Lin Hao's brain felt like it had short-circuited. He just sat there, frozen on his narrow bed, staring at the holographic prompt.
(Y/N)
The two letters blinked with a calm, steady rhythm.
"Upgrade... the world?" he said out loud, his voice a dry croak. "What does that even mean?"
This was not the 10 Upgrade Points he had been desperately hoping for. This wasn't a magic sword, an ancient cultivation manual, or even a simple pill that would make him smarter for his next exam. The "Newbie Gift Pack" had given him a single, planet-sized button.
His first instinct, a cold wave of pure, rational fear, was to think 'No!'.
This was the entire planet. Billions of people. His family. What if "upgrading" meant "destroying"? What if "Lower Spiritual Plane" was just a fancy term for "Hellscape"? The warning was right there: [global, irreversible consequences]. This was a choice that could make him the greatest monster in human history, all by accident.
He was just a broke, stressed-out college kid. Who was he to make a decision for all seven billion people on Earth? He wanted to upgrade his life, not gamble with everyone else's.
He took a shaky breath, forcing his panicked mind to slow down. He was an engineer. He had to analyze the data.
"Think, Lin Hao. Think like a webnovel protagonist."
In every story he'd ever read, the main character was always at the bottom, just like him. And the System, the "golden finger," was the path out. It was always a test. It was never easy.
He mentally pulled up the other tabs, his eyes flicking between them, looking for a clue.
He looked at [$Self Upgrade$]: [Cultivation: Uninitiated] [Talent: Level 1 (Mortal Root)]
He looked at [$World Upgrade$]: [Current Plane: Mortal Plane] [Global Reiki Density: 0.00%] [Cultivation Ceiling: Level 4: Grandmaster (Bone Forging)]
He stared at the words until they blurred, and then, suddenly, they snapped into sharp, perfect focus.
It was a logic problem.
"Mortal Root..." he whispered, looking at his own status. "Mortal Plane..." he whispered, looking at the world's status. "Global Reiki Density: 0.00%."
He remembered the term from his novels. "Reiki." Spiritual energy. The invisible, all-powerful fuel that cultivators used to strengthen their bodies and defy the heavens.
"How can anyone cultivate... how can I cultivate... if there's zero Reiki in the world?"
It all clicked into place. This wasn't a random, terrifying choice. This was the first step. It was the tutorial level. The System was telling him, "You want to cultivate? You want to upgrade yourself? Well, you can't. Not in this world. This world is mortal. It has no fuel."
The 10 UP cost for [Level 1: Novice (Iron Skin)] was probably useless right now. Even if he had the points, what would he use to power the upgrade? It would be like having a car with no gasoline.
This "free planar ascension" was the gasoline. For the whole planet.
He looked back at the [$World Upgrade$] tab. He saw the "Cultivation Ceiling" for the Mortal Plane was "Level 4: Grandmaster." That must be the absolute peak of human potential right now—the legendary martial arts masters you'd see in old movies. It was a dead end.
But a "Lower Spiritual Plane"? The name implied it was the first step on a much longer path.
"If I upgrade the world," he reasoned, his heart beginning to beat faster with a terrifying, wild excitement, "I'm not just upgrading everyone else. I'm upgrading my own potential. A better world... is better for me."
The warning still echoed in his mind. "Irreversible consequences." "All life... affected."
He thought about his failed exam. He thought about the FINAL NOTICE from the loan company. He thought about the polite, soul-crushing rejection email.
His current life was a slow, grinding defeat. The "system" of society was already crushing him, and he had no choice in the matter.
This... this was a choice. A real, massive, terrifying choice. For the first time in his life, he wasn't powerless. He was the only one with power.
"I can't just... do nothing," he said, his voice stronger now. "If I have this power, and I'm too scared to even use the free gift, then I deserve to fail. I deserve to be at the bottom."
He looked at the two blinking letters.
(Y/N)
"I've read enough stories to know," he muttered, "the protagonist never, ever chooses 'No'."
He closed his eyes. He took one last, deep breath of the stale, familiar, "Mortal Plane" air.
And with all the focus he could muster, he thought the word.
"Yes."
For one split second, nothing happened. He opened his eyes, a jolt of disappointment flashing through him. "Did it..."
THUMP.
It wasn't a sound. It was a feeling. A deep, silent, invisible pulse that seemed to thump from him. It was like a giant, ghostly heart had just beaten once, and he was at the very center of it.
The pulse radiated outward, impossibly fast.
It passed through his body first, a feeling of strange, cold-then-hot energy that made him gasp.
It hit his desk.
CRACK!
The screen of his smartphone, sitting dark and silent, suddenly fractured. A hairline crack spiderwebbed out from its center. The old, rattling fan on his desk let out a high-pitched whine, spun three times at an incredible speed, and then died with a puff of smoky-smelling air. The single fluorescent light bulb overhead flickered, buzzed violently, and went dark, plunging the room into blackness—a blackness relieved only by the steady, calm blue of the System interface.
The pulse kept going.
It passed through his dorm building. In the hallway, the 'Exit' sign at the far end fizzled and went out.
In the next room, his neighbor's video game console let out a digital scream and reset. The neighbor, who had been seconds from beating a final boss, shouted in rage.
The pulse expanded, faster than light, faster than thought.
It swept through his city.
In an instant, car alarms on a thousand streets began to blare, all at the exact same moment. Their sensitive electronics, touched by an energy they were never designed to handle, had all shorted out. Streetlights for a dozen city blocks flickered and died, creating a rolling blackout.
In the downtown hospital, a surgeon in the middle of a delicate operation suddenly gasped. "Doctor?" the nurse asked, alarmed. "I... I don't know," the surgeon said, looking at her steady hands. "I just... I feel..." She couldn't describe it. The chronic ache in her lower back was... gone.
The pulse covered the country. The continent. The planet.
In New York City, a taxi driver, half-asleep in traffic, suddenly sat bolt upright. He felt a strange, sudden "lightness" in his chest, as if he'd just been tossed in the air and caught. He slammed on his brakes, thinking he'd hit something, but there was nothing there.
In a village in rural India, an old woman, her joints swollen with arthritis, woke from her sleep with a sharp, involuntary gasp. She sat up, and for the first time in twenty years, the burning pain in her knees was just a dull ache.
In the deep Himalayas, a monk who had been meditating in a cave for three years opened his eyes. A single tear rolled down his cheek. The "truth" he had been seeking, the energy of the world he'd been trying to sense, had suddenly, impossibly, touched him back.
Every single human being on Earth felt it.
For some, it was a dizzy spell. For others, a sudden rush of energy. For millions, it was a shared, momentary, and completely unexplainable gasp, as if the entire planet had just been submerged in cold water.
Back in the dorm room, Lin Hao sat in the dark, his heart pounding.
He felt it, too. The stale, stuffy air in his room was... different. It felt cleaner. Sharper. He took a deep breath, and it was like drinking cool, fresh spring water. He felt a strange, warm, itching sensation spreading under his skin, a feeling of vitality that he had never experienced before.
The blue screen in front of him flickered once, then displayed a new message.
[Upgrade Complete. 'Earth' has ascended from Mortal Plane to Lower Spiritual Plane.] [Global Reiki Density: 0.01% (and rising)...] [Cultivation Ceiling: Level 9: The Perfect Foundation (Peak Houtian)]
[Global Reiki awakening. Latent Spiritual Roots in all biological lifeforms are activating...]
Lin Hao stared at the last line.
And then a new message popped up, this one just for him.
[First-time activation detected. Your 'Level 1: Mortal Root' is awakening...]
The feeling all over his body intensified. The warm itch became a sudden, sharp, prickling sensation, as if a million tiny needles were poking him from the inside out. It wasn't painful, not yet, but it was the strangest, most unnerving feeling of his life. His body was... changing.