"In the sect, everyone said he was my dog, a piece of trash who climbed up the ranks relying on my connections."
"But I told them he was my younger brother, my most trusted right-hand man."
At this point, the mockery in Lan Caidie's eyes grew even more intense; it was a ruthless dissection of her own past foolishness.
She crouched down, her fingertips tracing across Li Qingzhe's face, which was twisted in fear, before finally stopping on his bobbing Adam's apple.
"But alas... Young Master."
"An ingrate is an ingrate, no matter how much you feed them."
"He didn't just want to be treated as a human; he wanted to be the master. He even wanted to... ride on his master's head."
Lan Caidie's fingers applied a slight pressure, her long, slender nails piercing the skin of Li Qingzhe's neck until beads of blood seeped out.
"Three days ago, he said he had found a 'Seven-Star Begonia' and invited me to harvest it with him. I believed him."
"And the result?"
Lan Caidie's voice abruptly turned cold, carrying a chilling hostility—the monstrous hatred born from betrayal.
"There was no begonia at all. There was only a pre-arranged 'Spirit-Scattering Array' and a cup of spirit wine laced with 'Muscle-Softening Powder'!"
"Even at that moment, when all my spiritual energy had dissipated and I was paralyzed on the ground like a dead dog, I was still asking him why."
"Young Master, what do you think he said?"
She took a deep breath, her voice trembling and carrying a hint of a sob, yet remaining incomparably ruthless:
"He said... I shouldn't have been so good to him."
"He said that every time I rewarded him, it looked like charity to him; every time I protected him, it felt like humiliation!"
"He said he was sick of looking up to me, sick of being the shadow that could only stand behind the Holy Maiden."
"He said..."
Lan Caidie closed her eyes, and two lines of clear tears rolled down, dropping onto Li Qingzhe's contorted face.
"He said that only by turning me into a mindless, obedient puppet..."
"Only then would I truly belong to him forever. I would never look down on him again, and I would forever have to rely on him to live."
"How ridiculous..."
In the corner, Gu Yang listened to this melodramatic yet incredibly real tale of betrayal, his face as placid as an ancient well.
Give a bowl of rice and make a friend; give a bushel and make an enemy.
This kind of thing was far too common in the cultivation world.
Inferiority taken to the extreme often twisted into a sick sense of pride.
People like Li Qingzhe were typical rats in the gutter; they couldn't stand the sunlight, nor could they bear even the slightest bit of "charity."
Because the light was too bright and would scorch his moldy heart.
Lan Caidie opened her eyes.
In that instant, all her weakness, sentimentality, and tears were completely withdrawn.
Replacing them was the ruthlessness and decisiveness befitting the Holy Maiden of the Southern Frontier.
She stood up and raised her long, beautiful leg high into the air.
The crimson snake tattoo on her leg seemed to come alive in the dim light, flicking its tongue.
There was no flashy Gu magic.
Nor did she use any spiritual energy.
It was just the most primitive, most pure form of action—trampling.
"I am your master."
Lan Caidie's voice was bone-chillingly cold, like a judgment from the Nine Netherworlds.
"I was in the past, I am now, and in the future... you have no future."
"Squelch!"
That foot stomped down viciously.
It was the sound of a bare foot ruthlessly crushing a throat bone—crisp, muffled, and teeth-grindingly gruesome.
"Hrk... hrk..."
Li Qingzhe's eyes bulged, bloodshot and nearly popping out of their sockets.
His charred hands desperately gripped Lan Caidie's ankle in a final attempt to struggle.
But he could only open his mouth in despair, letting out a sound like a leaking bellows, mixed with the gurgling of blood bubbles.
Blood gushed wildly from his mouth and nose, staining Lan Caidie's snow-white jade foot red.
At this moment, the fear in his eyes finally froze.
Remaining within them was the last trace of regret from his life, and... a hint of a twisted sense of release.
...
Lan Caidie turned around to face Gu Yang.
Tear stains still hung on her stunningly beautiful face, while her foot was stained with warm blood. This extreme contrast gave her a breathtaking, bewitching beauty.
"Thud."
Lan Caidie dropped to her knees and kowtowed heavily to Gu Yang.
The sound of her forehead hitting the ground was exceptionally clear in the silent tomb.
"My great vengeance is exacted, and my inner demon is eradicated."
"From this day forth, Caidie's life belongs to you, Young Master."
Gu Yang looked at the woman kneeling before him.
A scorching hot figure, peerless looks, and a temperament... that could be considered decisive.
A pretty good seedling.
What a pity.
"What do I want your life for?"
Gu Yang's voice remained flat, betraying neither joy nor anger.
He turned around, picked up Li Qingzhe's storage bag from the ground, casually wiped away the spiritual sense imprint on it, and hung it at his own waist.
This was the spoils of war; it couldn't be wasted.
"I'm taking the storage bag. You can leave."
"We are even."
Gu Yang waved his hand, turning to walk out of the tomb.
Karma, it's all karma.
Right now, there was still a serendipitous encounter he needed to intercept.
He had to go.
He had to go quickly.
He left very decisively.
Without the slightest bit of lingering attachment, nor a shred of hesitation just because the other party was a peerless beauty.
Lan Caidie, kneeling on the ground, was stunned.
She snapped her head up, staring in disbelief at the fading gray silhouette.
Even?
How could they possibly be even?!
In the Southern Frontier, the grace of saving a life was greater than the heavens, let alone this kind of life-rebuilding grace.
She pressed her hand against her chest.
There, her heart was beating thump by thump in rhythm with that man's footsteps.
That was the bond of the Heart-Binding Gu, a resonance on the level of life itself.
Ever since she was betrayed by Li Qingzhe, her world had long since collapsed.
She no longer believed in anyone, no longer believed in so-called "feelings."
But this man before her.
He clearly possessed absolute power. He clearly could have easily turned her into his captive plaything, just as Li Qingzhe had intended.
But he didn't.
There was no greed in his eyes, no lust, only that kind of indifference that treated all things as straw dogs.
This "disregard," to Lan Caidie who had just experienced betrayal and objectification, was actually a fatal temptation.
He doesn't think much of me.
He disdains to use me.
This realization made an inexplicable sense of unwillingness surge in Lan Caidie's heart, along with a... crazy desire to be "looked favorably upon" by him.
"Young Master!"
Lan Caidie suddenly stood up, ignoring the blood beneath her feet, and stumbled after him.
"I'm not leaving!"
She rushed behind Gu Yang, wanting to reach out and pull his sleeve, but in the instant she was about to touch it, she retracted her hand as if afraid of profaning something.
"Young Master... Caidie has nowhere else to go."
Lan Caidie's voice carried a hint of a tremble, but her gaze was terrifyingly persistent.
"Li Qingzhe is dead; the Eastern Gu Sect will definitely investigate."
"Furthermore... furthermore, although Caidie's cultivation is low, I am proficient in Gu arts and also know a little about the charm arts of the Southern Frontier."
She bit her lower lip, took a step forward, and thrust out her proud chest, seeming to want to display her final worth.
"I can kill for you, scout the way for you, and even..."
Her voice lowered, a shameful yet resolute blush spreading across her cheeks.
"If Young Master needs it... Caidie's body is still clean."
Gu Yang stopped in his tracks.
He turned around, his gaze sweeping up and down Lan Caidie.
He had to admit, she was quite the stunner.
But Gu Yang merely frowned.
"Women will only slow down my blade."
With that said.
Gu Yang did not look back again. His figure flashed, and he disappeared into the depths of the gloomy corridor.
He left Lan Caidie all alone, standing blankly on the spot.
She had been rejected.
A complete, merciless rejection.
But strangely enough, Lan Caidie did not feel angry; instead... she began to smile.
Leaning against the cold wall, she felt the faint, gradually fading sensation of the heartbeat transmitted by the child Gu insect inside her body.
"Does he find me troublesome..."
"Young Master..."
"The more you act like this, the more Caidie... wants to tear out her heart to show you."
...
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
. 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!"
iaobai: "Councilor Dad, front me some funds. I want to hire ten thousand professional miners for a project!" [Five-Star Mission Issued: Capture the leader of the Blood Heaven Pirate Gang, who is on the run in the Radiant Star Sector. It is said the gang has over a hundred members. Proceed with caution.] Lu Xiaobai: "Councilor Dad, lend me the family's hundred-thousand-strong Lu Army!" [Seven-Star Mission Issued: Subdue a juvenile Void Dragon Beast.] Lu Xiaobai: "Councilor Dad, I'm taking your tamed Void Dragon Beast King out for a family reunion!" I said, System, don't you have any slightly more challenging missions? You're just not up to par! [Nine-Star Mission Issued: Become the Human Councilor.] Lu Xiaobai: "Dad, there's a small matter I'd like to discuss with you..."
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?!
