Ashen God

My name is Zhang Yanhang, and I have a slight difficulty making choices. I am a regular Awakener and a part-time university student, living a monotonous life composed of the same routine every day: attend school, cultivate, and return home. I neither smoke nor drink, and my only hobby is observing human beings during a Time Pause.

As a university student with a job, I thought my life would remain calm and ordinary until graduation, followed by finding a job, getting married, having children, and perhaps even having a second child in my middle age. Although ordinary, such a life seemed reasonable.

However, what I never anticipated was that about six months ago, the Empire suddenly announced that the world was once again experiencing a Spiritual Qi Recovery. Yes, it was not the first time, and although I do not know when the previous recovery occurred, from the Empire's statement, I could understand clearly that the recovery of Spiritual Qi seems to be a repetitive cyclic movement.

Additionally, with the revival of Spiritual Qi, a large number of Awakeners with awakened powers began to appear worldwide. According to survey data released by the Empire in the later stages, approximately one out of every thousand people would become an Awakener, which is quite a high probability.

Taking Qin Island City, where Zhang Yanhang currently lives, as an example, with a total population of over twenty million permanent and transient residents, about twenty thousand Awakeners will emerge.

But Zhang Yanhang did not awaken his power immediately; instead, it was only about a month ago that he finally awakened.

...

September 30, 2020, the day before the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day vacation, at noon, twelve ten.

Having finished his day's classes, Zhang Yanhang was walking home alone. Although he was going to have eight days off, his heart did not fluctuate because having a vacation really meant nothing to him—after all, he had no girlfriend, disliked traveling, and had few friends, so a holiday merely meant that he would be confined to cultivating at home.

Although it may seem sad, Zhang Yanhang did not really mind as he was relatively satisfied with his current life.

When Zhang Yanhang reached an intersection, he suddenly felt a noticeable damping sensation around his body, as if he had suddenly fallen into the ocean. The surrounding air began to press against his body like flowing water; of course, this pressure was very mild, merely superficial, and did not cause any real harm to Zhang Yanhang.

With the air's pressure came a few noticeably prominent text boxes before his eyes.

[Proceed directly left to return to Xingfuli District?]

[Option One: Turn left (Take advantage of the green traffic light, cross the zebra crossing, follow the correct road thereafter, and if you enter the gate of Xingfuli District before twelve thirty noon, you will find a wallet containing five hundred yuan in cash and relevant identification documents on the stairwell entrance.)]

[Option Two: Turn right (Ignore the green traffic light and turn right, then walk straight for fifteen meters, where you'll encounter an Earth Spirit Fruit produced by a fortunate coincidence from an apricot tree that has grown out of its boundary. Consuming it will enhance your defensive power and physical condition.)]

[Option Three: Go straight (Stay put until the traffic light turns from red to green, then walk straight across the street and head to the second public bench by the roadside. Strike up a conversation with the college girl picking at her feet sitting there, and you will be caught on her adjacent gopro camera and uploaded to a short video app, after which you will inexplicably become viral and gain a following of tens of thousands of fans.)]

Zhang Yanhang did not immediately attend to these strange text boxes. He looked up at the sky. Although it was autumn and it was noon, the Sun, albeit not as intense as in summer, should still be hanging high in the sky, continually emitting its harsh and dazzling sunlight.

But when Zhang Yanhang looked directly at the Sun, he felt no discomfort at all. The Sun, which should have been radiating infinite splendor, was now fixed in the sky like a hyper-realistic oil painting, utterly motionless.

Zhang Yanhang looked around him. The usually bustling and noisy intersection was now eerily silent. Whether it was pedestrians crossing the street or cars driving on the road, everything had fallen into a bizarre state of stillness.

Snap! Zhang Yanhang bent down and stretched out his right hand to catch a black, flower-patterned mosquito that had flown to his leg side. As he caught it, a crisp sound arose around him, as if something brittle had been forcefully snapped.

After catching the mosquito, Zhang Yanhang brought it close to his eyes to carefully observe its sexual characteristics. It had sparse antennal plumes and a noticeably swollen and forked ovipositor at the tail. Unless there were surprises, this should be a female mosquito (scientifically known as White Striped Mosquito), meaning it sucked human blood.

Having confirmed that this was a mosquito that was about to bite him, Zhang Yanhang, with mixed feelings, flicked his fingers, launching it into the surrounding air. However, the female White Striped Mosquito did not fly far before it was once again frozen in the air.

Yes, this was the superpower Zhang Yanhang had awakened, Time Pause, or rather, Time Pause was just an accompanying feature. His awakened power's official name was "Multiple Choice," and its function, as the name suggests, was merely to allow him to make various choices.

The current state of Time Pause was an added effect, meant to give Zhang Yanhang time to carefully consider which option to choose. While this might be inconsequential to others, for someone like Zhang Yanhang, who had slight difficulty making choices, this Time Pause was quite beneficial.

Of course, the duration of the Time Pause was not limitless. Zhang Yanhang had roughly tested it before, and it could at most last about an hour, after which he had to make a decision. Once he made a choice among the options, the Time Pause effect would immediately disappear.

When he first awakened this power, Zhang Yanhang thought he had become invincible, but he soon realized that during the Time Pause, he could not cause any destruction to his surroundings, nor could the surroundings inflict any harm on him. It was as if both he and the surroundings were isolated by something, which was also why he had merely flicked the mosquito away instead of crushing it directly.