Inherited 100 Million - Chapter 1

The weather did not seem especially hot, but the sun was scorching. After standing under it for too long, the exposed skin began to ache as if it had been burned. A small river ran through the town, with two rows of willows growing along its banks. The willows’ long, slender leaves had been wilted by the sun, and Xu Yizhuo felt that she looked just like those leaves—drooping and listless.

Xu Yizhuo walked rather quickly. As she moved, the pale blue gauze robe layered over her white clothes fluttered slightly. She used the round fan embroidered with lotus flowers and brocade carp to block the sun a little, then hurried into a teahouse situated by the river.

Xu Yizhuo was a regular here. As soon as she entered, the waiter came up to greet her.

“Miss Xu, will you be sitting in your usual seat again?”

Xu Yizhuo instinctively wanted to nod, but fortunately, she remembered something and quickly shook her head.

“I’ll still sit on the second floor, but don’t arrange a seat by the window.”

What sunlight could an open window possibly block? Xu Yizhuo was currently suffering from the heat.

She added, “Bring me an extra plate of sushan today.”

The waiter noted everything down one by one.

Once she reached the second floor, Xu Yizhuo hid herself in a shaded corner where she could see the area downstairs without being exposed to the sun. She did not care about a young lady’s proper bearing. Bored out of her mind, she sprawled over the table, looking as weak and lifeless as usual.

In summer, this appearance was normal for Xu Yizhuo.

It was only when the sushan was brought over that Xu Yizhuo regained a little energy. She picked up a small spoon and slowly scooped it up in small bites.

Sushan was basically ancient ice cream. Logically speaking, this kind of food should not have appeared in an ordinary teahouse. After all, storing ice in ancient times was not easy. But who asked this to be a cultivation world?

Xu Yizhuo had arrived in this world one month ago.

She had read some transmigration novels before. Some female leads transmigrated into books, while others transmigrated into film or television dramas. She was different. Xu Yizhuo had transmigrated into a game.

The game was called Yellow Springs Mirror, and it was currently the hottest PC game around—developed by Xu Yizhuo’s company.

Xu Yizhuo was not good at playing games. The game company was merely one of the countless industries she had inherited from her mother, and it was not a particularly eye-catching one at that. After all, her family mainly dealt in real industries. But that day, when she went to inspect the company, the person in charge of the project invited her to try the game out, and Xu Yizhuo gladly agreed.

She had played a new version that had not yet entered open beta. The person in charge said that even the preview for this version’s expansion would not be released until a month later. A special version naturally required a special account. The account the person in charge gave her had all its values adjusted to the game’s upper limit.

And the game’s upper limit was one hundred million.

Even the server-wide boss with the thickest health bar did not have HP as high as one hundred million. Not to mention, the test account Xu Yizhuo used did not only have one hundred million HP.

Xu Yizhuo awkwardly controlled this true final boss of Yellow Springs Mirror, but in the end, she did not even manage to leave the beginner village.

When she submitted the beginner quest item to an NPC, Xu Yizhuo’s vision suddenly went black without warning. Immediately after, her forehead slammed onto the keyboard, and she lost consciousness on the spot.

Before losing consciousness, Xu Yizhuo was so confused that she had only one thought—

She slept at eleven every night and woke up at half past eight every morning. She was already a salted fish to the point that she could not be more salted. How could her body still have problems like this?

When she opened her eyes again, Xu Yizhuo watched with her own eyes as the smiling, amiable NPC took the quest item from her hand.

She instantly understood what had happened.

Under broad daylight, beneath clear skies, she had suddenly transmigrated into the game without any warning!

Holding the two low-grade spirit stones the NPC had given her, Xu Yizhuo stood in place and seriously pondered life for a while. Before long, she arrived at her most profound realization of the moment.

As a salted fish who adapted to whatever came her way, Xu Yizhuo decided to make peace with her situation. If she could find a chance to leave, then she would leave. If she could not, then aside from properly staying here and living her life, she had no other choice.

Xu Yizhuo lowered her head and looked at herself, only to realize that she could not find a pocket on her clothes to put the spirit stones in.

Almost the instant this thought arose, Xu Yizhuo felt something strange. She sensed that she had come into contact with another space. With a single thought, the two low-grade spirit stones were placed into that space.

Was this not just the in-game inventory?

Xu Yizhuo could sense that this space was divided into individual slots. After she threw the spirit stones in, the two low-grade spirit stones automatically entered a new slot, because the low-grade spirit stones originally in her inventory already numbered one hundred million and had reached the storage limit of a single slot.

Xu Yizhuo fell silent for a moment, then brought up her character panel.

…Sure enough, all her data belonged to that test account.

Xu Yizhuo noticed the small river nearby and walked over to look at her reflection. She could barely make out her face.

She was afraid that only this body was exactly the same as her real one.

In the river, Xu Yizhuo saw herself at fifteen years old—the exact age when the player character began the main storyline.

Xu Yizhuo slowly ate the sushan while recalling what she had done over the past few days.

Although her identity outside this world was that of a company president, the family business had been passed down from her ancestors. Along with it came the professional dream team her mother had personally built. Xu Yizhuo herself was an out-and-out salted fish.

She was extremely laid-back. As long as it was not a life-threatening matter, she did everything at an unhurried pace.

Her advantage was probably that although she was not very efficient, once she started doing something, she would persist until it was finished.

When Xu Yizhuo transmigrated, she had also brought along the player operating system. For the past month, whenever she had nothing to do, she followed the system’s guidance and completed main quests. Because the main quests were not released all at once, while waiting for new quests to refresh, she wandered around town and triggered several side quests and hidden encounters.

At first, Xu Yizhuo thought she would stay in the beginner village, Qingping Town, for a very long time. She had even grown used to life here while helping the neighbors search for cats and catch dogs, and she planned to simply give up on quests and spend the rest of her life in Qingping Town.

She already had unparalleled wealth and martial strength. She could pretty much skip the years of struggle and retire directly.

But early this morning, the main quest had come looking for Xu Yizhuo. Xu Yizhuo stared at the quest description for a long while before accepting it.

Because the quest description read: Many people in Qingping Town have unknowingly disappeared. Go to the teahouse and ask around about what has happened recently.

There was no helping it. Xu Yizhuo hoped she could retire in a quiet and peaceful place.

She did not deliberately ask around. Since the system had already issued the quest, as long as she stayed in the teahouse, she would naturally learn everything needed to keep the quest going.

Xu Yizhuo propped up her head and had not waited long before she heard whispers coming from the neighboring table.

“You’re not lying to me, are you? Lin Er turned into a dried corpse? But I—I just saw him yesterday morning!”

Another person lowered his voice and said, “Why would I lie to you? I saw it with my own eyes! All the blood in Lin Er’s body had been sucked dry, and it happened right beside his wife!”

The man who had been skeptical sucked in a cold breath.

“His wife kept feeling like there was movement in the room in the middle of the night. When she woke up, she realized the blanket beside her had sunk down. She turned her head and saw Lin Er’s face, looking as if only a layer of skin was left. Doesn’t Lin Er live right beside my house? When his wife screamed, I thought a thief had broken into their home, so I grabbed a weapon and rushed over. Who could’ve thought I’d end up seeing Lin Er dead?”

“Such a method… such a method…” the man said blankly. “How could this be something a human can do? Who did it?”

“Do you still remember Ma Hu?”

“I remember. He was just buried a few days ago.”

“Then do you still remember what Old Madam Ma said?”

The man’s expression stiffened.

Xu Yizhuo, who was eavesdropping from the side, blinked thoughtfully.

She knew Old Madam Ma. The old woman had been the target of one of the side quests she had triggered.

In fact, in all of Qingping Town, there were very few people who did not know Old Madam Ma. The town itself was very small, and Old Madam Ma was a madwoman who spent all day running out of her house. She did not hurt anyone, but whenever passersby saw her, they hurriedly avoided her. That was because if they got close, Old Madam Ma would pounce forward, grab them, and say nonsense that no one could understand.

The side quest related to Old Madam Ma had been triggered after the completely clueless Xu Yizhuo was caught by her while walking along the road.

As for the words Old Madam Ma had said, which the teahouse guest had mentioned, perhaps Xu Yizhuo had heard them too.

Three words surfaced in Xu Yizhuo’s mind.

The blood-robed person.

Old Madam Ma was not clear-headed, and when she spoke, her words did not connect properly, so everyone thought she was speaking nonsense. But as long as one listened carefully, they would discover that Old Madam Ma’s words could be pieced together into a complete story.

Old Madam Ma’s husband had been a merchant. He lost his life while traveling for business, and his corpse disappeared along the way. Old Madam Ma entrusted little Ma Hu to her parents-in-law, then went to search along the trade caravan’s return route for an entire month before finding her husband’s body and bringing it back.

But not long after she buried her husband, Old Madam Ma went mad. The things she repeatedly muttered were all related to her husband’s past.

Ma Hu had resented Old Madam Ma. In his eyes, this mother did not care about him at all. In his mad mother’s heart, there was only that father who had died early.

But Xu Yizhuo knew that after Ma Hu died, when Old Madam Ma grabbed her, the sorrowful question she asked was where her Little Tiger had gone.

Xu Yizhuo felt quite sorry for her, and also sorry for Ma Hu. In the end, she only felt regret.

Xu Yizhuo searched Old Madam Ma’s house for an entire day before finally finding the tiger-head shoes the old woman had made for Ma Hu while she was pregnant. Then she spent another day mending the tattered shoes. During that time, she heard plenty of “nonsense.”

Originally, Xu Yizhuo had not paid much attention to it. But now, she remembered one strange sentence.

Old Madam Ma had once said: The blood-robed person took away my Little Tiger.

Xu Yizhuo could not be sure whether “the blood-robed person” was a common noun or someone’s name. She had only clearly heard the pronunciation.

Xu Yizhuo instinctively felt that it probably was not a person’s name.

Just as she was thinking this, she heard the guest who had spoken of Lin Er’s death say in a low voice, “She mentioned the blood-robed person—and last night, when Lin Er’s wife opened her eyes in a daze, she also seemed to see someone wearing blood-red clothes appear inside the room!”

The listener felt his spine go cold, chills rushing upward.

Xu Yizhuo subconsciously used her spoon to scoop up some sushan, only for the spoon to collide with the porcelain plate and produce a crisp clink.

Without realizing it, she had already finished eating.

Xu Yizhuo wanted to call the waiter over for another plate, but when she lowered her head, she saw the waiter downstairs receiving a group of newly arrived guests.

The surroundings had grown much quieter. Aside from those who had not noticed the entrance, everyone who saw them stopped speaking one after another.

On this hot, restless day, it was as if a clear, bright moon had fallen coldly and quietly into the mortal world.

Xu Yizhuo lightly tapped the plate.

“…Huh?”

The person at the head of the group seemed to notice her gaze and raised her head to look over.

Xu Yizhuo saw a pair of calm eyes, as though filled with cold autumn water.

Their gazes met.

Jun Yu gave her a gentle nod.