Siheyuan: From Pauper to Billionaire with an AFK Skill System

On New Year's Eve in 1962, Zhang Heping was reborn in a drafty side room in a courtyard house. The famine was at its worst, and his family of six survived on the meager grain rations his father received. The cheat he brought with him was simple: whatever he did, he gained a skill in it. Making matchboxes raised his proficiency. Drinking salt water gave him survival experience. Even crouching on the frozen surface of Houhai with an empty hook could level his fishing skill to mastery.

From then on, the schemes in the courtyard grew more and more absurd. Jia Zhangshi was still eyeing that one jin of cornmeal. Third Uncle Yan Bugui chased after him on his bicycle, eager to learn how to catch big fish. Qin Huairu stood at the doorway with a bowl in her hands, pacing back and forth. Meanwhile, Zhang Heping was browsing books at a trust shop in Dongcheng to level up his medical skills, trading meal tickets at the steel mill cafeteria, and turning his first earnings from selling fish into stacks of silent big bills.

While the neighbors in the courtyard were still arguing until their faces turned red over who got an extra steamed bun, his business empire had already expanded beyond Nanluoguxiang. Looking back years later, those neighbors who had once buzzed incessantly in his ears were merely poor people struggling to survive in a great era. And he had already reached a place they could not even hope to glimpse.

This novel and its characters are purely fictional. Any resemblance is coincidental. Do not imitate.