Ian Song had always been sensitive to things like killing intent. He glanced up at the second floor, just in time to catch sight of a shadowy figure quickly retreating.
With a thought, he activated his Clairvoyant Vision, and the retreating figure instantly came into clear view.
"It’s actually him?"
Ian was a bit surprised, and also curious—why would that guy harbor killing intent toward him?
That evening.
Kevin Zhou, who had led the raid on the vocational school, finally returned.
There were over three thousand zombies holed up in the vocational school. Without a J-Type Zombie to coordinate them, it was still tough for just two hundred people to wipe them all out.
Luckily, Kevin managed to get the job done.
But eight people lost their lives, and seven more were injured by zombie attacks.
He also brought back more than three hundred survivors.
Most of these survivors were students from the vocational school, with a handful of teachers and staff mixed in.
After using Radiance of Life to purge the zombie virus from the seven wounded, Ian gathered everyone who’d fought for a tactical review. The meeting focused on what strategies worked against zombies—and how to minimize casualties next time.
By the time the meeting wrapped up, it was already eight o’clock at night.
As senior members of the Management Council, they naturally had the privilege of a private meal.
After dinner, Ian told Helen Guo, Jason Long, Leo Liao, and the others, "Tomorrow morning at nine, meet me in the training room."
The night was thick and heavy, with a blanket of fog shrouding the world.
Inside Ian’s room.
He flipped his right palm, and a thumb-sized green crystal appeared in his hand.
Sure enough, this Evolution Crystal had come from the J-Type Zombie at the Mold Factory.
From the moment he got his hands on the crystal, Ian had felt its powerful allure. But with so much going on these past two days, he hadn’t had the chance to use it yet.
Just as luck would have it, tonight Coco Guan’s relatives came to visit, so she went back to her own room to sleep. That meant Ian Song could finally swallow the Evolution Crystal.
With a thought, his system interface popped up in front of him:
Host: Ian Song
Level: 10
Physical Strength: 4040 points
Spirit Power: 925 points
Skills: Martial Arts, Piano Master, Driving Mastery, Firearms Master, Super Chef, Painting & Calligraphy Mastery, Eastern Medicine Mastery, Gambling Mastery, Language Master, Dance Master, Raging Waves, Thousand-Hand Buddha, Dragon Soars Nine Forms, Whirlwind Thirty-Nine Styles, Huarong Golden Needle Method
Divine Abilities: Photographic Memory, Mastery, Clairvoyant Vision, Radiance of Life, Spatial Stasis, Gravity Domain, Pill Condensation, Puppet Mastery Divine Art, Galaxy God Eye
Cultivation Method: Origin-Nurturing Scripture
Fictional Worlds: Unlocked
Fame Points: 2.75 billion
Next lottery draw: 200 million points.
After glancing over the Spirit Power section, he closed the system panel and tossed the Evolution Crystal into his mouth.
Just like before, the Evolution Crystal melted instantly, turning into gentle energy that surged straight into his sea of consciousness.
As the energy merged with him, Ian could clearly feel his Spirit Power steadily rising—not too fast, not too slow.
After about half an hour, the J-Type Zombie’s Evolution Crystal was fully absorbed.
Suddenly, Ian felt his Spirit Power start to surge and churn violently.
"What the...?"
Startled, Ian wondered if there were side effects from absorbing the Evolution Crystal.
The surging only intensified, growing wilder by the second.
Ian stared unblinkingly at the spiritual mass in his sea of consciousness.
Suddenly, he noticed the spiritual masses begin to devour and merge with each other.
Beep!
After a moment, he saw a milky-white droplet appear at the center of the spiritual mass.
Beep beep beep!
Gradually, more and more droplets formed.
Eventually, all the spiritual masses condensed into exactly 100 spirit droplets. These droplets gathered into a small spirit lake in his sea of consciousness, surrounded by wisps of mist. Ian knew that mist was also Spirit Power, just not condensed enough to form droplets.
"Spirit Lake transformation, huh?"
Ian thought to himself, then sensed that the Spirit Power in the form of a lake was now much more refined. With a single thought, he could combine the droplets into any shape he wanted.
"Form sword!"
With a soft command, all 100 droplets quickly formed a milky-white sword that shot out from his brow and circled his body.
To Ian’s delight, the sword made of Spirit Power became completely invisible after leaving his sea of consciousness. Perfect for sneak attacks.
Retracting the spirit sword, Ian felt that the Spirit Lake could do more than just this. So he spent the rest of the night experimenting, uncovering other uses for the spirit lake.
His research paid off—he discovered several new Spirit Power attack techniques.
Before he knew it, it was already five in the morning. Ian pulled up the system interface again and saw his Spirit Power had risen to 1009 points, and his level had increased to 11.
"Huh? I leveled up, but why didn’t the system notify me?"
He quickly realized that because he was inside a Fictional World, many system functions were disabled.
At nine in the morning, Ian headed to the training room.
Leo Liao, Kevin Zhou, Helen Guo, Jason Long, Jimmy Zhu, Mark Mao, and Ray Wang were already there.
Except for Helen and Jason, the other five had hit a bottleneck—their strength had peaked, and it was hard to improve further.
But with zombies and mutant beasts evolving every day, if they stopped progressing, they'd be in trouble down the line.
After careful thought, Ian decided to teach them his cultivation method from the real world.
"Good morning, everyone," Ian said with a grin.
"Good morning, President!" Leo and the others replied in unison—except for Helen, who just rolled her eyes at him.
Ian glanced at Helen, then said, "By the way, the reason I called you all here today is to teach you my exclusive cultivation method!"
The seven of them instantly perked up, breathing heavily with excitement.
Ian’s strength was downright inhuman—they’d all seen it. If they could learn his exclusive cultivation method, maybe they could reach his level too.
"President, are you serious?" Leo asked, barely able to contain himself.
"Why would I lie to you?" Ian shot him an annoyed look, then waved him over. "You’ll be first. Come here!"
Cultivating inner power isn’t easy—you need to know the acupuncture points and meridians.
But Ian didn’t have time to teach them all that basic theory, so he decided to take a shortcut: he’d use his own true essence to open their meridians and leave some energy in their bodies...
"So, President, what do I need to do?" Leo asked eagerly as he stepped up.
"You don’t have to do anything! Just sit cross-legged on the floor," Ian instructed.
"Alright!"
Without hesitation, Leo sat cross-legged in front of Ian. Ian’s lips curled into a playful smile as he placed his palm on Leo’s back.