Su Qi didn’t say anything about prying into matters that weren’t his business. Everyone had their own secrets. He just patted Old Li’s shoulder and said, “I’ll be off then.”
“Go ahead.”
……
On the way back, Liu Yuan was burning with curiosity, biting back her questions several times.
Finally, Su Qi couldn’t take it anymore. “Just ask if you want to. That ‘curious kitten’ look of yours is driving me nuts.”
“Hmph… More like you just want to show off how much you know…” Liu Yuan muttered, but quickly dropped the act. “Is it about last night? Was it that serious?”
She suddenly remembered Su Qi’s message had mentioned something.
“Go to sleep. I doubt this training camp will continue. We’ll probably be evacuated first thing tomorrow—don’t oversleep.”
And today, for once, Su Qi woke up early instead of lazing in bed. Clearly, he was certain the training wouldn’t proceed.
Su Qi spoke slowly, “You know about cultists, right?”
Liu Yuan shook her head.
Su Qi’s prepared explanation froze midair. “Did you not pay attention in class?”
Liu Yuan did have a habit of texting him during lectures. No amount of scolding had changed that.
“No, it wasn’t in the textbooks.”
Su Qi wondered if the curriculum had been revised. He tried another term. “What about the Descendants?”
Liu Yuan shook her head again.
Su Qi quickly switched tactics. “The Cornered?”
“The Fugitives?”
Seeing Liu Yuan’s increasingly dazed expression, Su Qi felt a pang of defeat. What kind of education system was this now? Teaching them nothing?
He took some time to explain what cultists—or the Descendants—were.
“Last night, it was a seventh-tier cultist.”
“Luckily, I was a step ahead.”
Liu Yuan’s heart clenched.
The way Su Qi said it so casually…
But that was seventh-tier.
Su Qi was only sixth-tier…
A single misstep, and he might not have come back.
“Who knows what they’re scheming? Investigations take time, so this Source Realm is off-limits for now.”
Liu Yuan nodded vaguely. This wasn’t a topic she could contribute to. So she steered the conversation her way.
“Brother, what are the Cornered?”
Su Qi’s tone was light. “We are the Cornered.”
Liu Yuan blinked, confused. “Huh?”
“No need to be surprised. We’re the ones fighting with our backs against the wall.”
“Think of Blue Star as one big arena.”
“The Source Realms are the endless beasts thrown at us…”
“The Fugitives are self-explanatory—those who flee, find another human civilization, settle down, and assimilate.”
“Honestly, these are just textbook terms.”
“In reality, these groups have nastier names for each other: Cultist mutts, Cornered pigs, stinking rats.”
But Su Qi didn’t say this mockingly.
A realization struck him.
Liu Yuan’s generation’s textbooks had even stripped out such fundamental knowledge?
Coupled with the brainless education reforms these past few years…
All the clues pointed to one thing.
Something catastrophic must have happened on Great Xia’s frontlines recently.
So catastrophic that the nation was on the verge of collapse.
Forcing Great Xia to rush the training of new recruits while suppressing panic among the populace…
Heaven…
Was it about to fall?
No, no—Su Qi, why bother with this?
Even if the sky falls, it’s not your problem.
Someone will shoulder the burden.
But…
What if there’s no one left at the front?
“Brother…”
“Brother…”
Su Qi snapped out of his thoughts at Liu Yuan’s voice. “Hmm?”
Liu Yuan looked worried. “I was about to ask you the same thing…”
“You looked… kind of…”
“You’ve been spacing out the whole way. Didn’t sleep well last night?”
“We’re home.”
Liu Yuan pushed the door open and paused at the entrance.
But Su Qi made no move to enter. “I’m heading out.”
“Where to?”
“To ask your ‘future sister-in-law’ a few things.”
Liu Yuan: ???
Liu Yuan’s face flushed crimson—for the hundredth time!
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.”
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
m back to his original world. In the end, he realized he had overthought things. [Hey, why is Shen Manni, the female lead, acting strange? Shouldn't she be fawning over the male lead at this point?] [Zhou Qiaoqiao, are you sick? Weren't you supposed to break off your engagement today?] [Damn it! An Youyi, please do your job as an undercover agent and sell my information to the protagonist, you idiot!] ... At this moment, Xu Mo himself didn't know that these female leads had already heard his inner thoughts. Then they decided not to play by the rules. Xu Mo: Please respect my profession as the big villain!
