Twilight descended, and a full moon climbed into the night sky, its cold light lingering.
Chen Yansen drove his Bentley Mulsanne slowly into Xucheng Academy, finally parking it at the base of the faculty apartment building.
He then headed upstairs and unlocked the door to Room 0418.
Entering the living room, Chen Yansen closed the door behind him, sat down on the sofa, and summoned the system panel.
"Allocate points!"
A vast and magnificent golden mist tore through the void and shot into the space between his eyebrows. The sensation this time was extremely intense; even his eyes were tinged with a golden glow.
The diameter of his Divine Sense’s detection range, originally just over eighteen meters, began to expand—nineteen meters, twenty, twenty-one, finally stopping at thirty meters.
Within the surrounding nine-hundred-square-meter area, a myriad of colors instantly appeared. His once gray-and-white world of perception was now one hundred percent synchronized with the scene visible to the naked eye.
The only difference was that with his Divine Sense, Chen Yansen could see farther and with greater clarity. All the people, objects, insects, and small animals nearby were under his control.
The enhancement ended after just a few breaths.
Chen Yansen walked to the mirror and carefully observed the subtle changes in his body. Besides his eyes becoming brighter, there seemed to be no other alterations.
CLANG!
CLANG!
CLANG!
The dumbbell plates in the corner of the room floated into the air one after another.
Chen Yansen remembered clearly that his previous telekinetic limit was 41.25 kilograms. Now, he was controlling ten plates at once without the slightest sense of fatigue.
Each plate weighed 10 kilograms!
Then, with a thought, the eleventh plate immediately soared into the air.
The twelfth!
The thirteenth!
...
The twenty-third!
The twenty-fourth!
When the weight reached a terrifying 240 kilograms, Chen Yansen finally felt the strain. He tried to lift one more ten-kilogram plate but couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried.
THUD THUD THUD!
Under Chen Yansen’s control, the stack of plates returned to its original position.
Then, his condensed Spiritual Power began to coil around the soles of his feet, circle by circle, gradually forming a disc about half a meter in diameter.
His body, weighing over two hundred pounds, then rose up, hovering in midair.
’I’m... lifting myself?’
Chen Yansen took a deep breath and cursed inwardly. ’Judging by the direction this damn system is modifying me, does it really want to turn me into a god?’
’What does it feel like to fly?’
Chen Yansen stomped his foot. It felt like he was stepping on solid concrete.
He tried to take a step forward, and the disc immediately split in two, firmly attaching to the bottoms of his feet.
Walking in the air felt like climbing stairs.
’What if I envelop myself in Spiritual Power?’
The thought piqued Chen Yansen’s interest. In an instant, the rest of his Spiritual Power flowed like water, squirming across the surface of his skin to form a protective film.
The discs under his feet were absorbed as well, yet he remained floating in midair!
’It worked!’
The corners of Chen Yansen’s mouth curled up into a smug smile. Even though the system hadn’t provided an instruction manual, he had figured out the uses of his Spiritual Power one by one through simple trial and error.
The room was too small to really let loose.
With that, Chen Yansen hovered three millimeters off the ground and floated out of Room 0418 with incredible smoothness, not forgetting to lock the door behind him.
Standing on the fourth floor, Chen Yansen glanced down and couldn’t help but think, ’If I weren’t afraid of being noticed, I’d never have to use stairs or elevators again.’
He gave a faint smile and floated down the stairwell toward the first floor.
Thanks to the perception of his Divine Sense, not a single person noticed his strange movements.
The faculty apartments were adjacent to Xuyuan’s perimeter wall. Chen Yansen avoided the security cameras and, with a light leap, cleared the three-meter-high brick wall.
Beyond the wall lay a field of golden wheat.
All around was pitch-black and exceptionally quiet.
But to Chen Yansen’s ears, he could hear rabbits digging burrows, crickets burrowing into the earth, wheat-stalk snakes slithering, pheasants scurrying, and grasshoppers pouncing. The moonlight cascaded down, illuminating the surface of a river canal several kilometers away and making it shimmer like silver scales.
After making sure no one was watching, Chen Yansen lifted his feet and floated above the heads of wheat.
Under his control, his flying speed increased steadily.
At first, it was only four to five kilometers per hour, about the same as a normal walking pace.
Then it reached ten kilometers per hour, on par with a fast run.
Twenty kilometers per hour, sixty, one hundred!
His speed kept increasing, but his brain also began to swell, and he felt a faint twinge of pain.
Seeing this, Chen Yansen slowly reduced his speed.
Next, he tested his flight altitude and endurance. He found that the limiting factor for his altitude wasn’t the strength of his Spiritual Power, but the thin air at high altitudes; the temperature was a minor issue.
His endurance was also impressive. He only felt a hint of fatigue after floating continuously for more than ten minutes.
Even though the Lighthouse Country’s most advanced KH-11 Keyhole satellite in 2012 had a resolution of ten centimeters, successfully capturing his silhouette would require several things. First, the reconnaissance satellite would have to be aimed directly at the area near Xuyuan, with good lighting conditions and no cloud cover. Second, it would need precise real-time data processing capabilities.
And in 2012, that technology didn’t exist.
Besides, even if a satellite did capture an image of him, with the current ten-centimeter resolution, he would likely be dismissed as a human-shaped balloon.
Chen Yansen put away the phone he had been using to measure his speed and turned back toward Xuyuan.
Additionally, a new talent had quietly appeared in the talent section of the system panel: [Planck Clock]. Unlike [Eidetic Memory] and [Rhino-Hide Tiger-Bone], this newly activated talent came with a line of explanation next to its name.
When the talent is active, you can experience one hour of subjective thought within a single second of real time.
Chen Yansen mulled it over for a moment and immediately understood its function. The [Planck Clock] was similar to bullet time; it was like activating an overclocked mind, stretching time by a factor of 3,600. For research and development, it was an absolutely unbeatable tool.
With his Spiritual Power, combined with this talent, it was like he had broken through technological barriers. A technology that would normally take hundreds of people three years to develop could probably be completed by him in just two or three days.
The [Planck Clock] was an active talent; it had to be turned on and off through the system panel.
This unusual requirement made Chen Yansen wary.
’This thing probably has side effects, and they’re likely not small.’
Chen Yansen didn’t test it immediately. Only after he returned to Room 0418 and sat down on the sofa did he focus his mind and try to activate the [Planck Clock].
In the next second, the entire world seemed to pause.
His thoughts raced at an unimaginable speed. The smart memory compression problem he had encountered that afternoon while writing the Aurora Future OS was instantly solved with a better solution.
He also came up with new ideas for inter-process communication, the eco-compatibility layer, and the layered security model.
The business data from all of Senlian Capital’s subsidiaries intertwined before him like a spider’s web, and all the organizational and management loopholes that were usually hidden were now laid bare.
The code he had already written for the Aurora Future OS now seemed like garbage, utterly worthless.
Chen Yansen subconsciously tried to get up and grab his computer, but while the thought was there, his body was slow to respond.
His movements had also been slowed down 3,600 times!
The talent was terrifyingly powerful. It was well worth the millions of Human Dao Fire he had poured into it.
’Deactivate!’
Chen Yansen issued the silent command and withdrew from the [Planck Clock] talent.
But what followed was a bone-deep exhaustion. He didn’t even have the strength to climb into bed and collapsed onto the sofa.
With his last ounce of strength, he glanced at the timer on his phone. Only three seconds had passed.
’Son of a bitch, it was only three goddamn seconds?’
Chen Yansen’s eyelids fell heavily. He felt an unprecedented weight on both his Spirit and body.
Ever since his rebirth, this was the first time he had ever been this exhausted. His lips were pale, and he fell asleep the moment his head hit the cushion.
The next morning, sunlight streamed straight through the glass. The chirping of birds filled the air, and gentle music began to play from the school’s broadcast system.
Only then did Chen Yansen slowly open his eyes.
At that moment, the hour hand on the wall clock was pointing to the number 10.