Nothing to be done

A young man was lying on an antique stone bench. There was moss climbing up around the legs of the bench and the intricate carvings were nearly entirely worn away, but it was still functional. It seemed to be a good match to the young man lying on it.

The young man was dressed casually in a hoodie and shorts like he was going to the gym, but his clothing looked very worn. His dark hair, originally cut short, was messy and overgrown, and his otherwise attractive face was slightly sunburned and peeling. His name was Lin Feng.

Lin Feng sat up and looked apathetically around the large courtyard he was in. The wind blew through the overgrown trees and vegetation, stirring up dried leaves on the ground before exiting through the huge main gate hanging open on its hinges.

With a sigh, Lin Feng got up and walked toward an enormous oak tree in the center of the courtyard. He had to take care to walk around where the tree's roots had cracked and split the stone paving.

Under the tree was an odd sight. At first glance, it looked like some kind of painting, free-standing and showing the scene of an enormous circular room. White stone pillars ringed the perimeter with a large pool of water and an intricate stone fountain sitting in the center.

When Lin Feng walked closer, the surface of the painting automatically slid away, releasing a wave of cool air that ruffled Lin Feng's hair. The "painting" wasn't a painting at all! It was a sliding glass door that opened up into a room that was many times larger than the courtyard that supposedly contained it.

Lin Feng walked through the sliding glass door and into the room. Everything in the room was blank white stone. Behind the pillars lining the edge of the room, many different hallways were branching out into the distance.

The fountain and pool of water in the center were nearly the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Inlaid into the floor, seemingly nothing was stopping anyone from carelessly stepping over the edge and falling into the water.

There was one thing in the room that broke the monochromatic color scheme. A small red fox was sitting next to the pool of water, staring out at the water spouts and statuary in the center.

"What do you want for lunch?" The fox looked up as Lin Feng spoke.

"One of those sandwiches!" The fox excitedly answered. It spoke with the voice of a twelve or thirteen-year-old girl.

"What kind?" Lin Feng asked as the fox stood up, revealing three identical tails.

"Turkey?"

"Alright." Lin Feng nodded and began walking around the large pool with the fox at his side.

Most people who read about transmigration into a new world expect it to come with adventure and drama. Lin Feng had been the same. When he showed up, he expected something exciting. Unfortunately, his new life came with boredom and isolation.

When he had opened his eyes to this new world, he was greeted with isolated wilderness and an old rundown Chinese courtyard house. He was in a tiny valley nestled within an immense mountain range. There wasn't a hint of civilization to be seen.

To make matters worse, huge monstrous beasts wandered through the forests and flew through the air. Lin Feng was already very lucky that there were none in his tiny little valley. He could only stay in this little valley that seemed to be too inconsequential for any of these demonic beasts to pay much attention to.

When Lin Feng had transmigrated he did receive his cheat—A system. Unfortunately, the heavens seemed to have a sense of humor because his system was called "The Immortal Shopping Mall System". A Shopping Mall? How was that going to help him?

The system told him to choose a suitable location for his first storefront. The system would only activate when he truly started a store. Lin Feng chose the only suitable place he could see, the old building, and activated the system.

From there, nothing much happened. The system kept his life intact but that was it. To do much of anything with the system, Lin Feng would need to take in customers and make money. Unfortunately, no matter what Lin Feng did, he couldn't get past the fact that there were simply no people around to become his customers.

The System did give him a few benefits, but those did little more than ensure his survival. As his "starting shops", he had chosen a few vending machines. From these, Lin Feng had as much food and water as he could eat. He had also chosen a basic Greco-Roman preset for the shopping mall's style, simply because it included a large fountain and pool of water with it. With that, he could at least bathe.

Finally, within the shopping mall, and within one-thousand paces of the entrance, Lin Feng was invincible. A feature that Lin Feng relied upon heavily to survive against any demonic beast that wandered into his valley. The first demonic beast that had wandered in was a bear half the size of a bus, but Lin Feng's panicked slap had crushed the bear's skull like wet paper.

The fox's name was Mei, a name that Lin Feng had given her after she showed up three months ago.

At that time, Lin Feng had already been in this world for around two months. He had been close to going crazy from boredom and loneliness. In Lin Feng's eyes, Mei was heaven-sent company that helped keep him sane.

Where other demonic beasts attacked him on sight, Mei had initially been very skittish. Lin Feng hadn't even realized she was a demonic beast at first until he saw that she had more than one tail.

After walking for a little while, Lin Feng and Mei eventually reached the side of the fountain facing away from the door. There were four vending machines placed there, but these vending machines looked quite different from the vending machines in Lin Feng's old world.

Instead of large machines filled with food and drink, these looked like thin slabs of stone with vivid display screens on the front. They each hovered in the air about a foot off the ground. Each one showed images of different foods and drinks available for purchase. There were different kinds of drinks, hot and cold, and prepared meals from many different places.

Lin Feng reached out and pressed his hand against the screen. The screen glowed green and the words "Administrative Unlock" appeared at the top. After tapping the image of a sandwich and the image of a dark carbonated beverage on the machine to the left, the selected items appeared hovering in front of the vending machines.

Lin Feng grabbed both items out of the air before sitting down on the ground next to an excitedly bouncing fox.

"Sit down, you can't eat while jumping around like that."

"Alright! Hurry up! The vending machine food is too good. I can't calm down!"

Lin Feng chuckled as he unwrapped the sandwich, food from a vending machine being so good sounded like a joke to his ears. He placed half of the sandwich down in front of Mei, ignoring the mess she made as she tore into it. The shopping mall was self-cleaning anyways.

"How's your cultivation coming?"

"Hmm?" Mei looked up from her sandwich. "No problems, I've almost broken through again."

"Good, good. Once you've grown strong enough, I'll send you to advertise for Big Brother Lin, okay?"

"Yeah! Mei will be the best advertiser for Big brother!"

When Mei had first shown up at Lin Feng's doorstep she had only had two tails and wasn't able to talk, but after just over a week of staying with Lin Feng she had broken through into the Core Formation realm and gained the ability to talk. That was when Lin Feng realized that he may have found a way out.

The spiritual energy directly outside the shopping mall was much higher than normal, and it was so ridiculously concentrated inside the shopping mall that Mei didn't even have to actively cultivate to grow stronger. A pig could become an immortal if it lived right outside, and a rock might become an immortal if it was left inside.

Lin Feng hadn't realized this at first because his own strength came entirely from the system. He had never cultivated in his life and he had no way of sensing spiritual energy on his own. It was only once Mei arrived and gained the ability to talk that Lin Feng realized that his shopping mall was more than just a place to go to get out of the sun.

According to what Lin Feng knew from cultivation novels, and from what little Mei knew about this world, a demonic beast would be able to take on a human form once it grew strong enough. Neither Lin Feng nor Mei knew at what stage this transformation happened, but aiming for the next major realm after Core Formation seemed like a good goal.

"I'll expand the mall some more later, let me know if it helps."

"Okay!"

Expanding the mall helped increase the spiritual density even further. Originally, Lin Feng had barely expanded at all. He had only placed a few hallways and empty rooms right outside of the main entry room in the hope that one day he would be able to put stores in them. That changed when Mei arrived.

As far as he could tell, the spiritual energy increased based on surface area. While adding stores and facilities cost points that Lin Feng couldn't earn without customers, creating hallways and empty rooms cost nothing. So Lin Feng began to create a dense jungle of twisting hallways and empty rooms, all to increase the density of spiritual energy as much as possible.

At this point, Lin Feng had placed down miles of convoluted maze-like hallways looping back in on themselves, coming to dead ends, and leading to empty rooms.

Lin Feng doubted that this was the system's intended progression path, but Lin Feng didn't care.

After Lin Feng finished eating, he took the empty soda bottle in his hands and pinched the plastic between his fingers. Then he tore the top half of the bottle off like it was made of paper. Reaching into the fountain, he scooped up some water. His hand was momentarily stopped by an invisible barrier before being allowed through.

"Here, drink up." Lin Feng put the bottle-turned-cup down in front of Mei. The water in the cup began to slowly bubble like it was lightly carbonated after it was removed from the fountain.

The water in the fountain wasn't normal water, it was spirit water; spiritual energy that had condensed into a liquid. Once it was removed from the fountain, it would begin to evaporate into the air.

"I'll be by the entrance if you need me."

"Okay! I'll cultivate well and bring Big Brother lots of customers!"

Weeks passed like this. Some days, Lin Feng would spend all day napping in the shade of the oak tree outside. On other days, he would take hour-long baths in the water fountain while eating ice cream and then play hide-and-seek with Mei in the convoluted maze of hallways he had created.

Sometimes a demonic beast would wander in and Lin Feng would play around with them for a while. He would slap them around until they couldn't tell up from down before crushing them into dust.

It had to be said, the demonic beasts that wandered into Lin Feng's valley were extremely unlucky. Due to Lin Feng being trapped by these demonic beasts, he held an extremely strong grudge against them. Outside of the system's protection, Lin Feng was doomed to be their food. Inside the system's protection, Lin Feng could tear them apart with his bare hands.

One day, Lin Feng was laying flat on the stone floor of the shopping mall and staring up at the ceiling. Without anything to do, Lin Feng decided to, once again, expand the shopping mall's size a little bit in the hopes that it would speed up Mei's cultivation. Reaching out towards the empty space in front of him, Lin Feng swiped at the air and opened the system interface.

Before he started expanding the hallways, he glanced over the main menu stats and paused for a second, staring incredulously at one of the stats. Something had changed.

"Do you think I don't dare curse your family? Incompetent, your ass!"

The main menu had a list of different stats that it kept track of and displayed. From Points, which were the currency used to buy things in the system, to a system evaluation. It was the system evaluation that made Lin Feng curse this time.

When he had first created the shopping mall the evaluation had been, "A newfound shopping mall with bright prospects." After about a month it had dropped to, "A newfound shopping mall that is stalling in the opening stages." After another month, it dropped again, being described only as, "An unprofitable shopping mall." Now it had changed again.

[A failing shopping mall run by an incompetent owner.]

Being dropped off in the middle of nowhere and being asked to start a shopping mall? Terrible. Being called incompetent when there are no customers? Lin Feng felt like he had been really wronged. What could he possibly have done to warrant this treatment?

He had never seen the system offer any response that made him think that there was any kind of sentient intelligence behind it. Until now.

"Hey! Can you understand me?!" Lin Feng stood up in outrage, "Six months! I've been trying to get answers out of you for six months!

"Come on! Answer me!"

Lin Feng repeatedly tapped his finger against the system evaluation angrily.

"Do something! There's no way you can't understand me!"

Lin Feng was so caught up in trying to get the system to react to him that he didn't hear the door next to him open. He kept yelling at the system and angrily tapping on different options in the system menu until he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

Lin Feng's head snapped to the door in shock. Standing in the doorway—looking at him with bewilderment and fear—was a person.