The school bell rang, not with a melodic chime, but with a harsh, electronic blare that signaled the end of the day—and for most, the end of their peace of mind.
I watched as my classmates scrambled, their faces a mix of terror and avarice. They gathered in cliques, discussing "priming agents" and "Aether-density supplements." They were already dividing the world into the hunters and the hunted, oblivious to the fact that I had already seen the bottom of the food chain and died there.
As I slung my worn canvas bag over my shoulder, a shadow fell across my desk.
"Still acting the philosopher, Feng?"
I didn't need to look up to know the voice. Zhao Kai. In my previous life, he had been the son of a mid-level bureaucrat who delighted in reminding me of my place. In this world, his father was a high-ranking executive in the Heaven's Reach Guild. He looked at me with a smirk that felt like a localized infection.
"I heard you're still working that graveyard shift at the Aether-processing plant," Zhao Kai drawled, leaning against the desk. "Scrubbing the floors of the elite to pay for a vocational school you'll never attend. It's poetic, really. The orphan trying to climb a mountain made of glass."
I looked at his hand—manicured, soft, the skin glowing with the faint, pearlescent sheen of someone who had been injected with Grade-B Aether stabilizers since puberty.
"The mountain isn't made of glass, Zhao Kai," I said, my voice coming out as a low, dangerous hum. I stood up, and for a second, the height difference between us seemed to vanish. "It's made of bodies. And glass breaks a lot easier than bone."
The smirk on his face faltered. There was something in my eyes—the cold, dead stare of a man who had felt the weight of a ten-ton truck crush his soul—that made him take a subconscious step back. He masked it quickly with a scoff, but the seed of unease had been planted.
"Three days," he sneered, pointing a finger at my chest. "When the Awakening Orb measures that hollow chest of yours and returns an F-Rank 'Laborer,' I'll make sure my father hires you. We always need someone to clean the monster dung from the stables."
He walked away, his sycophants trailing behind him like pilot fish following a shark. I didn't respond. Words were the currency of the weak. In three days, the only currency that would matter was Aetheric Potential.
---
I walked home through the district of Jianghai, my mind a hyper-active engine of observation. This wasn't the city I knew. The "Neon District" was still there, but the signs didn't just advertise noodles and cheap electronics.
[EQUIPMENT REPAIR: D-RANK AND ABOVE ONLY]
[WANTED: HEALERS FOR C-RANK GOBLIN CLEARANCE. 20% COMMISSION]
[NOTICE: DO NOT ENTER THE VORTEX RADIUS WITHOUT EVOLUTION CLEARANCE]
The air itself felt heavy, charged with a static tension that made the hair on my arms stand up. This was the "Nature of All"—the pervasive energy that had turned our planet into a staging ground for a cosmic game.
I reached my "home"—a cramped, one-room apartment in the Grey Zone, the buffer between the city's gleaming core and the dangerous "Wasteland" portals. It smelled of damp concrete and the metallic tang of the nearby processing plants.
I sat on the edge of my thin mattress and closed my eyes.
'Nature of All... Synchronizing...'
The words from my death-vision echoed in the silence of my mind. If this was a regression, why did the world feel so different? Was I in a parallel dimension, or had the impact of the truck simply cracked the seal on a reality that had always been hidden?
I reached deep into the core of my being, seeking that "spark" I had felt in the void. At first, there was only the cold ache of hunger.
But then, I found it.
Deep within my soul, buried under layers of trauma and the memory of Ye Shenyue's betrayal, was a flickering ember of obsidian light. It wasn't the blue "Aether" the teachers talked about. It was darker. More primal.
My breath hitched. In my previous life, I was a stepping stone. A fucking nobody. But as I stared at the faint, ghostly Aether essence in my soul, predatory hope began to take root.
Ye Shenyue wanted a life of luxury. She wanted a man who could "give her the world."
"Li Wei can give me the world. You can't even give me a decent meal..."
The memory of her voice was no longer a wound; it was a whetstone.
"You were right, Shenyue," I whispered into the dark, empty room. "I can't give you a decent meal. Because in this life... I'm going to be the one who decides who gets to eat at all."
---
I spent the next forty-eight hours in a state of clinical obsession. I didn't go back to the convenience store. I didn't scrub any floors. I used the last of my meager savings—the money I had painstakingly hoarded for her tuition—to buy raw, low-grade Aether stones from a black-market dealer in the Grey Zone.
Commoners weren't supposed to possess them. They were "volatile" without a Class. But I didn't care about the rules of a world that had discarded me like trash.
I sat in the center of my room, the stones glowing with a sickly green light. I didn't try to "circulate" the energy like the textbooks suggested. Instead, I imagined the truck. I imagined the crushing weight. I imagined the void.
I consumed the energy.
By the morning of the third day, my skin felt tight, as if my muscles were being rewritten by a master architect. My eyes, once dull and clouded by fatigue, now held a sharp, crystalline clarity.
I stood before the cracked mirror, adjusting the collar of my frayed shirt. Today was the Awakening Ceremony. Today, the "nobody" would be weighed.
I left the apartment and began the walk toward the school's Grand Hall. The streets were packed. Families were praying openly. Some were weeping, knowing that today would determine if their children were "Assets" or "Liability."
I walked through the crowd, a ghost among the living. I didn't feel fear. I didn't feel excitement. I only felt a cold, focused intent.
As I reached the school gates, I saw a sleek, silver sports car purr to a halt near the entrance. It was a model I recognized—the same predatory growl, the same arrogant posture of wealth.
The passenger door opened.
A girl stepped out. She wore a silk dress, a deep crimson that caught the morning sun like spilled blood. Her hair was styled in elegant waves.
My heart didn't skip a beat. It didn't stutter with grief.
Ye Shenyue looked toward the gates, her eyes scanning the "common" students with a practiced, elegant indifference. She was already acting like a goddess among mortals, her arm linked with a boy who radiated the smug confidence of an S-Rank-to-be.
She didn't see me. Not yet.
But as I stepped into the shadow of the Grand Hall, I felt the obsidian ember in my soul roar into a silent flame.
'Look closely, Shenyue,' I thought, a dark smile playing on my lips. 'The stepping stone is about to become the mountain.'
---