Ascension of the Hollow Star - Chapter 36: To Shatter a Crown, Burn the Sky

To care for her ailing sweetheart, college student Lu Chenchen gave up her white-collar office job and chose the higher-paying caretaker profession instead. Going around in circles, she ended up at the Mao family’s home.

The Mao family background was complicated. Old Madam Mao was not her son Yanning’s birth mom, but his young aunt. His wife was Old Madam Mao’s first love’s daughter, spoiled and pampered. Despite over ten years of marriage, husband and wife were distant.

To repay Old Madam Mao’s kindness in raising him, and for the sake of his three children, Mao Yanning endured again and again – not just a loveless but outright destructive marriage.

Lu Chenchen walked on eggshells among these people – carefully serving young and old, currying favor with the lady of the house without offending the man of the house, while also worrying about his sweetheart’s illness and missing “his” elders and children back home. Her heart was like a cookie flattened between the pages of life, living a difficult and cautious existence.

However, as the saying goes, “You reap what you sow.” A life that has been polished will eventually shine with a brilliance that ordinary years cannot compare.

Guys here is my pitch.....In the sprawling world of fantasy, we’ve often been treated to tales of heroes reincarnated with divine blessings, legendary powers, or cheat-like abilities, thrust into magical lands as shining saviors—or chaotic terrors. But what happens when the very concept of reincarnation becomes a curse? When the divine boon is a big fat joke, and the “cheat system” doesn’t quite… cheat?Enter John, the unluckiest reincarnate. Blessed by a god and thrust into a fantasy world, he dreams of glory, power, and adventure—only to wake up as a normal, utterly powerless bird. Not a mythical phoenix, not an ancient thunder eagle. Just… a bird.To make matters worse, this world is no ordinary realm. It's a land scarred by the devastating legacies of past isekai’d heroes and villains, whose reckless exploits piled skeletons into mountains and turned their cheats into harbingers of chaos. Fed up with these unruly intruders, the ancients of the realm banded together to create a world-shaking seal: all reincarnated souls are trapped in the bodies of harmless animals, confined to isolated sanctuaries that function more like fantasy zoos.Here’s the twist: this isn’t mercy. It’s a resource grab. The powerful beast tamers of this realm have turned these reincarnated souls into exotic pets, prized for their cheat-like potential.John finds himself at the bottom of the food chain in every sense. His cheat doesn’t work. His human form is gone. And his world is filled with predatory cultivators who see him as either a snack or a tool.But John isn’t one to give up so easily. What starts as despair quickly turns into cunning survival. With wings and wit as his only tools, John must navigate layers of misfortune, dodge fate’s sharp talons, and cheat his way through a world determined to keep him grounded.Get ready to join John on a wildly unconventional journey—one where reincarnation isn’t a ticket to greatness, but a death sentence he’s determined to rewrite. His story is one of humor, wit, and persistence, as he explores a world where he is the joke and his survival is the punchline.Main tags: reincarnation/isekai, beast taming cultivation system, comedy, action, adventure.Of course No-harem!

A phoenix is a creature of legends, a wonder of the world, an imagery of life and destruction. This fabled creature signifies the rise of a hero in a virtual world where battles occur for the sake of honor and glory!

Zhang Yang was a professional gamer in the first and most fantastic game that revolutionized the world: God’s Miracle. A game where traditional knowledge in RPGs did not matter anymore, players would have to manually target and evade attacks, giving rise to a significant gap in skill between a professional and an amateur gamer.

Zhang Yang’s downfall came a little too soon. His girlfriend was snatched, his guild was harassed and disbanded, and he was even driven to commit suicide! Jumping off the top floor of a hotel, Zhang Yang seemed as though he was soaring like a phoenix. Little did he know that the end of his life also signified his rise from the ashes.

- Description from novelupdates

Hunter Cha Eui-jae, who was dispatched to seal a rift that appeared over the West Sea, was flung out as soon as he closed the rift. When he came to his senses, he was lying in a garbage dump.Starving, he was drawn like a zombie is to blood to a hangover soup restaurant, where he realized that he had fallen into South Korea, eight years in the future.In this era, disaster alerts notify people of rift openings in advance, ASMR videos of slimes gathered from dungeons were trending, and idle hunters livestream unboxings of A-rank longswords.Unlike the past, where people trembled in fear of an impending apocalypse, the future was surprisingly peaceful, leaving Cha Eui-jae feeling empty. Since things had turned out this way, why not start a second chapter of life as a part-timer at the hangover soup restaurant, rather than being a hunter?“That’s strange.”“…”“Have we met somewhere before?”Cha Eui-jae’s plan to quietly spend his remaining days as the only part-time worker at the decades-old hangover soup restaurant goes awry when he encounters a mysterious, gas-masked individual…DISCLAIMER: The story isn't mine