At this moment, Ye Shu was completely unaware that all his clothes had already met a tragic end, never to see the light of day again.
He walked out of the small courtyard and headed straight for the Patriarch's estate.
"Shu'er, don't you find it strange?"
Halfway there, Danxia couldn't help but remind him, "That childhood sweetheart of yours hasn't shown her face at all. In the past, this would have been absolutely impossible."
"She has very likely been reborn as well."
"Don't worry, Master."
Ye Shu casually smiled. "I know what you're worried about. You're afraid she might suddenly slap me to death out of nowhere, right? Your worries are completely unnecessary."
"No matter what, there are still our past feelings."
"She couldn't possibly be like a certain someone who, without any explanation and completely disregarding past affections, popped out just to kill someone, right?"
Hearing this, Danxia couldn't help but blush.
Wasn't he talking about her?
The very first thing she did after her rebirth was to ruthlessly try to kill him without a word of explanation.
If it weren't for Shu'er's eloquence...
If she remembered it in the future, she would probably regret it for the rest of her life and find a small hill to slit her own throat and pass on.
Thinking this in her heart, Danxia nevertheless pouted her lips and said aggrievedly, "You bad disciple, I've already apologized. What more do you want..."
Seeing her like this, Ye Shu couldn't help but laugh.
"Master, you're over three thousand years old, right? How are you still acting like a young girl who just came of age?"
"Hmph! What do you know."
"A woman is always three and a half years old at heart, don't you know?" Danxia turned her face away, refusing to look at him. "You'd better worry more about your childhood sweetheart. Who knows, maybe she doesn't want you anymore."
"Not everyone is like me—affectionate, righteous, magnanimous, possessing a heart broad enough to sail a ship in, and capable of forgiving your mistakes."
"So it's my fault now?"
Ye Shu was dumbfounded.
Just two days ago she was crying and admitting her mistake, but today she turned hostile and refused to acknowledge it.
No wonder the ancients said.
Only women and petty men are hard to deal with.
Ye Shu didn't argue with her. He just softly recited, "The hardest things to keep in this world are a rosy face fading from the mirror and flowers falling from the tree," while walking along the courtyard path.
The passing maidservants couldn't help but look infatuated when they saw him.
"Young Master Ye is reciting poetry again. He's so handsome~"
"Yeah, yeah! Even though Young Master Ye's cultivation is lacking, he's so handsome and talented. Especially that melancholic aura about him. If only I could be with him..."
"I'd gladly marry him for the rest of my life."
"Hehe... hehehe... hehehe..."
One maidservant giggled lewdly, her face flushed red. One glance was enough to tell she was thinking about something completely inappropriate.
"Shu'er, from now on, you are not allowed to recite poetry outside," Danxia said faintly, glaring at the maidservant.
"Why?" Ye Shu didn't understand her reasoning.
"Kids shouldn't learn bad habits. You only learn how to show off and act flirtatious. Can reciting poetry put food on the table? Can it increase your cultivation?" Danxia put on a stern face, adopting the strict demeanor of a teacher.
"..."
How come he still had to be disciplined by a mother-figure even after transmigrating?
The maternal love he lacked in his youth seemed to be returning to him in some bizarre way. Ye Shu shook his head, tossing the absurd thought to the back of his mind, and quickened his pace.
Soon, he arrived at the front of the Patriarch's estate.
"The Young Master has returned."
An old man with a hunched back stood by the door. Seeing Ye Shu approaching, he spoke with a beaming smile.
"Uncle Fu."
Ye Shu bowed respectfully.
Uncle Fu was the old butler of the Ye family. He had taken great care of Ye Shu since he was little; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call him his grandfather.
"Mhm, the good boy has grown up," Uncle Fu nodded with a smile. "The Master has been in a great mood lately. He will definitely be even happier to see you. Hurry inside, Young Master."
"In a great mood?"
Ye Shu muttered in his heart.
Why would he be in a great mood for no reason? It would be a miracle if he hadn't fainted from being angered by the Second Branch, Third Branch, and the clan elders, let alone be in a great mood.
He pushed the door open and entered.
Inside the study, candlelights flickered.
A middle-aged man was sitting at the desk, handling clan affairs.
"Old man, I'm back."
Seeing the old geezer, Ye Shu didn't stand on ceremony. He pulled out a chair and sat down, picked up a teacup from the desk, and took a huge gulp.
"Tell me, did you miss me?"
"Miss you?"
Ye Zhan raised his head, looked him up and down, and sneered. "Missed you dying outside so I could just have another one?"
He set his pen and paper aside and leaned back in his chair. "Speak. You went to the Demonic Beast Mountain Range for a whole month. What is your cultivation level now, brat?"
"Not that high, just Qi Refining..."
Ye Shu waved his hand. Before he could finish the second half of the sentence, Qi Refining Ninth Layer, he was interrupted by Ye Zhan.
He stood up, pointed at Ye Shu's nose, and said, "I knew you were full of hot air! You said going to the Demonic Beast Mountain Range to train would definitely bring improvements, that you'd shock everyone. But you came back still at the Third Layer of Qi Refining. You're just a braggart! Sticking scallions in a pig's snout to pretend you're an elephant!"
"In the end, don't you still have to rely on your old man?"
Seeing his father looking so smug, Ye Shu wasn't in a hurry to explain. Instead, he crossed his arms and asked with a chuckle, "Rely on you? What's there to see in you?"
"Do you have four balls or two dicks?"
"Hmph! I'm not going to bicker with you. Open your dog eyes and take a good look at what this is!"
Ye Zhan coldly snorted and pulled a brocade box from his robe.
Ye Shu maintained a calm and collected expression, waiting to see what he could bring out. However, when Ye Zhan opened the box, Ye Shu's pupils violently shrank, and the smile instantly froze on his face.
"How about it? Dumbfounded, right?"
Ye Zhan thought he was shocked and said somewhat proudly:
"This is called the Purple Qi Foundation Establishment Pill. A Rank One Golden Pill, understand? One bite, and let alone someone with no cultivation talent, even a pig could instantly reach Foundation Establishment!"
"You... where did you get this?" Ye Shu swallowed hard, his eyes glued to the pill brimming with purple qi inside the brocade box. His eyeballs were practically popping out.
"Your old man happened to be running errands in Star City."
"I heard there was an auction at the Star City Auction House, so I went over to take a casual look. Who would have thought I'd see this item? So, I casually spent two hundred thousand spirit stones to buy it. Remember to pay me back later."
Ye Zhan placed the Foundation Establishment Pill into Ye Shu's hands and conveniently handed him an already drafted IOU.
Ye Shu's mouth twitched.
An item worth twenty thousand spirit stones somehow turned into two hundred thousand the moment it passed through his deadbeat dad's mouth.
No wonder Qian Jiang had such a weird expression that day.
It turned out that son of a bitch knew all along that the buyer was his dad, and easily swindled him out of two thousand spirit stones!
Ye Shu suffered in silence, unable to voice his grievances.
In the end, he could only give a carefree smile and sign his name.
"Alright, alright, I'll pay you back sooner or later."
Ye Zhan tucked away the IOU as if he were putting away a precious treasure. Then he waved his hand, issuing an order for his guest to leave. "I've gotten this thing for you. If you still can't reach Foundation Establishment by tomorrow, just slit your throat to apologize for your sins."
"Now, hurry up and roll back to enter secluded cultivation."
"Wait, aren't you going to ask what I went through in the Demonic Beast Mountain Range? How I survived?" Ye Shu asked in disbelief.
"Oh?"
Ye Zhan lazily lifted his eyelids. "Did you break an arm or a leg? Or did you bring a daughter-in-law back for me?"
"If it's none of the above, then why the hell should I ask?"
"Scram."
Ye Shu: "..."
Sometimes he really doubted if he was his biological son.
"Alright, I'll get lost then. Just don't secretly jerk off alone in the study tonight."
"Get the hell out of here!"
Ye Zhan fiercely threw a bamboo slip at him, which Ye Shu dodged with a laugh before running off and vanishing without a trace.
It wasn't until his figure had completely disappeared that Ye Zhan slowly slumped back into his chair, murmuring softly, "It's good that you're back... it's good that you're back..."
After sitting for a moment, he straightened his back again.
He was just about to get back to his official duties.
Suddenly, a cold blade, as slippery as a venomous snake, was pressed against his neck. Ye Zhan's entire body stiffened, feeling as though he had been plunged into an icy cavern.
Damn it, when did they get here?
"Patriarch Ye..." a dark figure pressed close behind Ye Zhan, speaking in an extremely hoarse voice. "I have a few questions I'd like to ask you. I suggest you cooperate a little."
"Otherwise..."
He pressed the dagger closer. The sharp edge instantly sliced open a tiny wound, and blood trickled down the blade. "My knife might not be so obedient."

world slacker. But a genius female disciple just had to get clingy, insisting that he take her as a disciple. Not only that, she was always making advances on him, thoroughly disrupting his peaceful slacker life...

ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.

pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"

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.”