Interstellar: Who Let That Paper Effigy Maker Pilot a Mecha?

[No Romance + Interstellar Mechs + Eastern Folk-Custom Cyberpunk + Everyone Is Ruthless + Making Money and Building an Enterprise]

Xie Santu transmigrates to the interstellar age.

The good news: she inherits a shop.

The bad news: it is a funeral home on a garbage planet, drowning in debt.

This is an iron age that worships “battleships and big guns.” People put their faith in S-class alloy mechs and scoff at the old art of paper effigies as a trick for fooling children.

Then the insect tide erupts, the Federation’s defenses collapse across the board, and its vaunted steel armada proves as fragile as paper against the uncanny creatures.

As the entire interstellar community watches in despair on a live broadcast, Xie Santu sighs and pushes out the “paper figure” she has just finished making.

The crowd jeers, “You’re sending a toy made of paper to its death?”

Xie Santu says nothing. She takes up her brush and paints in its eyes.

“Three souls and seven spirits, return to your place. I summon the manifestation of Erlang Shen!”

The next moment, the flimsy paper figure swells to a hundred meters, wreathed in golden flames, and cleaves the entire insect tide in half with a single strike!

The entire interstellar community erupts!

Later, the Federation’s strongest female marshal, the Empire’s crown princess, and the aloof chief mechanic all line up at that dilapidated funeral home.

“Master Xie, one leg of my mech has broken. Can you fix it?”

Xie Santu smiles faintly and pulls out a calculator.

“I can, but I’ll need to install my ‘Meng Po’s Soup’ engine, and you’ll have to burn some spirit money for fuel. Oh, and I run a shady shop, so I charge a fortune.”

Watching the woman casually dismantle S-class mechs as if they were made of paper, the bigwigs across the stars go mad.

Please, stop making paper figures! They’re supposed to be for the dead!

Xie Santu calmly sips her tea.

“Nonsense. If the money’s right, I can even make you King Yama himself out of paper.”