Awakening — Unlimited Potential

"This is your final Awakening Ceremony. If you still cannot awaken today, you will spend the rest of your lives as ordinary people. That may feel like a disappointment, but it also means you'll be far removed from the dangers that fill this world. Perhaps it isn't entirely a bad thing..."

The voice drifted into Lu Yuan's ears, pulling him from somewhere distant into the sharp clarity of the present.

He jolted awake.

*Didn't I die?*

He lifted his head and glanced around with eyes full of wariness and confusion.

This was a classroom. About forty students sat in their seats, all quiet. At the front podium, a teacher well past fifty stood with both hands braced against the desk, speaking to the class.

Each word the teacher spoke was comprehensible on its own. Put together, none of it made sense.

*Where am I?*

*Who am I?*

*...What is this place?*

The fog lasted only a moment. Then it all came flooding back.

His mind lurched as a torrent of information poured in — memories that were not quite his own, layering themselves over everything he used to be.

He had been, in a past life, an ordinary corporate drone: two years out of university, living the daily blessing of the 996 grind, with the occasional gift of a 007 all-nighter thrown in. The rat race had grown so suffocating that taking a single evening off felt like a personal insult to the universe.

Too many late nights. Too much takeout. A body worn down until it finally gave out. He'd gotten cancer.

By the time the diagnosis came, it was already terminal. To spare his family the burden — and himself the drawn-out suffering — he'd tearfully deleted the years of study materials he'd painstakingly accumulated, said his quiet farewells, and ended his own life.

Strangely, the diagnosis had barely shaken him. He had a younger brother at home; the two elders who had raised him would be cared for. He had gone peacefully enough. Only the thought of how deeply they would grieve had troubled him. But there was nothing he could have done about that.

He'd closed his eyes. Then — darkness.

Apparently he had died.

So what, exactly, was this?

He'd read enough transmigration novels to recognize the situation.

He had arrived in another world, now inhabiting the body of a young man who also happened to be named Lu Yuan.

The original body's memories cut off right before class had started. In the final frame of those memories, the body had slumped over the desk and lost consciousness. Because the original owner had been so withdrawn — without a single friend in the entire class — no one had noticed he'd died. Not until Lu Yuan woke up inside him.

*Weren't transmigrators supposed to be protagonists?*

In every novel he'd read, a transmigrator woke up to either a crowd fawning over them or some antagonist stepping forward to make a scene. Instead, the classroom was completely indifferent. Everyone sat staring blankly at the front.

He grumbled inwardly. Not even a shred of protagonist treatment.

Still, life had a way of surprising you right when you thought it couldn't possibly get any worse. Getting a second chance was already more than he deserved.

Since he was here, he might as well accept it.

He just hoped this life wouldn't be such a brutal rat race. He genuinely could not go through that again.

As his thoughts settled, the teacher's words began to take shape.

"The Awakening success rate for ordinary people is only ten percent — and the odds fall with each failed attempt. Given that most of you have already failed twice, the probability of succeeding on your third try is very low. Don't get your hopes up. I'd rather spare you the disappointment."

The classroom sank into silence.

That landed like ice water.

Lu Yuan began piecing together what he knew from the original body's memories.

In this world, every person between the ages of sixteen and eighteen had one chance per year at the Awakening — three chances in total. A successful Awakening activated one's Gene Chain, transforming a person into a Gene Warrior.

Gene Warriors could venture into a place called the Land of Origin to hunt the monsters there. By engraving those monsters' genetic material, they obtained Gene Battle Techniques — abilities as natural and instinctive as a fish swimming or a bird in flight, written directly into their DNA.

Each time a Gene Warrior advanced a rank, they gained one new empty slot on their Gene Chain, granting one gene fusion. Once fused, a gene was locked in place — permanent, incapable of further improvement. Low-grade genes offered minimal returns; high-grade genes, if engraved carelessly, could backlash and destroy the host's body. Gene selection therefore required extreme caution. Every engraved Gene Battle Technique had to work in concert with the others.

Lu Yuan had not been a Gene Warrior. His knowledge of the Land of Origin and this world's awakened hierarchy was limited — just fragments from the original body's memories. But he understood the fundamentals.

If he awakened this year, he could enroll in the Gene Warrior Academy.

If he didn't, he could still attend a regular university — though the Empire's tuition subsidies and living allowances would not apply to the unawakened.

The original body was an orphan. During an Aberration Event in his early childhood, he had been the only member of his family to survive. The Empire had raised him since then — but that support extended only to his eighteenth birthday. Which was now.

This world was not safe. Aberration Events. The Foreign Races. Constant, grinding threats. Gene Warriors formed the backbone against both — every person who failed to awaken was one less pillar holding up the Human Race.

*If I don't awaken, this world loses one supremely powerful Gene Warrior*, he told himself, with completely sincere self-importance.

He'd never had access to anything like cultivation or supernatural power in his previous life. He'd always found it compelling whenever he read about it. Having a genuine second chance in a world like this—

He wasn't going to let it slip by.

When the memories buried deepest in the original body surfaced — raw, instinctive recollections of the Aberration Event — his pupils contracted slightly, and his body shuddered with a tremor that wasn't his own choosing. That fear belonged to this flesh, not to him. But it was real all the same.

He let it go. In this world, Aberration Events defied all ordinary logic. Strange things happening during them was simply the nature of the phenomenon.

The teacher swept his gaze over the room.

"All right. When I call your name, come to the podium. Awakening Ceremony, begin. Wang Yi."

A boy got up from his seat and made his way to the front with the careful bearing of someone fighting their nerves. He nodded at the teacher, pressed his palm firmly against the crystal orb on the podium, and shut his eyes.

The air in the room went thick.

Silence.

After a minute, the teacher glanced at his watch.

"One minute. No response from the Awakening Crystal — Awakening failed. You can step down."

Wang Yi heard the words. His eyes went faintly red at the corners. He walked back to his seat without speaking, his head lowered.

The class grew quieter still.

*This teacher is something of a professional at killing the mood*, Lu Yuan thought. Not a flicker of expression, not a word of comfort — the same flat delivery for every single student.

The Awakening Ceremony rolled forward.

One name called. One minute of silence. One failure. Over and over.

Half an hour passed. Roughly thirty students had stood at that podium. Not a single successful Awakening.

Just as the teacher had said.

Lu Yuan's heart sank a little further with every name.

"Lu Yuan."

Every head in the room turned.

He was an outsider here. The original body had been so reclusive that there was not one person in this class he could call a friend. No one offered encouragement. No one said a word. They simply watched.

He walked to the podium. The teacher repeated the same instructions he'd given thirty times already, in the same flat voice:

"Don't be nervous. You've done this twice — you know what to do. Place your hand on the Awakening Crystal and focus inward on your own existence. Don't overthink it."

Lu Yuan nodded and placed his hand on the crystal.

It was cool to the touch. Smooth. Almost soothing.

He closed his eyes and turned his attention inward.

Nothing.

*I can't feel anything. Am I really not going to awaken?*

The teacher had said it clearly — third attempt, probability extremely low.

Time passed in silence. The unease in his chest crept steadily upward.

*Both previous tries failed. Please let this one work.*

His heart kept sinking.

This world was dangerous. Even a little strength was better than none.

Then, in the darkness behind his closed eyes, a faint blue light bloomed.

The next instant, a translucent blue cube materialized in the black, tumbling through it in slow, irregular rotations — turning this way and that with no discernible pattern.

The moment the cube appeared, the darkness split apart. White mist billowed outward in all directions.

From within the mist, a massive Double Helix Light Pillar rose — its base planted in white ground, its apex vanishing into the swirling fog above.

The blue cube drifted toward the pillar as if pulled by gravity, and began to orbit it.

*Gene Chain!*

Lu Yuan stared at the cube. In the next instant, as though by instinct — as if the knowledge had simply always been there, waiting for him to look — he understood exactly what he was seeing.

Its function was simple.

And absolutely outrageous.

Normally, a fused gene was locked in place forever. That was this world's immutable rule — no exceptions, no workarounds, no upgrades. What you fused was what you had.

But this cube could evolve an already-fused gene. Continuously. Without limit.

Even the most ordinary, lowest-grade gene — the kind that should have been a dead end — could be evolved, step by step, all the way to the absolute pinnacle.

*Awakening.*

*Evolution.*

Unlimited potential. Unlimited possibility.

He had never read or heard of anything like this appearing during an Awakening. Not once.

*So I did awaken.*

Joy surged through him — pure, startled, electric.

This wasn't just talent. It was the ability to transcend every ceiling that talent could impose.

*Naturally*, he thought, with the quiet smugness of a man whose self-regard had survived cancer and death intact. *What else would you expect? This is me we're talking about.*

Outside his closed eyes, in the classroom he'd stopped paying attention to, the ceremony continued.

The teacher called the next name.

"Next — Li Xi."