The Great Merchant in the Cataclysm - Chapter 74 - Erode

I am currently re-writing the first chapters of this story. They are quite rough and bounce around a lot and I can do better. At some point, I will replace these with the better chapters.Sometime in 2024 Aethon Books will publish the first volume of this story on Amazon, KU, and audible. This will mean the story will be stubbed. I will notify people far in advance of that.In the dystopian world of the future, life is rough when you live at the bottom. Jobs are non-existent. Far too many people live in poverty, crammed into huge buildings called Habitats. With no jobs in the real world, many people can only find work online in VR worlds as servants to the very rich. And it's getting worse. The old internet is unusable and hacked to pieces. The new system needs AI to run things, but all but one of them were destroyed. The last sentient AI is ordered to create a new game world so the rich can have a playground, and the corporations that rule the world can have a new global market place. Everyone wants a piece of the new game. The guilds are competing to be the first to find the dungeons and kill the biggest monster. The corporations are claiming land and putting in their online market places. Ozzy and his friends just want a paycheck.Four friends sign five year contracts as virtual serfs in a small village, and can't go adventuring at all to gain money. They don't have many choices. They can work as a blacksmith, barmaid and shepherd for all those years....or they can cheat and find ways to take advantage of the system and carve out a section of the game world for themselves, and earn a fortune in the real world.When they give you a mop and not a sword, you have to find the loopholes and change the rules.

Ethan Carter never thought much about heroism—until the night he pushed a girl out of the way of a speeding truck and felt cold steel and shattering bones instead of pavement. He expected to die. Instead, he woke up in a hospital, completely healed, with a strange blue screen floating in front of him.[System Activated.][Welcome, User. Your journey begins now.]At first, he thinks he's hallucinating. But when his body starts changing—his strength skyrocketing, his reflexes sharpening—Ethan realizes this is real. The System grants him quests, skills, and rewards, pushing him to break human limits. And yet, there’s more. Locked away in his interface is something called *World Travel*—but it remains inaccessible, its conditions unknown.As he grows stronger, Ethan catches the attention of powerful forces—some eager to recruit him, others determined to stop him. And amidst the chaos, women drawn to his power and charisma begin to enter his life, each with their own mysteries.But one question haunts him: *Why was I chosen?*The answer lies beyond this world. And when the time comes, Ethan won’t just step into new worlds—he’ll conquer them.

The grand master of Shape-Will Fist, Ning Wufeng, was brought to the Divine Land Continent by a mysterious scroll. In this world, he was an abandoned child and appointed by his family as inferior leader of a small fishing village because he was unable to open up his Spirits Aperture and begin his cultivation.

However, he seemed destined to open up his abandoned with the memories of previous life integrating into his mind. And the scroll guided Ning Wufeng into a vast mysterious hidden world where he was bestowed divine weapons and acquired supreme skills of cultivation.

Deafening thunder indicated the immense changes in the movement of winds and clouds. In a world where people worshiped martial arts, how could the teenage loser be the master of his own destiny? How could he wield his power to control the world, making gods and demons tremble with fear?

- Description from Novelupdates