Anana slowly raised her head.
Before her stood a strikingly handsome young man.
His features were refined, with perfectly sculpted facial contours, hair as dark as the night, and eyes that seemed to hold amber within them.
Ah, so handsome.
That was the only thought in Anana's mind.
After all, in the snowy wilderness, most men tended to have rugged appearances. Compared to Xia Lun, they might as well have been uncivilized barbarians.
"What's wrong, little one?" Xia Lun waved his hand playfully in front of Anana, snapping her back to reality.
"I-I'm fine... Sir, is there something you need?" Anana stammered, her cheeks flushed as if she'd just been pulled from a hot bath.
"Let me ask instead." Aina suddenly grew wary, pulling Xia Lun behind her.
"Does your village have a merchant caravan heading to Kro Village?"
Ah, so beautiful.
Staring at Aina, Anana found herself lost in another daze. Compared to her, she felt like she wasn’t even an ugly duckling.
Anana's face turned an even deeper shade of red from embarrassment.
Aina gave the young girl a suspicious glance.
As Xia Lun’s wife, she was well aware of his overwhelming charm—officially a hero, unofficially a walking incubus. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have made that mistake with him while he was asleep...
Noticing Anana’s expression, she had stepped in to prevent the sinful hero from stealing yet another young girl’s heart.
But... why was the girl blushing even more now that she was the one talking?
Could she be... into women?
Aina’s expression gradually turned peculiar.
"I can sense your thoughts drifting somewhere strange again." Xia Lun lightly tapped Aina’s head with a mock chop.
"I believe I’ve told you before, Xia Lun, in front of others..." Aina puffed her cheeks slightly.
"Right now, our identities are students of Olifando." Xia Lun cut her off before things got complicated, then added via telepathy, "But I’ll gladly accept punishment for this transgression later, Your Majesty the Demon King."
Aina’s heart skipped a beat.
This guy... he really isn’t a proper hero at all!
"Kro Village? You mean Kro City, right?" Anana replied to Aina. "Our village does have a merchant caravan going to Kro City... If I remember correctly, they’re leaving for it today."
That’s why her parents were in such a hurry to process those furs.
"What a coincidence," Aina continued. "We’d like to go to Kro Village and hope to travel with your caravan."
Anana pointed in a direction. "The caravan leader lives in that house."
Aina nodded and casually tossed Anana a gold coin as payment for the information.
On one side of the coin were engraved wheat stalks and flowers, while the other bore the portrait of a bearded man.
The man was Elro XIII, the current king of the Yalan Empire and the first Prime Minister of the United Nations of Yaliris.
This was the currency issued by the United Nations of Yaliris, the most widely used and trusted among humans. Even many other races had begun adopting it for trade.
Below it were silver and copper coins, with an exchange rate of 100:1.
A single gold coin was enough to cover a month’s expenses for an average family in the Yalan Empire.
Anana’s eyes widened. "Um... this..."
A gold coin... even for her, this was a considerable amount of pocket money.
Yes, pocket money.
Because Anana’s family... wasn’t exactly poor.
Wealthy merchants and nobles of the Yalan Empire were willing to pay high prices for the furs transported from Lake Village. Though hunting in the snow plains was extremely dangerous, the rewards undoubtedly matched the risks.
And Anana’s father was the most experienced hunter in Lake Village—in terms of skill, he could probably rival a knight.
Anana instinctively wanted to return the gold coin, but the two had already walked away.
"They left so quickly," Anana murmured in amazement before happily tucking the coin into her pocket.
She could ask the caravan uncle to bring her a few new dolls.
...
If Xia Lun and Aina wanted to travel somewhere in the world, there was likely no faster method than flying there themselves.
Yet they chose to set off slowly with a caravan, just like novice adventurers.
There had to be a sense of ceremony.
The more powerful a person was, the more they pursued meaning in life—power, wealth, strength. After all, they could have almost anything. If they simply indulged without restraint, they would eventually grow empty and weary.
Ceremony played a crucial role, acting as a seasoning for emotions.
But to those who couldn’t understand, this so-called "ceremony" would simply seem like the eccentricities of the strong.
The caravan leader, Ge Rui, was a portly, bearded man with a perpetually cheerful grin.
Aina handed him a gold coin, and the matter was settled swiftly.
"This is too much... Just taking you to Kro City shouldn’t cost this much..." Despite his words, Ge Rui’s hand obediently pocketed the coin. After all, no one turned down money.
As a result, Ge Rui specially cleared out a... dog sled for Xia Lun and Aina.
In the snow plains, the sleds weren’t pulled by horses but by domesticated snow-wolf dogs.
Snow-wolf dogs were hybrids of snow wolves and regular dogs, far gentler in temperament than their savage wolf ancestors but just as large. The biggest in the caravan was nearly three meters long, with remarkable stamina and endurance.
The sled’s runners were also widened, not the typical narrow type. Since the caravan was heading toward the Yalan Empire, where the ice plains would eventually melt, traditional sleds wouldn’t be usable.
Ge Rui rang a bell, and the caravan began moving forward.
"Are you two from Kro City?" Ge Rui struck up a friendly conversation with Xia Lun, handing him a leather water pouch. "Warming liquor, untouched. It’s all yours."
Money really did buy better service.
Xia Lun took a sip—the liquor carried a milky fragrance, quite pleasant—then passed it to Aina.
"We’re students from Olifando, here on business and now heading back," Xia Lun offered casually.
"Ah, so you’re mages." Ge Rui’s expression shifted to one of sudden understanding. He had already guessed Xia Lun wasn’t ordinary.
After all, what kind of normal person could trek all the way to their village alone?
"Still, Kro City is a place with a long history," Ge Rui mused.
"Yes, it’s been a very long time." Xia Lun gently wrapped an arm around Aina’s shoulders, his gaze tinged with nostalgia.
Kro Village... was where he had first met Aina, over a thousand years ago.
rowess are unmatched, commanding a million-strong army! Yet, the Emperor wants to depose him for the sake of a false prince? Hold on, are you throwing me into some female-oriented romance plot? How can I tolerate this? With a grand wave of his hand—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! Slander the Emperor? Very well, all of you shall die! ... The False Prince: "Although I am not the biological son, Father and Mother love me more. The throne should be mine!" The Female Lead: "Qin Xiao, you are the Emperor, and I am a commoner. If you wish to marry me, you must abdicate. Otherwise, you will never have me!" The Empress: "After we divorce, you must give me half the empire!" The Transmigrator Consort: "You worthless Emperor, why should I kneel to you? All men are equal—I advise you to be kind!" The Great General: "The enemy general is my childhood sweetheart. For her sake, I willingly abandon the frontier defenses!" The Retired Emperor: "Although Yu'er was adopted, I prefer him. Qin Xiao, you should abdicate and let him become Emperor!" ... Very well! So this is how you want to play? Facing this twisted world of female-oriented tropes, Qin Xiao grins and raises his hand to unleash—the Nine Clan Extraction Technique! I am the Emperor. Why would I bother reasoning with you? Seal the gates! Leave none alive!
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
