"Damn it! That Blessed really managed to escape!"
"This is over! What do we do? How are we going to explain this to that person?"
Three dark wyrmlings, their wings whipping up storms within the bottomless abyss, stared at the space-time vortex Shi Feng had vanished through, their eyes burning with fury and terror, their voices trembling with helplessness.
"The legacy was stolen by a Blessed — the plan has completely gone off track. That person will never spare us when they find out. Our only chance is to scatter and flee, or none of us will live to see another day..."
"There's no other choice. Let's just hope that person's rage will be focused entirely on that Blessed. If so, our odds of surviving go up quite a bit."
With the lead wyrm speaking, the other two dark wyrmlings quickly reached a consensus. Spreading their jet-black wings, hearts full of resentment toward Shi Feng and a bitter kind of schadenfreude, they flew off in different directions, abandoning the bottomless abyss behind them.
On the other side of the space-time vortex, Shi Feng had no idea about any of it. A momentary flash of disorientation passed before he found himself back in Silverwing City's secret chamber.
"Done!"
"Tier 4! A true Tier 4 Class!"
Shi Feng couldn't help but gaze around as torrents of liquid mana surged toward him, flooding his body, steadily restoring the depleted mana and exhausted spirit within him. It felt as though he had been reborn, and an indescribable rush of excitement and elation surged through his heart.
A goal he had never achieved in his previous life — accomplished in this moment.
Moreover, it wasn't just any Tier 4 Class. As a hidden Class, the Blade Saint's advancement to Tier 4 meant that, in terms of base attributes and magical skills alone, he utterly crushed ordinary Tier 4 players.
He was now a genuine powerhouse in the Divine Realm — someone even the major NPC kingdoms had to respect.
Just as Shi Feng was reveling in his triumph, an icy system notification suddenly rang in his ears.
System Announcement: The Divine Realm system will undergo a major upgrade. A new expansion, Return of the Heroes, will be launched simultaneously. All players will be logged out within thirty minutes. Estimated downtime: one full day.
...
The system announcement repeated three times, leaving everyone in the Divine Realm — Shi Feng included — stunned.
"A major system upgrade?"
"How is that possible?!"
Shi Feng stared in disbelief at the system announcement displayed before him, reading it over and over, a deep sense of confusion and puzzlement written across his face.
System updates in the Divine Realm were frequent, but a major system upgrade had only happened twice before.
The first major upgrade had come three years after the Divine Realm's launch.
Back then, there were already quite a few Tier 4 players, Tier 3 players were everywhere, and some had even begun attempting to break through to Tier 5.
But how long had the Divine Realm been open this time around?
That first major upgrade remained one of Shi Feng's most vivid memories — an event that had shocked the entire world and transformed the Divine Realm from a virtual reality game into the world's singular form of gaming and entertainment.
If the Divine Realm's previous system updates had been a process of continual world-building and refinement, then a major upgrade was nothing short of a revolution — a complete transformation that took the game beyond anything anyone had imagined.
Players were no longer merely players. In the Divine Realm, they became just one special group among many.
The NPCs and monsters alike were now as real as living beings — they had their own life stories, their own personalities, their own lives. They existed to survive.
These changes had made the Divine Realm an entirely different place. It was no longer simply a virtual reality game; it had fundamentally altered the real world itself.
At that moment, Shi Feng wasn't the only one grappling with this revelation. Players across the Divine Realm and the leaders of every major power were equally stunned and bewildered.
"A major system upgrade? And it's going to take a full day? What the hell is going on?"
"Hell, I haven't even promoted to Tier 3 yet and they're already overhauling the system? They're trying to kill me!"
...
Players across the Divine Realm were filled with complaints and frustration, utterly speechless at the sudden major upgrade.
A full day of downtime had caught everyone completely off guard. They had no idea what to do with themselves for an entire day, because the Divine Realm had long since become an integral part of their lives — logging in every day had become second nature.
Previous system updates typically lasted only a few hours or, at most, a dozen or so hours. An entire day? It was enough to drive someone insane.
At the same time, anyone who had been among the earliest players in the Divine Realm knew full well what a system update entailed: the difficulty of leveling up and fighting monsters would spike significantly, and the skill requirements for players would climb considerably.
This sudden major upgrade was nothing short of a nightmare for players who hadn't yet promoted to Tier 3.
For the major powers in the Divine Realm, it was no small upheaval either. It meant that the number of players capable of promoting to Tier 3 would shrink further, the difficulty and resource costs of cultivating experts within guilds would rise, and countless development plans would be rendered obsolete — everything would have to be planned from scratch...
Yet even as the established powers seethed with dissatisfaction and frustration, many of the Divine Realm's newer forces and newly arrived major corporations were thrilled.
The increased difficulty and tighter resources were virtually guaranteed to shake up the balance of power. If they seized the opportunity, there was no reason they couldn't replace the Divine Realm's old-guard factions.
In an instant, the atmosphere among the Divine Realm's various powers turned eerily tense. On one hand, they ordered frantic recruitment and massive resource stockpiling. On the other, they ruthlessly cut resource allocation to ordinary, low-potential guild members — driving many to consider leaving their guilds for other factions.
As these major powers sprang into action, Liang Jing also hurriedly contacted Shi Feng.
"Guild Master, all the major powers are buying up gold coins and resources like crazy. Should we start purchasing too?" Liang Jing asked, a note of urgency in her voice.
"No need for that," Shi Feng said with a chuckle upon hearing her question. "Weren't those super guilds busy suppressing us, making sure we couldn't get our hands on large amounts of capital? Fine — let's flood the market with the gold Silverwing City has earned over this period. Let them do all the buying."
"Guild Master?" Liang Jing froze, completely confused about what Shi Feng was after.
Every major power was scrambling to buy resources and gold. And here Shi Feng wanted to sell? Once the system upgrade finished, it would be them left holding the bag.
"Go ahead," Shi Feng said with a smile, offering no further explanation.
Based on previous system updates, stockpiling resources had indeed been the right call. But this time was different — this was a major system upgrade. Not only would resources fail to become scarcer, they would actually become easier to obtain. Leveling up would even become somewhat easier in certain respects.
That said, it wasn't without its troubles.
After the major upgrade, both externally and internally, the requirements for players to promote would become far stricter. The biggest change lay in mana itself — players would need a deeper understanding and control of mana to advance, which was why the top experts of the future were all master-grade magic array specialists.
"Oh, and once you're offline, have Youyu Weixiao and the others come to the conference room. I need to discuss something with them," Shi Feng added.