System Upgrade?
Lu Ze's previously idle brain suddenly sprang to life.
"What did you just say?"
Lu Ze abruptly turned to look at Shen Yan.
"Huh? I need an illusionary realm to comprehend the Sword Dao..."
"Not that, the line before."
"???"
Shen Yan was baffled by Lu Ze's question. After thinking for a moment, he hesitantly replied,
"I'm not skilled in the Sword Dao, but I have a natural affinity for hammer-type weapons?"
"Yes, that's the one."
Lu Ze snapped his fingers, then dropped his usual playful demeanor and looked at Shen Yan seriously.
"Brother Shen, I don't think you and the hammer are truly in harmony yet."
Shen Yan was taken aback. "That can't be, right? All the elders say..."
"The Sword Dao emphasizes the unity of man and sword. Brother Shen, do you feel... united with it?"
Lu Ze pointed at the massive hammer in Shen Yan's hand.
"This..."
Shen Yan didn't know how to respond.
He had never considered this question before.
"What do you mean, Brother Lu?"
"If Brother Shen's hammer techniques reach the state of unity between man and hammer, I’d be more than willing to design an illusionary realm to temper your Sword Dao."
Lu Ze's expression was utterly sincere.
"Otherwise, if your hammer techniques aren't yet mastered and you switch halfway to the Sword Dao, ending up proficient in neither... I’d feel guilty!"
With that, he even put on a pained expression.
Seeing Lu Ze like this, Shen Yan had no reason to doubt him.
"Brother Lu makes an excellent point!"
He nodded thoughtfully, staring at his hammer in deep contemplation.
"But how can I tell if I’ve reached the state of unity between man and hammer?"
"Simple."
Relieved that Shen Yan believed him, Lu Ze relaxed, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
"I can design a trial illusionary realm to test your unity with the hammer. However..."
Shen Yan grew curious. "However what?"
"However, this illusionary realm might be quite challenging. If it affects Brother Shen’s mental state..."
Lu Ze trailed off, sighing dramatically.
"Oh, that’s all?"
Shen Yan laughed, completely unfazed.
"Don’t worry about that! My Dao heart is unshakable. My master says I’m a born prodigy—no trial, no matter how difficult, can shake my resolve in the slightest."
"Besides..."
"My master once said that if anyone could shake my Dao heart, I should bring them straight to him!"
Lu Ze forced a smile. "Heh, good, good..."
In his mind, he thought:
That person is definitely going to be me.
"So it’s settled? Once I pass the unity trial, you’ll design the training environment for me?"
Shen Yan’s eyes shone with hope.
Lu Ze nodded. "Yes, it’s a promise."
......
Returning to his guest quarters, Lu Ze immediately got to work crafting the illusionary realm.
When the system issued the "shake the Dao heart" mission, he had recalled a "classic" game from his past life—
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy.
But Lu Ze preferred its other name: Digging for Ascension.
You like hammers, huh?
Want to test your unity with the hammer?
Perfect fit.
Compared to games like I Wanna or It Takes Two, Digging for Ascension stood out for its utterly inhuman control scheme.
Whether in the games of his past life or the illusionary realms of this world, players generally didn’t reject the feel of the controls too much—because they aligned with their expectations and habits.
Struggling? Practice more. Bad at it? Train harder. Skill comes with time.
But Digging for Ascension was a whole different kind of torment.
Its controls and physics were downright anti-human.
You had to fully immerse yourself in that nonsensical, borderline-unplayable system to make progress.
So, skill didn’t matter here.
At least not until you’d internalized the janky controls.
Even the best players had to suffer through an adjustment period.
Lu Ze refused to believe anyone could remain unshaken by this game.
Even if Shen Yan’s will was truly unbreakable and Digging for Ascension failed to crack him,
Lu Ze had a backup plan.
He could mix in some "souls-like" elements into a sword-training game.
But he suspected that, given Shen Yan’s genius mindset, souls-like challenges would be the least effective at shaking his Dao heart.
Death after death wouldn’t faze him—he’d just revive and grow stronger.
What would get to him was hitting a wall with no clear path forward.
With that in mind, Digging for Ascension was undeniably the best choice.
Lu Ze activated the Illusion Tower and began constructing the virtual space.
First, he replaced the terrain with a cultivation-world aesthetic.
Then he crafted a pot and a hammer.
After a moment’s thought, Lu Ze summoned Zhong Yi’s digitalized soul and tossed it into the pot.
"You—go test it!"
......
The original Digging for Ascension was a 2D game, so Lu Ze couldn’t copy it outright.
The best approach was to have someone test the mechanics firsthand.
Zhong Yi’s digitalized soul became the perfect guinea pig.
Honestly, Zhong Yi was such a reliable senior brother.
Illustrations, testing, modeling—the guy excelled at everything.
Then again, among this batch of powerful cultivators, he’d died the most, leaving behind the strongest digitalized soul.
Extremely useful.
After repeated adjustments and tests, Lu Ze felt the physics system was finally ready.
Though digitalized souls had no faces,
somehow, Zhong Yi’s movements radiated an aura of utter exhaustion...
Lu Ze climbed into the pot himself to test the controls.
After tweaking a few minor issues, he finalized the design.
The rest was straightforward.
He polished the background, adding some signature scenery from the Tianxuan Sect.
Soon, the illusionary realm was complete.
Lu Ze took out the communication jade slip Shen Yan had given him.
"Brother Shen, the illusionary realm is ready."
"What?? It’s only been three days!"
Shen Yan’s voice from the other end was stunned.
"I did it all for your training, Brother Shen! Shall we meet now?"
Lu Ze’s tone was earnest.
"I’ll come find you right away... Oh, Brother Lu, your illusionary realms always have interesting names. What’s this one called?"
"It’s called..."
"Digging for Ascension."
orn and Humiliation】【Forced Love】 In his past life, Lin Ran was betrayed and murdered by his girlfriend and family, while the yandere female aristocrat, who had treated him as a mere plaything, avenged him by doing in his enemies. Upon seeing the yandere female aristocrat lying in the same coffin, ready to die with him, Lin Ran realized how profoundly mistaken he had been. Reborn, he abandoned the fickle campus beauty and wholeheartedly embraced the yandere female aristocrat's arms. "Ran! If I dig out your eyes and turn them into a specimen, you'll only be able to look at me!" Lin Ran: "Darling, kiss me!" "Ran! If I break your legs, you won't run away anymore, right?" Lin Ran: "Love, hold me tight!" "Ran! If..." Lin Ran: "Hush now! Love me more!" Luo Yao: ... Seeing his scumbag dad: "Take him out!" Seeing his stepmother: "Get rid of her!" Seeing his brother: "Eliminate him!" Seeing his white moonlight: "Send that to Southeast Asia!"
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
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.”
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
