1: Chapter 1, First Life: A Transmigrator Without a Cheat Code is Destined to Fail (The End)

Reader's Brain Storage (૮ ₍ ɵ ̷ ﹏ ɵ ̷ ̥ ̥ ᷅ ₎ ა)

Reincarnation + Alternative Simulation, writing is slow, but I won't deliberately suppress cultivation levels.

Writing every night, even the author doesn't know the plot... Stay tuned!

"Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river, do not bully the young because they are poor."

Chen Shi hoped this famous quote would trigger some heavenly phenomenon, awakening his potential cheat.

But the world remained silent. Only the cold wind swept through the courtyard with yellow dust. No miracle occurred.

Wang Xiaohua's father sighed, pulled the head-bowing Xiaohua away, leaving him standing alone in the empty courtyard, feeling cold all over.

He had been rejected. Wang Xiaohua's father had come with two strings of cured meat and brought Xiaohua along.

There was no melodrama, no cursing, no humiliation, only apology and helplessness.

It was simply because Wang Xiaohua's younger brother had been tested to have decent bone structure and was scouted by the martial arts hall in town.

However, the high cost of martial arts training forced them into a dead end.

To support her brother's training, Wang Xiaohua had to marry a wealthy man in town as a concubine.

This was helplessness; it was also the cruelest reality of this wasteland world.

He had transmigrated to this strange wasteland for sixteen years.

When he was eight, the snow outside Heishi Village came much earlier than in previous years, catching everyone off guard, including the Iron Claw Wolves in the mountains.

His father, in the Tree Bark Realm, died protecting him and his mother, taking three Iron Claw Wolves of the same realm down with him before collapsing in front of him.

The only thing echoing in his ears was a faint, dying instruction: "Take care of Shi'er... and live on."

Hot blood splashed onto his face; he didn't know if it was his father's or the wolf's, perhaps both.

It was then that the trauma awakened his memories of his previous life.

After this, the sky in his home collapsed. His frail mother gritted her teeth and held up this fragmented family.

As for him, while enduring grief, he searched everywhere across the mountains and plains for his cheat.

Everyone thought he had gone crazy from the trauma, and his mother had gradually grown haggard over the years.

He refused to give up, searching for ten whole years, but he never found his cheat.

He had missed too much and lost too much over these years.

Even his father's only legacy—a tattered, yellowed manual that could only train one to the Tree Bark Realm—was forced to be sold to the village manager.

But the various novels he had read in his previous life, combined with his occasional special feelings, made him exceptionally convinced that he absolutely had a cheat!

However, there was no time left.

Another four years passed in the blink of an eye, and he was twenty.

A sudden cold wave struck, and his mother fell ill. Years of hard labor and the pain of losing her husband had completely crushed her body and spirit; no medicine could help.

He finally woke up. With all the savings the family had accumulated over a dozen years, he ran like a madman to the town to hire the best physician.

But his mother held him back tightly, her withered hands using their last bit of strength to shake her head.

"Shi'er, Mother is not going to make it. All these years, I've thought of your father every moment, but you haven't started a family yet.

Now, Mother's final wish is to see you settle down, so you can continue the Chen family line. Of the three unfilial acts, having no offspring is the greatest."

Dragging her sick body, his mother asked a matchmaker to arrange a marriage, using the last of their savings to betroth him to Liu Xiaofang from the village.

Liu Xiaofang was the carpenter's daughter. She had had a limp since childhood, walking with a hobble, but she was a gentle and sensible girl.

There was no red bridal dress, no wedding banquet—just a dilapidated house leaking wind in every direction, two bitter souls, and a hasty marriage.

Three days after the wedding, his mother closed her eyes with a smile and was buried with his father on the hillside behind the village.

On the day of the burial, Chen Shi placed the fragments of his father's broken iron blade into his mother's coffin.

From then on, he was the only one left in this world.

Fortunately, Xiaofang was a rare, good woman. Even with her limp, she kept the house in perfect order.

His father-in-law was the village's old carpenter. Feeling sorry for the young couple, he taught him carpentry step by step.

By planing wood and hammering nails, life finally began to improve.

At twenty-five, his son was born.

Holding the crying infant in his swaddling clothes, the light returned to Chen Shi's long-dead heart.

He pinned all his hopes on his son, hoping the child would have the aptitude for martial arts, be able to leave this poor mountain village, and live the life he hadn't been able to.

This wait lasted another ten years.

When his son was ten, he gritted his teeth and used half a year's savings to buy his son a new set of clothes, taking the child to town to have a martial arts master test his bone structure.

But the result dealt him a heavy blow.

The master shook his head, saying the child had mediocre bone structure and no talent for martial arts, unable to even grasp the most basic stance training.

It was also on that day that he heard the gossip of others beside the martial arts hall:

Wang Xiaohua's younger brother had already reached the Ox-Skin Realm and was serving in the town's garrison. The whole family had moved to town in glory, completely escaping their life at the bottom.

There was no anger, no unwillingness, and no jealousy—only deep numbness.

Returning to the village, he picked up the carpenter's plane and taught his son the trade step by step.

This was the only skill they, father and son, had to make a living on this wasteland.

Time was like a knife, whittling away his obsessions and his youth one cut at a time.

At thirty-eight, his father-in-law, who taught him how to make a living, passed away.

At forty-three, his wife, who had accompanied him through half a lifetime of wind and rain, passed away due to severe illness.

On her deathbed, Xiaofang held his hand and whispered: "I'm sorry, I can't accompany you until you're old. You must live well."

As his closest loved ones left one by one, he watched his son grow up and finally understood that the so-called cheat had perhaps never existed.

The following year, he arranged his son's marriage, marrying the daughter of the town's butcher, only hoping the next generation could be closer to prosperity and live a little easier.

At forty-seven, his twin grandson and granddaughter were born.

Looking at the two little lives blinking in their swaddles, a rare smile appeared on Chen Shi's face after all these years.

The pride of a transmigrator and the obsession with waiting for a cheat had long been ground into dust by time and hardship.

He was now just an ordinary grandfather who only wanted to watch his grandchildren grow up safely.

He had thought he could watch his grandchildren grow up and live out the rest of his life in peace.

But misfortune always strikes the weakest point, and fate never let him go.

Chen Shi curled up on the hard earthen bed, staring at the drafty window lattice with murky eyes, every breath sounding like a broken bellows.

His withered, tree-like fingers clutched half a worn-out carpenter's shaving. His knuckles turned pale from the effort, and even the veins on the back of his hands were trembling slightly.

This year, he was fifty-one.

It was another lethal cold wave, exactly the same as the year his mother passed away.

He fell ill and could not get up. High fever persisted, and his body completely collapsed.

Seeing the doctor had exhausted all their savings. He had invited every physician in the vicinity, but they all shook their heads, saying it was beyond saving.

His son knelt before the bed, his forehead bruised red, crying and begging to go to the city a hundred miles away to find a more skilled physician.

Chen Shi shook his head slowly. In his murky eyes, there were no tears, only exhaustion and relief.

Fifty years.

From a transmigrator full of hope, believing himself to be the chosen one, he had withered into an old man whose edges had been smoothed away by the wasteland.

He had waited a lifetime, hoped a lifetime, and in the end, it was all for nothing.

He had lived enough.

"Don't go, it's a waste of money."

His voice was so hoarse it was almost inaudible, each word exhausting his strength. "After I die, bury me next to Xiaofang. Take good care of the family, and live on."

His son wept uncontrollably and knocked his head three times.

Chen Shi finally let out a breath, feeling life slipping away from his body bit by bit, and slowly closed his eyes.

However, it seemed that the cheat he had waited for his whole life had finally arrived.