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."
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
