Handsome and Stronger
"One day, I will become a great webnovel author, sell a title for tens of millions, live in a luxury mansion, drive a sports car, marry a rich and beautiful woman, and reach the pinnacle of life!"
In the dim basement, lamp shadows flickered.
Sitting in front of his computer, Bai Xiaowen clacked away at his keyboard, shouting his dream to the empty basement all by himself.
In the basement, only his shadow high-fived Bai Xiaowen back.
After finishing yet another chapter, Bai Xiaowen skillfully logged into the website and opened the author backend.
Copy! Paste! Upload successful!
"I wonder how much my subscriptions went up?" Bai Xiaowen clicked on subscriptions with a trace of anticipation.
"Up by three average subscriptions, already breaking one hundred... cough cough, anyway, I'm one step closer to becoming a great author." Bai Xiaowen comforted himself, wiggling his plump butt as the old wooden chair let out an objecting groan.
Glancing at the bottom-right corner of his monitor, Bai Xiaowen patted his belly, which boasted three layers of fat, and finally felt a wave of hunger.
"It's already eleven-thirty, time to wander around the night market and grab a late-night snack." Bai Xiaowen pushed open the basement door, walking along the stairs and out of his doghouse of a home.
Bai Xiaowen had actually seen better days. Back in high school, he had always hogged the top spot in his class. Whenever grades came out, classmates wouldn't ask who was first, but directly ask who was second. For three years of high school, the runner-up position rotated around, but without exception, everyone shivered in the shadow of the great demon king Bai Xiaowen.
It was just a pity that after getting into a key university, he lost his drive and direction, turning into a literary shut-in during his college years.
Bai Xiaowen finally managed to get his graduation diploma, only to hit wall after wall when looking for jobs. By a fluke, he ended up in the webnovel industry and became a writer. Long nights of staying up late coupled with his love for food made Bai Xiaowen's figure rapidly expand horizontally. As the saying goes, being fat ruins everything; it was hard for anyone to discover the handsome essence of him from Bai Xiaowen's bloated physique.
Bai Xiaowen wandered the streets like a foraging grizzly bear, completely unaware that a speck of starlight in the sky was hurtling straight toward him, faster and faster.
What were the odds of a person getting struck by a shooting star? Hard to say, the difference between getting hit and not getting hit was fifty-fifty, right?
The starlight accurately struck Bai Xiaowen's head as if guided by navigation. In a split second, Bai Xiaowen only had time to raise his head.
An eyeball-shaped object crashed violently into Bai Xiaowen's left eye socket.
Bai Xiaowen felt the world spin. In the endless darkness, there was only a blood-red eyeball that filled the heavens and earth!
When Bai Xiaowen woke up again, his nose was filled with the smell of disinfectant, and opening his eyes, he saw only a pure white ceiling.
"This is a hospital? I actually didn't die from getting hit by a shooting star?" Bai Xiaowen was somewhat puzzled, touching his left eye. "The shooting star clearly pierced straight through my left eye, but my eye is still here. Am I dreaming?"
"Big Brother, you're awake!"
A voice of pleasant surprise rang out. Beside the hospital bed, a girl rubbing her reddened eyes looked at Bai Xiaowen with full delight and disbelief, lunging forward to grab Bai Xiaowen's arm.
The girl was around thirteen or fourteen, wearing a washed-out blue cloth school uniform. Her pretty face was delicate and charming, standing upright like a little white poplar.
"You..." Bai Xiaowen was somewhat dazed, not expecting a pretty girl to call him big brother the moment he woke up. He didn't remember having such a little sister! Given the White Family genes, even if he had a sister, she couldn't possibly be this pretty, right?
Little White Poplar was crying and laughing at the same time, helping Bai Xiaowen sit up slowly. "That's great, Big Brother. I knew you wouldn't abandon me. Ever since Big Sister went missing, there are only the two of us left at home. You can't leave me behind again, wuwuwu..."
Bai Xiaowen straightened his waist and abruptly spotted a small round mirror on the bedside table, seeing his own face in the mirror.
"My god, is this me? This... this is way too handsome, right?"
The Bai Xiaowen in the mirror had pitch-black eyes, a straight bridge of the nose, fair skin, and a jawline with a perfect arc. He was absolute eye candy.
Bai Xiaowen remained dazed, instinctively wanting to pinch himself, but both his hands were tightly grabbed by Little White Poplar, unable to break free at all. In his anxiety, countless images seemed to surge up in his mind, and right then, he rolled his eyes and passed out again.
Little White Poplar let out an "ah" shriek and rushed wildly out of the ward, her crying shouts of "Doctor" echoing through the corridor.
In the empty ward, Bai Xiaowen slowly woke up. But this time, he had already figured out the situation and was no longer lost.
"I time-traveled... This identity is called Bai Xiaowen, homophonous with my original name."
This was the Earth of the "Psychic Energy Era"!
In the year 2021 AD, a special energy named "Psionic Particles" poured into Earth through the gaps of the "Spirit Realm," causing the entire Earth to become digitalized under the influence of psionic particles, and countless species mutated.
At the same time, batches of creatures from the "Spirit Realm" invaded Earth.
Zombies that could shrug off bullets, dreadclaw monsters that skimmed over walls and roofs making them impossible to target, mountain giants with immense strength that treated tanks like toys, and vengeful spirits that could tear souls apart with a single glance...
Most importantly, these monsters were protected by the energy of psionic particles, greatly weakening the effectiveness of weapons from Earth's original tech tree.
Fortunately, psionic particles also altered the bodies of Earth's humans, opening a new path of evolution. Humans who successfully evolved were called—Awakened Ones!
"Awakened Ones" possessed the strength to go toe-to-toe with monsters. After the first generation of Awakened Ones grew up, a fragile balance finally formed between Earth's humans and the monsters.
The Psychic Energy Era kicked off, and the year 2021 AD was designated as Spirit Origin Year 1.
This year was Spirit Origin Year 96, and Bai Xiaowen had traveled one hundred years into the future, into the body of a high school student named "Bai Xiaowen." The memories of their two lives overlapped, feeling like a dream—though he didn't know whether it was Zhuang Zhou dreaming of a butterfly, or the butterfly dreaming of Zhuang Zhou.
"From now on, I am Bai Xiaowen." I must say, a webnovel author's life gave Bai Xiaowen thick nerves, coupled with the impact of soul fusion, so he accepted this identity without any psychological barriers. Besides, he had turned into a major hottie—what else was there to be dissatisfied with?
In this life, thirty percent relied on hard work, seventy percent on talent, and ninety percent on looks.
Bai Xiaowen picked up the small round mirror and scrutinized himself thoroughly.
"Tsk tsk, broad shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs, model build and celebrity face—it'd be hard not to become popular in showbiz."
Just as Bai Xiaowen was staring intently at himself in the mirror, a string of information flowed into his mind.
[Bai Xiaowen] [Race: Human Species / Human Race] [Talent: Insight] [Attributes: Strength 1.8, Agility 2.1, Constitution 1.7, Spirit 4.9] [Specialties: Basic Combat Level 1, Basic Weaponry (Single-Handed Sword Mastery) Level 2, Basic Meditation Level 1]
"This is the personal data under the Psychic Energy Era. Huh, what's up with the 'Talent'? In my memory, this body didn't have any talent! Also, how did the 'Spirit' attribute suddenly increase by so much? The original Bai Xiaowen only had a Spirit of 1.9."
"Right, the newly appeared Insight Talent, the skyrocketing Spirit attribute... It's all probably related to that huge blood-red eyeball!"
The moment a question arose in Bai Xiaowen's mind, the answer popped up immediately. The speed of his thought processing surprised even himself, making him feel as though his brain had evolved too! Compared to his old brain, it was like the difference between a super sports car and a hand-tracted cultivator—simply put, Bai Xiaowen now had a super brain!
Merely with a gentle sweep of his eyes, the tables, chairs, beds, and cabinets in the hospital room were engraved clearly in his mind like a photograph, down to the slight wear and tear and how many scratches were on them, appearing in exquisite detail! What was even more terrifying was that Bai Xiaowen had memorized all this while mentally calculating five-digit squares.
This kind of observational power, this kind of memory, this kind of computational power... was not only vastly superior to Bai Xiaowen, the high school senior of this time and space, but also a hundred times smarter than Bai Xiaowen, the webnovel author from another space-time. It was definitely a super brain!
The super brain should also be a perk brought by the blood-red eyeball.
Bai Xiaowen observed his left eye carefully in the mirror, and deep within his pupil, a faint trace of red light was actually swirling. He silently chanted cancel insight, and the red light faded away accordingly.
"Open personal attribute panel."
A transparent page like a book page opened before Bai Xiaowen's eyes. The race, attributes, talents, and specialties on it matched the data Bai Xiaowen had just obtained through his Insight ability completely. This meant the Insight talent had zero errors and was extremely precise!
"Awesome." Bai Xiaowen was extremely excited. In the Psychic Energy Era, only a small fraction of people possessed talent abilities. No matter how trashy a talent was, once confirmed, it would be highly valued.
Like someone who had just received a beloved toy, Bai Xiaowen searched everywhere for items to test his talent: the cabinet, the bed, the mirror... not sparing a single one. However, the prompts he received were all: "The target contains negligible psionic energy and is not a psionic item."
Finally, Bai Xiaowen managed to find a box of used bandages emitting a dim glow, and the Insight talent yielded results.
[Cotton Hemostatic Bandage (Used)] [Tier Rank: 0] [Composition: Life energy 0.71%, Disinfectant 0.28%, Blood 12%, Cotton yarn 86.01%] [Effect: Causes wounds to heal rapidly and scab over, shortening the duration of bleeding effects.]
"My Insight talent can work on items containing psionic energy! Not only can it identify effects, but it can also reveal composition! This feeling... is so much stronger than average detection-type abilities!" Bai Xiaowen rejoiced inwardly, tossing the blood-stained roll of bandages back into the trash can.
However, the moment he threw away the bandages, Bai Xiaowen suddenly remembered.
"The blood on these bandages... is mine? Damn, which bastard did this..."
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