Spiritual Energy Awakens! The Firmament Wristwatch

"No more, that's enough~"

"Seriously, don't move..."

A woman's languid, sultry voice drifted through a room with cosplay outfits strewn across the floor.

Pushing aside the fair, shapely leg draped over him, the young man pulled away, settled into a lounge chair beside the floor-to-ceiling window, and took out his phone.

[A hundred-meter-long mutated octopus made landfall on Japan's southeastern coast, leaving thousands dead or injured. Experts from Korea claimed it was the combined product of nuclear contamination and the awakening of spiritual energy. Japan's shameless actions could introduce enormous uncertainties into the awakening.]

[America's chief elder declared that nobody understood the Spiritual Energy Revival better than he did. Stocks in major new-energy companies soared overnight.]

[With the awakening of spiritual energy rendering precision weapons useless, the people of India were celebrating, convinced that the waters of the Ganges would help them lead the new era.]

[The "Firmament Ledger" world will open tomorrow. Huaguo's government publicly announced that this second world offers opportunities to acquire supernatural powers. Public enthusiasm for preordering "Firmament Wristwatches" is soaring.]

[Several Western European nations issued a joint statement condemning Huaguo for revealing information about the Spiritual Energy Revival to ordinary citizens and inciting panic. Protesters in their own countries blasted them for it.]

[Huaguo's Bureau of Extraordinary Individuals has been established. A government spokesperson stated that citizens must register with the bureau after becoming a Dou Zhe.]

[Celebrity Brother Kun announced that he will randomly select ten thousand fans from the comments to receive standard Firmament Wristwatches.]

[...]

Long, fair fingers swiped across the phone screen, rapidly scrolling through one short video after another.

The young man had fair skin, elegant collarbones, beautifully defined pecs, and eight-pack abs that peeked out beneath a thin blanket. His features were sharply sculpted, with thick eyebrows and large eyes.

"Tomorrow... I'll find out whether it's what I think it is." He switched off his phone, an unreadable look in his eyes.

His name was Chu Zhou. He had arrived in this parallel world almost half a month ago, yet seeing these news reports on his phone still left him feeling dazed.

Half a month earlier, as a short-video content creator, he had just finished his cosplay outing at a convention in Magic City. He had arranged to spend the evening having an in-depth discussion with a girl cosplaying Queen Medusa, to assess whether her inner qualities were equally faithful to the character.

On his way back to the hotel, he had run into an influencer cosplaying Xun'er. They hit it off immediately, and she, too, proposed getting to know each other more intimately. But as an honest man who kept his word, he couldn't stand his "queen" up, so he suggested that he and "Xun'er" learn from one another the next day instead.

After chatting a little longer with "Xun'er," he missed his subway stop. Just then, "Canon" suddenly played inside the carriage. He looked toward the sound and discovered that it came from a middle-aged woman carrying a pot.

Then came a boom. Everything spun, and he suddenly found himself outside a convention venue in Hang City.

After a few simple checks, he confirmed that he had crossed into a parallel world—and brought his own body with him.

After all, his utterly unremarkable face and the size he took such pride in hadn't changed at all.

His SIM card didn't work, and the hotel's system said his ID was invalid.

His phone could still connect to Wi-Fi, and he could still log into the green chat app, but he couldn't reach any of his contacts—not his parents, his younger brother, his older sister, or his friends.

As for his payment software, banking apps, and the like, some wouldn't even open, while others reported data errors or showed no login history. None of them worked.

Penniless and without a valid identity, an ordinary person would have been at a complete loss. He, however, turned straight around and entered the convention to put his talents to use. Drawing on his experience, he quickly found a target and secured free meals and lodging. Now, he was supposedly just rubbing against her without putting it in—yet he had gone very deep indeed.

A veteran had once said that you had to be bold when pursuing women!

With either looks or money, you would succeed eight or nine times out of ten.

If you also had a way with words and a sense of humor, winning women over became even easier.

And women in the cosplay scene were right in Chu Zhou's area of expertise. He had successfully landed himself a sugar mommy.

During this time, he had also figured out the state of this world. Before the turn of the millennium, it had been no different from his original world, except that Earth was called Blue Star.

After the millennium, some famous people, celebrities, successful entrepreneurs, and others were different, but the countries' development remained more or less the same as in the world next door.

When Chu Zhou first saw this information, he thought he had entered an entertainment-world scenario, where he could use works from the neighboring world to become an entertainment mogul.

But the next piece of information gave him quite a fright.

On June 2, 2024, Huaguo successfully collected samples from the far side of the moon and returned to Blue Star.

Not long afterward, a meteor from outer space crashed into the North Pole in a way that defied every nation's understanding.

America's chief elder declared that people from Huaguo must have burned an alien's backside with a cigarette on the far side of the moon, causing all of this.

Later, various nations sent expedition teams to the North Pole to study the meteorite. A few months afterward, Huaguo became the first to announce that the era of the Spiritual Energy Revival was approaching.

Animals, plants, and all other living things would undergo mutations. Humans, too, could gain supernatural powers and embark on the path of "immortal cultivation."

But to "cultivate immortality," they needed to enter the second world, the "Firmament Ledger," through a special method and acquire cultivation techniques there.

The method was simple: wear a "Firmament Wristwatch."

The wristwatches came in a standard grade, available for preorder for just one thousand yuan.

Beyond that was the special grade, which cost one hundred thousand yuan to preorder.

Some supposedly high-ranking insiders had also privately revealed the existence of supreme-grade wristwatches, which even ten million yuan couldn't buy.

The difference between the special and standard grades was that, when entering the "Firmament Ledger" world, special-grade users could choose their own spawn location and Soul Attribute.

But even standard-grade wristwatches guaranteed that users would be transported to a safe zone and assigned the attribute best suited to their souls, so many people online felt that spending another ninety-nine thousand yuan was pointless.

"What are you thinking about?"

A lovely, languid voice rang out, and a pair of long, straight legs with no gap between them appeared in Chu Zhou's field of vision.

Chu Zhou looked up to meet her eyes and broke into a smile. "I'm wondering when you're going to pay for my services, Sis Ziwei."

The woman's name was Meng Ziwei. She was fairly tall, with very fair skin and large eyes that seemed to smile. She was pretty, with the sweet face of a cute girl, and looked a lot like a certain big-eyed actress back on Earth. Her chest was well developed, doing justice to all the food she had eaten growing up.

Even when living off a woman for a little while, Chu Zhou had standards. Money wasn't the only thing he cared about.

"You really know how to say things I don't want to hear." Meng Ziwei folded her arms across her chest and spoke irritably.

"You're not going to skip out on the bill, are you, Sis Ziwei?" Chu Zhou sank into the lounge chair, admiring the view from slightly below. "You said you were very satisfied last night. I even recorded it."

"You actually recorded it?" Meng Ziwei's eyes widened, and she reached out a fair hand. "Hand over your phone, or I'll beat you up."

Naturally, Chu Zhou refused.

Meng Ziwei reached for it.

Chu Zhou pulled her straight into his arms.

Their struggle over the phone turned into a round of morning exercise.

In the end, Chu Zhou won. He smiled and said, "I was kidding. How could I do something that sleazy?"

"Hmph, you animal." Meng Ziwei couldn't be bothered to move even a finger. With her eyes closed, she said, "I already bought the Special Watch. Go pick up the package at the hotel's front desk yourself."

Chu Zhou's eyes lit up. "Sis Ziwei, you're the best."