Chapter 1#
Saturday, 8:49 PM.
After an hour and a half of buildup, Starnet’s annual awards ceremony had finally reached its climax.
“This year’s Starnet Award goes to — Saen, for Throne of the Supreme God!”
On stage, lights blazed and confetti streamed through the air.
Accompanied by a roar of cheers that crashed like a tidal wave, the suited man accepted the trophy from the host and raised it high above his head.
Delivering his acceptance speech, he gripped the microphone and spoke with theatrical emotion: “I want to thank my dear readers, and I want to thank the platform for their tremendous support. Since everyone voted to give me this honor, I will never let you down…”
In a silent room, a phone lying on a desk suddenly began to vibrate like mad.
The young man slumped over his keyboard was jolted awake by the noise.
He rubbed his bleary eyes and, guided by muscle memory from before he’d fallen asleep, fumbled through the dark to unlock his screen.
The young man had slender fingers and pale skin. When he bowed his head, long bangs nearly fell over his eyes, and he carried an air of quiet gloom about him.
This quality was especially striking now, with the room in total darkness and the blue glow of his phone screen the only light source.
In reality, though…
Qiao Jing had just woken up disoriented.
He wasn’t fully conscious yet, and the messages flooding his screen only made his head spin.
Yuan Daxia: “Holy shit, Jinghuashuiyue didn’t get the award again this year?”
Yuan Daxia: “I really thought it was a sure thing this time. The way that royal faction spammed votes — seriously, too much.”
Yuan Daxia: “Lmao, two million votes in the last day alone to leap from fourth place to first. Do they think everyone’s blind?”
Yuan Daxia: “Idiots jpg / idiots jpg / idiots jpg”
This person’s real name was Yuan Chengdao; Yuan Daxia was his pen name.
He and the other members of the group chat were all contracted authors on Starnet.
Someone quickly replied: “Give it a rest. Didn’t they say that readers in the group were saving their votes and waited until the last day to unleash them?”
Yuan Daxia: “And what’s there to say about that? This author’s finished work this year has been incredible — every metric blows that brainless wish-fulfillment garbage Saen writes out of the water. And they still got squeezed out through backroom manipulation? Starnet Award? More like the Backyard Chicken Award. Not worth having!”
The Starnet Award was the highest annual honor Starnet gave out to motivate its authors.
In its early days, it had genuinely been a prestigious accolade — tallying each novel’s statistics, then factoring in reader votes for a composite score. It was widely regarded as the most deserved top honor in web fiction.
But after capital moved into the industry, everything changed.
Qiao Jing sat in his desk chair and stared blankly for a while. By the time he came back to his senses, the messages in the small group chat were still pouring in.
Forced to sit through Saen’s acceptance speech in person, Yuan Chengdao was thoroughly disgusted and unleashed a torrent in the group: “Disgusting. Shameless prick! You were right not to go tonight, Daxia. This guy is so revolting I nearly threw up my dinner!”
A row of “1"s followed beneath.
Yuan Chengdao’s fury wasn’t just on Qiao Jing’s behalf, of course.
They’d signed with Starnet at the same time as Saen, and to snag the “Rookie of the Year” title, Yuan Chengdao had pushed himself to write ten thousand characters a day for six straight months — he’d even kept typing in the hospital while hooked up to an IV during a fever — only for the title to be swiped away by Saen through vote manipulation.
And now, even the author he admired most, Jinghuashuiyue, had been crushed under this petty person’s heel. How was Yuan Chengdao supposed to swallow that?
He began flooding the chat, urging Qiao Jing on: “Fight back! Daxia, we’ll go after him with you!”
“You’re right that it’s not something to put up with,” Qiao Jing thought for a moment, then typed back. “So I’m planning to terminate my contract.”
Yuan Daxia: “???”
Even the authors who normally lurked in silence were blasted out by Qiao Jing’s single sentence.
“Wait — Jinghuashuiyue, are you serious?!”
“That’s not a small thing! If you leave, where are you going to go?”
“Think carefully! Even though Starnet pulls shady stuff, they dominate the web fiction world right now. The other platforms are tiny. Even if you move to one of them, readers won’t follow.”
“Don’t worry, I’m serious.”
Qiao Jing dropped those words and left the group chat.
He opened his laptop, logged into his author dashboard, and posted a brief notice on the page of the new novel he’d started just a month ago:
“This novel is discontinued. The pen name ‘Jinghuashuiyue’ is hereby retired. I will not be publishing any future works on Starnet.”
Within seconds, the comments section exploded.
Not long after, his editor called his phone.
Qiao Jing hadn’t planned to answer, but the editor called four times in a row, with the determined persistence of someone who would keep dialing until the end of time.
“…Hello?”
His voice was flat, and a little reluctant.
“Hello, my ass!” His editor, Wang Cheng, bellowed through the phone. “‘Discontinued’? What does that mean? This one’s going so well — why are you dropping it?”
“Discontinued means I’m not writing it anymore. It means I’m abandoning it,” Qiao Jing explained earnestly.
Wang Cheng laughed despite himself.
But after years of working together, he understood Qiao Jing’s personality, so he skipped past that entirely and shifted to a more earnest tone: “Jing-ge, I know you feel wronged. But the site did give you the Popularity Award this year, didn’t they? With numbers this strong on this novel, maybe the Starnet Award will be yours next year!”
“You said the same thing last year,” Qiao Jing said calmly.
A silence fell on the other end of the line, and when Wang Cheng spoke again, his tone had softened slightly. “Even so, is terminating your contract really necessary? You just renewed with the site for ten years last month.”
Qiao Jing said “mm.” “I’ll pay the penalty fee. Please make sure the readers’ payments get refunded. Anything else?”
“…………”
Wang Cheng suddenly didn’t know what to say.
In Wang Cheng’s eyes, Qiao Jing was different from his other authors. He hated dealing with people and wrote purely out of passion, so as long as he was handled gently, money barely mattered to him. He was essentially a reclusive, slightly antisocial overgrown kid who never left the house.
But his talent for writing was, frankly, the greatest in the history of web fiction.
Debuting under the pen name “Jinghuashuiyue,” he’d claimed the “Rookie of the Year” title in his very first year at Starnet, then grown at a terrifying pace — single-handedly founding multiple sub-genres of web fiction, spawning imitators too numerous to count.
Some readers even joked that you could predict the next six months of trending web fiction topics just by looking at whatever Jinghuashuiyue’s newest story was about.
Yet despite being a superstar-tier author who arrived to every new project with built-in hype — useful as a flagship name for publicity — he’d become something of an eyesore to Starnet, which had lately adopted a strategy of de-emphasizing individual pen names.
And most critically: years ago, to keep this author from leaving, Starnet had given Qiao Jing the most favorable contract terms in the entire industry.
Now that the platform had grown powerful, the executives weren’t about to keep tolerating a star author whose IP licensing alone brought in tens of millions a year while they could barely skim anything off the top.
They weren’t a charity, after all.
This was why the executives had been so insistent on crowning Saen at this year’s ceremony — to suppress Qiao Jing, to erode his influence in the industry, and to lay the groundwork for renegotiating his contract.
But who could have predicted that the eternally easygoing, nothing-to-prove Qiao Jing would simply announce that he was leaving?
As his editor, Wang Cheng had no desire to see Qiao Jing go.
But when it came to the executives’ behavior, he’d looked the other way. He’d assumed this time would be the same as before — a quiet apology after the fact, a few soothing words, and it would all blow over.
What he’d forgotten was that Qiao Jing was socially avoidant, yes, but he was no fool.
After repeated attempts to talk him out of it proved fruitless, and seeing that Qiao Jing’s mind was made up, Wang Cheng had no choice but to call the executives late at night and ask how they wanted to handle Qiao Jing’s intention to terminate.
The CEO on the other end let out a cold laugh. “What a joke. Didn’t we make him? Without us propping him up, he’d be nothing. Readers these days don’t have high standards anyway — you throw enough promotional resources at anything and even a dog writing a book can get popular.”
“If he wants out, let him out. But the penalty fee must be paid in full, not a single cent missing,” he said. “And make sure this gets circulated on Weibo and in the author groups as a cautionary tale — to warn everyone else. Let other authors see what happens to him.”
“Without Starnet, Jinghuashuiyue is nothing.”
After hanging up, Wang Cheng found himself thinking back to an interview from a few years ago, where CEO Yao had faced the camera full of energy and said that Starnet’s growth to this point owed no small part to Jinghuashuiyue.
He sighed. He said nothing, and simply sent Qiao Jing the electronic termination agreement.
“Jing-ge,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
This time, Qiao Jing didn’t reply.
He filled out the form, hit “send,” then opened his contacts and went through a clean sweep — leaving group chats, deleting contacts, all in one go, without a moment’s hesitation. It was as though he’d been wanting to do this for a very long time.
But when he got to the small authors’ group with just Yuan Chengdao and a few others, Qiao Jing paused, and in the end didn’t tap “leave.”
His eyes were stinging from so long in the dark.
Qiao Jing rubbed his eyes and stood to go turn on the light — and right then, a crisp, childlike voice rang out in his ear:
“Ding ding — the Star System is now online!”
Qiao Jing stopped.
What on earth?
“Hello! I am an artificial intelligence system from a higher-dimensional universe, serial number 008,” 008 announced to its host with great enthusiasm. “Would you like to become a globally recognized household-name superstar? Would you like to effortlessly earn 2.08 million a day? Would you like a single word from you to send legions of fans charging into battle to write essays in your defense? As long as you provide me with sufficient Prestige Points, none of these will remain a dream!”
“No,” said Qiao Jing.
008 choked, but it didn’t give up easily, pressing on: “Isn’t being a celebrity great? Overnight fame, money, and glory — everywhere you go people recognize you and say hello, and every day your fans send you heartfelt gifts!”
Qiao Jing tried to imagine that scenario.
…It sounded like torture.
His expression darkened further. “I’d go insane.”
Making a socially anxious person into a celebrity. The nerve.
It was only now that 008 noticed something was off about the host it had bonded with.
Where was the supposed emotionally reserved but internally warm, strikingly handsome man with a commanding personal presence and a height of 188 cm?
This person didn’t match a single one of those criteria.
It hurriedly ran a check, and its jaw dropped.
“Oh no, I got the wrong person!”
Upon discovering the truth, 008 burst into tears on the spot.
A small black cat with blue eyes materialized on Qiao Jing’s desk, sobbing as it spoke: “I’m so sorry, but — but I’ve already bonded to you, and now it’s impossible to undo.” It asked, very carefully, “Would you… maybe just consider becoming a celebrity anyway?”
008 could tell that Qiao Jing’s features were actually fairly attractive. With the right styling and packaging, becoming an idol shouldn’t be out of the question.
“No.”
But Qiao Jing refused, flatly, just the same.
008: …whimper.
In all its existence since being created, it had never been rejected so thoroughly.
Its database said that humans all yearned for fame and fortune, it thought in a daze. How was it that none of that applied to Qiao Jing?
“What database?”
Qiao Jing asked suddenly, and 008 realized it had accidentally spoken its thoughts aloud.
It mustered its spirits and answered: “It’s one of the functions I downloaded from headquarters. It contains every work ever created, from the time humans invented writing up through one thousand years before the present day — essentially a repository of human civilization. You can think of it as a super-enhanced version of CNKI.”
This feature was one 008 had carefully selected after thoroughly researching this country’s entertainment industry.
Its host couldn’t become a great star and not even know what CNKI was!
“Does it have to be a celebrity?” Qiao Jing asked after a moment’s thought, raising his head.
The small black cat flicked its tail in existential despair. It was already preparing to report back to headquarters with a mission failure. “What other way is there to collect one million Prestige Points? Let me tell you now — human spiritual energy has its limits. On average, each person can only provide one point. It’s not easy to earn.”
In modern society, short of becoming a star worshipped by the masses on the silver screen, how could anyone possibly collect that many Prestige Points?
“There is one.”
“What?” 008 paused its tail mid-flick, eyes going slightly wide.
“I said, there is a way.” Thinking it hadn’t heard, Qiao Jing repeated himself.
Because of the bonding, the mechanics of using the system seemed to have been imprinted directly onto his mind. Within moments, Qiao Jing had intuitively figured out how to access the database.
And when he closed his eyes…
He saw countless points of starlight flicker to life in the darkness.
The lights, some bright and some dim, gathered in the void and stretched into an endless, glittering river of stars.
Here, every work was a point of light.
Philosophy, religion, history, literature, art, the natural sciences… this galaxy was like a distillation of thousands of years of human history, and every single piece was a precious, irreplaceable treasure of the human spirit.
With all of this — forget becoming an overnight celebrity sensation.
If Qiao Jing wanted, he could spark an entire era of brilliance.
“Perhaps you don’t know this yet, but I’m actually a writer.”
The young man, regarded by everyone around him as stubborn and solitary, opened his eyes. He lowered his gaze to the keyboard in front of him, its characters worn away from use, and said quietly: “I can’t sing or dance. I don’t know how to win over fans. Asking me to become a celebrity would be worse than asking me to die.”
“But,” he pressed his lips together, and his eyes lit up, “if you’re willing to open that database to me, then a mere million Prestige Points — I can get them for you.”
008’s voice jumped an octave. “Mere?”
Qiao Jing nodded.
008 was skeptical, but seeing how confident Qiao Jing looked, it had no choice but to treat a dead horse as a live one.
“Fine,” it said. “I’ll trust you, just this once. But don’t say I didn’t warn you — headquarters has rules. Downloading works from the database also costs Prestige Points. You can run a tab, but those are additional expenses, and they don’t count toward completing the mission.”
It paused, then added: “By the way, headquarters has set my task as collecting one million Prestige Points, starting from the moment of bonding. And your current Prestige balance is 0.”
“Mm.” Qiao Jing found this completely unsurprising.
Back when he used to research for his novels, CNKI alone had charged him several thousand a year.
Qiao Jing glanced at the time on his phone screen. It was 11:37 PM.
He took a deep breath, opened his laptop, and typed the first line onto a blank Word document —
Song of the Earth.