge of becoming a corporate drone. She’d already signed her employment contract and was currently in her internship. It was Saturday, which was why she hadn’t needed to go to work today.
But now she was an underage girl of just fourteen. There was no way that contract could still be valid. Otherwise, it’d be child labor, and someone would end up behind bars.
But if she didn’t have a job, wouldn’t that make her unemployed?!
She hurried to her desk and frantically searched for her employment contract. But, to her surprise, she found a student ID card where the contract should have been.
“Tianshui No. 1 High School Student ID
Name: Xi Feng
Gender: Female
Class: 102
Student number: 20200764”
“…Are you fucking kidding me?” Xi Feng’s mouth twitched violently.
Xi Feng recognized the student ID. Tianshui No. 1 High School was the very school she’d attended in high school, just three kilometers from her home.
She’d suffered through three years at Tianshui No. 1 High School, getting up before dawn and studying late into the night. She’d finally escaped that hell and made it into the ranks of the successful, and now they were telling her she had to go back and do high school all over again?
Starting from her first year, no less?!
Oh, vast heavens, why are you so cruel to me?!
That bitter reality sapped the little energy Xi Feng had just managed to recover, and she slumped all over again.
But after carefully weighing the pros and cons, Xi Feng reluctantly accepted it. According to her ID, she was only fourteen. Aside from going to school, there didn’t seem to be much else she could do.
Luckily, it was Saturday. She didn’t have to think about school just yet and could enjoy another couple of days of freedom.
The sudden weight of it all made her not want to think about anything anymore. She flopped onto the bed, grabbed her phone, and decided to put everything off. Why think so hard? She’d play on her phone for a while first. Whatever the problem was, it could wait.
That was the thinking of a terminal procrastinator.
She unlocked her phone with her fingerprint, as usual. Then a strange icon in the corner caught Xi Feng’s eye.
It was a little gear-shaped icon with the word “System” underneath. She was certain there hadn’t been an app like that on her phone before.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me, man…”
Suppressing the unease in her heart, Xi Feng tapped on the System app. Five buttons in different colors appeared.
【Status】, 【Affection】, 【Quests】, 【Gacha】, 【Inventory】.
“…”
Her heart gave a little lurch. Xi Feng shakily reached out and tapped the button marked 【Status】. After a brief loading bar, a list of stats appeared before her.
“【Status】:
Hunger: 54.3%
Health: 87.2%
Mood: 33.7%
Embarrassment: 45.2%
Sensitivity: 54.6%
Arousal: 6.7%”
“What the hell? This system’s messed up!” Xi Feng let out a loud cry of utter shock.
Her face darkened instantly. At the same time, her Mood dropped rapidly from 33.7% to 18.1%, while her Embarrassment shot from 45.2% all the way up to 81.2%.
All of this confirmed the theory she really didn’t want to accept: this was the very system she’d asked Lilian for before, the one meant to train “Xi Feng.” And these stats, of course, were Xi Feng’s body stats.
There’d just been one little hitch in the plan. Now that she’d become Xi Feng, the system’s target had naturally become her.
The first three stats under 【Status】 were more or less normal, but the last three were so embarrassing Xi Feng could barely look at them. This really was a system straight out of some eroge!
The one small bright spot in all this was that, even though the system’s target had changed from someone else to her, she was still the one in control of it.
She could just pretend this stupid system didn’t exist. It couldn’t force her to train herself, could it?
Her mood was so awful that she didn’t want to look at the system for another second. She locked her phone and tossed it aside.
To hell with the system. I’m going back to sleep.
With that thought, Xi Feng drew the curtains again and burrowed straight under the covers.
In this cold, indifferent world, only this blanket offered her any warmth.
Maybe it was because her body was already so frail. Maybe she was weak from losing too much blood. Maybe she was emotionally exhausted. Whatever the reason, she was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.
At this point, innocent and naive Xi Feng still had no idea what kind of hellish despair a system under her control—but designed to train her—would bring her.
