Goddess Creation Systemnote is an ongoing manhua by the Chinese author Dazui.
After being dumped by her boyfriend for a prettier girl, Xiaxi retreated into the life of a hikikomori. Treated as a goddess within games, she got a new boyfriend in that world. After being gently pushed into meeting offline, they met up and had a wonderful day together followed by a night in a hotel together. Waking to find herself alone, she got online only to see that her 'boyfriend' had posted photos of her online bragging about what he'd done. Horrified, she immediately cut open her wrists and bled out on the sheets, wishing she could be a goddess for real in her next life.
A wish which was partially granted by the automated Goddess Creation System, which set a mission for her. If she can successfully complete the mission by making a young nobleman, Wang Pu Mingluan, fall in love with her, then she can become a true goddess. If she fails, she'll die for real.
Unfortunately, in the test run to show her what she'll be doing, her confusion has her labeled mad and she is immediately executed after being turned into the butt of a joke from the same nobleman she's supposed to seduce. Resolving herself to do whatever it takes to survive, she begins using the Goddess System to improve her appearance and knowledge. But love is about more than appearance and abilities, so she begins learning to fabricate a new personality for herself and uses her position as a servant to slowly play the entire Wang Pu household for fools. Why should she care about this brutal young man and his equally cruel and arrogant family?
"Trope Creation System":
- Afraid of Blood: To escape the appearance of being disrespectful to Mingyi, Xiaxi pretends that she feels weak at the sight of blood and did not mean to disregard him.
- Alternate Self: The System sends Xiaxi to other worlds by having her possess the bodies of alternate versions of her who are either already dead, or at least, already destined to die in the near future. In the cultivation world, Xiaxi briefly gets to speak with that body's original personality, up until the original personality decides to move on to the afterlife.
- Apple of Discord: Mingyi and Mingluan used to be fairly close brothers until suddenly this charming new maid came in and brought long buried resentments to the surface, startling Yixin and angering their father. And the thing is that she's doing it on purpose and only Yixin has a vague suspicion about it.
- Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Played seriously. As part of her strategy for Mingyi, after thoroughly rejecting him over and over she strips off her clothes and tells him to simply rape her and be done with it if he desires her so much. And then just leave her alone. It is, however, simply a bluff.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Xiaxi finds herself surrounded by cold, heartless nobles. When she chastises them, she goes from sentenced to death to sentenced to a harsh beating, then death. So in round two she decides to play by the rules and charm them, even though she hates the lot of them.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: This appears to be what happens to residents of the cultivation world that reach a high enough cultivation level to become immortal.
- Asshole Victim: After the queen is forced to commit suicide, it's revealed that she assassinated the wife of Ping Yang Hou and the favored concubine of general Wang Pu.
- Bargain with Heaven: The Goddess Creation System works by making deals with the Genius Loci or guardian deities of various worlds. It then dispatches its host to resolve some problem that is throwing that world out of balance. As it becomes increasingly clear that the Goddess Creation System holds malicious intentions and considers Xiaxi a disposable slave, Xiaxi tries to figure out a way to cut out the middle man and make these deals herself in order to destroy the system.
- Bastard Bastard: Mingluan is the son of a concubine and has a way of acting out when bored. People connect these two. While he himself thinks this is unfair, it is of course entirely true... though not relative to the rest of his family, who also treat commoners like property.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Mingyi baits his concubines into harassing Xiaxi because he wants her to be forced to depend on him, but then the wife he considered to be the most gentle actually whips Xiaxi along with her servants, including a long gash down the side of her face. Mingyi is horrified, especially when a bleeding but calm Xiaxi points out that this is exactly what he wanted, right? And it's fun because she's doubly playing him: Liu Ru, the girl who whipped Xiaxi, was in on the whole thing. She and Xiaxi schemed to have her abuse the lowly maid so she could be driven out of the house and go back to the man she truly loves.
- Becoming the Mask
- While she doesn't love them like she claims, Xiaxi does end up feeling bad about leading the brothers on only to move on to the next mission.
- She worries that her manipulations are starting to supplant her true personality, who is not a bad person. So she goes out of her way to remind herself of who she really is by helping people sometimes even when it costs her.
- Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Button the eunuch serves as crown prince Jun'er's closest attendant, but secretly answers to the queen. That was all well and good until Jun'er began acting more seriously and took the effort to find out where Button's true loyalties lie. Button, for his part, doesn't want anything to do with this but is just a palace eunuch. Since he isn't a cute girl like Xiaxi he has no real way to cope with the situation and feels increasingly doomed as he cannot meet the expectations of both.
- Big Bad: The eponymous Goddess Creation System itself. A system is a magical software program that forms a symbiotic relationship with it's host, helping them grow stronger and growing stronger itself in turn. The Goddess Creation System is more of a scammer and treats Xiaxi as a disposable slave. It gives Xiaxi promises of power and a second life, but keeps Moving the Goalposts and threatening to permanently kill her the moment she fails or steps out of line. Eventually, Xiaxi's main goal changes from returning home to destroying the System.
- Big Brother Is Watching: The System watches everything Xiaxi does, meaning that she has to be careful if she moves against its agenda or tries to escape its leash.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: At first glance, the family seems to all cherish each other. However, Xiaxi's presence destabilizes things and brings hidden resentments to the surface.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Played with. Xiaxi hates the people she works for but pretends to admire them deeply in order to get by. She cares nothing for them. Yixin is somewhat aware of what she's doing and assists to some extent because she wants her brother to produce an heir. However, when she pushes too far without taking into account the other servants she gets brought down. At which point she starts ingratiating herself to them as well while still not caring about them.
- Bizarre Alien Sexes: One of the worlds Xiaxi ends up in has an alternate version of humanity. Humans are divided into males and females, much like our world. But on top of that, the alphas and omegas have a secondary sex based on their glands, effectively resulting in 6 different categories of sex. This is a side effect of the two deities that created that world, who are a straight couple in their divine forms, but are both male when incarnated as mortals. The exact details haven't been given, but it is implied that the Alpha and Omegas' secondary sex as defined by their glands gives them the ability to birth offspring regardless of the primary sex of them and their partner, allowing for things like Homosexual Reproduction.
- Born Lucky: No matter how much the other concubines try to assassinate Phoenix, every attempt ends in failure. She's come to the conclusion that all their traps and poisons are just gifts since they keep helping her or making her look good.
- But Thou Must!: The Goddess Creation System decides to mess with Xiaxi by pretending to give her a choice as to whether to accept the next mission. When she decides to reject it and look for something else to do, it soon becomes clear that accepting missions is the only way to progress forward, and the mission it just offered is the only mission it is willing to offer.
- Cain and Abel: Resentful that she was The Un-Favourite to her parents, Guan Mingjie ran away from home and ultimately conquered her way to the top of a powerful criminal organization. When her brother shuts down her underground fighting arena, she decides to take out her resentment towards him by plotting his death. She abducts their parents, forces them to sign their authority over to her, and drugs her brother in an attempt to make him die in a violent frenzy. When that fails, she drives her Sex Slave to suicide and uses a Frame-Up to make it look like his doing. She then graciously expels him from the family, winning herself a lot of popularity and turning her brother into a fugitive.
- The Caligula: Ping Yang Hou initially has support among at least some ministers until he executes one on the spot for refusing to acknowledge his dead wife as queen.
- The Casanova: Mingyi is known to be a womanizer. Intelligent, but frivolous in his pursuit of women.
- Character Development
- With the influence of Xiaxi and an old sage, Mingluan is convinced to be truer to himself rather than simply do what is expected of him until he gets too stressed and lashes out like he used to. He eventually secures the position of general as a result.
- Mingyi seems to end up calmer and less narcissistic as a result of his attempts to make Xiaxi love him and watching it backfire over and over. She may be a servant, but she's not a toy and he can't make her feel what she doesn't want to feel.
- Under Xiaxi's guidance, crown prince Jun'er becomes wiser and more serious about his responsibilities. She even convinces him to stop running outside the palace because it'll worry his father.
- Xiaxi herself learns more compassion and empathy over time as she realizes that in order to fit in to society she needs to look out for other people, not just herself. This helps counteract her growing more apathetic to the people around her as she begins choosing to not finish her missions as quickly as possible because there's more work that needs to be done than just winning the love of some local important dude, such as helping to bring prosperity to the desert.
- The Chosen Many: The System does not just pick high status men as capture targets at random. It specifically picks men that a world's Genius Loci has chosen to restore the balance or develop.
- Condescending Compassion: Mingyi seems to value his younger brother, but it's from the position as the superior. When they have a brief argument, he's enraged that his brother spoke back to him.
- Consummate Liar: Played with. While Xiaxi is an excellent actress and great at coming up with new lies to explain her behavior, close examination would reveal the massive glaring holes in her stories. However, people are too enchanted with her to realize.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: While Xiaxi's presence otherwise seems to mellow out Mingyi, he can't stand that she doesn't desire him at all and only has eyes for his brother. So far as he can tell, anyway.
- Defeat Means Friendship: After Xiaxi beats Ming Zhu in two out of three martial arts competitions and convinces her that she should give up on Jun'er for her own sake, Ming Zhu finds her rather interesting and decides to come back once a year to visit her.
- Deity of Human Origin:
- The Goddess Creation System's very name implies that it was meant to help its host achieve this, though its actions suggest that it doesn't actually want its host to succeed and will start sabotaging them as they get closer. Xiaxi does retain the improvements purchased from the System. Not all upgrades are compatible across all worlds, so while she retains her enhanced beauty and can, for example, still use swordsmanship even after finishing the ghost world, she cannot use her Spirit Cultivation Genre skills outside of cultivation worlds. After secretly obtaining a branch of the World Tree, Xiaxi starts making a lot more progress towards perfection behind her System's back.
- One resident of the Cultivation world managed to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, and effectively became that world's guardian deity.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Xiaxi ends up in a world where people are considered property that can be snatched as someone's leisure, given away and then killed as a mere joke. A concubine who is given away to her lover's brother is overjoyed because it's a chance to become his wife rather than a mere concubine. Xiaxi is horrified... especially since she's the first girl.
- Didn't Think This Through: To secure Mingluan's love and made him think she wasn't trying to seduce him, Xiaxi poisons herself and makes it seem as though Mingyi did it. Which would be fine if the mission ended there, but then she had to secure Mingyi's love as well. While poisoned. Uh oh. She apparently deals with it offscreen.
- Dishing Out Dirt: When Xiaxi gets transferred to a cultivation world, her host body has an Earth spirit root.
- Dogged Nice Guy: Jun'er doesn't really need the same kind of big Love Epiphany moment that the Wang Pu brothers did. Instead, he just grows increasingly interested and then tries to pursue her only to receive apparent indifference.
- Driven to Suicide:
- After her boyfriend broke up with her, Xiaxi retreated to the online world. When she got a boyfriend in the game, they eventually met up in real life, apparently slept together and then he posted about how ugly she was online along with a photo of her.
- It is implied that the version of her in the Alpha Beta Omega world drank herself to death after she angered the wrong people, resulting in them destroying her reputation and career.
- Emotion Eater: The Goddess Creation System grows in power by absorbing the emotions of the people around its host. At first, it is limited to the love of Xiaxi's capture targets and the jealousy of her rivals, but Xiaxi eventually unlocks the ability to gain power from all positive feelings towards her, including non-romantic ones.
- Emotionless Girl: For the prince, Xiaxi puts up the air of complete calm and lack of expression. Accompanying it is a (relatively) vast knowledge and level of ability to pique his interest.
- Epiphany Therapy: Mingluan acts out because he gets bored with what is expected of him as an idle noble. When overhearing Xiaxi tell the story of the ugly duckling, he realizes he needs to be truer to himself and his own talents rather than act as an inferior version of Mingyi.
- Everyone Is Bi: One world Xiaxi ends up in has an alternate version of humanity. While they are divided into males and females, they are also considered to have a secondary sex based upon glands. Everyone in this universe is considered to be bisexual.
- Fake Weakness: Xiaxi at one point (probably) pretends to be too physically weak to fire a bow so that she can use her own equipment, which happens to come from the Goddess system and is a laser sighted crossbow.
- Fake Wizardry: To get the prince's interest, Xiaxi exploits the Goddess System weather forecaster and knowledge of chemistry to make him believe that she's one of the Xian, otherwise known as a Daoist sage. She does not really have any magic powers, but by using charm points and her basic education as a Chinese student she comes across as extremely knowledgeable.
- Fanservice Pack: Xiaxi uses the Goddess System to clear up her skin, lose weight, get more fashionable clothing and learn attractive skills. While she was cute at the start (even if the story doesn't think so) later on she's considered one of the most beautiful women in the country at worst.
- Fantastic Caste System: One of the worlds Xiaxi ends up in has an alternate version of humanity with three castes, the alphas, the betas, and the omegas. Betas are basically the same as normal humans, while alphas and omegas have an extra sex based on their glands, effectively resulting in 6 different sexes in this world. The alphas are at the top of the hierarchy. Omegas are the next wealthiest after alphas, but often end up being targeted over caste based violence and are basically just pets to the alphas. Betas are the poorest and most common caste. Betas risk going hungry due to their poverty, but unlike Omegas, they are Beneath Notice and are therefore in less danger of being directly harmed by the caste system. Even alphas, the rulers, have their own problems, since they are subject to difficult expectations and keep having to deal with betrayal. Alphas and Omegas can expect to be given an Arranged Marriage to barter influence and are prohibited from marrying Betas, though Betas can still be accepted as concubines. The sheer cruelty and Chronic Backstabbing Disorder of the caste system has gotten so badly out of hand that their very world is at the brink of destroying itself.
- Fantastic Racism: In one world, humans and monsters are at war. Oddly enough, Xiaxi's Alternate Self in this world is not a human, but a unicorn disguised as a human, meaning that she needs to hide her true race.
- Foreshadowing: Early on, Xiaxi looks at a smiling, supportive Yixin and declares the girl's love for her family makes her evil. Much later, she ends up stabbing Xiaxi after her actions end up showing that the Wang Pu family was not the kind, supportive place she thought, leaving Yixin feeling that Xiaxi destroyed her family.
- Friend to All Living Things: When coming in wolf hunting where true victory comes from subduing the wolf without killing it, the wolf turns into a big puppy for Xiaxi and nets her an easy victory. Of course, she probably used the Goddess system to cheat somehow.
- Genius Loci: Xiaxi eventually realizes that each world has a mind of its own, and the Goddess Creation System works by making deals with them.
- Genre Savvy: Xiaxi, master of otome games, uses her “experience” to play the two brothers like fiddles.
- God in Human Form: A godly couple created a world of their own, but when the mortal rulers became too greedy, they started leading the world to destruction. The deities were forced to incarnate as mortals to directly intervene, only for said evil rulers to betray and capture them. Their mortal avatars are subconsciously influenced by the gods they are part of, but do not have direct access to their other self's thoughts and memories.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Mingyi claims that while he may not practice as much as Mingluan at archery and other combat sports, that doesn't mean he's inferior. He's a born genius and is better without trying. However, it's subverted when their father watches the two compete: Mingluan is definitely the superior archer even if Mingyi is better than you'd expect for someone who finds archery too boring to deal with most of the time.
- Harem Seeker: Xiaxi has to seduce a lot of handsome young men in order to escape death. She doesn't love any of them, however, nor is she even willing to pursue a romantic or physical relationship. Even in the case of a capture target she genuinely likes, she cannot afford to grow attached to them, because the System requires her to move on to the next target by penalty of death when she is done with the current target. Since the body of the Alternate Self she took over is always someone who died and is Living on Borrowed Time, even in worlds where there is only one capture target, she cannot leave a piece of herself behind, with the possessed identity vanishing from the world when the System is done.
- He Knows Too Much: The imperial doctor is executed and his death passed off as an illness to hide the death of the king just a bit longer.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Xiaxi sacrifices her cultivation world self to create a new World Tree to restore that world's balance.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: The Goddess Creation System is certainly not Xiaxi's friend, and it is implied to be hiding things behind its veneer of a mutually beneficial relationship, inflicting increasingly petty punishments as Xiaxi steps more and more out of line and tries to figure out how it truly works. Notably, the System has a strange obsession with ensuring Xiaxi's beneficiaries do not have lasting gratitude towards her, to the point of punishing her over it, and, eventually, erasing all evidence and memory she ever existed from each world she completes.
- Hidden Heart of Gold: Relatively speaking, Mingluan is actually not a bad person. Yes, he looks down on commoners, uses them as property and doesn't mind his brother executing them, but this seems to be an evil born of ignorance. Compared to his brother, he doesn't usually abuse his authority and will stick up for bullied servants.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Very narrowly averted. Mingyi throws out Feng Lan for harassing Xiaxi despite her father being an important noble only for the brothers to need his assistance much, much later. He nearly throws Mingluan out as a result until Ping Yang Hou has another minister executed, meaning he can't allow his legitimate grudge against the Wang Pu family get in the way of doing the smart thing.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Phoenix thinks all the other concubines adore her because they keep giving her (lethal) gifts.
- Humanity Ensues: In the monster world, humans and monsters are at war. The unicorn tribe would be neutral if they could, but are considered monsters by default. Oddly enough, Xiaxi's Alternate Self in this world is not a human, but a unicorn foal. Since she is hiding among humans, she hides her true race by staying shifted into human form. When her Puberty Superpower comes with Power Incontinence, she also starts losing control over her shape.
- Hypocrite: Mingluan and Mingyi's father is enraged at them for becoming enamored with a commoner even though Mingluan's mother was a former prostitute. He similarly chastises them for their unreasonable behavior because of love, but his own love for her caused him to participate in a coup.
- I Let You Win: At the conclusion of the coup, Ping Yang Hou challenge Jun'er to a duel to determine who will be king... and instantly drops his sword the moment his nephew strikes at him, taking a fatal injury. He had already accomplished everything he wanted to.
- I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Recognizing that Mingyi does not treasure things he easily obtains, Xiaxi talks about how great his brother is to him and refuses to sleep with him like the other maids.
- Informed Deformity: Xiaxi at the beginning is considered super ugly by everyone... for some reason. The worst you ca say about her is that her glasses aren't flattering, she's very slightly chubby and that she *gasp* has freckles!
- I Owe You My Life: Xiaxi pretends that she sticks with Jun'er because he saved her from drowning.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Xiaxi pries a favor from Jun'er to grant her own desire. Later, he tries to build her a palace and take her as his wife, only for her to use the favor to ask to leave in peace. He sadly complies and never sees her again.
- Jerkass Gods: The Goddess Creation System itself, and what it ultimately wishes Xiaxi to become on pain of death. When she compensates her previous targets for their troubles, it punishes her by demanding that she kill her next target after she conquers his heart. As Xiaxi and her System get on bad terms, it starts handing out increasingly petty punishments.
- Jerkass Realization: Ting Zhu causes a temporary downfall for Xiaxi by outing her to Yixin, but Xiaxi realizes she had it coming because she had clearly spurned several attempts to fit in with the servants, causing them to consider her a two faced brown noser.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ming Zhu kidnaps Xiaxi to get her out of the way of her own attempt to win Jun'er, but she never even threatens to hurt her and is surprisingly reasonable for someone so hotheaded. Eventually, she comes to agree with Xiaxi that her own affections are probably not worth pursuing.
- Kick the Dog: Pretty much the first thing Ping Yang Hou does is order his sister to commit suicide.
- Ladykiller in Love: Invoked. Xiaxi appeals to Mingyi by being the one woman he can't seduce no matter how hard he tries. She shows him nothing but formal distance or even outright scorn when she can get away with it, only causing him to become more obsessed with her. Then once he can't stop thinking about her she 'reveals' that she loved him all along but wouldn't reciprocate because of blah blah social status blah blah he has other women etc. and bam, mission accomplished. Literally. That being said, the 'ladykiller' part is revealed to be less true than it at first appears: At least one of his concubines was outright abducted and never wanted to be with him in the first place.
- Living on Borrowed Time: All of Xiaxi's tasks are Timed Missions. If time runs out, the System will trigger a heart attack and make her drop dead permanently. This is mostly a way for the System to give Xiaxi "encouragement", but it's also because the Alternate Self she is possessing is either already dead, or was destined to die in the near future.
- Loophole Abuse: The Goddess Creation System essentially considers Xiaxi a disposable slave and keeps Moving the Goalposts by forcing Xiaxi to spend all her points on missions, but it is still forced to abide by certain rules. If it wants to kill Xiaxi, then it can issue death as a penalty for failing a new mission task, but it cannot kill her directly. Furthermore, the new mission task has to be something the world's Genius Loci agrees with, so while the task may be difficult, it won't be an Impossible Task. Likewise, if it dispatches Xiaxi to conquer one of two targets, she can demand double the reward if she conquers both of them, even if the system does not like it. However, in the latter case, the System can retaliate by increasing all of it's penalties to an unreasonable degree.
- Love at First Sight: Princess Ming Zhu falls for the crown prince at first sight, but after talking about it further with Xiaxi she grudgingly accepts that this is a bad start for a relationship, especially given how much she'd have to give up to be with him.
- Love Makes You Evil: After the Queen used a plague quarantine as an excuse to starve Ping Yang Hou's wife to death, he quietly went crazy and began plotting to destroy the king for revenge.
- Love Makes You Stupid: It's implied that the brothers' love for Xiaxi blinds them to the obvious holes in her plans and helps her cover over glaring mistakes.
- Low Fantasy: The first world Xiaxi is brought to is largely mundane, and only her last mission there involving vampires includes anything supernatural.
- Manipulative Bitch
- Xiaxi is intentionally manipulating the noble family for her own ends because, well, they're a bunch of bastards and she has no reason to have any qualms about it. After awhile she starts to sympathize with them and also begins worrying that being manipulative is becoming second nature to her and destroying her real personality.
- With Jun'er, Xiaxi adopts a different personality, though the prince eventually recognizes her anyway. Later, after she's faked her death she appears before the brothers again and reverts to her old subservient mask and says she fell in love with someone above her station and is therefore terrible... but doesn't say which one, leaving them both assuming she means them.
- Meaningful Name: Every time someone tries to murder Phoenix, she waltzes right on through it oblivious. Xiaxi wonders if her ridiculous survival ability is a blessing from her name.
- Morality Pet: Arrogant and domineering as the pharaoh is, he still makes efforts to keep Phoenix safe from the other, crueler concubines.
- Moving the Goalposts: The Goddess Creation System has offered Xiaxi a second chance at life, but she needs to earn enough points to buy it. The System keeps inflicting new penalties or increasing the price for the tools and skills she needs to buy for her missions, preventing her from accumulating the number of points she needs. Xiaxi eventually gives up any hope that the System will fulfill its end of the bargain and starts making deals with divine beings behind it's back
- Nominal Hero: What Xiaxi is doing is arguably good for the society around her, sometimes, but her actions can be downright cruel. And she's not really doing it for anyone but herself most of the time.
- Obfuscating Insanity: The prince feigns insanity after Xiaxi fakes her death. He keeps up the act until Mingluan makes it clear he's been in contact with her.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Xiaxi's unicorn Alternate Self was a genuine simpleton. The main Xiaxi is naturally much craftier, and after she takes over her other self's body, she continues to play an innocent idiot while getting back at her tormentors.
- Obliviously Evil: Yixin is kind to her family, but still views commoners as tools to fulfill her family's desires. She even thinks she's being nice to Xiaxi. The rest of the family are not terribly different.
- Oblivious to Love: Mingluan's family worries about him because he shows no interest in women. Xiaxi doesn't really love him, but she feigns interest as part of her strategy only for it to fly completely over his head.
- Only a Flesh Wound: After Yixin snaps, she stabs Xiaxi in the upper chest/shoulder area with a poisoned dagger. The wound isn't that deep, but it's treated as though the stabbing itself is not that big of a deal.
- Operation: Jealousy: After some time serving Mingluan, he grows attached to her, but only in the way you grow attached to your mother. So she baits him subtly by saying she would serve his brother instead just as happily, which shocks him.
- Perpetual Smiler: One Alternate Self of Xiaxi was always smiling, all the way up until her murder. It is to the point that many people, including the main Xiaxi, wonder if she was a simpleton.
- Pet the Dog: While it's satisfying to see Xiaxi completely controlling dickheads like the Wang Pu brothers, it doesn't really speak very well for her character. She does go out of her way to do the right thing on occasion even when it doesn't benefit herself, though, such as comforting a crying child when that could get her in a lot of trouble or arranging for Liu Ru to be exiled so that she can finally be with the man she loves.
- Playing Hard to Get: Since Mingyi doesn't value things he obtains easily, Xiaxi instead constantly rejects his advances to raise her value in his eyes. Eventually, he becomes obsessed with winning her love.
- Pragmatic Villainy: In a manner of speaking. Xiaxi saves her rival Ming Zhu from a wolf not because she's so sweet and all loving, but because if Ming Zhu dies then Xiaxi will surely be kllled by her guards. She admits it outright, which Ming Zhu likes.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: As multiple servants note, Xiaxi is only gracious and polite to the estate masters and only because she has to be.
- Properly Paranoid: As several servants and nobles notice, Xiaxi is definitely trying to seduce Mingluan. They're just mistaken about why.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Played with. The characters generally seem like good people when going about their lives, but the first few chapters start with them murdering a servant because she was used as part of a rude joke and through no fault of her own. After humanizing the brothers after this, it's shown that even when Xiaxi avoided this fate they still killed another servant for the same reason. As such, Xiaxi makes it clear every now and then that she has no intention of falling in love with either.
- The Purge: After Ping Yang Hou seizes the throne, he immediately targets instuctor Huaiyin and general Zhenlin to be executed. They're threats to him, as the Crown Prince already knows.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: As part of seduction of Mingyi, Xiaxi actually points out what a cruel person he is to his face.
- Ret-Gone: Starting with the 3rd world, the cultivation world, all evidence and memory that Xiaxi ever existed starts to get erased as soon as Xiaxi finishes her mission, with only the male leads of the worlds having Wistful Amnesia.
- Revealing Cover-Up: Xiaxi uses the System to hack the news and provide evidence of Guan Mingyu's innocence, revealing his sister to be the real culprit for a murder. His sister, Guan Mingjie, reacts by ordering them killed, and the resulting firefight becomes so public that even people who were previously skeptical become convinced that Xiaxi's evidence is real.
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Inverted. With Jun'er, Xiaxi tempers his enthusiasm and irresponsibility by making it clear that he needs to be more serious and dutiful. Because he really wants her to like him and recognizes she has a point, he generally complies. It's also why she ends up having quite a solid position in the pavilion: His mother may not particularly like her for getting above her station, but recognizes that she's been a fantastic influence on the young crown prince.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: At some point, Jun'er figured out that his 'teacher' Xi'er was actually Xiaxi, the former maid of the Wang Pu family. He keeps it a secret, only saying it aloud when she's asleep in front of him.
- Sex Equals Love: Always averted. Yixin urges Xiaxi to seduce her brother Mingluan so that he'll grow to desire sex, but this is because both of them know that sleeping with him before he loves her will mean nothing to him even if she succeeds. Next, she stubbornly refuses Mingyi because he doesn't value things he gains easily. She also refuses to become the concubine of the pharaoh because while it would seemingly get her closer to what she wants, it would realize just demote her to his property. Cared for, but just a thing.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: As Xiaxi uses more of her charisma points, her abilities and appearance improve quickly. By the time she reaches the crown prince she's gorgeous despite her relatively simple clothing and lack of makeup.
- Sibling Triangle: Mingluan and Mingyi eventually begin to passive aggressively fight over Xiaxi, though in truth she merely brought long standing resentments to the surface. Their father is not pleased.
- Smarter Than You Look: The prince seems like a buffoon, but just because he's silly doesn't mean he's stupid or gullible. Even some of his seemingly stupid moments like thinking Xiaxi would just jump into the arms of her life's savior and sleep with him are based on fairly solid reasoning: He thought the whole thing was a setup. He also realizes that she's the same maid that was serving the Wang Pu brothers, but pretends to believe her nonsensical backstory because she's so interesting.
- Spirit Cultivation Genre: The 3rd world Xiaxi travels to revolves around this, featuring Supernatural Martial Arts and absorbing qi in order to become The Ageless. The ultimate problem she needs to solve for this world is fixing the damage preventing people from reaching the last step and achieving Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
- Star-Crossed Lovers
- Both of the brothers end up falling for Xiaxi, but their father is having none of it. Eventually, it gets to the point where he has her “executed.”
- Surprisingly averted with Jun'er. After awhile both of her rivals peacefully get out of her way and even his mother, the queen, decides not to obstruct them. She's openly considered in the palace to be the crown prince's woman and he makes it clear that he wants her... but she herself puts up a mask of indifference.
- Supernatural Martial Arts: Xiaxi eventually ends up in a cultivation world, allowing her to cultivate her spirit root and slowly ascend into an immortal.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Xiaxi's attempt to call out the Wang Pu brothers for being terrible people just results in a harsher execution, not the 'Look at this interesting, outspoken commoner' reaction she was hoping for.
- Technical Virgin: As another character points out, Xiaxi is definitely a virgin... but only because she died and reincarnated. It's pretty clear that she had sex in the first chapter before committing suicide.
- Third-Person Person: As a kind of self debasement, Xiaxi almost always refers to herself in the third person when speaking to her superiors.
- Troll: The Goddess Creation System takes increasingly sadistic pleasure in messing with Xiaxi as the plot goes on.
- At one point, it makes it look like Xiaxi has finally returned home, even recreating the scene where she committed suicide. It helpfully reminds her that it has no intention of returning her home until she has done enough work for it after she has already been thrown in jail for trespassing on the equivalent property where her family's home would be within her own world.
- Ungrateful Bastard: After Xiaxi saves Yulianna's life by refusing to become the new concubine and replacing her, Yulianna views Xiaxi as a threat and plots to murder her to keep herself safe. Even though Xiaxi was absolutely clear about not wanting to be a concubine.
- Unkempt Beauty: Invoked. Xiaxi recognizes that Mingluan prefers women with less makeup, so after improving her appearance she deliberately refrains from dressing herself up as much as possible.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Guan Mingjie, an organized crime boss, abuses her omega Sex Slave so badly that she is Driven to Suicide. Via her alliances with powerful officials, Guan Mingjie uses the media to frame her brother for it and then hypocritically portrays herself as a savior to omegas. She succeeds so well that actual evidence becomes irrelevant to the public sentiment.
- World Tree:
- In the cultivation world, Xiaxi takes a Heroic Sacrifice, goes through Transflormation, and effectively becomes that world's world tree to repair the damage to that world and put it back into balance.
- When Xiaxi is approached by one of the guardian deities of a world she saved for a reward, she asks for help in breaking free from the Goddess Creation System's enslavement. The guardian deity's response is to give her a branch of the true world tree. The branch effectively gives Xiaxi access to a source of power that doesn't overcharge her like the System does, allowing her to secretly conserve the points the System keeps forcing her to spend as well as become more independent of the System.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit
- Faced with jealous servants, Xiaxi pretends that she's being bullied and hiding it to increase her own position. When the servants are banished, Xiaxi acts as though she's defending them by emphasizing that he'll be lacking in servants, causing Yixin to give her to Mingluan.
- When Mingyi's wife Feng Lan is harasshing Xiaxi, she makes it look as though she tried to outright drown her.
- The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: The basic point of the serious part of Jun'ers arc is that he's intelligent, kind and capable, but too spoiled and immature to make an effective ruler. Ping Yang Hou seems much more capable and has a large faction supporting him even though he has no apparent interest in the throne. However, it's subverted when he seizes power: He turns out to be totally crazy and quite brutal, meaning the main cast needs to get Jun'er back in power.
- You Have Failed Me: The punishment Xiaxi is threatened with if she ever fails a task for the Goddess Creation System? Death. Xiaxi notes that the system considers her disposable and couldn't care less about her future potential.
- Zero-Approval Gambit: Xiaxi and Liu Ru seem to have made a deal behind the scenes where Liu would outrageously punish Mingyi's new favorite maid Xiaxi and be driven out of the house. She was never a willing concubine and wanted to escape so she could be with her true love.
