After I Handed Over the System, the System Begged Me

Laid off at thirty-five with exactly 0.37 yuan left to his name, Lin Qi is certain he has hit rock bottom. That is, until a "daily-disposable world-reset system" forcibly latches onto him, delivering an ultimatum: the world is riddled with bugs, and unless he pays a renewal fee of 9.9 trillion dollars per day within three days, Earth will be formatted into raw data. His response? Let it burn. Desperate to keep its most apathetic host from walking away, the system pivots to a work-relief model—help it patch up glitches, and it will keep him alive. Armed with its bizarre powers, Lin Qi begins dispensing his own brand of justice: joyriders see their motorcycles vanish into thin air, nuisance livestreamers are trapped in an endless loop of Buddhist chants, and a corrupt CEO's quantum computer degrades into a bricked blue screen. But when he rescues a trafficked girl named Zhang Xiaoman, he unknowingly steps into a conspiracy laid by the thirty-six system hosts before him—all of whom are dead. Hidden in an abandoned power plant on the city's west side lies "system wreckage" capable of distorting reality, and the girl, once chosen as a "vessel" by those predecessors, holds the only key to unraveling the truth. Lin Qi is host number thirty-seven. The upside? He has absolutely no desire to save the world. The better upside? Anyone who dares to harm the people he cares about will find themselves subjected to a very public, very permanent social death.