As an online tech scammer, Lu Shu made thousands of dollars a day to help pay for his mother's treatment.
Even though he lives off of other's misfortune, Lu Shu didn't care. As long as his mother was saved.
One day, he was doing his usual rotation of scams, when he get a call from the hospital.
He was informed of his mother's passing, he wasn't even able to say goodbye. The last words he said to her were "I will be back soon."
He cried endlessly, was it because of how he made the money? Was god punishing him for it?
His mother was the only thing that kept him going. Without his mother he didn't wanna live, so that's exactly what he did next.
He hung himself.
However, that is not the end of Lu Shu, he was transmigrated into the body of a merchant.
"I'm a merchant? What the hell is going on!?" Lu Shu gained the memories of the merchant, he was very similar with him.
The merchant had no family, and scammed others to make a living. He was like Lu Shu but he did it for his own personal gain.
"What the hell? Am I destined to be a scammed forever?" Lu Shu punched the wall in anger.
Lu Shu pulled his fist off the wall and walked to the closet to get some clothes on.
He was now in the Eastern divine continent, a land where the strong decide everything and the weak obey them.
Once a person starts cultivating, they will develop a soul core. This soul core harbors their soul weapon, which can be strengthened by cultivating the energy of the heavens and earth, which is known as essence.
The soul weapon of the user has some major factors that decide what it is and it's grade. A grade of a soul weapon ranges from F to S grade, it decides the talent of the user and how fast they cultivate.
The main factors include: Natural affinity to an element, Nature of a person, Their willpower, and many more.
A soul weapon can also be anything that's a weapon, but there are 5 main weapons that people mostly get and the rest are called sub-weapons.
The sword, spear, dagger, axe, and scythe. The sub-weapons include things like flails, longswords, sickles, and so on.
In this life, Lu Shu has not started to cultivate, he is not apart of a sect or clan so he never was able to get a cultivation technique.
There's some cheap ones but they ruin the users body so the original body never risked it.
'Arghhh so annoying. I can't believe I have to be a merchant now.' Lu Shu left the house in search of someone to scam, he was bored anyway.
'Ahah there's some easy pickins right there' An evil grin was on Lu Shu's face as he tapped the woman lightly on the shoulder.
"Hmm? Oh a merchant? Sorry I'm broke." The woman said she was poor at the moment but Lu Shu could see the taels of silver in her purse.
Lu Shu swallowed his annoyance and replied calmly, "Sorry for the bother miss, it's just that I noticed you have some pimples, would you like to buy this that removed pimples?"
Apparently makeup wasn't invented at this point in time, so Lu Shu knew if he made a fake it would be fine.
The woman scoffed, "Hah, something that removed pimples? Yeah right."
Lu Shu pulled put a strange looking piece of cardboard with blue stuff inside, he took some out and gave it to the woman.
Lu Shu actuvated his swindling skills and said, "If you put it on your pimples, people won't see them anymore. Do you want to buy? It's only 1 tael of silver for each one."
1 tael of silver was enough to last a guy a month, so 1 tael per piece was pretty insane. Luckily Lu Shu has the innate ability of seeing rich women.
"Chepa enough, here." The woman took out 7 taels of silver and gave it to Lu Shu.
He greedily took the money and gave her the products. "Happy doing business with you miss, have a good day."
Lu Shu went straight home and admired the 7 taels he just scammed out of that woman. The pimple power is just some dirt and coloring from a useless herb.
> Congratulations, Host. You've scammed someone in the first day of your arrival.
A system panel appeared next to Lu Shu, but he wasn't too surprised at it. He's read a few novels in his spare time.
"Great, tell me what you can do man." Lu Shu asked, he was greedy for power already.
> Host, the features of the system include (but not limited to):
> Level Ups and Stat Points.
> Passive Scamming Traits
> Gacha
> Interdimensional Storage
> These are the only features you have unlocked, dear Host.
After observing all the features Lu Shu asked, "Gacha? Like gambling? Is it fun?" That was probably the only interesting thing for him.
> Yes, Host.
> You have 5 gacha pulls, do you wish to spin the wheel?
"Can you do all 5 at the same time I think it would be nice." Lu Shu sat upright, ready for the gacha to come up.
> Activating.
> 'Begginner Luck' boost activated
> 'Scamming Everything' boost activated
'Interesting." Lu Shu watched the buffs appear and the 5 system screens also appear.
He watched each of the wheels land on a prize, it was really exciting.
"What are those? What did I get?" He said excitedly.
> Congratulations Host, you gained:
> Blood Tempering Pill x5
> Blood Tempering Pill x5
> Blood Tempering Pill x5
> Blood Tempering Pill x5
> Heaven and Earth's Gluttoby scripture
"Just my luck. 4 of them are commons. What the hell is the last one, a cultivation technique?" Lu Shu tried to touch the system but it did not work.
> Claim?
"Duh."
> Claimed.
5 bottles of pills feel onto his lap but also a thick amount of information flowed into his head.
The Heaven and Earth's Gluttony Scripture, a cultivation manual with 4 main offensive techniques and 4 defensive techniques.
It's based on cultivating as fast as possible and gluttonously absorbing the essence around the user and directly spreading it to the body and the soul weapon.
Usually this would be bad for a cultivator since they can't take in that much essence to make up for both at the same time, but this Scripture doesn't have that problem.
The main offensive techniques are all based around consuming the the enemies attack with the body and then redirecting it as a different technique.
Imagine a wizard threw a fireball at a guy, but the guy consumed that energy and spit a bunch of ice shards at the wizard, it's like that.
For the defensive techniques, it's all just different barriers that absorb the enemies essence to assist your own.
Lu Shu nodded while listening, "I'll cultivate it then. By the way this body only knows a few realms of cultivation. What are all of the realms here?"
> Host, the cultivation realms, from order of first to last go:
> Spirit Disciple, Spirit Master, Soul Refining, Soul Warrior, Divine Soul, Soul Palace, and lastly, Immortal Soul.
"Okay." Lu Shu prepared and went outside, he sat on the ground and recalled the information in his head.
He pulled put the pills he had stored from before and ate them all in one sitting, he could feel his blood being tempered.
He went into a meditative state and unbeknownst to him, whirlwind of essence started to flow into his body.
Every single cell on his body seemed to be greedily consuming the essence like an endless pit.
Innfhd first 40 seconds, Lu Shu broke through the 4th stage of spirit disciple, usually it'd take 3 or 4 weeks.
In an hour, he was at the Spirit Master realm, and in 13 hours he reached the final stage. But for some reason its like he was unable to breakthrough, so he stopped cultivating.
"System, why has my progress stopped?" Lu Shu couldn't think of a reason he'd be unable to cultivate, he's was going at an insane pace.
> Host, you are at a bottleneck in cultivation, to get past jt you need worldly experience or something to help you breakthrough.
"Worldy experience? Like fighting? I'm not doing all that." Lu Shu refused, he was never a good fighter.
Lu Shu sighed and packed his bags. "It's time to go out for real. I hope nothing bad happens."