Steel and Mana - Chapter 3 – Coming of Age

In a world of shallow-minded, materialistic mortals, what would one from humble beginnings – whose face had been stomped on, spat on, oppressed for the longest while by the arrogant, pampered upper echelons of society – do, when a mysterious application pops up on a brand new phone that was meant to be the birthday gift of an ungrateful girlfriend? What if the application takes the form of a chatroom where its occupants, bearing the names of mythical, fictional beings, start giving out ‘Red Packets’, all the while spouting nonsense?

Anton is a great-grandfather. He is living quite a happy life, despite his advanced age and declining health… until a group of cultivator bandits moves into the area. The nearby guardians of the area, the Order of Ninety-Nine Stars, are unable to track them down as they continue to ravage nearby towns. During one desperate winter Anton is out on a hunt when his family- his entire village- is killed or taken as slaves by the bandits. He lacks the strength to fight them, and he wasn’t even present for their arrival to die with his loved ones. At the pit of his despair, he wonders if he ever had any chance to change things. What could he even do? He cannot even pull his best bow, and his eyesight is failing. If he had been a cultivator… perhaps there might have been a chance, but he was decades- perhaps even most of his life- too late.Participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge (2022)Notes on cultivation levels:There are five general stages of cultivation, though the fifth is extremely rare. Each cultivation style might have their own name for the stages.1. Body Tempering2. Spirit Building/ occasionally System Creation (Ninety-Nine Stars)3. Constellation Formation (Ninety-Nine Stars)4. Life Transformation/Galaxy Construction (Ninety-Nine Stars)5. Ascension

Transported to a rural family in 1973, where eating required food stamps, dressing needed cloth tickets, stepping out asked for a letter of introduction, doing business was considered speculative profiteering, and securing a job demanded an urban household registration. She, a young girl from the countryside, faced an indifferent mother, a troublesome younger brother, and an elder sister who often had poor ideas. Life had become insufferable.Memories from her past life are mostly forgotten, yet the myriad of objects in her magical storage ring baffles her greatly.

Yuan Luoyi felt like she was a little hamster in a pit of snakes, with her family full of crazy villains, yet as the fake heiress she still focused on slacking off.

Dad was an arms dealer, Mom an ace assassin.

Eldest brother, business world’s killing god, with proxy syndrome.

Second brother, cold-blooded lawyer, zero moral sense.

Third brother, addicted to killing, born with antisocial personality.

Fourth brother, evil celebrity, who trained fans into believers.

Fifth brother, genius scholar, loves those pure white bones.

Yuan Luoyi didn’t know that because of her birth, the world gained five more brothers, not five more lunatics.

Those greedy villains also didn’t know, the one they wanted to kill was not an ordinary girl, but the most beloved little sister of five crazy bastard brothers.

The female lead has 99 lifetimes of memories, a system, harem darling + suspense, happy ending.