After Three Years Haunted by a Female Ghost, I Awaken Grade-D Aptitude

This is a world overrun by the uncanny.

Outside the city walls are man-eating horrors. Inside, the Awakened uphold the human world. Humans awaken automatically at eighteen, forming aperture walls, storing spiritual energy, and crafting cards.

The higher a card's rank, the tougher its wielder's life. Yet the horrors still have humanity beat, and the city walls and formations are the lifeline of the living.

Qi Xin transmigrated here three years ago.

On his very first day, the original body's parents were killed by a powerful female horror. With their dying breath, they used their last ounce of strength to force a bead into his body.

Ever since, the female horror has lived by his side for three years. She has threatened and intimidated him, and tried seduction and temptation. She has tried everything short of using force, all for the bead. Qi Xin knows full well that his life has long been bound to it. He is still alive because he is useful.

For three years, he has struggled to get by, using what he learned from nine years of compulsory education on Earth to handcraft an ugly pistol and stockpile a full magazine of bullets. He has never met a match among those of the same rank.

At sixteen, he risked his life to awaken early.

At the awakening ceremony, he was stuck with the worst aptitude in the class, Grade D: spiritual energy filled only one-fifth of his aperture wall. Most people had Grade D aptitude, but it also meant a lifetime with no prospect of advancement.

But on the day of his awakening, he accidentally stumbled into the ghost domain inside the abandoned laboratory building.

That was when he first learned that the bead could absorb the ghost energy of dead horrors and turn it into spiritual power.