Chapter 36: Creation

With a mixture of nervous anticipation, Jiang Qin drank the bottle of power awakening liquid that looked like glucose.

It had no particular taste, just as if it had just begun.

Ten minutes passed...

Jiang Qin still felt nothing.

She looked at her hands and silently hoped: Fire? Water? Ice? Vines? Lightning?

Well, it was just her imagination—nothing appeared.

After waiting another five minutes, she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her head, her vision darkened, and she fainted.

When she woke up again, her mind felt empty, as if it was ready to hold many thoughts.

As if guided, the image in her mind finally settled on a large light bulb.

This moment made her suddenly recall her elementary school textbook from her first life.

In those illustrations, when a character had a good idea, a light bulb would appear above their head.

And now, she felt as if she was wearing a light bulb on her head, so her mind conjured up the image of one, even tracing its outline.

Then!

A large light bulb truly appeared before her eyes!

Jiang Qin stared blankly at the glowing bulb in front of her.

She knew what power she had awakened.

A branch of psychic abilities—Creation.

The light bulb before her continued to shine brightly; when she reached out to touch it, it felt just like a real object.

This power had been recorded in interstellar history, but only about two thousand years ago.

This ability allowed one to manifest imagined objects into reality using psychic energy.

How much could be manifested depended entirely on the strength of one's psychic power, as did how long the manifestations could be sustained.

Generally, first-level powers could only manifest ordinary small objects or mere phantasms of larger items.

Phantasms were just images without physical substance.

For example, if Jiang Qin wanted to manifest a creature from the Classic of Mountains and Seas.

When her psychic power was weak, only a phantasmal image would appear, like a holographic projection, but different in that she could control it in real time.

Holograms, by contrast, only displayed pre-set images, such as pre-made videos.

To fully manifest a creature from the Classic of Mountains and Seas—with real substance and the creature’s abilities—would require a tremendous amount of psychic energy.

Maintaining them alone would consume a vast amount of psychic power.

The moment the energy was depleted, the manifestation would vanish immediately.

With Jiang Qin’s current B-level psychic power, she could at most bring forth some live animals, but how long she could maintain them remained unknown since she had yet to try.

To be honest, Jiang Qin suspected that because the awakening liquid was a system product, that was why she had awakened this ability.

After all, this power matched the system perfectly.

When her psychic energy became more abundant, maintaining something like a movie, TV show, or play wouldn’t be a problem—she would essentially be a playback device.

Sustaining images was much easier and consumed far less psychic energy.

Perhaps she could already maintain an entire episode of a TV show.

***

Making movies in the interstellar age was quite similar to Earth—actors were still needed.

Even for background extras, holographic corpses or bystanders were rarely used, only in low-budget, poor-quality productions.

Because it looked too fake; everyone could easily tell the difference and be pulled out of the immersion.

Therefore, film crews preferred real actors and real scenes whenever possible, resorting to holographic backgrounds only when necessary.

Backgrounds were somewhat forgivable since they were inanimate and could be adjusted later, but holographic humans felt hollow and lifeless.

Jiang Qin’s controlled images, however, could be alive.

As long as she had enough psychic energy, she alone could recreate an entire film.

She could then record it, add voiceovers in post-production, and effectively replicate Earth’s audiovisual works.

This made Jiang Qin suspect there might be some rigging in the random awakening of this ability.

But it didn’t matter—she liked the power very much.

In fact, she liked whatever ability she awakened; it was free, so why be picky?

To see how long her current psychic power could sustain the manifestations, she didn’t let the light bulb disappear.

Instead, she placed it by her bedside as a nightlight.

Checking the time, it was already 2 a.m., meaning she had been unconscious for about three hours.

It had been a fulfilling day, and Jiang Qin felt exhausted.

After a quick shower, she fell asleep immediately.

***

The next morning, she opened her eyes to see the light bulb still shining by her bedside.

It was unchanged and hadn’t disappeared.

After freshening up, Jiang Qin changed clothes and went to the living room to grab a bottle of nutritional liquid.

The taste was unpleasant, but she never minded.

No matter how bad, it was better than having nothing to eat or drink.

She couldn’t even remember how many nights she had curled up on the floor, enduring burning pain in her stomach before falling asleep.

During those hard times, her only hope was to save enough for a spaceship ticket to leave the barren planet and find her family.

Or that her family would find her soon.

For this reason, her tolerance for the Jiang family was so high.

After all, it was the family she longed for day and night; until she truly lost hope, how could she let go?

Yet, even with the thickest filters to view them, she was ultimately disappointed.

Jiang Qin shook her head, dismissing such thoughts—it was an unlucky start to the day!

Just then, Shi Lichuan entered from outside and saw the scene.

The delicate young woman, shaky-headed, sipping the nutritional liquid—she looked adorable.

He smiled faintly and greeted her.

“Good morning, Miss Jiang.”

“Good morning, Captain Shi. Have you had your nutritional liquid yet?”

“Not yet, I was just about to drink some. Are you going out today?”

Jiang Qin shook her head. “No. Uncle Youwei should be sending someone soon to install a set of recording equipment for me.”

Her room had a study partition that could be converted into a small recording studio.

This way, she wouldn’t have to rent one.

For the rest of the day, she planned to record the songs she had accumulated and upload them on July 1st.

The new songs chart for this month would close at 11:59 p.m. the day after tomorrow.

Currently, "As Desired" had proudly reached third place.

"Anonymous Comfort" followed closely behind.

"宁夏" (Ningxia) was in eighth place.

She held three of the top ten spots all by herself.

This terrifying scenario had caused many to break down recently.

Especially those singers who had already secured their rankings.

Suddenly, a dark horse emerged.

Having released only three songs, she surged ahead to claim three top positions, leaving those displaced unwilling to accept it.

Their anger naturally led them to investigate who Jiang Qin was.

They found her live broadcast videos.

Good heavens, with two songs from two PK battles plus ten songs she had voluntarily put through hardship, she still had twelve more songs yet to upload!