"Explain what happened today."
After Niu Shouren left, the smile faded from Wang Jianqiang's face as he stared expressionlessly at Chen Jiaojiao.
Chen Jiaojiao's delicate face paled, and she quickly defended herself, "Uncle, I didn’t ask Shouren to come. He insisted on following me."
Wang Jianqiang remained silent, his cold gaze fixed on her.
Chen Jiaojiao forced a bitter smile and continued, "In the past, the resources you provided were always generous, but the last two times, you only gave one Spirit Gathering Pill each—a drastic reduction."
"Shouren assumed it was because he hadn’t visited you in a long time, which might have displeased you. That’s why he insisted on coming today."
"I couldn’t stop him, nor could I explain properly, so I had no choice but to bring him along."
Wang Jianqiang’s expression softened slightly. "Really?"
"Absolutely true," Chen Jiaojiao nodded repeatedly.
Initially, Wang Jianqiang had suspected that Chen Jiaojiao brought Niu Shouren to pressure him, trying to extort more resources.
If that had been the case, he would have severed ties with her immediately, even at the cost of making enemies, refusing to give her another scrap of aid.
But after hearing her explanation, his demeanor relaxed completely.
"So that’s how it was."
Guilt flickered in his eyes as he placed a hand on Chen Jiaojiao’s shoulder.
"Jiaojiao, Uncle misjudged you..."
"Just now, you looked a little pale. Are you feeling unwell?"
"Come, let Uncle give you a thorough check-up."
……
Over the next month, Wang Jianqiang didn’t leave his residence, dedicating himself entirely to pill refining.
Ever since awakening his system, he had never failed in crafting pills.
A 100% success rate was nothing short of inhuman.
By the end of the month, all the medicinal herbs he had purchased were exhausted, yielding fifty flawless Body Nourishment Pills and fifty flawless Verdant Spirit Pills.
He had also accumulated a substantial amount of cultivation points.
During this time, Niu Shouren and Chen Jiaojiao visited a few more times.
After exchanging pleasantries, Niu Shouren would leave Chen Jiaojiao behind to "supervise" while he smugly departed.
Niu Shouren believed he had Wang Jianqiang under his thumb, gloating inwardly.
Little did he know—
The most formidable hunters often disguise themselves as prey.
Wang Jianqiang merely watched his performance with detached amusement, as if observing a clown.
To him now, Spirit Gathering Pills were mere pocket change.
Cultivation was inherently a monotonous endeavor.
Prolonged cultivation only made it more tedious, so he saw these interactions as a brief diversion between sessions.
Spending a little extra was no big deal.
……
Inside the dimly lit room, Wang Jianqiang stared at the 100 cultivation points displayed on his status panel. Without hesitation, he allocated all of them to the "Yanling Art."
Advancing the technique’s mastery would improve his pill absorption rate, making it the most efficient way to boost his cultivation at present.
His goal was to elevate the Yanling Art directly to its peak—Great Perfection.
Ding.
"The Yanling Art has reached its current maximum level."
"Spend 500 cultivation points to optimize and upgrade. Proceed?"
The system’s voice echoed in his mind, startling him.
Even cultivation techniques could be upgraded?
Glancing back at the panel, he saw that the Yanling Art’s proficiency had shifted from "Adept" to "Great Perfection," followed by a new option: "Optimize & Upgrade."
With his abysmal innate talent and the Yanling Art being a common, low-tier technique, his cultivation speed was painfully slow.
If he could enhance the technique’s grade, his progress would undoubtedly accelerate.
The thought sent a surge of excitement through him.
But when he noticed his remaining balance—a mere 5 cultivation points—his enthusiasm cooled instantly.
Reaching Great Perfection had cost him 95 points, leaving only 5 behind.
He was still 495 points short of upgrading the Yanling Art.
That wasn’t a small amount. Even if he refined pills nonstop, it would take nearly four months to save up!
Wang Jianqiang shook his head, deciding to table the idea for now.
He retrieved a flawless Verdant Spirit Pill and swallowed it.
With the Yanling Art at Great Perfection, his pill absorption efficiency had skyrocketed from 30% to 70%.
His cultivation speed more than doubled.
In just two days, after refining ten flawless Verdant Spirit Pills in succession, his cultivation broke through to the fifth layer of Qi Refining.
Just as he prepared to continue his cultivation and push straight to the sixth layer—
Chen Jiaojiao’s voice called from outside.
Wang Jianqiang decided to take a break.
Half an hour later, Chen Jiaojiao left contentedly, clutching a Spirit Gathering Pill.
After resting briefly, Wang Jianqiang resumed his closed-door cultivation.
Ten days later, a tremor ran through his seated figure as his cultivation advanced once more.
Breaking through from the fifth to the sixth layer of Qi Refining had consumed thirty-seven flawless Verdant Spirit Pills.
He set aside the remaining three, not planning to refine them himself.
Upon reaching the sixth layer, the effectiveness of Verdant Spirit Pills plummeted.
To break through again using them would require refining at least two to three hundred pills—a process that would take over two months even if he worked nonstop.
For ordinary cultivators, such speed would be astonishing.
But he was a cheater.
This pace was beneath him.
With a pulse of spiritual energy, he cleansed the impurities from his body and strode toward the External Affairs Hall.
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!
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.”
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?!
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?"
