When he woke up, his body informed him that yesterday had not, in fact, been a hallucination.
Not because of pain. Because of exhaustion. Mental exhaustion. The kind that sits behind your eyes and makes every thought feel slightly heavier than it should.
He lay there for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling.
Then a pale blue window flickered into view.
Daily QuestPush-ups: 0/100Sit-ups: 0/100Squats: 0/100Run: 0/10,000 mTime until reset: 16:58:22
He stared at it.
Zero across the board.
I ran twelve kilometers in a desert last night. Climbed an eight-meter portal. Killed a scorpion with my body. And none of that counted?
The quest didn't care. Fresh timer. Fresh zeros. As if the ruins had never happened.
"Unbelievable."
Two hours of sleep. A full day of school ahead. And the counter already ticking.
Skipping crossed his mind for half a second. Then memory kicked in. Wen Jiayi had specifically said today's lesson would cover class ranks, tiers, and evolution. Missing that would make him an idiot by choice.
He pushed himself upright and sat still while his brain finished booting.
The apartment was quiet. Morning light spilled across the clean living room. Hard to believe it had been a trash kingdom less than 24 hours ago.
He washed up, found the school uniform in the wardrobe, and changed. Dark blazer. White shirt. Black trousers. The uniform fit. Not perfectly, but well enough.
The face staring back at him in the mirror was still rounder than he liked. The body was still heavier than it should be. But the frame underneath was obvious. Tall. Broad shoulders. If the weight ever disappeared, this body wouldn't look bad at all.
Not handsome yet. But not hopeless either.
He adjusted the collar and headed for the door.
Outside, the air hit him first. Cool. Absurdly clean. Not "city after rain" clean. Clean in the way that felt engineered by a civilization that had decided pollution was unacceptable.
The residential district stretched around him in wide blocks of high-rise apartments and quiet roads. Trees rose between buildings, not as decoration but as structure. Some were taller than the towers themselves, their canopies spreading overhead like a second sky. Shrubs and flowering plants lined the pedestrian paths. Vines climbed facades in deliberate patterns, cultivated, not wild.
The whole district had a quiet, expensive atmosphere. Not flashy. Just confident.
He booked an ETT. Three minutes later, the vehicle descended almost silently. Sleek. Oval-shaped. Faint blue energy lines along the chassis. It hovered half a meter above the road before the side door slid open.
"Passenger identified: Yan Ye. Destination confirmed."
He climbed in. The door sealed. The ETT rose.
And Tianmu City opened beneath him.
From above, the place looked like someone had woven a metropolis through a forest that was already ancient. Wide roads curved between districts of glass, steel, and pale stone, but the trees dominated everything. Some rose hundreds of meters, their trunks wider than the buildings beside them. At this altitude, the ETT wove between branches thick enough to park on. Leaves the size of dining tables brushed past the windows. Sunlight filtered through canopy gaps in golden shafts that cut across the cityscape.
Tianmu City was young, barely sixty years old, but the land it was built on was not. The City Lord, a T6 Peak awakener with nature affinity, had found this place when the natural energy concentration was already dense. What he did was shape it. Mold the terrain. Guide the growth. Turn a naturally rich environment into something livable without destroying what made it special.
The result was a city that looked like it had existed for centuries. Trees and architecture grew together. Glass towers curved to accommodate trunks. Bridges arched between branches. Commercial levels were built into the canopy itself, shops and cafés visible through gaps in the leaves hundreds of meters up.
Five million inhabitants. One of the wealthiest cities in Huaxia. The medicinal market alone was worth billions, fed by the Jade Current Dungeon and the ambient energy that permeated every district.
The academy appeared a minute later.
Tianmu Academy was the best school in the city, and it looked the part. The campus spread across wide terraces connected by paths of white stone shaded by trees that had been growing since the academy was founded. Training fields lined the eastern edge, their surfaces etched with formation lines that hummed faintly even from the air. Lecture halls rose in stepped tiers of glass and stone, integrated with the vegetation so naturally that some buildings looked like they had grown from the ground rather than being built on it.
At the center, a circular plaza held the awakening formation. A platform of ancient runes and embedded crystals that hummed with dormant energy. In roughly two months, the senior class would stand there and have their futures decided. In fourteen months, it would be his turn.
The ETT landed. He stepped out.
A few students glanced in his direction. Mostly because of his size. Then they looked away.
The old Yan Ye wasn't important enough to attract attention. He wasn't hated. He wasn't bullied. He wasn't the target of some dramatic rival. He simply existed. A background character in someone else's story.
In the novels he'd read on Earth, transmigrators usually got at least a bully. Some arrogant young master blocking the entrance. A jealous classmate. Something.
He got nothing. Not even acknowledgment.
He almost laughed. Almost.
Then the feeling settled in properly. Not funny anymore. Just empty. Walking through a crowd where not a single person registers your existence isn't humiliating. It's worse. It's like being told you don't matter so quietly that no one even bothers saying it.
This changes. Everything changes.
He followed memory upstairs and found his seat.
The classroom was already scattered with students. Some talking. Some scrolling phones. Some staring out the windows at the training fields. Second-year students. Still over a year from Awakening. Not panicking yet. Just curious.
He noticed two people immediately.
Front row, left side. A girl with dark hair pulled back in a clean ponytail. Sharp eyes. Posture that said she was comfortable being watched. Song Lian. The principal's granddaughter. Regularly top three in academics. Usually top ten in the school's physical combat rankings. The standard everyone in the year quietly measured themselves against.
Three rows to the right, near the window. A boy leaning back in his chair like the classroom belonged to him. Expensive watch. A uniform that was technically within regulation but tailored to make sure everyone noticed the difference. Not because he needed better quality. The academy-issued uniforms were already excellent. He just needed people to know he'd spent more. Wei Hao. Family money. Business empire. No real awakener lineage. In a school full of heirs and prodigies, he was the one who tried hardest to look like he belonged.
The teacher walked in before the room fully settled. A lean man in his late thirties wearing the instructor coat over dark clothes. There was a density to him. The kind of presence that said he was used to being stronger than everyone around him.
Memory supplied: Late Tier 3.
He placed papers on the desk and looked over the class.
"Good morning."
The response was weak.
He ignored it.
"Today we cover the framework that governs every awakener's path. Class ranks. Core Skills. Tier progression. Evolution."
He turned and wrote on the board.
CLASS RANK
"Awakened classes are categorized into ranks. F through SSS. These classifications are assigned after awakening through government evaluation. They measure elemental affinity, structural complexity, and long-term growth potential."
He looked around the room.
"Can anyone tell me what a higher rank actually provides?"
Wei Hao's hand shot up.
"Power. An S-rank class is basically guaranteed to become a powerhouse."
"Incorrect."
Wei Hao's smile faltered.
"A higher rank provides a stronger starting foundation," the teacher said. "Better energy compatibility. Better skill efficiency. Faster early development. In the early stages, a lazy high-rank awakener can outperform a hardworking low-rank one. But rank determines your starting point. Not your destination."
He looked at the class.
"Low-rank classes have narrower evolution paths. Smaller margins for error. But opportunities exist. Dungeons. Inheritances. Rare encounters."
He paused.
"What about Irregular classes? Who can explain those?"
Song Lian answered. Her voice was calm.
"Irregular ranks exist outside the standard evaluation. Their potential is theoretically limitless, but their growth paths are entirely self-determined. No structured evolution. No documented breakthroughs to follow. They can stagnate permanently or reach heights that standard ranks never will."
The teacher nodded.
"Correct. An Irregular class can stagnate at Tier 3 forever, or reach heights that standard ranks never will."
Like Wen Jiayi, Yan Ye thought. Truth Seeker. Stuck at Tier 2 not because she's weak or dumb, but because nobody can tell her what the next step looks like
"The probability of awakening an Irregular class is approximately 0.000000043% of all awakeners annually."
He let that number sit.
Wei Hao leaned toward the student beside him and whispered something. The student ignored him.
"Now. Core Skills."
The teacher moved on. He erased the board and wrote two new words.
CORE SKILL
"Every professional class possesses one Core Skill. This defines the class itself. Combat methods, utility, strengths, weaknesses, and future evolution all revolve around it."
He circled the words.
"You may learn additional skills through books, inheritances, or rare opportunities. But those are branches. The Core Skill is the trunk."
Yan Ye's eyes narrowed slightly. The system had never mentioned Core Skills.
Big Sis gave me skills that have nothing to do with a Core Skill. I don't even have a class yet. Is she operating outside the rules everyone here is learning about?
He filed that away. The teacher wrote beneath the Core Skill section.
TIERS
"Power growth follows Tier progression.In the nearly five hundred years since Day X, humanity has mapped this path step by step. Trial, error, and a great many deaths."
"Today, the structure is relatively well understood up to Tier Seven."
He wrote on the board.
Tier 0 → Tier 7
"Sixty-seven years ago, the first Tier Seven awakener appeared publicly. Today, several exist across the world. In Huaxia alone, Ninety are known."
A murmur ran through the class.
A faint smile appeared on his face.
"Within the next few decades, humanity may see its first Tier Eight."
His gaze swept the room.
"Who knows. One of you might be the one."
"To attempt each tier transition, two conditions must be met."
He wrote:
Reach the minimum level 100% Core Skill Proficiency
A girl in the front row frowned. "One hundred percent? How are we supposed to measure that?"
"The system measures it. Your job is not to calculate it. Your job is to build toward it."
Wei Hao raised his hand again. "What's the minimum level for Tier 1?"
"Level 20."
"That doesn't sound that hard."
The teacher looked at him evenly. "The level isn't the difficult part. Achieving 100% proficiency on a Core Skill you've had for less than a year is. Most awaken at 18 and attempt their first evolution between 19 and 20. The ones who rush it fail."
Wei Hao nodded with the confidence of someone who hadn't processed a word of what was just said.
The teacher moved on.
RESONANCE
"Once both conditions are met and the awakener enters a dungeon, the system activates a state called Resonance."
He underlined the word.
"Inside the dungeon, the awakener's perception of energy becomes dramatically sharper. The environment's energy density amplifies the effect. This heightened state makes it significantly easier to comprehend and complete the evolution requirement for the next tier."
"This is why most awakeners attempt breakthroughs inside dungeons."
He paused. Let that settle.
A hand went up. "What happens if it fails?"
"The attempt fails. And each failure weakens the next Resonance."
He wrote:
3 failures. After that, Resonance is effectively gone.
The room went quiet.
"Each failed attempt weakens the next Resonance. After three dungeon attempts, the system's assistance drops to virtually nothing. Evolution without Resonance is still possible, but it requires extraordinary conditions. Special environments with extreme energy density. And even then, the success rate is negligible."
Three chances, Yan Ye thought. For normal people, that's terrifying.
But I have skills before awakening. A system that doesn't follow the rules.
If Big Sis can bend the evolution process the way she's bent everything else…
Then Resonance might not even matter for me.
Might.
He stopped himself.
Don't assume. Not yet.
The teacher moved through the evolution stages efficiently. Tier 0 to Tier 1: elemental imprint. Incorporating an external energy signature into the Core Skill. Tier 1 to 2: purification. Removing impurities, refining the element. Tier 2 to 3: conversion. All energy in the body aligning with the Core Skill's property.
"After Tier 4, the scale changes entirely," he said. "Flight becomes possible without skills or equipment. Awakeners can consciously absorb energy from the environment. Combat duration increases dramatically. The gap between Tier 3 and Tier 4 is not incremental. It's a different world."
He set the chalk down.
"Our principal is a Mid Tier 5 awakener. The vice principal is Late Tier 4. If you want to understand what the divide looks like, those two are your reference."
Nobody spoke.
Then the teacher picked up the attendance sheet.
"Your class provides the framework. Your Core Skill determines your evolution. Your effort determines how far that evolution goes."
A small pause.
"Awakening luck decides where you begin. Discipline decides how far you climb."
The bell rang.
Students rose in waves. Chairs scraped. Conversations exploded. Speculation, nerves, fake confidence.
Yan Ye stayed seated a second longer, going over everything.
Framework. Core Skill. Resonance. Imprint. Purification. Conversion.
All of it built around one assumption: that growth starts at awakening and follows a structured path.
His system had already violated both of those rules before he'd even set foot in a classroom.
And nobody in this room knows that.
He packed his notes and headed for the corridor. The hallway was crowded. Students moved in clusters, discussing ranks and tiers and who would awaken what. A few glanced at him. Looked away. The usual.
He found a quieter hallway near the secondary lecture building. Leaned against the wall. Pulled out his phone to order lunch.
"Yan Ye."
He looked up.
Wen Jiayi was walking toward him, a thin stack of papers in her hand. Silver hair catching the corridor light. Green eyes. The same effect on his nervous system.
But here, in school, she was different. Composed. Distant. Teacher mode. A few students passed behind her. She was a known figure at the academy. Young. Beautiful. Rumored to have an Irregular class. Being seen having a casual conversation with her would generate exactly the kind of attention neither of them needed.
She seemed to understand that, because she didn't slow down. She walked past him and held out the papers without breaking stride.
"The materials you missed."
He took them. Their fingers didn't touch.
"Thanks."
She kept walking, but as she passed, her voice dropped just slightly.
"Give me your phone."
He blinked. Pulled it out.
She took it, tapped for three seconds, and handed it back without looking at him.
"Check your messages later."
Then she was gone. Around the corner. Back to being Ms. Wen.
He looked at his phone. A new contact.
Wen Jiayi.
Something warm and slightly stupid settled in his chest.
He ordered lunch, ate in the shade behind the lecture building, and tried not to check his phone every thirty seconds.
He failed.
No message yet. She said later. Calm down.
The afternoon passed. He sat through the remaining period, took notes, and pretended his brain wasn't running two parallel processes: one absorbing information about awakener economics, the other replaying the way she'd said "give me your phone."
By the time the final bell rang, the light had shifted toward late afternoon.
16:47
He checked the daily quest.
Push-ups: 0/100Sit-ups: 0/100Squats: 0/100Run: 0/10,000 mTime until reset: 07:12:38
Seven hours. Everything still at zero.
He could take an ETT home. Comfortable. Fast. Painless.
Or he could use the trip.
Six kilometers to his apartment. Not enough for the full ten. But it was a start.
He stared at the route for three seconds. Sighed. Put the phone away.
The memory of scorching sand and a segmented body blotting out the sky surfaced without invitation. The sound of his own breathing buried under a meter of desert. The countdown. The teleportation.
Not again.
I am not going back there.
He adjusted his bag, stepped through the academy gates, and started walking.
Ten kilometers.
Seven hours.
And a punishment he would do anything to avoid.