Chapter 1: Acquiring a Daily Intelligence System!

CRASH!!!

A deafening roar erupted!

An irregularly shaped stone fell from the sky, slamming directly into the windshield of a 4.2-meter cargo truck. The stone punched through the glass and landed on the cluttered center console inside the cab.

"What the..."

Inside the truck, Jiang Tao, who was busy calculating the interest rates for an 80,000-yuan loan on his phone, was startled by the sudden explosion of noise. Still shaken, he looked at the spiderweb of cracks on his windshield, then at the fist-sized rock resting on the console.

He felt physically ill. Which idiot threw a rock at his truck?

With a forceful shove, he pushed the driver-side door open and stepped out. He glared aggressively in every direction, searching for the culprit. But after scanning the area, there wasn't a single soul within a 50-meter radius. Finding no one, Jiang Tao looked up at the overcast, gloomy sky above Beijing.

"Don't tell me this rock fell from the heavens?" he muttered. "Damn it, when a man's luck is down, he can even break his teeth on water!"

Replacing the windshield would cost at least four or five hundred yuan—a day or two of work gone in an instant. Just when he was most desperate for money, fate had dealt him another heavy blow.

It was the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, and with less than a month until the New Year, Jiang Tao’s anxiety grew by the day. This year, he dreaded the holidays more than a pig destined for the slaughterhouse. For those who had made money, the Spring Festival was a time of joy; for someone like him, who hadn't earned a dime and was buried in debt, going home was like facing a trial by fire.

Throughout the day, Jiang Tao had received four collection calls from creditors. He still owed over 20,000 yuan to the construction crew that worked on his house, another 10,000-plus to the interior decorator, and over 20,000 for building materials. Then there was the 20,000 yuan he’d spent on installing an air-source heat pump and floor heating. All in all, he was over 80,000 yuan in debt.

As the year-end approached, the creditors seemed to have coordinated their efforts to demand payment. It was only natural to pay what one owed, and he couldn't blame them; he could only blame himself for failing to earn enough.

"Sigh, why is this year so hard?" Jiang Tao sighed, looking at his shattered windshield.

Originally, he and his wife, Xu Li, had planned to work hard all year to pay off their debts. Though working as a freelance hauler in Beijing wasn't as stable as a factory job, he usually managed to bring in over 10,000 yuan a month on average. If nothing went wrong, it wouldn't have been difficult to save 70,000 or 80,000 yuan by the end of the year.

But, as expected, things went wrong.

Back in July, Jiang Tao had accidentally tripped while walking at night. He hadn't felt much at the time, thinking he’d just strained a muscle, but the next morning, he was in such agony he couldn't get out of bed. The hospital diagnosed a severe patellar ligament tear. Not wanting to end up crippled, he had to undergo surgery immediately. At thirty, in the prime of his life, he had to spend the money to save his leg. The surgery cost over 20,000 yuan, and after insurance, he was still out-of-pocket by more than 10,000.

"A hundred days of recovery for a broken bone." For a "freelance" hauler like Jiang Tao, this was a fatal blow. Over a hundred days with no income, while expenses continued to pile up, put him deep in the red.

He stayed home until October, but before his leg had fully healed, he rushed back to Beijing to resume work. On his very first day back, disaster struck again. His "old partner"—the truck he’d been driving for over five years—suffered a breakdown, and the transmission was totaled. Before he’d earned a single cent, he had to spend 7,000 yuan for a new transmission assembly.

In November, his daughter, Jiang Xue, caught a cold that turned into pneumonia. She spent over half a month in the city's children's hospital, costing him several thousand more. By year-end, after paying for the family's health insurance, he had less than 5,000 yuan left. And now, this rock had fallen from the sky and shattered his windshield.

With these misfortunes piling up, even someone as skeptical as Jiang Tao thought about finding a high-ranking monk to see if he had offended the Grand Duke of the Year.

Returning to the cab, Jiang Tao stared at the fist-sized rock on the console. A sudden thought occurred to him: Could this be a meteorite? If it was a meteorite, and he had witnessed it falling, that made it a "witnessed meteorite." These were far more valuable than ordinary ones! And given its size, it could sell for millions, maybe even tens of millions!

If that were the case, this sudden disaster would turn into a sudden fortune. He could pay off his debts instantly and save himself decades of struggle!

*Gulp.*

The more he thought about it, the more excited he became. He took out his phone and snapped several photos to document the scene, then recorded a few videos.

"Ancestors, bless me! Let me strike it rich just this once! Please!" Jiang Tao pressed his palms together, bowed to thin air, and reached out cautiously toward the irregular stone.

The moment his fingers touched it, a tingling, electric sensation surged through his entire body!

Simultaneously, the stone vanished. The air in front of him rippled like the surface of a pond, and a glowing blue virtual interface appeared before his eyes.

[Bind to the Daily Intelligence System now?]

Staring at the prompt, Jiang Tao was stunned. A system? A "Daily Intelligence System"? As a veteran reader of web novels, he was no stranger to this concept. An illusion? A hallucination? He hadn't eaten any strange mushrooms!

He squeezed his eyes shut and snapped them open. The blue interface remained, now displaying a countdown.

[Bind to the Daily Intelligence System now? Countdown: 10, 9, 8...]

"Bind! Bind! Bind it for me!" Faced with a system that started a countdown without a word of explanation, Jiang Tao made a split-second decision. Regardless of whether it was real or a hallucination, he would bind it first!

[Binding to the Daily Intelligence System, please wait...]
[Progress: 1%... 5%... 17%...]

Watching the progress bar, Jiang Tao held his breath, unable to look away. The thought of becoming a "cheat-user" with his own system made his heart race.

[Daily Intelligence System bound successfully!]
[Host]: Jiang Tao (30 years old)
[System Level 1]: Unlocks 1 piece of intelligence daily.
[Today's Intelligence 01]: You are currently parked at the West Gate of the Red Star Second-hand Furniture Wholesale Market. Relevant intelligence acquired—
In the third trash can from the left on the right side of the West Gate, there is an iced black tea bottle cap that can be scanned to win an iPhone 15!

"A bottle cap that can win an iPhone 15?" Jiang Tao’s eyes lit up.

Weren't these bottle cap sweepstakes all scams? Aside from the "win another bottle" prizes, he never bothered with the ones with QR codes. Scanning them for a few cents wasn't even worth the data cost—it was a waste of time. But now, the system was telling him that a bottle cap in a trash can could win him an iPhone 15!

Is this for real?