Chapter 1008 – Earth’s Upgrade

Inside the card system shop, survival-essential resource cards like food and tools were all available. As long as one had accumulated some Gem Coins in the game, staying alive was no longer a problem.

Apart from the very first month, the game’s environments had been even more perilous than the real apocalypse they now faced.

The players’ confidence swelled further.

Even for those fringe players who hadn’t played much, had barely any Gem Coins, and possessed minimal psychic power — or ordinary people who had only experienced the game a handful of times — the cheapest {Food Card – Black Bread} and {Food Card – Clean Water} in the card system shop were well within their means.

With careful planning, obtaining the basic supplies needed to sustain life was quite easy.

Meanwhile, those players with powerful psychic abilities, rich gaming experience, and even a rudimentary grasp of magical power quickly realized that this was an opportunity to overthrow the old order, establish a new one, and seize leadership.

After the true apocalypse descended, they each leveraged their strength, knowledge, resources, and experience as bargaining chips, and began building their own factions.

These emerging groups varied in scale and were primitive in structure. Their leaders’ authority was built upon personal strength, resource control, knowledge advantages, and the organizational abilities they had demonstrated early on.

Among them, there was both cooperation and competition, friction and conflict.

But regardless, an embryonic new order — one based on real power and the shared need for survival — was growing wildly amid the ruins of the post-apocalyptic world.

Under the guidance and influence of these individuals and organizations, survivor societies across the entire globe were being rapidly reshaped.

Even though technological products were gradually being recreated, given the precedent of how everything had collapsed and decayed in an instant, people could no longer trust technology the way they once had.

Magic, learned and mastered through one’s own efforts, replaced technology as the new means by which humanity survived, fought, and developed in this new world.

Everything was moving in a positive direction!

Mo Lan, who had been secretly observing the survival conditions of Earth’s humanity, could finally relax a little.

But this still wasn’t enough!

Their magical progress was far too slow!

Conveniently, the now-closed game space could be repurposed.

Mo Lan placed {Holographic Game: Apocalypse Descends} into a card slot of the Book of Cards and completely reforged it.

Within the game space, the once-ubiquitous wasteland scenery — fraught with danger at every turn — faded and dissolved like pencil drawings being erased, rapidly dimming into nothing.

The weather system, resource distribution logic, and even the entire gamified quest and progression framework were stripped away strand by strand, deconstructed and reduced to the purest energy, then entirely redirected toward reshaping the time flow within the space.

The vast demiplane was reorganized, partitioned and divided into countless sealed psychic learning spaces of varying sizes — each independent and strictly compartmentalized.

Every space was a customizable blank room with adjustable time acceleration, ranging from slightly faster than reality to far exceeding it, forming a gradient of options.

Here, there was no hunger, no injury or illness, no external enemies. The only “expenditure” was the user’s own psychic power, along with the “knowledge” and “simulated practice objectives” they brought in with them.

A brand-new {Psychic Learning Space} card was created.

Mo Lan immediately set about crafting new “access terminal” cards.

She didn’t even bother with pretenses anymore, directly pushing out an advertisement for the new cards through the card system of Earth’s people.

“Still worried about not having enough time? New addition! Special Function Cards!”

{Psychic Learning Space Limited-Use Card – Basic (2x Speed)}

【Effect: After use, your consciousness can access a stable psychic learning space for 1 hour (real time). Time flow within the space is approximately 2x reality, granting you roughly 2 hours of focused study/practice time. Within the space, you can call upon data from cards you already own for simulated practice, engage in deep meditation, and repeatedly perform mental training such as spell structure construction.】

【Price: 10 Gem Coins】

{Psychic Learning Space Limited-Use Card – Standard (3x Speed)}

【Effect: Access a 3x speed space for 1 hour, granting approximately 3 hours of study time…】

【Price: 20 Gem Coins】

…

{Psychic Learning Space Limited-Use Card – Advanced (10x Speed)}

【Effect: Access a 10x speed space for 1 hour (real time), granting approximately 10 hours of study time…】

【Price: 90 Gem Coins】

The newly updated cards sparked a fervent response among the survivor community.

“Psychic learning space?! Time acceleration?!”

“Up to ten times real time? Is this for real?”

“You can call up card data for simulated practice? That’s incredible!”

“You can even try meditation! In reality I always get distracted during meditation and it’s so inefficient. If there were an absolutely quiet place with extra time, maybe I would have already mastered it…”

“Gem Coins… the price isn’t cheap, but if it’s real, it’s absolutely worth it!”

“The system listed new cards again… there’s definitely an ‘administrator’ behind all this! Who is it? What are they trying to do?”

“Who cares who it is! Staying alive and getting stronger is all that matters right now! My saved-up Gem Coins finally have a use — let me buy a basic one and try it out!”

…

The appearance of the “Psychic Learning Space” injected a potent dose of “growth catalyst” into Earth’s fledgling magical civilization, still taking its first toddling steps.

It enormously alleviated the constraints that safety, time, and resources placed on learning in the real-world environment, allowing precious experience and magical knowledge to be accelerated in their settling, digestion, and conversion into actual magical ability within the psychic learning spaces.

As billions of survivors, driven by the instinct to survive and catalyzed by the psychic learning spaces, hungrily absorbed, practiced, and mastered magical knowledge while elevating their psychic power —

Their very life essence underwent a qualitative leap.

This collective elevation of life essence ultimately fed back into Earth, the world that had nurtured them.

Earth’s originally fragile boundary membrane was strengthening at a visibly perceptible rate, soon breaking free from the confines of a zero-rank world and steadily advancing toward First Rank, Second Rank, and even Third Rank.

As the world’s rank rose and the boundary membrane strengthened, Earth absorbed cosmic energy at an ever-increasing pace. The elemental energy pathways running through mountains and rivers, vegetation and stone became clearer and more palpable, providing spellcasters with endless magical inspiration.

More importantly, Earth’s source power had grown stronger. As the sole intelligent species on Earth, humanity’s magical talent awakening rate and growth ceiling were raised across the board.

The two reinforced each other, forming a perfect positive feedback loop. Earth had finally, thoroughly escaped its fate of destruction.

Although the Earth before her was not the homeland deep in Mo Lan’s memories — the one that had carried the laughter and tears of her previous life, the one that had ultimately crumbled in despair — she was genuinely happy for this world’s transformation. Because once, another version of her had lived here too.