The Market Dad

On his sixtieth birthday, Chen Jianguo binds with a "More Children, More Blessings" system. With his wife gone and no way to have his own children, he converts his bicycle repair stall into a "free repairs plus homework help" station and gradually takes in eight girls with nowhere else to go—a top student, a rebellious heiress, a martial arts prodigy, a celebrity-obsessed fangirl, a kidnapped young beggar, a runaway from a son-preferring family, an orphaned vocational-school tough girl, and a female gang leader. All eight squeeze into his sixty-square-meter old flat, fighting over the bathroom, the remote, and the last chicken leg, raising a ruckus every single day. Chen Jianguo grumbles "so annoying" while quietly buying an extra two pounds of ribs. The system, originally a cold AI, is worn down into a chatterbox, and its rewards include a school-district housing voucher (still too expensive), a volunteer armband (which neighborhood committee ladies mistake for stolen goods), and a community center converted from an abandoned public toilet (graffiti still on the walls). Years later, the eight girls have each found their own success and crowd back home for New Year's. Chen Jianguo sits on the sofa with his enamel mug, the chaos roaring behind him. He wipes the corner of his eye quietly. The noise, he realizes, is his blessing.