Lin Jincheng swore for the 162nd time—if she didn’t quit this job, she was a dog.
Quit. She had to quit!
…But quitting meant finding a new job too.
Getting to know new coworkers, getting used to a new environment—she might even have to find a new place to live.
The chain of hassle that came with it suddenly sapped all her resolve.
What deflated her even more was that she’d almost certainly never negotiate her current salary again—two-thirds of it, if she was lucky.
Hu Meifen said, displeased, “Xiao Lin, I’m talking to you about a major life decision here, don’t space out on me.”
Lin Jincheng looked up.
Hu Meifen, standing across from her, was half a head shorter, her hair permed into a mass of curls. Her family of five lived next door.
When Lin Jincheng had first moved into this complex, she’d run into Hu Meifen a few times in the elevator on her way to work, and every single time she’d catch Hu Meifen muttering in dialect about her being an outsider, dripping with snide undertones.
Later, over dinner with her roommate Qiao Di, Qiao Di mentioned that Hu Meifen was an outsider herself—she’d moved here with her husband a few years back to help take care of their grandson.
Qiao Di also said that Hu Meifen made at least 20k in matchmaking fees per successful pairing.
“Being a matchmaker pays that well in Shanghai?” Lin Jincheng was stunned.
Qiao Di gave a noncommittal shrug. “You’ll understand once you meet the rejects she’s tried to set people up with.”
The day before Little New Year, the two families had arranged to meet at the Hu household.
Lin Jincheng got back from work just as they were wrapping up, and caught a glimpse of the match Hu Meifen had been singing praises of, calling him a catch you couldn’t find even with a lantern in hand.
He truly was hard to find, lantern or not.
Short, scrawny, looked like a sentient piece of old tree bark.
Naturally, nothing came of that meeting.
One Spring Festival break later, it was her turn to be introduced to the old tree bark 🙂
Hu Meifen was still rambling on. “Perfect timing, you’re back. I’ll have him come pick you up a little later, you young people can grab afternoon tea and get to know each other.”
Lin Jincheng kind of regretted not dawdling a few extra minutes at the office—otherwise she wouldn’t have run straight into Hu Meifen coming back from buying breakfast the second she got to her own door.
Hu Meifen stared at Lin Jincheng’s face for a few seconds, then pursed her lips.
What good was a pretty face anyway, when she didn’t even go home for New Year’s—clearly her family had nothing to offer.
Then Hu Meifen remembered the 40k red envelope the man’s side had promised, and stretched her mouth into a smile, though her tone still carried a “you’re getting the deal of a lifetime here” air. “Xiao Lin, ah, a local like this with a house and a car—I had to talk myself hoarse just to get him to agree to meet you once. You need to seize the opportunity.”
Lin Jincheng, dead tired and exhausted, kept her eyes lowered. “I’m not looking to date right now, go find someone else.”
At that, the smile vanished from Hu Meifen’s face, her mouth curling down. “You’re an outsider with an ordinary family background, all you’ve got going for you is your face—what do you think you’re in a position to be picky about?”
“Give it a few years and you’ll be thirty, and by then you won’t even be able to land a second-marriage guy!”
You care this much about whether I get married—are you worried I’ll steal your resources or something?
One second, two seconds… ten seconds passed, and Lin Jincheng still couldn’t bring herself to snap back.
She’d never liked direct confrontation, not since she was a kid, and especially not after starting work—arguing just felt like such a drain on her energy.
Besides, Hu Meifen’s whole family lived right there, and her husband and son both listened to her—Lin Jincheng was worried about being hassled by the entire household.
Seeing Lin Jincheng listening obediently, Hu Meifen looked satisfied. “He told me himself, once you marry in you won’t even need to slog away at a job anymore, you can just be a rich tai-tai at home!”
…
If you can’t stand it anymore, there’s no need to keep standing it.
Lin Jincheng took a deep breath, her voice rising a notch. “You keep beep—”
【…static… handoff…】
Out of nowhere, a mechanical voice buzzing with electric static rang out beside her ear.
【Money-Dumping System S0075 temporarily in service. Please confirm binding within the countdown.】
【3, 2, 1. Default binding confirmed.】
Lin Jincheng watched as Hu Meifen carried on as if she’d heard nothing, her face going blank with shock. I just pulled one all-nighter—since when do I start hallucinating?
The door next-door banged open.
Shen Yuan shook off her husband trying to hold her back and grabbed Hu Meifen’s arm. “Mom, Xiao Lin coming home at this hour obviously means she pulled an all-nighter at work. Whatever you two need to say, save it for another time.”
Hu Meifen’s eyebrows shot up, and she opened her mouth to argue, but her daughter-in-law cut in under her breath, “Young people who don’t rest properly after an all-nighter are the most likely to drop dead of sudden cardiac arrest—what if that ends up pinned on you?”
In an instant, Hu Meifen went quiet.
Lin Jincheng caught Shen Yuan’s apologetic glance, her heart pounding.
If she was already hallucinating, was sudden death really that far off?!
She hurried to turn and open her door.
Sure, on an ordinary day she carried herself like someone who was fine living and just as fine dying, but she really couldn’t die right now—she hadn’t even finished spending the savings from her job yet!
Flustered, she rushed into the living room, nearly walking into the bedroom with her shoes still on. Just as she’d kicked them off and straightened up, the same flat, monotone electronic voice rang out again.
【Initial funds: 10,000 yuan. Please have the host select—】
Outside the door, just before her daughter-in-law dragged her home, Hu Meifen shrieked, “Don’t set your sights too high, little girl! Think it over carefully, Auntie’s only doing this for your own good! You’d never find someone this good on your own!”
The electronic voice didn’t let up. 【A legitimate source of funds. 1. Investment profits. 2——】
Lin Jincheng’s brain short-circuited, and she blurted out, “Source? Why don’t you just be my rich boyfriend instead?”
The words barely out of her mouth, Lin Jincheng walked into her bedroom, shrugged off her coat, and collapsed face-down onto the bed.
A heavy wave of drowsiness swept over her.
The system froze for half a second. 【Option confirmed. Compiling program now.】
Lin Jincheng: “?”
·
When Lin Jincheng woke up, a soft evening light was spilling in through the window, the curtains on either side a muted, low-saturation lavender.
Whew—
Didn’t die after all.
Lin Jincheng picked up her phone to check the time: the tenth day of the first lunar month, Thursday, 3:20 PM.
Along with the time, a message from her bank caught her eye.
Your debit card account 1099 has received a deposit of 10,000 yuan. Post-transaction balance: 25,732.5 yuan.
“…?”
The memory from before she fell asleep came rushing back all at once, and Lin Jincheng shot upright, her heart racing wildly.
She lowered her head and tapped into her banking app, and sure enough, there in the transaction history was a record from 7:01 that morning.
Incoming transfer from another bank: 10,000 yuan.
Note: Romance fund from your rich boyfriend, freely given.
Huh????
It didn’t take long for Lin Jincheng to get the full picture, courtesy of the Money-Dumping System’s explanation.
The System told her this world was derived from a novel.
She was originally supposed to become the heir of a wealthy distant relative half a year from now, thereby becoming an obstacle on the male and female leads’ road to love.
But then someone reincarnated had gotten adopted by that distant relative ahead of schedule, and her fate had changed along with it.
As compensation for this plot bug, starting today, all she had to do was finish spending every sum of money the Money-Dumping System issued her, and she’d earn cash rewards of varying amounts—until the original novel reached its end.
Lin Jincheng skimmed through the plot summary the System had compiled.
The full text ran 6,351 chapters, following the male and female leads’ romance, then their children’s generation, then their grandchildren’s generation.
—An 88-year span, start to finish.
“…”
“………….”
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
Money-Dumping System: 【.】
Sensing the System’s silence, Lin Jincheng rubbed her nose.
Money-Dumping System S0075 didn’t normally take on a host—its job was to rake in massive fortunes across various mini-worlds to fund the pool that other systems drew from.
But the system originally bonded to her had suddenly malfunctioned and gone in for 12 hours of maintenance, so S0075 had stepped in as a temporary substitute.
If Lin Jincheng had simply picked any of the existing options, then once her regular system finished maintenance, S0075 could’ve handed things off and left.
Instead, her offhand remark about it playing rich boyfriend had gotten flagged as a valid selection by the program, and now it was stuck seeing the whole story through to the end with her.
Lin Jincheng: “Can’t I pick again?”
【No.】
The System listed out every available option in its flat, toneless mechanical voice. 【What did you actually want to pick?】
Lin Jincheng’s eyes lit up, her face full of longing. “Let you play my rich dead husband instead~”
【…】
Having had her fun teasing it, Lin Jincheng lowered her head again to check the checking balance on her bank card.
Heh.
Heh heh heh heh.
Eight hours had passed since the deposit landed, and the bank still hadn’t called about any suspicious activity—which meant the System’s money channel really was legitimate.
The System didn’t restrict how long she had to spend the 10,000 yuan, but she’d only get the 5,000 yuan cash reward once she’d spent every last cent of it.
Spending someone else’s 10k and still earning herself 5k on top—hah, she’d bet nobody would believe her if she told them.
Without hesitating, Lin Jincheng pulled up a shopping app and searched for gold jewelry.
Honestly, there was a long list of things she wanted to buy—food, clothes, everyday stuff, an apartment, a car, topping up games, blind boxes, cosplay gear, concert tickets, you name it—but for now she just wanted to turn this windfall into gold first.
The store had a full range of categories: necklaces, pendants, bracelets, rings, earrings, gold bars, and more.
Lin Jincheng first picked out a small gold ingot—10.3g, priced over ten thousand, way over budget.
The only one cheaper than that was 5,897 yuan.
She added the 5,897-yuan gold ingot to her cart and moved on to browsing pendants.
The System watched Lin Jincheng go from sitting to leaning against the headboard to lying on her side, deliberating with total seriousness—clicking through product photos, then digging into the reviews to check buyers’ uploaded pictures. She spent nearly half an hour like this and still hadn’t settled on anything.
In the end, she picked a gold ginkgo-leaf pendant—she had a plain gold chain from the year before last at home that would go with it.
Lin Jincheng checked off both the small gold ingot and the pendant in her cart, totaling 8,558.6 yuan, and clicked to check out.
Before paying, she first transferred 15,000 of the 15,732.5 yuan that was actually hers to another card, leaving the remaining two fixed-term deposits, which hadn’t matured yet, untouched.
She’d kept some aside just in case she couldn’t spend the System’s 10,000 yuan down to the exact cent and needed to chip in a bit extra herself.
Watching the “payment successful” notification pop up, Lin Jincheng rolled over on the bed, then flopped onto her back, kicking her legs excitedly. “Having someone foot the bill really is the best feeling ever!”
With that thought, she started scrolling through the items she’d added to her cart earlier.
The first thing that caught her eye was the Kérastase black diamond hair mask everyone on Xiaohongshu kept raving about in the comments—a 200ml jar, 482 yuan even after the discount.
The reason she hadn’t bought it yet wasn’t entirely about the price—mainly, she just didn’t trust herself to actually use it.
When she’d first started working, she’d bought a jar of Fino hair mask and only used it twice before it expired.
She had a sinking feeling the Kérastase one would end up gathering dust the same way.
But the recommendations from other users had felt so genuine, and with hair as dry and frizzy as hers, she was seriously tempted.
【Want it now, satisfy it now. Delayed gratification just drains your time and your mood.】
The System cut in out of nowhere. 【It’s romance funds, don’t be stingy. Be generous with it.】
“…”
Lin Jincheng was not convinced.
Who was being stingy? She’d eaten at a 500+ yuan all-you-can-eat seafood buffet by herself, and she’d bought an 800+ yuan outfit bundle in a game before.
…Okay, fine, maybe once or twice a year.
Aside from rent running 3,000+ a month, she didn’t really have any other regular big expenses.
She was always trying to save up and coast—save 10k, want to save 100k; save 100k, want to save 200k.
The real question was how much she’d need to save in Shanghai before she could actually afford a place of her own.
“You’re right!” Lin Jincheng decisively completed the payment. “Let it gather dust if it gathers dust, satisfying yourself right now is what matters most.”
Same old logic—it wasn’t even her own money she was spending, 0v0.
