After the Spiritual Qi Revival

My author page's new novel, After the Demolition, My Whole Family Made the Pig-Butchering Scam List, is now underway! Coming soon: Can Infinite Failures Only Deduct Love? Please add them to your reading lists, thank you!~ P.S. I'm terrible at titles and blurbs. If you like strong female leads, try my older novels in the same genre, The Old Wang Is Gone, So We Went to Reclaim the Wasteland and Hold Tight to the Wrench in Your Hand. Trust me and stick with it for a few more chapters. (Judging by the comments and reader gifts, those seem to work better than blurbs, but please make sure to read the guide at the very end. It'll be better for both of us.) If you don't like it, you don't pay. Synopsis: On the eve of the national college entrance exam, the nation's genius cultivators are full of confidence, ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with Heaven. Only A Diao is timid and keeps her head down. When the competition begins, she quietly pulls out an ordinary, cheap magic staff and casts a curse: Everyone, turn into pigs! Bang! Bang! Bang! The geniuses chasing exam scrolls on their flying vehicles all plunge to the ground, where they turn into little pink pigs. After taking first place in her group, she wants to collect resentment, so she quietly takes a screenshot of the pig farm and posts it to her social media feed, writing: What's there to be proud of, even if I took first place? They only lost their grades, while I lost their love for me The collective psychic power of contestants from across the country: +99999... Worldbuilding synopsis: A feudal empire with high martial arts and advanced technology, complete with robots, spaceships, Taobao, and the college entrance exam. The imperial court sits atop a rigid aristocratic class, while financial conglomerates control the lifeblood of society. Everyone's life and death are watched over by others. Some say that spiritual qi revival, the spread of underground caverns, and the borders of the Three Kingdoms will herald the Demon King's arrival and the slaughter of all who live there. Some say A Diao is that revived Demon King. Maybe she really is. P.S. Romance isn't a major focus in this novel. There may be some flirtation, but the story is mainly about building a career, making a comeback, and seizing power. Everything else is secondary. Also, in my opinion, an independent woman is someone with exceptional survival skills who can manage her feelings on her own terms and enjoy the richness of life. That's all. She won't sacrifice her principles or dignity, or give up her ambitions for romance. I'm explaining this because I hope the ladies won't argue in the comments. I'm a hopeless flirt who loves everyone, and I'll feel bad no matter which of you loses the argument. (A real scumbag thing to say.) Reader's guide: 1. This is a high-risk world, where people use every means at their disposal to fight, and the morality of the characters doesn't align with modern sensibilities. (The protagonist is ruthless too.) It's a fictional parallel world, so don't compare it to real life. Readers who insist on judging everything by their own moral standards, and readers who demand chaste characters, please stay away. The characters' opinions and the events in the story do not represent the author's views. This is simply a story. 2. The female lead rises from humble beginnings and grows stronger step by step. For the first few dozen chapters, she appears to keep her head down while secretly setting traps and profiting at others' expense. This isn't a story where she ascends to the heavens and crushes everyone from the start, but she generally doesn't let her enemies live through the night. There are secrets behind the family feud, and every other character serves a purpose. The female lead is all about making money and fighting for power. Once the academy exams begin, she dominates the whole field. 3. I'm warning you in advance: if you dislike either of the points above, please don't read this. I also politely decline writing advice, thank you. My next novel, Will the Grand Archmage Make Money Today?, is coming soon. Here's the synopsis. A murder takes place in District 13, a slum for the lower classes, in the alchemical magic game world of Arcane Throne, with its Western fantasy flavor. The wooden door opens. Xie Keli, a scumbag who used to roam the streets, stumbles out of the room belonging to Fu Chuan, a lowly commoner, with his clothes in disarray. Just as the furious crowd is about to execute him, a noble's guard unit descends from the sky. As the illegitimate son of a noble, he gets away unscathed. In the dead of night, he touches his own face and remembers that before she used the Devouring Scroll, she was actually called Fu Chuan. Before transmigrating as Fu Chuan, she had been a game-resource broker. In a world of arcane magic, staffs wave, elemental particles sing, flesh surges and is destroyed, and matter born of time crumbles under spells. The Coffin Bearers, the Little Butcher Assassin Corps, the Cross Rose Knights, cunning financiers, zombie brides, ugly goblin armies... Are these all just dungeon instances? The academy's arcane mages are choosing their dungeon party members. The eldest heir calculates how to eliminate his family's disgrace of a younger brother, while his beautiful fiancée is already pregnant with twins by the academy's heartthrob. The male lead, equipped with a bugged System, plans to kill the scumbag young master and claim the world's fortune. Shaking a triangular potion bottle, using fire elements to light the cloudfire furnace, calculating a miniature world of metal reactions, and struggling through an alchemy system of endless possibilities, Xie Keli, sporting bedhead, works out how much this batch of alchemical goods can sell for, if the reaction chamber doesn't explode first. Reader's guide: 1. A blend of Eastern and Western dimensions: a high-martial world where the game has become reality. Class divisions are severe. Theocracy constrains the monarchy, the monarchy rules everything, and capital monopolizes material resources and the economy. 2. Equipment and resources come from dungeon runs. Defeat a boss and it drops equipment and experience; otherwise, practice alchemy. Either burn money on technology or grind relentlessly and survive the dungeons. The story centers on the academy system: fight monsters and level up, as countless academies compete in a global arcane rat race. Rise to the top through strength, and make a comeback through sheer resilience. 3. The characters' values do not represent mine. Given the civilization and plot logic of this world, please don't judge it by modern morality. The protagonist keeps a low profile and can be male or female, an honest, down-to-earth person with a dark, ruthless streak. When fighting others, it's either you die or you die. 4. Romance takes up little of the story and is open-ended, shaped by the protagonist's identity and the plot. Feel free to imagine the rest, but I won't accept readers interfering with the story. 5. I haven't thought of anything else yet. I'll add more when I do. My next novel, The Mutants: A Future War of Mutation, is now underway. World setting: The year is 2500. Resources are running out, and technology has developed in only a few directions: firearms, biological mutation, and energy. The world is on the brink of a wasteland-era upheaval, and the resources needed for everyday life are dwindling to their limits. The world's mainstream political systems are collapsing, financial conglomerates control everything, and the gap between rich and poor is enormous. Identity cards are beginning to mark people's class, and society is embracing entertainment to the extreme. Synopsis: Global climate change and radiation disasters have exposed mysterious regions across the seas and on land. With resources equaling wealth, the Tianxi Conglomerate, one of the world's largest financial powers, has concluded that its investment in the Deep Red Zone B05 ruins has failed. It therefore sends the Ninth Exploration Team to survey the site. Sui Xin, a frail history and environmental studies consultant on the exploration team, is one of the conglomerate's highly intelligent middle-class employees. She stands out from the team's burly members, who carry lethal weapons. But on their very first day inside, fog engulfs their convoy, and the tires are corroded and blown out. With a tremendous crash, their vehicle plunges into a ravine. When Sui Xin wakes from the pain, she sees that the skin on her arm hurts. She touches it and feels a two-centimeter-long worm crawling beneath her skin. In the pool where the wrecked car has landed, countless blood-red worms are swimming toward her. At that moment, she knows it's over. She also suddenly realizes that everyone selected for this mission seems to belong to the lowest classes, with E- or D-level identity cards. And she is E, the very lowest. What Sui Xin doesn't know is that the moment she touches her arm, a global livestream begins. Across the world, including in the livestream channels for the Tianxi Conglomerate's many different ruins, an advertisement appears: Trapped in the ruins, they face certain death. But they will also bear the hopes of humanity and achieve genetic mutation! The advertising hype is deafening. Heads roll in the ruins, while the enormous wealth generated by the livestream makes the capitalists beam with delight. But they never expected that three days later, some of these people would really mutate. The mutants go on a killing spree during the livestream, cruel and powerful, on the verge of breaking free of the ruins and returning to the human world. They are about to take revenge. Humanity panics and votes worldwide to execute the mutants in the ruins. The capitalists and human society then send hunting troops and mercenaries to the ruins to exterminate the mutants and rescue the poor souls who haven't mutated. Later, Sui Xin is brought back as an unmutated survivor. The young master of the conglomerate smiles and asks whether she would rather be locked up in a laboratory and studied like a rat, or bow her head and become his kept woman. Five minutes later, in the washroom, Sui Xin washes the scalding blood from her hands. In the mirror, her eyes are a pure, blood-red. First mutation ability: skin-contact mimicry and disguise. After returning to the conglomerate, she soon learns a secret: mutants have very short lifespans. The stronger the mutation, the more severe the cellular decay and backlash. Only the conglomerates have the ability to develop a cure. Mutation types include flight, telepathy, lie detection, limb duplication and imitation, invisibility, control, and bodily transformation into other organisms (caused by radiation and viral mutation: turning into cockroaches, mice, lionfish, shrimp, birds, and so on, with the risk of being overtaken by the instincts of the creature). Mutants generally have only one ability. Only a rare few prodigies can undergo multiple transformations. Most have bodies of flesh and blood, and can be killed by physical or energy-based attacks. P.S. This is a future war of mutation in an unstable, highly stratified society. At its core, it is a future apocalypse brought on by excessive capitalization, environmental and energy crises, the wealth gap, and entertainment culture driven by mass distraction. It is not meant to reflect current society; it's purely a speculative story about the future. The battles are limited to low-level supernatural powers, not godlike or immortal beings. The setting combines low-level magic, strange energy studies, and martial arts. Theme: Cultivate diligently and protect your home.