I'm the Mastermind Behind the Fourth Calamity

Overworked office drone Chen Mo died suddenly after working overtime, only to wake up as the lowliest handyman disciple of Qingyun Sect in the cultivation world of Xuanqiong Realm. Even worse, he was bound to a faulty “Strongest Slacker Cultivation System.” It turned out to be a “new player tutorial NPC template” built into this game world, which was about to launch its public beta! The System was powerful, but rigidly demanded that he become an “outstanding NPC.” If he failed to advance to the outer sect within ten days, he would be erased!

With death counting down, Chen Mo struggled to survive at the bottom of a brutal and all-too-real cultivation world. Using the System’s scouting, quest-posting, and shop functions, he exploited the rules and abused System bugs to generate “hidden quests” for himself, narrowly advancing despite the abuse of cruel servants and desperate shortages of resources. But an even greater crisis soon emerged: a chilling warning in the System log revealed the horrifying truth. In one year, the “Fourth Calamity” would descend! Countless “players,” immortal and indifferent to the rules, seeking only experience and rewards, would sweep through like locusts and completely overturn this world!

Chen Mo realized that he was neither a player nor a pure NPC. He was a soul from Earth inhabiting a native body, bound to a faulty “fake System interface.” As a higher civilization, the game company, plotted to treat the real plane of Xuanqiong Realm as a playground and resource mine, he became the only “variable.”

Facing the “calamity” destined to overturn the world, Chen Mo smiled. As the players eagerly killed monsters, completed quests, and fought over bosses, they would never imagine that the mysterious NPC who gave out the infuriating quest “Collect 999 Pebbles for 1 Experience Point” was using the coins from trading in mountains of junk materials to…