Chapter 1: Stardust and Fortune
Chapter 1: Stardust and Fortune
The room was too quiet for a girl who had just come back from the dead.
Shen Ci blinked up at the wooden ceiling, its beams warped and familiar. The air was warm, thick with the scent of old books and dusty linen. She inhaled sharply—and choked. This wasn't a hospital. It wasn't even modern. It was… home. Her childhood home. In the village she had vowed never to return to.
She sat up fast, heart hammering. Her breath came in short bursts as her fingers scrambled across the rough cotton of her quilt. There was the pale blue window curtain she remembered, the handmade shelf still stacked with hand-sewn dolls, and—God—the calendar on the wall.
2020.
The numbers stared back at her like a curse.
Her hands trembled.
In her last life, she had died in 2035. A meaningless accident on a rainy highway, just months after finally clearing her name from the scandal her cousin had dumped on her. She had died poor, alone, heartbroken, with a heart full of rage and regret.
But here she was. Alive. And twenty again.
"No freaking way."
She pinched herself. Hard.
Still here.
Still alive.
Still… twenty.
And that's when she noticed the shimmer.
It was faint, like sunlight refracting off glass. A glowing outline hovered in the air before her, pulsing softly in her peripheral vision. Shen Ci flinched.
"Initializing host consciousness sync."
A flat voice filled her ears. Digital. Genderless. Cold.
"System loading: Stardust Seed Bank v1.0. Primary directive: Restore planetary economic-biosphere stability. Host: Shen Ci. Sync complete."
"...What the hell?" Shen Ci breathed.
There was no screen. Just the shimmer. Then it flared, once, and settled into her vision like a ghost.
She stumbled from the bed, rushing to the mirror. Her reflection stared back—youthful, fresh-skinned, unmarred by the years of betrayal, lawsuits, and soul-rotting poverty she'd once trudged through. Her hair was thick again. No gray. No grief lines. Not even the scar on her collarbone from the factory fire.
She looked… innocent.
But inside, she was the woman who'd watched her parents die too soon, who'd been sold out by the relatives meant to protect her, and who had clawed her way through a world that never gave her a fair shot.
She knew this was real.
She knew she was back.
And if the universe had thrown her a second chance—
She wasn't wasting it.
---
The system remained mostly quiet after that strange announcement. It hovered in the back of her mind, silently syncing. Her first instinct was panic—Was she going crazy?—but the longer she stayed grounded in this new reality, the more it clicked into place.
She went to her old desk drawer. Her hands moved on instinct, pulling it open. A bank passbook lay there.
Her jaw dropped.
Balance: $100,000.00
Her heart stuttered.
This was her savings—every yuan she had managed to squirrel away in her last life before it all burned. She remembered hiding it here before leaving the village, back when she still believed she could build something in the city.
But the strangest thing wasn't the fact that the money was still here.
It was that the currency had shifted.
The yuan was almost worthless now. The dollar had become the gold standard globally, and after the market collapse—something she vaguely remembered from the early 2020s—people had resorted to foreign currencies. But somehow, here, in this reality, 1 cent equaled 100 yuan.
And she had $100,000 in clean, crisp USD.
Which meant...
She was rich.
Not billionaire-rich, sure. But in a world like this? In a crumbling village where farmers lived paycheck to paycheck?
She was powerful.
---
The wind outside blew dry and hard as Shen Ci made her way to the courtyard.
Her childhood home was a modest two-room stone house with a rickety shed and a tiny backyard where her mother had once grown green onions. The house had survived—barely. But it looked neglected. The paint on the door peeled like sunburnt skin. The roof sagged on one side. Her aunt had promised to take care of it after Shen Ci left.
Clearly, that was a lie.
She stood in the middle of the cracked courtyard, staring at the weeds that had taken over.
"I'm back," she whispered to no one.
Memories tugged at her—the soft lilt of her mother's voice as she hummed lullabies in the garden, her father's rough hands guiding hers as she learned to plant her first radish.
Both of them were gone now.
Her father had died in an accident at the construction site when she was 12. Her mother, already fragile, succumbed to illness the following winter. They left her in the care of her paternal uncle's family, who turned out to be wolves in sheep's clothing.
She had trusted them. She had believed her cousin was her sister.
Until she wasn't.
Until that same cousin seduced her fiancé and framed Shen Ci for embezzlement.
She clenched her fists.
Not this time.
Never again.
---
Back in the house, she sat down and tried to get the system to respond.
"Hello?" she tried. "Can you… talk?"
"Stardust Seed Bank activated. Initializing beginner tutorial. Please choose primary development path."
Three options blinked across her mind:
A. Urban Investment Track
B. Agricultural Development Track
C. Mixed Hybrid Track (Recommended for Host)
Shen Ci didn't hesitate. "C."
"Confirmed. Mixed Hybrid Track. Unlocking starter module: Asset Evaluation + Market Sync."
A flood of data downloaded into her brain like a burst of sugar-laced caffeine. It didn't hurt. But it left her breathless.
She now knew the value of her land, which crops would thrive best in the region's new climate pattern, which forgotten stocks were on the verge of revival, and—strangest of all—where certain "anomalies" were buried beneath her land. Treasure, maybe? The system was vague. Strategic.
"Why are you helping me?" she asked out loud.
"Host meets requirements. Fate interference level: High. Restoration potential: 87%. Probability of host influencing socio-economic revival: 92%."
So... she was chosen?
Maybe not special. Maybe not holy.
But important.
She exhaled shakily.
The world had never given her a break before. Now, it was putting a literal strategy game in her hands.
Her hands trembled. But her spine straightened.
"Fine," she whispered. "Then let's play."
---
That night, Shen Ci made a plan.
Step one: quietly cash in a portion of the dollars. She couldn't draw attention. Not yet.
Step two: use those funds to begin minor upgrades—fertilizer, tools, seeds. Keep it all looking humble.
Step three: chart out the surrounding land. Look for anomalies. Search for anything her parents may have left behind.
And step four… revisit her past enemies. One by one.
She wasn't here to beg for scraps this time.
She was here to build a kingdom.
And if the past came knocking?
She'd answer with interest.
---
End of Chapter 1