How to Raise a Divine Embryo on a Zero-Spend Budget

[The entire novel is completed and ready to read. New chapters daily at 9 p.m. Volumes One through Seven are complete.]

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Coming next: The Guide's Spirit Form Is a Dayun. An SSS-Rank Sentinel takes up a new job as a rookie Guide. The blurb is at the end.

Tang Ming is a widely acclaimed game power-leveling expert. At twenty-two, he dives into the game world of Doomsday Echoes for a thirty-thousand-yuan reward.

As a free-to-play player, he draws the identity of a pitiful orphan with no one to rely on, forced to live by scavenging. From the start, a villain threatens to kill him and kills him twelve times in a row. Then he runs into a game bug that prevents him from gaining supernatural abilities, and he's so furious he nearly quits.

Wait, what did customer service give him as compensation?

The game's top-tier title!

Although the title gives him a 0% stat bonus and even comes with a debuff, it lets his character download a DLC expansion pack for divine script.

From then on, the forbidden divine-script text The Ancient Gods' Record, which countless S-Rank ability users from other worlds have failed to study, becomes his exclusive secret manual.

The only odd thing is that the title of the book translates into divine script as... The Prenatal Education Handbook.

“Well, prenatal education it is!” The shameless adult Tang Ming reads The Prenatal Education Handbook by lamplight. “I've read the handbook personally written by the Divine Lord, so the Divine Lord is my adoptive father now!”

Ten basic elemental runes, six protective runes, two enhancement runes... With the power of divine magic runes behind him, he can still conquer the world even without supernatural abilities!

*

After reaching the pinnacle of the world with The Prenatal Education Handbook, Tang Ming thinks he has the script of a certain site's male protagonist in his hands. Then one day, he realizes something is wrong.

Why does his boss always show off in front of him? Why is his roommate always taking such special care of him? Why did the abandoned pet he picked up turn into a human and keep rubbing against him? Why is there an NPC holding a marriage contract and insisting that he is the divine child promised to them in an arranged marriage?

Do all these NPCs want to team up with him so he can carry them?

Wait, why are they confessing their feelings to him?

Isn't this a monster-fighting and leveling game?

Tang Ming frantically calls customer service.

Customer service: “We see you've spent 0 yuan in total. Dear player, would it be okay if we compensate you with 0 yuan?”

Tang Ming: “I'll spend money, I beg you, just make all these NPCs go away. Men will only slow down my leveling!”

Customer service: “Sorry, dear player, we can't do that. Those are other players pretending to be NPCs.”

With no other choice, Tang Ming can only find an excuse to reject the others. “Actually, I'm straight.”

Everyone: “Yeah, yeah, we get it. Straight means you're directly into men.”

Tang Ming: “...”

Can he explain that he just picked the wrong romance-route preference?

Never mind. Might as well go with it.

[Reading Guide]

1. A satisfying leveling-up story with a protagonist who grows over time. The protagonist's growth is similar to that of a male lead on a certain web-novel site. The protagonist is the one being pursued, so “male-lead protagonist” actually means a protagonist who gets pursued by men (not really).

2. The protagonist is a heartthrob without realizing it, but takes romance seriously and cautiously. He may feel lost at times, but always firmly chooses himself. Yes, the protagonist really is like that.

3. The protagonist has a powerful sense of self. He isn't a bad person, but he isn't purely kind either. He's more of a chaotic good type who does what he believes is right.

4. There are many potential love interests, but few of them get a major outcome.

Coming next: The Guide's Spirit Form Is a Dayun:

Question: What do you call a Guide who can't provide mental guidance?

Everyone: Useless.

The Tower: Disabled.

Ye Qiguang: A Sentinel.

Ye Qiguang is one of the Empire's SSS-Rank Sentinels and the White Frost Legion's top Sentinel. With a strikingly beautiful face perfectly suited to a Sentinel, all sharp edges and aggression, he is known as the “Wild Rose of White Frost.”

But lately, he's had a little problem. His behavior is so flamboyant that he's offended far too many people, from the Empire's noble and haughty Third Prince to the street vendor who shortchanges customers on vegetables. Someone whose identity is unknown exposes him as a Guide, and he's locked up at the Polar Day Base.

Under Imperial law, Guides must choose a spouse from among Sentinels with a compatibility rating of 90% or higher. So, inside the Polar Day Tower, Ye Qiguang meets five “fiancees.”

To get their help escaping the base, Ye Qiguang accepts all five proposals at once, then turns around and sells them out before making a run for it. The five top-tier Sentinels are left staring at one another, forced to face the Tower's interrogation.

While the five potential beaus nurse their broken hearts, Ye Qiguang, now free, happily opens an auto repair shop at the Border Region's Polar Night Base. He couldn't care less that he's offended, or perhaps entangled with, five people yet again.

Why open an auto repair shop?

Because his spirit form is a Dayun truck.

“My spirit form is a Dayun! A Dayun! Have you ever seen someone use a Dayun for mental guidance?”

With wanted posters plastered across every street and alley, Ye Qiguang swings a wrench and dodges the pursuit of search teams again and again.

Going it alone is too hard, so he decides to return to his old home, the White Frost Legion, and try his luck.

After all, he fought his way up from the very bottom of F-Rank back then, and Bai Li, the commander of the White Frost Legion, is his sworn brother.

*

After Ye Qiguang escapes, Bai Li, commander of the White Frost Legion and Ye Qiguang's former team leader, is listed as a major suspect.

“Our compatibility is as high as 99%, and we grew up together. Why would I give up the chance to marry him openly and properly?”

He calmly accepts questioning with a gentle smile, clearing himself of suspicion. But when Ye Qiguang walks right back into his own trap once again, dark feelings inexplicably stir in him.

On the commander's left are the compatibility report and marriage application. On his right are the new recruit's records.

Looking at those familiar eyes in the photo, Bai Li thinks, If I catch this troublemaker, I'll never let him run away again.

After all, they are the most compatible pair, aren't they?

Theme: Even a lonely heart should have the courage to pursue freedom and love.