Ten thousand I am across the heavens

After a brief period of peace in his world, Mo Chengzi devoted himself to the study of magic. It was like a unique technological tree in that world. He hoped to find a way home through his research. Time passed, day after day. He could feel his body aging bit by bit. His hair turned white, his skin wrinkled. The vitality of his youth had long since vanished, replaced by a feeling of blockage in his joints, like unlubricated gears.

The approach of death once filled him with dread. No one can remain indifferent to death; on the battlefield, in a life-or-death moment, one might be able to fight to the death with great courage. But death, brought on by the passage of time, is like a frog being slowly boiled in water. It gradually erodes a person's courage.

However, some people are ultimately able to accept it. Even if they don't believe in heaven or hell, even if they think that nothing remains after death, they can still face death with equanimity in the final moments of their lives.

Mo Chengzi's first life seemed unremarkable, a complete failure, and he died. Compared to those geniuses who possessed some kind of cheat code and thrived in their first reincarnation thanks to that cheat code, he appeared quite mediocre, even somewhat incompetent.

But he was still given a second chance at rebirth, only this time not in the world he was in now, but in a magical cyberpunk city.

Here, he was reborn as a young man. He awoke in a rented room. The original owner's memories flooded his mind, giving him a general understanding of his surroundings. His original parents had abandoned him because he had accumulated a large amount of debt that he couldn't repay in the short term, even leading him down a path of endless borrowing to pay off more loans.

Unlike those gambling addicts and drug addicts, what he was addicted to was far more terrifying: studying. In this cyber-modern city, learning real skills and joining a company was incredibly expensive. To maintain his class ranking and have a chance to get into a top university and secure a job, he had to be among the best in his grade. Everyone was vying for those spots, so the investment was immense. The original owner was extremely competitive. To maintain his ranking, he secretly bought prosthetic limbs, special mental and muscle-enhancing drugs, and other mental supplements to maximize his learning efficiency and study time. He even sacrificed sleep.

Some members of his family couldn't afford that much money, so he secretly started borrowing. With the equipment he bought through loans, he became a top student in his class. But being a top student isn't easy. To maintain his position, he had to continuously invest in himself, constantly modifying his mechanics, injecting himself with chemicals, and buying the latest tutoring courses and supplementary materials.

He borrowed money again and again, asking his family for money time and time again. Finally, one day, he couldn't cover the debt, and debt collectors called his home. At first, his parents tried hard to help him pay off the debt, but after learning the enormous amount he owed, they finally gave up on him and left him.

As her grades steadily declined, she slipped from the top-performing class to a regular one. She also lost her family's financial support and was burdened with enormous debt. The immense pressure drove her to jump from a high-rise building.

He transmigrated to a point in time one day before the original owner of the body jumped to their death. If he hadn't taken over the body's owner, that person might already have jumped.

"This world is truly maddening." Mo Chengzi glanced at his snowballing loan. Even disregarding the monthly rent of around 1000 yuan, plus utilities of about 100 yuan and basic food expenses of 500 yuan, he had to repay at least 8000 yuan a month just to cover the interest payments. And judging from the rent, utilities, and food costs, it was clear that this money wasn't easy to earn.

Now, if he wants to maintain his grades at school, he needs to invest a huge amount of money. Academic subjects are manageable; general education requires the fewest resources. After all the hard work, almost everyone gets near-perfect scores. But precision mechanical operation, physical education tests, hacking skills, and the final practical test—each of these is a major drain on resources.

Precision mechanical manipulation refers to a student's ability to precisely control the mechanical devices commonly found on their prosthetic limbs. To pass the exam, besides extensive training to better integrate with the prosthesis, students also need to inject a drug during the exam to enhance the sensitivity of their nervous system. This ensures they are highly focused and can enter a state similar to bullet time during the operation.

Without the injections, even with rigorous training and hard work, a student's natural abilities alone cannot match those who use performance-enhancing drugs. Furthermore, drug tolerance is part of the training process. Therefore, those who are wealthier and can afford to administer drugs tend to perform better in this subject.

Mo Chengzi saw the schedule on the school calendar. There would be a test on the operation of precision machinery soon, and if his performance dropped significantly, he would not only be ridiculed by his classmates and his status in the class would plummet, but he would also lose many of the school's benefits.

As for abandoning the path of education and choosing other avenues to enhance one's abilities, gaining the power to compete with the company, and gradually reaching the pinnacle of this world, theoretically, there's a sliver of a possibility. After all, there's always a way out.

But that's just a theoretical possibility; without a high-level, comprehensive observation of the world, without understanding the workings of society, that path is a dead end. Relying solely on knowledge, experience, and an understanding of how society operates, and assuming that a particular industry or field is suitable for development, suitable for uniting a group of people to fight for their own interests, may very well lead to failure due to a complete lack of knowledge about certain hidden aspects.

Mo Chengzi could understand why the original owner studied so tirelessly. Indeed, they only had this one way out. Besides studying to the point of exhaustion, it was truly difficult to find another path to change their fate. At least on this path, if they could truly compete to the top of their class and get into university, they could enter a company and obtain a respectable position.

Although they are still considered ants in the eyes of countless high-ranking officials, they are already unattainable figures to those living in the cyber slums.

Without any special advantages, he could only desperately continue studying at school. As for the money he needed, he would probably have to borrow more, just like the original owner. With his current education, the income from working would be far from enough to fill the huge loan hole. Only by showing the debt collectors that he had a chance to get into university and repay his debts in the future would he have a sliver of hope to survive under their relentless pressure. He knew the city in Cyber ​​Art quite well; being a deadbeat here wasn't easy. After all his valuables had been mortgaged and sold, he still had his own body and organs. If the debt collectors really couldn't get the money, every part of his body could be sold for money. Even if they couldn't recover all the costs, they would dismantle him into parts to minimize losses. Violent resistance was out of the question. Although he had spent a lot of money on himself, compared to the well-equipped debt collectors, his strength was still far inferior. Moreover, those debt collectors had connections in both the legal and illegal worlds. Even if someone from the company comes to help, no matter how capable they are, they won't be able to solve the problem.

"There's no other way. The only thing I can do now is to continue down the original owner's path. I'll try my best to save some money and see if I can make some with my skills."

In terms of precision mechanical operation, the knowledge and memory I've inherited are already on par with my current level. After all, the machinery in this world is quite different from what I'm familiar with. My past knowledge and experience may not be applicable. Investment is still necessary; there's no way to save a single penny.

In sports, there's absolutely no way to cut back on spending money. Trying to improve physical strength through exercise is simply a pipe dream for people in this world. The amount of muscle gained from a month of training might not even equal what someone gains from a few injections. With more expensive prosthetic limbs, the improvement is even greater; you only need to replace parts. Strength increases dramatically. Control, once developed, is simply no match for prosthetics.

As far as I know, hacking skills are one of my strengths, but the internet technology in this world is far behind that of the Republic of Mountains and Rivers. Although the underlying network architecture is slightly different, they are largely the same. My original skill level was already top-notch here; what I lacked was computing power.

The hackers in this world rely on their brains to forcibly enhance their computing power. They directly connect to the network via neural connections, using a virtual, visualized interface to employ hacking techniques. Therefore, they often need to use neurostimulants to keep their brains active, thus achieving excellent results in hacking exams. I, however, can take a shortcut. With a higher level of hacking skills, even without forcibly stimulating my brain's potential, I should be able to easily crush these students.

The final practical training is a comprehensive test of the three abilities mentioned above, and it's also very expensive. My experience can help me reduce the cost. I compensate for equipment disadvantages with combat skills. Hacking techniques can also be used in actual combat; directly hacking into the opponent's system and controlling their machinery is also a combat method.

Overall, this subject can save a considerable amount of money. But even so, it probably still won't last until the exam. After all, there are still two years of courses before the big exam. Trying to survive until then with the limited resources is simply a pipe dream. At least I need to be able to pay the loan interest every month before I can find a way to get more money.

Mo Chengzi calmly analyzed his current situation. Unlike his previous life, which was uneventful and lived like an ordinary person with little to no distinguishing qualities, his initiative was now greatly aroused, immediately making him stand out from the crowd.

He had hidden his extraordinary abilities, living like an ordinary person. Now, however, all of these abilities had been activated, allowing him to quickly comprehend the memories left to him by the original owner of the body and to integrate the courses he had taken at school.

The knowledge gained from general education courses was his best way of understanding the world, and thus he learned that there had been no groundbreaking achievements in theoretical physics for decades. While the technology around him seemed to be advancing rapidly, cutting-edge technology had actually not seen a breakthrough for many years.

This technological bottleneck may persist for thousands of years, possibly forever. After all, the ladder of technology wasn't built specifically for humans; some races or regions of the universe will almost never have the chance to reach the summit. Not every step can necessarily be climbed.

It is precisely because cutting-edge technology has ceased to advance, and the overall level of technology has reached a relatively high level, that society has gradually become involutionary, evolving into its current form.

The expanded memory chip is sufficient for students to easily learn most of the world's knowledge, or at least store it in the chip and memorize it. Therefore, general education courses account for a very small percentage of the grade. Knowledge is something that only requires a general understanding, and then it can be downloaded into the memory chip. Thus, the difference in knowledge levels between people will not be significant.

There's absolutely no need to compete in this field. No one believes they can break through the technological bottleneck using the existing knowledge base. Training so many scientists would be a waste of resources. It would be better to have them learn more practical technologies and train more assistants. This explains why the weight of individual subjects in the curriculum is far greater than that of general education courses.

Even knowing all this, all he can do now is go back to school. Jumping off a building to commit suicide is out of the question. Even if he survives, illegal jumps here will result in compensation. If his body is injured, the medical expenses for repairs will be astronomical. Accidentally damaging his expensive prosthetic body would be even more painful than breaking his own body. What's worse, he has a rented prosthetic body; although it's deposit-free, if it gets damaged, a loan will be forcibly taken out of his account to compensate for the loss.

He had truly thrown himself into a world where even dying was difficult. Of course, it wasn't entirely impossible to live an easier life. With his current knowledge and abilities, he could work for ten or twenty years, gradually paying off his loans. Then, he could live a muddled, ordinary life in the cyber slums, numbed by the drug, and his life would pass by like that. But Mo Chengzi clearly couldn't accept that kind of life.

[To be continued]

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