It Began in 1999: Words by Will

Removing the person radical from a promissory note makes the life-threatening debt collectors suffer an instant collapse of understanding and drop to their knees, admitting their liability.

1999, Neon City. A debt of 140 million in blood money comes knocking.

Shendai Xingluo, a coding worker who died from working 996, grasps the divinely bestowed carving knife of the Goddess Cangjie in her desperate hour.

In this parallel world, where all of East Asia runs on Chinese characters, she becomes the only Root administrator capable of altering human consciousness.

She carves away the grass and tree components of the character for "power." The financial conglomerate's patron is erased from existence on the spot, wiped from the database and reduced to a madman.

In this ramshackle outfit she has rebuilt with her own hands, old-world elites are fit only to serve as disposable memory sticks.

When the System will of the old world spews out frenzied error messages, trying to erase this anomaly with its broken logic, the newly risen power behind the scenes leans back in her chair and smiles viciously. "In this abandoned server riddled with typos, how are you going to punish someone holding an eraser?"

Tired of patching bugs, Xingluo coldly presses the format button. As the fog lifts, a sandbox world built from code unfurls before her eyes.

The gods rewrite the code. The hounds guard the ruins to the death.

Never surrender. Fight until the end.

The countdown has only just begun.

This world never had freedom, until my will rewrote your characters.

[Reading Guide]

1. A behind-the-scenes sandbox story, with a deeply satisfying focus on building a career.

2. Those who stand in her way have only two possible fates: become stepping stones or be crushed into ashes. She shows no mercy.

3. The heroine is the strongest. Anyone stronger than her may have received a death notice from the author.

Theme: Seeing through the tricks of the world, cashing in on greed, cybernetic creation