Silver Wing City, Zero Wing headquarters.
Within the secret chamber, a flash of light flickered and Shi Feng's figure gradually materialized. Compared to how he usually logged into the Divine Realm, Shi Feng felt a faint dizziness this time, which only subsided after a few seconds. Everything before his eyes felt utterly different.
If the Divine Realm had previously appeared to players as an extremely vivid, hyper-realistic scene, then now the Divine Realm was, for all intents and purposes, truly real. In other words, the level of realism a player perceived had shifted to an entirely different tier.
"This sense of realness… it's oddly nostalgic." Shi Feng took stock of his condition and couldn't help but let a faint smile tug at his lips.
After the Divine Realm's system-wide upgrade, the average player might not notice much of a difference. But for Shi Feng, who had spent ten years adventuring in the Divine Realm, the change was qualitative.
Before, there had always been a subtle disconnect between his body and mind inside the Divine Realm—a barrier that his real-world body didn't have. Now that barrier was completely gone.
The difference was 99% versus 100%.
For ordinary players, this change wouldn't matter much. But for expert players—especially those who had reached the realm of Extreme Precision—the gap was enormous.
Humans and chimpanzees shared roughly 99% of their DNA, yet the gulf between the two species was as vast as heaven and earth.
Combat in the Divine Realm was nothing like fighting in the real world. In reality, the human body was fragile in every respect, and many techniques simply couldn't be expressed—like a child trying to swing a thousand-jin greatsword. With only so much physical constitution, wielding such a weapon properly was impossible.
But what if your body's capabilities were sufficient to swing that greatsword with ease?
One could imagine just how terrifying the destructive force would be. It would be no exaggeration to say the earth itself would tremble.
After that, Shi Feng left the secret chamber in the headquarters, intending to head to the office and sort through the data from the system upgrade.
The moment he stepped out of the chamber's door, the Tier 3 NPC male guard stationed outside—Frederick—startled in panic, straightening up with the flustered urgency of a frightened rabbit, his expression one of deep respect.
"Good morning, my lord!" The Tier 3 NPC guard saluted Shi Feng respectfully.
"Good morning." Shi Feng looked at the Tier 3 NPC guard, Frederick, and merely gave a slight nod, a playful smile playing at the corner of his lips. "It's finally here. I wonder how chaotic the major powers across the Divine Realm are about to become."
The biggest change following the system-wide upgrade wasn't the enhanced realism—it was the NPCs and monsters within the Divine Realm.
Every NPC and every monster would now possess their own thought processes.
That was right—thought, not mere artificial intelligence.
So-called AI was nothing more than pre-programmed data that could generate reasonable responses to player behavior. It was not genuine cognition. Typically, only NPCs of Tier 5 or above possessed even a rudimentary spark of thought.
But now, no matter how weak a monster or NPC might be, they all had minds of their own. The implications for the Divine Realm were staggering.
Because in a sense, these NPCs and monsters were no different from real human beings. When the time came, whether players were fighting monsters or clashing with NPCs, it would feel no different from PvP combat against real people.
No—in truth, it would be even more complicated than PvP, because the monsters and NPCs in the Divine Realm had long grown accustomed to battle. Some of those creatures and certain NPCs had been fighting since the day they were born—for over a decade, even two or three decades. Their combat experience was so vast that ordinary players who had entered the Divine Realm for only a year or two could not even begin to compare.
But these were not even the changes that would affect players the most.
What would truly shake things up was the shift in NPC and monster behavior. When that happened, NPCs would venture into the wild to hunt monsters, compete with players for adventurer guild quests and resources, and even vie for the rare materials and opportunities needed for class advancement.
In his previous life, when this transformation occurred, it had given every major power a monumental headache. Resources that had once been monopolized by these factions suddenly slipped out of their control—and on top of that, NPCs and monsters seized a large portion of them.
Of course, this change was not without its benefits.
Players who belonged to no faction could now team up with NPCs to take on quests. Not only did this give solo players far more room to survive, but resources and equipment that had once been utterly out of reach were now within their grasp.
Down in the underground hall, after Shi Feng departed, Frederick—the Tier 3 NPC guard who had been stationed at the chamber door—let out a long, deep breath of relief.
"My lord was acting so strange today. He never talks to us guards, yet today he actually said good morning to me." Frederick, clad in silver-white chain mail, stared after Shi Feng's retreating figure, his eyes filled with bewilderment. "Did he catch me slacking off and say that on purpose as a warning?"
At that thought, Frederick's entire body shuddered.
"No way—I absolutely cannot slack off anymore. A job this good is nearly impossible to find in the entire Star Moon Kingdom. If I lose this position, my old colleagues would never let me hear the end of it." Frederick straightened his posture even further, suddenly on high alert.
Meanwhile, the other NPC guards in the underground hall who had also seen Shi Feng whispered among themselves about his peculiar behavior today.