Chapter 258: A Spiritual Awakening for Saekano
Street-Corner Illustrator: Admin-sama, I think something's happening on my end. Came across something strange while browsing this morning, sending you a few images so you can take a look.
Street-Corner Illustrator: ［image］［image］［image］［image］…
Street-Corner Illustrator: That's the situation. What should I do? Could this be one of those legendary transmigrators?
RawrSoFierce: …Probably a transmigrator, yeah. This is interesting.
RawrSoFierce: No group quest has triggered though, which means he could be a "legitimate" transmigrator or reincarnator — one whose presence isn't causing a canon-deviation crisis.
RawrSoFierce: No quest popping up means he's operating within acceptable parameters. Nothing to worry about.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Hm… so Admin-sama is saying just leave it alone?
RawrSoFierce: Killing him wouldn't accomplish anything. Just wasted effort.
RawrSoFierce: Worth noting though — given that something this significant happened in your world without a group quest triggering, that suggests your world isn't actually the canonical Saekano world. It's a doujin variant.
RawrSoFierce: No idea which author cooked up this particular AU, but "spiritual energy awakening" is an extremely overused trope at this point.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Eh? Overused? I think it's pretty novel!
RawrSoFierce: …That's because you haven't read much in the genre. I've personally read at least thirty different spiritual-awakening novels.
"…"
Ryū rubbed his stubble-free chin. Eriri's world — the Saekano world — was a doujin variant. That, on its own, was a surprise.
The bigger surprise was what flavor of doujin it had turned into.
Spiritual energy awakening. In the Saekano world, of all places. And not a fresh phenomenon, either — by the look of the news coverage, the awakening had been quietly underway for years, with governments only now losing the ability to keep a lid on it.
The images Eriri had sent were all news coverage of the phenomenon.
Spiritual awakening wasn't a foreign concept to Ryū. In his previous life, his first exposure to the urban fantasy genre had been exactly this trope — and once he'd read one, he'd gone looking for more. Twenty or thirty officially published titles by his count, and significantly more unofficial ones.
Japan Economic News: "[Spiritual Awakening Begins in a Major Eastern Power!] The phenomenon actually began ten years ago. Dr. Chen Fan of China is the strongest figure of the new era — he discovered the awakening first, ten years prior, and established the cultivation method ('Technique') that allows ordinary people to train. He is the defining figure of this new age!"
American Headlines: "Our nation has been researching spiritual awakening for eight years and our findings are absolutely competitive with the Eastern power in question. However, our President recently stated that China should make all research with humanitarian potential publicly available rather than maintaining what amounts to a technical monopoly."
Weibo News: "Who exactly is Dr. Chen Fan? Why disclose a decade-long secret now? How did he develop a training method usable by ordinary people? Precognition? Reincarnation? Transmigration?"
Russian News: "Our nation maintains excellent cooperative relations with neighboring China, and our researchers participated in this spiritual awakening research. Dr. Chen Fan is the greatest figure of the 21st century — we believe his achievements rival those of any scientist in history!"
[Redacted] News: "…"
"…"
That was the substance of Eriri's screenshots — all of them converging on three key points.
Spiritual awakening.
Dr. Chen Fan.
Cultivation techniques.
A familiar pattern clicked into place for Ryū almost immediately. Something here had the unmistakable fingerprints of a system-style protagonist with a golden finger, engineering a worldwide spiritual awakening — or, more likely, an awakening that was always going to happen on schedule, with this "Dr. Chen Fan" figure positioned as a reincarnator or transmigrator conveniently placed to ride the wave and develop the corresponding cultivation system a decade ahead of anyone else.
Why the awakening had finally been disclosed publicly was a detail Ryū had no particular interest in chasing down.
This "Chen Fan" was, in his estimation, an obvious doujin protagonist — and a fairly aggressively buffed one at that, given that he appeared to be single-handedly steering the direction of an entire era.
Young people and their ambition. Meanwhile I can't be bothered to leave the house most days.
"Didn't expect a genre I've already grown tired of to show up in the Saekano world of all places. The really unexpected part is that Eriri didn't notice any of this happening. Or maybe she's just too absorbed in manga to register the world changing around her."
He turned back to the private chat.
RawrSoFierce: Eriri, you've been training under Yukari in the Gensokyo magic system this whole time, right? When you're cultivating, you never noticed anything strange about the spiritual energy in your own world?
Street-Corner Illustrator: Mm… I did notice something a bit odd, actually, but I didn't think much of it at the time.
Street-Corner Illustrator: I asked Yukari-nee about it specifically, and she guessed it was probably just my world's spiritual energy being unusually active, said I didn't need to worry, so I didn't.
Street-Corner Illustrator: It wasn't until the news broke about the actual awakening that I realized it had apparently been happening for a while. I'm honestly a little stunned right now…
RawrSoFierce: Isn't your father the British ambassador to Japan? He never mentioned any of this? Someone with his political position should have access to this kind of information.
Street-Corner Illustrator: No, nothing. Probably figured I was too young to be told something like that.
RawrSoFierce: Fair enough. Doesn't matter either way — for you, this is purely beneficial. You're training in the Gensokyo magic system, and the more active your world's spiritual energy is, the faster your cultivation speed goes.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Mm, that's a relief to hear from you, Admin-sama!
Street-Corner Illustrator: Should I track down some of this "Dr. Chen Fan's" cultivation techniques for you, by the way?
RawrSoFierce: What would I even do with that. Do you know how strong this doctor actually is?
Street-Corner Illustrator: There's a video online with something like a billion views in two days — Dr. Chen Fan demonstrating his abilities. Looked weaker than me, honestly.
RawrSoFierce: …Then you definitely don't need to worry about anything.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Mm-hm! Thanks for clearing that up, Admin-sama!
RawrSoFierce: ?(°□°?)?
"…"
The fact that Eriri's Saekano world was a doujin construction was, on its own, mildly unexpected. The good news was that the spiritual awakening posed no real danger to her. This "Chen Fan" — clearly a legitimate transmigrator or reincarnator, doujin protagonist or not — was almost certainly weaker than her at this point. Eriri had been in the Chat Group long enough, training daily under direct instruction from a certain old hag, who happened to be one of the more overpowered moderators in the entire group.
Even without participating in group quests, that kind of personal coaching produced serious results. Her sign-in luck hadn't been bad either — her cumulative daily Points total was sitting comfortably in the four-digit range at minimum.
And the protagonist is Chinese, on top of everything else. Did some Qidian doujin author write this one?
Ryū murmured the thought to himself, only half paying attention.
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