The Jiangnan siege was over. The Newcomer Tournament was over.No one had seen it coming. The Special Occupation Academy — invite-only, tiny, half the roster dead before they graduated — had taken the whole thing. The people who'd bet against Ethan were sick about it. The people who'd bet on him were counting their money.The odds had been 3,999 to one. A hundred credits had bought you nearly four hundred thousand. People were buying houses with it.* * *Jiangnan was rebuilding fast. The Awakened economy had produced dozens of construction Classes. A crew could raise a twelve-story building in a day. The Outer District was already taking shape again. The rubble was cleared. The blood was hosed off the streets. The survivors were trickling home.Zane Zhao sat in his rebuilt living room with a cigarette in his hand and a payout in his account. Nearly forty million credits. His wife had bought a new kitchen with it, the old joke went.His wife was dead. He hadn't found his kid's body. H

The pocket didn't have time acceleration. The animals grew at the same speed as outside. He checked on them once. They paired off naturally — except for the birds, which had one rooster and one drake between them — and they grazed. He didn't need to tend them.The house itself went on longer than he expected. Three floors. Eleven bedrooms. Two studies. Three bathrooms per floor. Two living rooms. It could sleep twenty without crowding.The hundred guards materialized when he called them. They were all Warrior Class, all B-rank talent, all Level 30. Strong enough to be a real tip of the spear. They'd build their own barracks on the hundred acres. He sent them off to do it and didn't think about them again.They saluted like soldiers. They didn't ask questions. They didn't want to. Whatever pocket they'd come from, they were relieved to be in it. He watched them march off toward the far treeline, already starting to mark out a perimeter, and decided he'd deal with whatever they were lat

Ethan froze for one heartbeat.Then he did the math.There were a lot of them. The forest had hidden them. Now it was gone. Now they could see him, and now they were furious.The roar went up all at once. A million of them. More. Whatever number he estimated was too low. They came out of the ground and out of the air and out of the half-buried caves, and the ground shook under the weight of them, and the sky darkened with wings."No," Ethan said. "No, that's too far. I took a few thousand mu of trees. You don't need me to feed this army."The cloud of wings came lower.He ran.There was no pride in it. He was not about to test his hard-control against a million unknown monsters, some of which might have talents that bypassed his domain. He didn't gamble in places he didn't know. The drop to #8 had already proved someone was running the game. Gambling twice was how you died.He ran fast. Faster than he'd ever run. The monster tide roared behind him, a carpet of teeth and fur and scales

Yunsheng Li's eyes found the speaker. His expression got worse."You want to tell me how to run my operation?" He didn't wait for an answer. "If you'd rather stay in there, nobody's stopping you. But you pay for your own teleportation back. Out of pocket."The bluntness landed. Shuo Han's own face changed. He'd gained three thousand kilograms of strength in Realm One, and he'd walked out convinced he could crush Su Chen if they met again. He'd planned to wait, to gloat. Now General Li was shoving everyone out the door.He said nothing. Nobody else did either.The white space dropped away. They stood in the cold of the real world again, and the relief hit all at once - that place had no horizon, no air, no sound, and it had been wearing on them the longer they stayed.The students scattered. Each school's cohort headed back to its rally point. The semester had started; the tournament was over, and now came the part that actually made them stronger: classroom work, field exercises, live

After Ethan vanished, Gordon Tang ordered a daily watch posted in the realm space. Yunsheng Li assigned a rotating two-man detail. Today it was Tiansheng Lin's turn.He and Youcai Wang leaned on their rifles, whispering."I'm telling you," Lin said, "we're wasting manpower. The kid's been in there over a month. Number Eight. Our own commander goes in there and he might not walk out. Yeah, Su Chen's got talent, but come on. Standing here every day is making me sick.""Shut up. You still don't get it? The produce on the trading platform? The vegetables, the fruit, the flowers? All him. Since he vanished, supply's been cut off for over a month. Half the country's screaming. The big clans, the rich merchants - they're losing their minds. There are families that have gone back to nutrient paste after a year of real meals.""He'd better come back. If he doesn't, the loss is incalculable." Wang jabbed a finger at him. "And you're here for two military-merit points a day. Safer and easier tha