1: Chapter 1: Starting with a debt of 500,000? This transmigration is truly something else!

A splitting headache.

It felt as if someone were drilling into his temples with an electric drill, accompanied by waves of nauseating dizziness.

Jiang Chen opened his eyes abruptly. What met his gaze was a patch of yellowed, peeling wallpaper, and the air was thick with a rancid smell—a mixture of cheap alcohol, mold, and instant noodle seasoning.

"Where is this..."

Before he could react, a vast and unfamiliar torrent of memories violently crashed into his mind.

2025, Blue Star, a parallel world.

Tianhai City, an urban village, Jiang Chen.

Countless images flashed frantically like a slideshow: his father's failed business, the crushing debt, his jump from a thirty-story high-rise, leaving him unrecognizable; his mother, unable to bear the blow, saw her uremia worsen and was admitted to the ICU, where money was burned like water every day; his younger sister, Jiang Qianqian, still in her third year of high school, was cornered at the school gate by creditors, trembling in fear...

And "himself," the original owner of this body, unable to withstand this suffocating pressure, had downed two catties of cheap baijiu last night, wanting to just end it all.

"I was a tech upstart worth billions; how did I wake up to become this unlucky bastard?"

Jiang Chen clutched his forehead, a bitter smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

He had transmigrated.

And it was a hell-difficulty start.

Before he could digest this shitty reality, a loud bang nearly shook the dilapidated wooden door down.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Dust fell in droves from the old door frame, as if it would completely fall apart the next second.

Immediately after, a hoarse and aggressive male voice drilled through the door, painful enough to rattle his eardrums.

"Jiang Chen! Stop playing dead in there! I know you're home!"

"Debts must be repaid, it's only natural! If you don't bring out the money today, believe it or not, I'll torch this dump of yours!"

Jiang Chen took a deep breath, his eyes gradually turning cold.

These were Zhao Tianba's men.

A notorious loan shark in Tianhai City, a man who would consume people without even spitting out the bones. After his father died, that 500,000 principal in usurious loans had snowballed into an astronomical figure.

"Bang!"

Another kick.

The door groaned in pain, the latch already teetering on the brink of collapse.

"Jiang Chen! I'm giving you an ultimatum!"

The person outside had clearly lost patience. His voice was sinister, carrying a chilling ruthlessness. "Master Zhao said, tomorrow is the final deadline. If we still don't see the money, you won't have to pay it back anymore."

"Hand over your pretty little sister to us; Master Zhao just happens to need a girl to pour drinks, and this debt will be considered settled!"

Hearing the word "sister," Jiang Chen's previously muddled brain instantly cleared, and a rage originating from the depths of his soul surged into his heart.

That was the residual obsession of the original owner, and also Jiang Chen's bottom line as a man.

"Screw you!"

Jiang Chen roared at the door, his voice hoarse but ferocious. "Whoever dares to touch a single hair on Qianqian, I'll fight you to the death!"

The commotion outside paused for a moment, then erupted into several sneers.

"Oh? Still acting tough, huh? Fine, if you've got guts, just don't come out."

That hoarse voice spat through the door panel. "Remember, before the sun goes down tomorrow. Don't blame us brothers for being ruthless then! Let's go!"

The messy footsteps gradually faded away.

Jiang Chen leaned against the cold wall, gasping for air, his heart pounding violently in his chest.

The threat was gone, but the crisis remained unresolved.

500,000.

Not to mention his current self, even if he sold this house, he couldn't scrape together 50,000.

This was an illegal structure in an urban village; it wasn't worth anything at all.

"Ring—ring—"

The cracked-screen phone thrown in the corner of the bed suddenly rang, the harsh ringtone echoing in the cramped room like a death warrant.

Jiang Chen grabbed the phone; the word "Qianqian" was dancing on the screen.

He took a deep breath, tried hard to calm his emotions, pressed the answer button, and tried to make his voice sound as steady as possible.

"Hello, Qianqian?"

On the other end of the line was a burst of suppressed sobbing, as if she were hiding somewhere to make the call secretly.

"Brother... am I not going to be able to go to school anymore?"

The girl's voice trembled, filled with endless panic and grievance. "Just now... just now some people came to the school looking for me, saying they were your friends, but they didn't look like good people to me... I want to come home."

Jiang Chen's heart tightened abruptly, as if it were being fiercely gripped by an invisible hand.

These animals actually went to the school to harass Qianqian!

"Qianqian, don't be afraid."

Jiang Chen clenched his fists, his nails digging deep into his palms. "Brother is fine, Brother can solve this. Stay at school, don't go anywhere, and don't go with anyone. Do you hear me?"

"But... Mom's medical expenses are gone too, the doctor said if we don't pay, they'll stop the treatment..."

Jiang Chen gritted his teeth, his eyes turning slightly red.

Money.

It's all about money.

In this world, without money, even breathing is a mistake.

"Listen to your brother, just study hard."

Jiang Chen's voice was low and firm, carrying an unquestionable strength. "Don't worry about the money; tomorrow... tomorrow I'll be able to scrape it all together. Trust your brother, okay?"

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, before a very faint "Mm" came through.

After hanging up, Jiang Chen slumped powerlessly on the edge of the bed. Looking at the mess in the room, a deep sense of helplessness surged into his heart.

Scrape together 500,000 by tomorrow?

With what?

Go rob a bank?

Even his former self would need time to mobilize funds, let alone now when he was penniless and didn't even have any decent connections.

"Do I really have to watch my family fall apart and perish?"

Jiang Chen stared fixedly at the broken phone in his hand, wishing he could crush it.

Just then, a burning, scalding sensation suddenly came from his palm.

The phone, which had been in standby mode with a black screen, suddenly lit up, its brightness blindingly high.

"What's going on?"

Jiang Chen instinctively tried to throw the phone away, only to find it seemed stuck to his hand; he couldn't shake it off.

On the screen, countless garbled characters were jumping frantically, as if some kind of virus was forcibly installing itself.

[Host's mental fluctuations detected as intense...]

[System binding in progress...]

["Civilization Recovery" APP downloaded...]

[Resources loaded.]

Lines of eerie small text flashed by quickly, and immediately after, the phone screen changed.

It was no longer the familiar Android interface, but had turned into a dark, oppressive game screen.

The background was a devastated Wasteland, with broken walls and ruined buildings, yellow sand filling the sky.

In the center of the screen, a tiny chibi character was crouching.

It was a young girl wearing tattered armor, her long silver hair covered in dust, her red pupils revealing despair and exhaustion.

Although it was in pixel style, Jiang Chen could still feel the character's exquisiteness and... misery.

Too miserable.

A bright red health bar floated above her head, already bottomed out and still flickering with red light.

Beside it was a status bar: [Extremely Hungry] [Near Death] [Faith Collapsing].

"What is this? Adware?"

Jiang Chen furrowed his brows, his mood irritable to the extreme. "Pushing a game on me at a time like this? Who has the mood to play this!"

He pressed the power button desperately, even trying to remove the battery, but this broken phone acted as if it were possessed, completely unresponsive.

On the screen, the silver-haired girl seemed to sense something and slowly raised her head. Those red eyes seemed to look straight at Jiang Chen through the screen.

A line of blood-red text slowly appeared at the top of the screen:

[Your subject is starving.]

[In this world abandoned by the gods, you are her only hope.]

[Feed her?]

[Yes / No]

Jiang Chen was stunned.

This copy... is a bit interesting.

But his current self couldn't even support himself; what could he use to support a 2D character?

"I'm about to starve to death myself, and I'm supposed to feed you?"

Jiang Chen sneered, just about to click "No," when his stomach unhelpfully let out a "growl."

He instinctively looked around.

On the nightstand sat half a steamed bun he hadn't finished last night, already dry, hard, and cracked. Next to it was half a bottle of leftover mineral water.

This was his entire current wealth.

In the hallway outside, he could vaguely hear the neighbor auntie cursing, seemingly complaining that Zhao Tianba's group had disturbed her earlier.

"See you tomorrow."

Zhao Tianba's sinister threat as he left echoed in his ears once more.

Jiang Chen looked at the dying little figure on the screen. The longing for life in those red eyes actually overlapped with Qianqian's helpless tone on the phone earlier.

Driven by some impulse, Jiang Chen reached out and picked up that half of a dry, hard steamed bun.

"Forget it, I'm going to die anyway."

He laughed at himself, pressing all the madness of being driven into a corner by life and a trace of inexplicable expectation onto his fingertips.

His finger hovered over the "Yes" button.

Jiang Chen said softly to the screen:

"Eat up. Eat and be on your way."