Random funny thought for a xianxia/LitRPG story: a guy isekais in with the Putting In The Work system.
Starts out with a standard isekai opening. MC isekais into an outer disciple who has just died. The outer disciple was bottom of the class, his talent was trash, and he got casually abused by the various Young Masters, but be was so sure that he was protagonist material that he kept throwing himself at various Lesser Trials and failing miserably, rather than working his way up slowly doing scutwork, and finally one of them wound up killing him.
The sect is really into the idea of Trials. Basically, they have Greater Trials, which you need to succeed at in order to progress in the sect, and Lesser Trials, which are optional but offer various rewards for those who do well. Those who don't think they can manage the Lesser Trials instead do work for the sect for adequate but comparatively unexciting rewards. A lot of the disciples pick and choose - grabbing the Lesser Trials at the things they think they're good at and doing work for the rest. Anyway, protagonist has a mandatory Greater Trial that will either see him rise up or get kicked out of the sect, it's happening the next day, and he is really, really not prepared.
His System informs him of this. It perhaps goes into some degree of loving detail about exactly how screwed he is. Happily, he has an out! He has a system. The system can save him. All he has to do is agree to do an appropriate work project, and the system can hook him up with the resources he needs to survive this. So, with no other real options, he agrees.
It's drudgery. It's unpleasant drudgery. He has to dig all of the large rocks out of a rocky field, and then pile them up next to a hill in the center. The rocks are large enough that he can only carry one at a time, and there are a *lot* of them. It's not entirely clear how long it takes - time is fuzzy here - but it's a lot. He goes through a bit of a mental breakdown in the middle, collapses for a bit, picks himself up, gets over his pity party, and drives on. finally he's done, and he gets returned to the room he was in, at exactly the time he left it, with... one pill. It's a simple qi pill. It's enough to get him from qi condensation 1 to qi condensation 2. It's the kind of pill that his fellow outer disciples have been earning once a week for their work in the sect, and their work wasn't half so long or unpleasant.
MC gets upset about this. System calls him out for it. It is what he needs to have a chance to make it through the next Greater Trial, and anyway, it's worth a lot more than he's giving it credit for. It's a Pure Pill - no toxins. Toxin buildup is a major issue in later stages of cultivation. It becomes clear in the conversation that Pure Pills are incredibly rare in this area, partially because no one makes them, partially because basically no one expects to actually make it to the levels where it's truly crippling. It further becomes clear that if he lets his body start filling up with pill toxins, his System is going to abandon him. Well. fantastic. He takes the pill, he does the cultivation, and hits Qi Condensation 2 by morning.
The next day, he gets the experience of actually being qi condensation 2, which feels kind of awesome, and gets gently mocked by his peers because he's the *last* one of them to have this experience. Still, there's a general feeling from said peers of "Oh, hey - you might actually make it through after all. That's cool." They make it to the Trial and... it's rough. If he was still qi condensation 1 he would never have made it. Even so he's just barely hanging on, making it through on mental toughness. Then he makes a misstep, takes a wound, and he's not going to make it after all... but he has a System. System tells him that it can provide him with the healing pill he needs in return for another work project. He grits his teeth and agrees.
In the work project he is not wounded. That's funny. In paying attention, he realizes that his body is... simpler, somehow. The System informs him that the work projects are in lower-order universes. That's how they can be done in an instant, and it means that his body is not along for the ride, he can't usefully cultivate while on a project, and so forth. Anyway, the work project involves working in a spiritual herb garden, on the simplest of spiritual herbs, doing all of the grunt labor that entails. There are instructions posted on a wooden sign. He works his way through the field, and as soon as he's done for the day, there's a sort of fizzle-timeskip and he gets to work through the day again. He has a few more mental breakdowns, then picks himself back up and keeps moving. Finally he gets to harvest and he's done... and he comes back out into the real world the moment he left it, holding a wound-healing pill. Welp. It is what he asked for. On his way out, he notices and harvests a few herbs of the variety he'd been cultivating. It's something, at least. The alchemy hall is willing to pay a few sect points for things like that. Of course, his showing in the Trial isn't great. He doesn't get any of the Incredibly Shiny Rewards that some of the other guys do... but he at least managed to pass and isn't getting booted out.
...and it keeps going along like that. Over time, the premise becomes clearer. His system really is doing the best that it can with what it has. Its ability to hand out rewards is really limited, it manages to subsidize that by essentially farming him out for grunt work in lower realms, and it picks the grunt work as well as it can to help him gain personal growth and learn skills that will help get him through whatever it is that he's doing. Since the realms he's doing the work in are less "real", the memories don't linger as much. Also, the System is a massive "strong foundations uber alles" fetishist, and actually does know the old-school ways of doing such things. Fortunately, many of those ways leverage pretty much exactly the kinds of skills and mental toughness that you can build up over time by doing lots and lots and lots of work projects in lower realms.
I have an image of a later bit where he finds some cute female fellow sect disciple basically breaking down from stress in a time and place where she doesn't have *time* to break down from stress. He drags her into a work project with him to give her that time (he is feeling impulsive and also young and male and romantically interested) and then they have to actually do the work project to get back out again. By the end of it, the girl comes to the conclusion that this is basically the one chance that she ahs to make it, and begs the System to take her on as well. It's really quite pleased about this (Having two users at once? Fantastic!) but can't do it for free and agrees to do that in lieu of the reward for both of them for the work contract they've just finished. There's some explanation about the System's internal economy that lays out why "having two" is shiny but difficult, but "share it around to lots of people" isn't going to be something it can manage any time soon. The girl goes on to be incredibly intense about knocking out work contracts as a way to burn through her problems in the main world, and they have a fun little dynamic. The system is totally shipping them, but tries not to be too obvious about it.
