"How did the Origin Realm get connected to the outside internet?"
At the time, Su Qi had been preoccupied with analyzing other details and hadn't noticed this anomaly.
But now, seeing it again sent a chill down his spine.
"Has this Origin Realm descended?"
Guardian Jiang nodded grimly. "It descended without a sound..."
Su Qi's pupils constricted sharply.
Descended without a sound...
The weight of those words struck harder than the possibility of Descendants attacking the martial exam.
Origin Realms—special spaces existing independently of the real world—were dangerous but at least controllable and observable.
Their emergence, stabilization, expansion, and eventual "descent" (complete fusion with reality) were always accompanied by violent energy fluctuations and spatial distortions.
They were predictable, preventable, and stoppable.
There had never been a precedent for a "silent" descent.
Su Qi grasped the severity immediately. "The monitoring network detected no spatial disturbances? What about energy signatures?"
"Nothing." Guardian Jiang's expression darkened. "It's as if... it had always been part of Jiangxia."
"Or perhaps its method of descent surpassed our current understanding and detection capabilities."
He rubbed his temples, exhaustion evident. "Ironically, we only noticed this because of that post while evaluating your stance."
It sounded absurd.
But it was the truth.
Like how everyone assumes water must boil at 100°C—no one would ever put it in a freezer to "heat" it.
Few had visited that Origin Realm recently—mostly veterans or students under supervision.
With only a few hundred people, the odds of outliers were slim.
Su Qi was literally the only one who'd tried contacting the outside world directly via the internet.
"By the time we reacted and sent scouts, the Origin Realm... had already fully merged with real-world coordinates."
"The entrance vanished—or rather, the entire area became the entrance."
Su Qi steadied himself, focusing on the critical question. "Impact assessment?"
"Initial surveys show it covers about 15 square kilometers of Jiangxia's western outskirts," Guardian Jiang replied. "Luckily, it's sparsely populated. No reports of mass casualties yet."
"Thankfully, we caught it early. If Origin creatures had spread, containment would've been a nightmare."
"But this is temporary. No one knows what changes might follow."
Guardian Jiang's gaze sharpened as he locked eyes with Su Qi. "What if they replicate this? Make the martial exam's Origin Realm descend next?"
"Or worse—plotting to drop a high-tier Origin Realm?"
Su Qi didn't answer immediately.
He connected the dots in his mind:
Descendants reducing activity, possibly internal selection.
An Origin Realm descending undetected.
"You know this—Great Xia is our territory, but Origin Realms? They're half the Descendants' domain."
Agitated, Su Qi absentmindedly swiped Guardian Jiang's phone screen.
The image changed—now showing a white-stockinged anime loli.
Guardian Jiang snatched his phone back in 0.1 seconds: "Human nature. Basic instincts."
"Focus on business. No snooping."
...
Meanwhile, at Su Qi's home, a different scene unfolded.
Liu Yuan had just seen off two assistants.
The door clicked shut.
She turned back to the kitchen, eyeing the plate of barely-passable scrambled eggs with tomatoes—her "masterpiece" under the assistants' guidance.
The more complex chicken soup and steamed fish? Wisely abandoned.
The chaotic cooking session had confirmed her lack of culinary talent.
Picking up chopsticks, she tentatively tasted a bite.
Hmm.
Surprisingly... decent?
Wait, why "surprisingly"?
Never mind!
At least it wasn't the "dark cuisine" she'd feared.
Balanced sweet-sour tang, eggs reasonably tender.
A tiny spark of pride warmed her chest.
Should be enough for Su Qi to devour tonight!
And she could improve.
Rome wasn't built in a day.
Her lips curved slightly.
If Brother sees me trying so hard, improving bit by bit... wouldn't that itself be happiness?
But the fleeting joy faded as she remembered her original mission—
The card evolution task!
Wiping her hands, she headed to Su Qi's room.
What exactly are Brother's preferences?
The question looped in her mind.
Power on.
Familiar boot screen, then the password prompt.
'xbllzj'
("Xian bu liao le zai jian"—"Can't chat now, bye.")
Easy to remember.
Enter.
The desktop loaded.
But Liu Yuan suspected Su Qi hadn't meant it literally.
What then...?
So hard to guess...
Then she recalled someone saying boys panic most when their cloud drives or D/E disks are checked.
So... Brother's secrets are hidden there?
Clicking into the D drive, she spotted a folder named "Study Materials" inside "BaiduNetdiskDownload."
Her pulse quickened. Important notes must be here!
She double-clicked.
Ready to witness Su Qi's hard work and dedication.
...The folder was empty.
Frowning, her brain raced.
No problem—ask the internet!
Netizens might suck at making money, but they knew everything.
Soon, advice poured in:
[View → Show hidden items]
Liu Yuan tried it.
Submenus exploded on-screen. Her eyes darted until—
Show hidden items?
Check.
Instantly, dozens of folders materialized.
Their names were bizarre: random alphanumerics, some resembling script from a defunct island nation, and very few in Great Xia's language.
ions, keeping it grounded and realistic】 After quitting his job, office worker Su Yang accidentally binds with the "Enjoy Life System." As the name suggests, simply by indulging in life's pleasures, he can earn random rewards from the system—no need to spend money on beautiful women or grovel before anyone. Just enjoy, and the money follows, making it all about effortless fun. The system comes with a scanning feature, allowing him to establish a favorability bond with women rated 85 points or above. Every 20-point increase in favorability unlocks additional rewards. After suffering through over twenty years of hardship, Su Yang trembles with excitement, his dull eyes suddenly gleaming with newfound hope. "Enjoy life? How hard could that be?"
world slacker. But a genius female disciple just had to get clingy, insisting that he take her as a disciple. Not only that, she was always making advances on him, thoroughly disrupting his peaceful slacker life...
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
