The stars above Star Origin City were not real.
Jiang Fan understood that now.
As he leaned against the cool stone of the dormitory balcony, the artificial constellations shimmered faintly across the sky dome—painted illusions cast by sky array projectors, meant to remind the city's residents of their place in the cosmos.
But Jiang Fan knew better.
He had seen the stars—the real stars. Not with his eyes, but through data. Through algorithms and simulations. His mind, once tethered to Earth's great network of knowledge, had calculated orbital drift, quantum decay, exoplanetary rotations.
These painted stars were pretty lies.
Yet they shimmered with a kind of quiet loneliness that reminded him of home.
The dormitory building was ancient by the standards of this world, but to Jiang Fan it felt like stepping into the bones of a storybook—etched wood, hanging lanterns, soft paper walls that muted every sound into silence. The floor creaked underfoot like a breathing thing, alive with the weight of a thousand students who had passed through before.
He hadn't spoken a word since the Awakening.
Not to the instructors.
Not to the other students.
Not even to himself.
Not until now.
He breathed in the cold night air. Somewhere below, a training bell chimed—someone practicing sword techniques late into the evening.
He didn't blame them.
They were children of a world that had taught them only one thing: that strength came from spirit.
That the soul must be tempered through combat, meditation, and faith in powers greater than themselves.
But Jiang Fan had come from another world—one that believed in cause and effect. In logic. In the ability of humanity to create gods, not worship them.
And tonight, he felt the weight of both worlds on his shoulders.
Memories of Earth
It had been a small lab.
Hidden in the underbelly of a sprawling research university, surrounded by bureaucratic red tape and underfunded proposals. Yet somehow, Jiang Fan had pushed through it all—he'd gathered a team, pieced together ancient grants, repurposed military hardware.
Project Eidos.
The dream was insane: simulate entire alternate timelines to test theoretical outcomes.
But Jiang Fan hadn't stopped. He'd rewritten neural inference models in his sleep. He'd hallucinated lines of code while staring into fluorescent lights. He'd poured every ounce of his identity into building the closest thing Earth had to a god-machine.
And in the end, something had answered.
He still remembered that final moment.
A flash of white.
A single whispered phrase in a voice no one had heard:
"You will continue where others cannot."
Then—darkness.
Now, that whisper echoed across worlds.
He turned away from the stars and walked back into the dormitory, footsteps soft against the wooden floor. The door slid shut behind him with a gentle sigh.
Inside, his room was minimal: a sleeping mat, a small desk, and an orb of soul-light that dimmed as he approached.
But as soon as the door sealed, the quiet hum returned.
A sound that didn't belong in this world.
[Planetary Consciousness Online.]
The voice no longer startled him. It was cold, emotionless—yet familiar. It reminded him of the earliest versions of the Eidos core assistant. Logical. Obedient.
But this one had evolved faster.
Jiang Fan sat down cross-legged and summoned the interface.
It wasn't spiritual like the others' cultivation visions. It was digital—sleek panels of translucent light hovering before his eyes, data fields rendered in perfect resolution.
Each one represented part of his planet's structure.
—The Central Nexus, where early AIs coordinated city growth.—The Atom Forge Grid, producing synthetic materials without relying on cultivation-enhanced minerals.—The Education Protocol, where accelerated knowledge transfer simulations ran for new generations.—And more—so much more. More than this world could understand.
All of it alive, evolving.
They Had Laughed
He hadn't forgotten the sneers.
The way the crowd had stared—some with blank confusion, others with disgust.
They couldn't comprehend it.
To them, planets were supposed to breathe, to sing, to resonate with divine principles. They had grown up around floating temples and aura-forged palaces. They could feel the pulse of the heavens in their bones.
But his planet made no sound.
No wind.
No waterfalls or beasts.
Only the hiss of pressurized steam. The precise tick of quantum computation. The low hum of reactors aligning with absolute precision.
It didn't breathe.
It calculated.
And so they had dismissed it as lifeless.
But Jiang Fan knew better.
He leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he pulled up a simulation. A model of future development.
In twenty cycles—days in Earth terms—his AI networks would mature past the current node limit. The civilization would self-generate adaptive knowledge structures.
In thirty?
They'd start experimenting with matter rearrangement.
In sixty?
Interstellar propulsion simulations would begin.
He ran the projections again, just to be sure.
It's not lifeless, he thought. It's just waiting.
Fear Was Natural
He closed the interface and leaned back, staring at the wooden ceiling.
Fear, he realized, was a logical response.
This world had never known control—not the kind that his civilization would bring.
They believed in ascension, in chance, in chaotic growth. Spirit beasts and inheritance trials, mystic legacies lost and found.
Jiang Fan's world would end that chaos.
In his world, everything had a place.
A purpose.
That was the real reason they stared at him like he was unnatural.
Because somewhere in their bones, they understood once his world matured, it wouldn't need qi. Or mana. Or spiritual enlightenment.
It would make all of those obsolete.
Not by conquering them—
—but by outgrowing them.
A Knock at the Door
The soft sound interrupted his thoughts.
He blinked. Then stood.
The door slid open a crack to reveal a girl—delicate, eyes soft as ink, wearing the gray-trimmed robe of a fellow first-year. Her black hair was tied into a modest bun, a faint glow of spirit energy around her hands.
"Jiang Fan?" she asked.
He didn't reply immediately.
"I'm Su Chan," she added, bowing lightly. "I… I saw your Awakening."
He waited.
"You're not like the others," she said. "Your planet… it scared them."
"Did it scare you?" he asked.
She hesitated, then shook her head. "No. It… it reminded me of stories. Old ones. From before the Heavenly Ascension Era. My grandfather once told me the ancients built towers that touched the sky. Machines that mapped the stars."
She looked up at him.
"Is your world like that?"
Jiang Fan studied her for a moment. Then he nodded.
"It's exactly like that."
For the first time since arriving in this world, he saw something in someone else's eyes: wonder, not suspicion.
Su Chan smiled—soft, uncertain.
"Then I hope you build it," she whispered. "I hope I get to see it."
And she left, fading back into the hallway shadows.
The Room Was Quiet Again
But something had changed.
Not outside. Inside.
Jiang Fan returned to the desk, fingers tapping lightly on the invisible keys of his mental interface.
He paused.
Then typed a new directive into the AI construct queue:
Objective: Design entry-level interfaces for external users.Purpose: First contact. Integration.
His world wouldn't remain isolated.
If he was going to outgrow this realm, he would need allies.
And eventually… believers.
Not in magic.
Not in cultivation.
But in progress.
In humanity.
In design.
And in systems that never forget.