Not that the rest of the Chinese netizens cared, nor did most of the world. Instead, the capitalists found themselves thoroughly humiliated online after a detailed post explaining the new housing market spread across every major platform. The author pointed out that a spacious house now cost roughly 200,000 euros, whereas before the System it would have easily sold for more than 400,000 euros in a medium-sized city and significantly more in a major metropolitan area. The post was backed by figures, comparisons, and historical prices, making it difficult for anyone to dispute its conclusions.
The story exploded across the internet within hours. Millions of ordinary citizens celebrated the dramatic drop in housing prices because, from their perspective, homes had finally become affordable again. They did not particularly care that the value of their own property had also fallen because every other property had declined in price as well. Relative wealth had remained almost unchanged, while the barrier to home ownership had become far lower than before.
Even most rational investors accepted the situation surprisingly well. Those who owned five or perhaps ten houses before the market correction understood that although they had technically lost money on paper, the entire market had shifted downward together. Their purchasing power remained largely the same, allowing them to continue investing if they wished. In the long run, they believed stability was worth far more than inflated property prices.
The truly furious people were the large-scale investors. Those who had accumulated dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of properties watched trillions of dollars in paper wealth disappear almost overnight. Years of speculation vanished as governments around the world deliberately cooled the housing market. For many of those investment firms, it was the single largest financial loss in their entire history.
Part of that loss came from the decision made by the United States government after the expansion of the world. Washington announced that every land purchase made before the expansion would still be legally recognized, even though the original buildings and property boundaries had literally disappeared. When the world expanded, countless cities had been torn apart as mana consumed the old structures, while Gaia eagerly absorbed the enormous amount of cultural energy contained within those homes. Although the buildings themselves vanished, ownership of the land remained protected.
Initially, many capitalists actually welcomed that announcement. Since the old buildings no longer existed, they believed they would now be free to choose entirely new locations for development. In their minds, this presented a golden opportunity to acquire prime real estate and construct projects that were even more profitable than before. For a brief period, many investors genuinely believed the disaster would ultimately benefit them.
That optimism disappeared the moment they learned how much urban housing prices had fallen. Owning prime land meant very little if the finished buildings themselves were worth only a fraction of their former value. Raising prices was not a realistic option because every competing country had adopted similar housing policies. Faced with a market they could no longer manipulate, the capitalists found themselves publicly ridiculed.
The internet showed them absolutely no sympathy. Every complaint about lost profits was met with thousands of comments celebrating affordable housing and mocking years of speculative investment. Memes flooded social media, portraying wealthy investors crying over shrinking fortunes while ordinary families finally purchased homes of their own. Unable to defend themselves without appearing greedy, many executives simply remained silent while privately seething over their losses.
Despite all the controversy and public outrage, the world continued moving forward. Economic activity gradually stabilized as people adapted to the new reality, and daily life slowly returned to something resembling normality. At roughly the same time, the seasons finally settled into their proper natural order after years of climatic instability. Humanity soon discovered that returning to normal weather brought its own set of unexpected problems.
In Europe, the first true winter caught many communities by surprise. For decades, buildings had been designed around the relatively mild temperatures created by global warming, leaving them poorly suited for prolonged freezing conditions. Heating systems struggled, pipes burst, and countless homes required emergency repairs before the coldest months had even begun. Fortunately, governments had anticipated the danger and issued warnings early enough that widespread deaths from exposure were avoided.
Nevertheless, the experience served as a harsh wake-up call. People had grown accustomed to warmer winters and had forgotten just how unforgiving nature could become once the climate returned to its historical patterns. Emergency services remained busy throughout the season, responding to frozen infrastructure and weather-related accidents across the continent. The transition proved far more difficult than many experts had originally predicted.
The Southern Hemisphere experienced problems of its own. Winters there also became significantly harsher than people had expected, creating ideal conditions for insects and other pests that had enjoyed unusually long breeding seasons during the previous climate. As temperatures dropped, enormous numbers of those creatures sought shelter inside homes, warehouses, and public buildings. Pest control companies suddenly found themselves overwhelmed with work.
Even those challenges failed to halt humanity's reconstruction efforts. Many large infrastructure projects that had previously been delayed because resources were redirected toward housing construction gradually resumed. Roads, bridges, warehouses, and industrial facilities once again became national priorities. Governments recognized that rebuilding homes alone would never be enough if those communities remained isolated from one another.
Construction companies, meanwhile, searched for ways to reduce their dependence on the System shop. Purchasing every raw material directly from Gaia remained incredibly expensive, especially for projects involving entire cities. Engineers therefore proposed expanding the transportation network so resources could be moved efficiently between different regions instead of being purchased individually through the shop. The proposal quickly gained widespread support.
Road construction accelerated across the world as a result. Forests that needed to be cleared to create farmland produced enormous quantities of timber, while mining regions generated equally valuable stone and metal. Rather than purchasing identical materials from the System, governments simply transported them wherever they were needed. The growing transportation network rapidly connected regions that had previously functioned almost independently.
Trade flourished under those new conditions. Farming communities exchanged food for industrial products, mining settlements exported ore to manufacturing centers, and lumber from newly cleared forests supplied housing projects across entire countries. Economic activity increasingly relied upon human labor instead of System purchases. Every successful trade route represented another step toward economic independence.
As local industries expanded, reliance on the raw materials section of the System shop steadily declined. Countries reserved those purchases for rare resources that could not yet be obtained domestically or for emergency situations where immediate delivery outweighed the additional expense. Everything else was produced, mined, harvested, or transported through ordinary human effort. It was slower than relying entirely on the System, but it also strengthened humanity's long-term economy and reduced the constant outflow of precious silver coins.The reliance on the shop's raw material tab continued to decline as mining operations expanded across the continent. Almost every nation had begun extracting its own resources, making imported materials far less necessary than before. Only rare or highly specialized resources still had to be purchased directly from the system. For everything else, humanity had slowly become capable of supplying itself once again.
The biggest cultural change, however, was the gradual disappearance of phones and computers from everyday life. They had not become obsolete overnight, but using them required remaining inside the major cities and their mana veins, which was increasingly inconvenient. Most profitable opportunities now existed far outside the cities, whether through farming, mining, exploration, or hunting valuable resources. As a result, many people willingly abandoned the conveniences of the old world in exchange for the opportunities offered by the new one.
Europe eventually settled into a strange but surprisingly effective rhythm that matched the changing seasons. During spring, summer, and autumn, countless people left the safety of the cities to cultivate farmland, explore the wilderness, establish mines, or gather valuable materials from nature. The countryside became filled with temporary settlements and caravans transporting goods between cities. Trade flourished as roads gradually connected more settlements, creating a far stronger domestic economy than anyone had expected.
Winter became an entirely different season. Instead of focusing on production, most people returned to the cities to cultivate inside the large magic circle arrays that had been constructed over the previous years. Months of physical labor had repeatedly tempered their bodies, allowing them to absorb mana far more efficiently once they returned to a purified environment. As a result, winter gradually became known as the season of cultivation rather than the season of rest.
Even so, the difference between ordinary citizens and those who never had to leave the cities continued to grow. Soldiers, government researchers, craftsmen such as seamsters, and workers employed inside shops could remain within the magic circles throughout the entire year. Their cultivation progressed much faster because they never had to interrupt their training for long periods. Unsurprisingly, those occupations rapidly became some of the most sought-after jobs in the entire world.
The ordinary population was naturally unhappy about this growing gap. Although they could keep their mana reserves full while working outside the cities, attempting to continue serious cultivation in unfiltered environments was heavily discouraged. Governments constantly reminded their citizens that doing so would permanently damage their foundations by allowing too many harmful mana attributes to accumulate inside their bodies. Every major nation launched massive public awareness campaigns to ensure that people understood the risks.
Those campaigns appeared everywhere. Television broadcasts, radio programs, public billboards, and especially schools repeated the same message day after day until nearly everyone knew it by heart. Governments even encouraged children to remind their parents whenever they attempted to cultivate outside purified environments. While many adults found the campaign annoying, they could hardly argue when the warnings came from their own children.
The slogans quickly became famous throughout Europe. Children happily repeated lines such as, "I don't want you to die early because you didn't listen to the government," whenever they caught their parents ignoring the safety recommendations. The strategy worked surprisingly well, even if countless parents secretly complained about it among themselves. Before they used the same slogan on their own parents, who grumbled even harder than when a child did it, it was at least cute or touching. Unfortunately for them, there was nobody they could really complain to, as many of their own parents had already passed away, leaving them without anyone to appeal to.
Because of that, nearly everyone simply accepted the new reality and waited patiently for better solutions. Researchers across the world searched tirelessly for materials capable of purifying mana outside the cities, but every promising lead eventually ended in disappointment. The theory that such a material should exist had become widely accepted among scholars, yet no one had ever managed to prove its existence. It remained one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in mana research.
That was precisely why the entire world erupted with excitement when a completely new stone was finally discovered. For years it had existed only as a theoretical possibility discussed in academic circles, with no physical evidence that it actually existed. Now, for the first time, researchers had something tangible they could hold in their hands. Everyone immediately understood that this discovery had the potential to completely change humanity's future.