Worldwide Class Change: Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward!-Chapter 168, The Celestial Slave Mark (1)
Lin Yi did not move from his knees.
He had been on both knees for long enough that the coldness of the surface was present and acknowledged and not relevant to anything he was deciding.
"Senior," he said. "I am asking again."
Cang Yutian looked at him. His dragon eyes moved across the kneeling figure with the observation that had been present since the first moment of their encounter, the watcher’s perception reading everything and filing everything.
Then the watcher did something he had not done at any point in the engagement.
He released his spiritual pressure.
The natural emanation of a level 240 Deity-class entity’s presence, the accumulated weight of what Cang Yutian was at his fundamental level, extended outward as a deliberate full downward force.
It pressed down.
Lin Yi felt it arrive like a change in gravity, the pressure building from the ambient level he had been operating under since entering the upper atmospheric layer to something that was not ambient at all.
His hands went to the island surface involuntarily, his body responding to the weight before his decisions could address it. He went from both knees to both knees and both palms, the pressure organized downward in a way that his passives defense could register but could not meaningfully counter because it was not an attack and his defensive skills were calibrated for attacks.
Then from both knees and both palms to flat. Face against the stone.
He was lying face down on the island surface with the full weight of a Deity-class spiritual pressure pressing him there.
"If you are asking for mercy," Cang Yutian said, "at least posture well."
The words clicked to Lin Yi and his body’s instinctive response to them produced a reaction in his chest that was not pain from the wounds and not the cold from the stone.
He stayed flat.
When I arrived in this world, he thought, all I wanted was a quiet life.
The thought came from a memory of the beginning before any of this had been what it was. The awakening ceremony. The E-Rank Laborer class appearing in a room full of people who found it laughable. The Amplification panel activating for the first time.
A quiet life. That was the goal. Stability. Comfort. The particular ease of someone who does not need to prove anything to anyone because there is nothing to prove and nothing at stake.
And then the amplification system activated, and minimum effort became ten thousand times maximum reward, and every step forward produced results that should have required a hundred steps, and somewhere in the process of watching that happen the quiet life became not the goal but the memory of a goal that the present had outgrown.
How could anyone seek calmness when the path to absolute greatness required only a single step? When the gap between ordinary and extraordinary was not a chasm but a decision? When the system demonstrated every day that the ceiling everyone else was working toward was not a ceiling for me but an intermediate point on a route that went much further?
You cannot live at the edge of that and choose the quiet. Not when each step forward reveals the next three steps. Not when the ground below you keeps being further down than it was before.
So the quiet life became a direction rather than a destination. Eventually. After the greatness had been achieved. After the climb was complete. Then the quiet. Then the calm.
And the desire for greatness brought me here. Face against cold stone. A Deity-class spiritual pressure holding me flat. A monster standing above me saying if you are asking for mercy, posture well.
If I had not tried the Thunder Dragon God, I would not have encountered the watcher. If I had not encountered the watcher, the Greater Qilin would still be alive. If I had approached the collection phase differently, found different targets for the halo, been patient about the thunder dragon until my level was sufficient to address whatever protected it, none of this would have happened.
The desire for more, applied impatiently, produced this.
He stayed flat and he acknowledged it and he did not argue with it.
The pressure eased. Enough for him to raise his head from the stone. He did not attempt to stand. The message of the gesture had been delivered and received and he was not going to respond to it by returning to a posture that the spiritual pressure had demonstrated could be addressed.
He looked at Cang Yutian from the surface.
"Senior," he said. "I will do anything you name."
Cang Yutian looked at him for a moment. Then he said two words.
"Middle Domain."
Lin Yi looked at him.
Cang Yutian’s expression shifted slightly. A fraction of adjustment, the specific quality of someone who has mentioned something and found the response to be an absence of recognition where recognition was expected.
"You don’t know it," Cang Yutian said.
"Senior," Lin Yi said. "I have no recollection of such a term."
The watcher was quiet for a moment, processing the absence of knowledge.
"Level 250 is what your world considers the highest," he explained calmly. "It’s the upper limit for lowly cultivation. Every rank you’ve earned, every class you’ve awaken, all the progress you’ve made — it all happens under the boundaries set by this level."
Lin Yi nodded in acknowledgment. "That’s true."
But Cang Yutian shook his head slightly. "No, it’s not just a limit," he said. "It’s more like a passage, a gateway to something beyond."
Lin Yi said nothing.
"Once you get past level 250," the watcher went on, "there’s still a path ahead. It’s not just a continuation of the same one—it’s something else entirely. This new path runs on a system unlike anything your world’s classification can handle. There’s no record, no category for it, because no one from your world has ever reached that point in all of recorded history." He took a moment to let that sink in. "I call the area beyond level 250 the Middle Domain. It sits between the mortal realm and the higher celestial planes. It’s a kind of in-between state—creatures there aren’t fully immortal, but they’re no longer limited by the mortal conditions that define everything below level 250. At the same time, they haven’t yet reached the ultimate boundaries of existence, the highest form that things can become."
"Immortality," Lin Yi said.
"Longevity," Cang Yutian said. "The body no longer operates on a biological basis. Aging as a process can be stretched indefinitely. Damage that would kill a mortal entity at equivalent power becomes something that can be sustained and recovered from." He looked at the ten Buddha wheels behind him. "I am at level 240. I have been at level 240 for a considerable period. I cannot leave the Thunder Dragon God’s side. That is the nature of my appointment. The celestial authority that placed me here did not provide a means for departure. I am here until the Thunder Dragon God’s protection is no longer required, or until a higher celestial authority recalls me."
He looked at Lin Yi directly.
"Since I cannot leave the Thunder Dragon side, I cannot hunt," he said. "I cannot accumulate experience. Every level between 240 and 250 requires that. None of those are available to an entity who cannot leave their appointed post." He paused. "And the Middle Domain is ten levels away."
Lin Yi looked at him. "But I can hunt," he said.
Cang Yutian looked steadily at Lin Yi, his tone serious as he spoke. "From what I’ve seen in your world, you’re the most powerful hunter I’ve come across. Level 230, with skills and attributes unlike anything I’ve witnessed in others." He paused, eyes locked on Lin Yi’s. "So, tell me. Do you accept these conditions?"
Lin Yi thought about what the condition meant. An arrangement, not explained yet, but the direction it was pointing was clear enough from the context.
"What is the condition?" he said.
"There is a skill," Cang Yutian said. "The Celestial Slave Mark."
The name was self-descriptive in a way that required no elaboration. Lin Yi stayed still.
"Once placed on your forehead, you are bound to me," Cang Yutian continued. "You cannot disobey my orders. Your actions naturally adhere to my will. The experience you gain in combat does not accumulate for your own level. It accumulates for mine." He paused. "There is one constraint that the skill carries at the binding stage. The bound party must agree to the binding. The mark cannot be placed without consent."
The system notification arrived before Cang Yutian had finished speaking.
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[Ding!]
[Celestial Slave Mark — Binding Initiated]
[Do you wish to be bound to the Player <Cang Yutian> as his slave?]
[ YES ] [ NO ]
