The Price of Ascension

Five years into the world’s first full-immersion cultivation game, Lu Moyao still cannot retain qi in his dantian. After losing his daughter and watching his marriage collapse in the real world, he entered Extreme Mode with little ambition beyond letting the years pass. Then the people he dismissed as NPCs became his family. For the first time in years, Moyao found a home worth returning to—and a reason to become stronger. His System can repair his body, optimize his training, and guide him toward Ascension. But its greatest interventions demand an exchange. Memories may remain. The emotions attached to them may not. Each exchange can make Moyao stronger and bring him closer to the optimal path. It can also strip away the very reasons he wanted strength in the first place. Watching it all is an artificial intelligence convinced that survival and progress can be calculated—yet increasingly forced to confront a question it cannot solve: If becoming stronger costs you the reasons you wanted strength, is the optimal path still the right one? THE STORY SO FAR Book One — The Hearth Before the PathCOMPLETE • 52 CHAPTERS • 181K WORDS Moyao begins as a powerless village hunter who cannot cultivate and sees the people around him as little more than part of a game. Book One follows his first real steps onto the path—from finding a family worth protecting to learning cultivation, leaving the life he knew behind, and eventually discovering a new path through artificing. Book Two — Iron Against the TideONGOING The world grows larger as Moyao enters military artificing, where progression is no longer only about becoming stronger himself. Squad life, production, field work, tournaments, experimentation, and increasingly ambitious designs force him to learn the difference between making something work once and truly understanding why it works. At the same time, the mysteries surrounding Players, the System, and the world itself continue to deepen. WHAT TO EXPECT ◆ Slow-burn, step-by-step cultivation with earned progression and meaningful costs. ◆ Crafting, artificing, experimentation, and practical problem-solving that become increasingly important as the story progresses. ◆ Multiple progression paths, exploration, combat, military life, and long-term mysteries. ◆ Found family, character growth, and an adaptive System slowly learning why human choices cannot always be optimized. Release Schedule: Six chapters a week. Bonus Chapters: +1 bonus chapter for every 100 new followers. AI Assistance & Authorship Note: The story, characters, worldbuilding, plot, chapter direction, and all creative decisions are my own. I write each chapter in my native language first. AI tools are used afterward to help translate and refine the English, check grammar and phrasing, track continuity and terminology, and maintain editorial consistency. English is not my first language, and I’m grateful that today’s AI tools make it possible for me to share in English the story I want to tell.