Global Asset: Rebirth Of The Ruthless Scholar
Chapter 1: The White Rift's Silence
The blinding white rift that had opened over Multan at the end of the previous volume did not bring monsters. It brought something far worse: Absolute Silence. For a radius of fifty miles, every sound—from the hum of the city's reactors to the beating of human hearts—simply ceased to exist. In this void of sound, the voice that had challenged Xun Long echoed not in the ears, but directly in the soul.
Xun Long stood on the precipice of the Artery, his violet-spark eyes fixed on the white tear in the sky. He didn't look like a scholar anymore. His skin had taken on a metallic, translucent sheen, and the air around him was vibrating with the frequency of Absolute Erasure.
"You ask who claims the Artery?" Xun Long whispered, his voice projected through mana so it resonated in Mandarin, Russian, and French simultaneously. "You are late, 'Watcher.' The Artery wasn't claimed. It was harvested. I have already integrated the Sleeping God's primary nodes into the Forbidden City's core."
"Master, the white light is decomposing the outer atmospheric layers," Li Mei reported in Urdu. She was communicating via a direct neural link, as sound was impossible. "If the dome doesn't hold, the city will be vacuum-sealed in five minutes."
Xun Long didn't panic. He accessed the Venom Intelligence Agency's new quantum-array. "The dome was never meant to hold back the light, Mei. It was meant to focus it." He tapped his wrist, and the Forbidden City's architecture began to shift. The skyscrapers, built with mana-conductive alloys, acted as tuning forks, catching the white light and channeling it directly into the underground Artery.
Chapter 2: The Brutal Optimization
The transition to the Rebirth Of The New God required a terrifying level of efficiency. Xun Long realized that the human workers in the Forbidden City were no longer fast enough to manage the new energy levels. Without a second thought, he initiated the "Project Hive" protocol.
He called the top five hundred engineers to the central hub. "You have served the Scholar well," he said in English, his voice cold and metallic. "But a scholar's world is too slow for what comes next. To survive the white rift, you must become part of the machine."
Before anyone could object, he unleashed a wave of Void-King's Command. The engineers weren't killed; their consciousness was stripped from their bodies and uploaded directly into the city's central AI. Their physical bodies were then repurposed as "Biological Processors," fused into the walls of the reactor.
The brutality of the act was absolute. Xun Long had deleted their humanity to ensure the survival of the system. He watched the integration metrics rise with a silver eye that showed no remorse. "Strategic genius requires the removal of the 'Self'," he remarked to Li Mei in Russian. "They are no longer men. They are the OS of the New World."
Chapter 3: The Scholar's Final Thesis
Despite the chaos, Xun Long returned to his private study. He was writing what would be his final academic paper: The Mathematical Impossibility of Godhood. He wrote in a mixture of Urdu script and advanced quantum symbols.
"Godhood is not a rank," he murmured to himself in French. "It is a resource management problem."
A small fragment of the "Watcher" from the white rift managed to manifest inside the room—a being made of pure, geometric light. It tried to strike Xun Long, but he didn't even look up from his desk. He simply adjusted the gravity constant in the room's local space. The being was crushed into a single, glowing point of light.
Xun Long picked up the point of light with a pair of tweezers and examined it. "A high-density mana-entity. Fascinating. You think you are a deity, but you are just another variable I haven't solved yet."
He used Absolute Erasure on the entity's "History," effectively deleting its origin from the universe. The being didn't just die; the very idea of its existence was wiped from the timeline. Xun Long went back to his writing. The mystery of the "Outer Realm" was slowly being decoded, one deletion at a time.
Chapter 4: The Subjugation of the Eastern Remnants
The governments of Japan and China, seeing the white rift, realized that Xun Long was no longer their "National Asset." They attempted one last joint military operation: Operation Sunset. They launched a swarm of "Spirit-Nukes"—weapons designed using the dismantled Japanese shrines from Volume 9.
Xun Long monitored the missiles as they crossed the Pacific. He didn't use the city's defenses. He used the Dimensional Anchor-Point trait.
"One chance," he said in Mandarin, though no one was there to hear it.
He didn't destroy the missiles. He used Chronos' Perception to accelerate the time around the warheads. Within seconds, the missiles "aged" ten thousand years. Their fuel evaporated, their electronics turned to dust, and the nuclear cores decayed into harmless lead. The thousands of missiles simply fell into the ocean as rusted scrap metal.
"The time for toys is over," Xun Long announced via a global broadcast in English. "China, Japan, and the surrounding territories are now officially the 'Sovereign Domain.' Your governments are dissolved. Your military is now my labor force. Any further resistance will result in the total erasure of your national history."
The brutality was so massive in scale that it felt like a law of nature. A boy who had once been a student was now the architect of a continent's fate.
Chapter 5: The Artery's First Harvest
The golden blood of the Sleeping God in the Artery had finally turned into a crystalline liquid. Xun Long descended into the pit, his Divine Bloodline thundering in his chest. The integration was nearing the 40% mark, and his body was struggling to remain solid.
"Li Mei, initiate the 'Siphon'," he commanded in Urdu.
The city's hive-mind, made of the fused engineers, activated the massive pumps. The liquid god-blood was injected directly into Xun Long's spinal column. The agony was beyond human comprehension, but Xun Long's 1000x Intellect partitioned the pain into a separate sector of his mind, treating it as nothing more than background noise.
[Divine Bloodline Integration: 45% Complete.]
[New Trait Detected: Universal Translator (Omni-Soul).]
He could now hear the thoughts of every living thing in the Sovereign Domain. He heard the fear, the worship, and the simmering resentment. He ignored it all. He was looking further—beyond the white rift, into the "Outer Realm." He saw the faces of the beings who had sent the Watcher. They weren't gods; they were just another civilization that had reached the "New God" state eons ago.
"You're just like me," he whispered in their own ancient tongue. "Just older. And I've always been a quick learner."
Chapter 6: The Scholar's Mask Cracks
For a brief moment, Xun Long returned to the surface. He walked through the streets of Multan, his presence causing the very pavement to glow. He stopped at a small tea shop that had somehow remained standing. The owner, an old man who didn't recognize him, offered him a cup of tea.
Xun Long sat down and drank it in silence. For those few minutes, he wasn't the Sovereign or the New God. He was just Xun Long.
"Beta, the world is ending, isn't it?" the old man asked in Urdu.
"No," Xun Long replied, his violet eyes softening for a fraction of a second. "The world is just being edited. The spelling errors are being removed."
He left a gold coin on the table—a coin made of pure, solidified mana. As he walked away, his mask of cold indifference returned. He realized that this was the last human interaction he would ever have. From here on, everyone was either a tool, a variable, or an enemy. The mystery of his soul was finally solved: there was nothing left but the mission.
Chapter 7: The Rebirth Of The New God
As Volume 11 reached its climax, the white rift finally shattered. From the shards, a massive hand, made of stars and dark matter, reached down toward the Forbidden City. The Watchers had decided to intervene directly.
Xun Long stood on the roof of the Iron-Yard, his six golden wings unfurled to their full extent. He didn't look up with fear; he looked up with a predator's hunger.
"This Is The Rebirth Of The New God," he roared, his voice shaking the pillars of reality.
He didn't use a shield. He used Absolute Erasure on the hand itself. The collision of the two powers created a shockwave that wiped out the "Dead Zones" across the entire planet, clearing the path for the new world. The hand began to dissolve into white particles, which Xun Long immediately began to inhale, accelerating his integration.
He looked at the horizon, where the sun was rising over a world that was now his alone. "The game hasn't ended," he whispered in Mandarin. "It's just been upgraded to my level."