DING!

All Defense Towers are now fully socketed with Level 8 Gemstones!

Trait Reward: All Defense Tower attack range increased by 45%... 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

***

In the game Tower Defense of Ten Thousand Realms, Shen Fei quickly spent 100 million to upgrade all the Level 7 Gemstones on his Defense Towers to Level 8. His towers were now socketed with 612 Level 8 Gemstones.

Once all were upgraded to Level 8, a new Trait Reward appeared: attack range increased by 45%! Thanks to this new reward and various other buffs, the attack range of his Tenth Tier Lightning Ball Defense Towers reached a staggering 99 kilometers.

I have 700 million left, but I need another 800 million to upgrade all the Gemstones to Level 9... It’s still not enough.

Shen Fei stopped after upgrading all his gemstones to Level 8. He ran into a problem upgrading the 612 Level 8 Gemstones to Level 9—he didn’t have enough money again! Even with the 700 million remaining from his recent top-up, it still wasn’t enough.

This Gemstone system, as the final Krypton Gold project, had an immense ability to devour money. He was still short on funds.

I’ll just upgrade a portion of them for now.

After a moment of thought, even though he couldn’t upgrade everything to Level 9, Shen Fei still spent the remaining 700 million in one go to prevent any unexpected twists. After a flurry of purchasing and synthesizing gemstones, most of the gems on his Defense Towers soon became Level 9. The number of Level 9 Gemstones reached 518.

This massive quantity of Level 9 Gemstones caused his Combat Power to instantly break past 450 million.

Now I’m not afraid of anything! All I have to do is wait for the ability inheritance in 20 hours...

Having now spent the entire 800 million he had recently added to his account, Shen Fei completely relaxed. If he had been on edge before the voice sounded at midnight, he was now completely at ease. Even if Tower Defense of Ten Thousand Realms shut down right now, it wouldn’t stop his game abilities from being inherited. It was the same logic that allowed people to inherit abilities from cartridge games they had played more than a decade ago.

***

Letting out a long sigh, Shen Fei felt a wave of exhaustion. The tension he had been holding in finally dissipated. It was 4 AM, and fatigue instantly washed over him.

Time to sleep. Tomorrow, I’m going to do something big!

He yawned, left the game running idly, and fell into a blissful sleep. It was the most peacefully he had slept since his rebirth.

***

"Everyone, look!!"

"Brother Chongtian’s Combat Power broke through again!!"

"450 million!!"

"He has 500 Level 9 Gemstones socketed! Those Gemstones are worth a billion!!!"

"Holy crap!!! Is that for real?!!!"

***

While Shen Fei was asleep, many night owls on the game Forum absolutely lost their minds when they saw his Combat Power. Although not many people were replying to the post due to the late hour, everyone was instantly stunned after they did the math and realized his gemstones were worth a billion.

"That can’t be right!" someone questioned the authenticity of Shen Fei’s data. "I was just watching PDD’s stream on Douyin, and he said you can’t top up in any game right now! How could Brother Chongtian have possibly topped up another billion?!"

"Couldn’t my Brother Chongtian have topped up yesterday?" a fan countered.

"If he topped up yesterday, why synthesize the Gemstones today?"

"None of your business! He can do what he wants!"

The players, shaken by the one-billion figure, quickly started arguing on the Forum. Meanwhile, many of the players who had received red packets from Shen Fei and now had the "Heaven-Reaching Gang" prefix in their names felt an intangible sense of pride seeing the arguments. They quickly forwarded the relevant pictures to their own QQ groups. And then, upon seeing that their boss had spent a billion on Krypton Gold for gemstones, the QQ groups exploded too.

***

"Extra! Extra!! Looting is happening again in the United States!"

"In Sir Latin, the public has started mass protests!!"

"Extra! Extra! These are pictures my classmate abroad just sent me! Foreigners actually heard that voice too..."

New posts quickly popped up on the Forum. Unfortunately, since it was late at night, they didn’t get much traffic. Only a few savvy individuals, after having a realization, got busy in their games overnight.

***

「The next day.」

Having rested peacefully, Shen Fei was awakened by a knock on his door. At his sister’s call, he joined his family for breakfast.

"And now for your morning news report!" The news was playing on the wall-mounted screen in front of the dining table. "...The Mandela effect refers to... In our country, many instances of mass memory discrepancies have also occurred in contemporary literature, such as ancient poems and song lyrics... for example, primary school poems..."

"...Many netizens have expressed that April Fools’ Day can be a source of relaxation and fun, and that some pranks are understandable..."

The news was covering topics that were well within Shen Fei’s expectations. This was a tradition in Xia Country. It was obvious that after confirming something, the authorities, for the sake of stability, were intentionally or unintentionally steering the narrative of last night’s anomaly toward the "Mandela effect" and "April Fools’ Day."

This approach was actually effective. After all, the voice had sounded late at night in Xia Country. Although some people’s nights were just beginning, most were already asleep because they had to work during the day. Coupled with the fantastical content of the voice’s message, most people, aside from gamers, treated it as little more than a topic of conversation. Because of this, Xia Country remained largely stable, with everyone going about their daily work routines. Most people dismissed the voice as a rumor, believing it was a prank coordinated by a small group of people.

But compared to the stability in Xia Country, countries like the United States in the other hemisphere were in total chaos. Since it was daytime there, the vast majority of people were awake and had heard the voice. This directly triggered widespread looting.

Aside from the usual groups who enjoyed looting at any opportunity, the choice more people abroad made after hearing the voice was to rush into all sorts of private game servers. Since the voice said game abilities could be inherited, they wanted to secure a baseline game ability first. Obviously, the fastest way to increase in-game strength was on private servers.

In the blink of an eye, countless private servers crashed from the massive influx of players, and countless others received enormous amounts of cash top-ups. Some professionals even set up their own super-games and modified their Krypton Gold amount to 9,999,999+. There were also those with GM-privileged accounts who, disregarding company rules, adjusted the data on their personal accounts to rank first on the leaderboards. Even more crazily, some game engineers directly maxed out the Combat Power of all game characters on the servers they maintained.

Because it was daytime and everyone was awake, most people abroad made their choice before the ten minutes were up. Their first thought was to increase their character’s strength, and private servers were the obvious answer. Online, many web stores selling private server data saw their transaction volumes exceed a hundred million within just a few hours.

Many people even started showing off their results on game Forums. For example, one Warcraft player on a private server learned the skills of every class, single-handedly mastering the abilities of a Warrior, Mage, Priest, Rogue, and all other classes on one character. A League of Legends player stacked the abilities of every champion onto their own character, including Summoner spells. A DNF player modified their character on a private server to have 999 equipment slots, and then equipped 999 Divine Artifacts.