With a thud, Yang Zhanbai collapsed again.
“I only have my mom,” he said. “I’ve never even seen my dad since I was born. Anyway, I’m more worried about myself than I am about my mom.”
He sighed from the bottom of his heart. “Ms. Yang is way stronger than I am.”
Zhu Yan decided to avoid talking about his own parents.
His memories of them only extended to before he turned ten.
Some things had grown distant and blurry. Whenever he thought of them now, all that remained was a damp sadness, like the feeling of being caught in drizzling rain.
He hurriedly asked, “So, have you been in contact with your mom? Is she coming to find you?”
“…Not necessarily.” Yang Zhanbai pondered for a moment. “She asked me for some information about the horrific creatures before, and she also had me photograph every page of that book, Living Alongside Forbidden Things.”
“I get the feeling she wants to enter a dungeon herself and beat the crap out of the horrific creatures.”
“B-beat the crap out of the horrific creatures?”
Zhu Yan tried to picture his aunt doing that, but he couldn’t.
“Yep.” Yang Zhanbai crossed his legs. “I’m not worried in the slightest. Oh, right—she also asked if I had the contact information for any of my roommates’ parents.”
Zhu Yan’s heart tightened. “Why?”
Don’t tell me she’s checking their family backgrounds.
He had already forgotten the contact information for his own “parents.” The fake details had been arranged for him by 【Narrative Stage】.
Fortunately, Yang Zhanbai merely said, “It’s always good to have a companion on the road through the dungeons.”
“My parents probably won’t work.” Zhu Yan put on a regretful tone. “They’re overseas… They can’t come along.”
“Ah, my mom could do it,” Qi Yinming said. “But my dad probably couldn’t. Forget my dad.”
“Why forget him? Bring him along too.”
“They’re divorced.” Qi Yinming answered irritably. “He’s a gambler. He used to hit me when I was little, bro. If you insist on having me bring him, then…”
“Forget it, forget it, forget it, forget it!”
Yang Zhanbai hurriedly cut him off, then gave an embarrassed laugh.
“Your mom will be fine. Uh, anyway, my mom can knock out three people with one punch, so there’s no need to worry about her safety.”
“We might not be headed to the same place,” Qi Yinming said. “Where is your mother?”
“She went traveling a while ago. I have no idea where she’s off having fun now. Oh—she’s in a place called Yuexing City.”
Yuexing City.
Zhu Yan knew the place. The last few times he had gone there, it was to handle business at the 【Hall of Mourning】.
“Has a dungeon descended there yet?” he asked, guiding the conversation subtly. “Yang Zhanbai, tell your mother to keep an eye out…”
“It has. My mom’s trying to find a way to piggyback on someone else’s beginner dungeon,” Yang Zhanbai said. “Xu Tongguang and Chen Zhaoxing are coming over for a visit later. We can ask about their parents too.”
…
Zhu Yan lay there for a while, but for some reason, he soon found it difficult to stay put.
He entered the 【Hunter Center】 to check on the surveillance feeds from 【Walking Corpse】, only to unexpectedly see Jin Rongxu’s handsome yet twisted face.
He stood behind his desk, facing Guan En, who was there to give him a work report.
“Still no reply?!”
“They said they weren’t feeling well,” Guan En replied. “They did suffer a knife wound, so it’s understandable.”
The viewpoint of 【Walking Corpse】 shifted to the side.
The person beside it was probably a military doctor. Pot Lid and Ma Dong were standing next to him.
Other than those five “people,” there was no one else in the office.
“They have to come back within the next few days,” Jin Rongxu said coldly. “Arrange for them to go to the shelter. Especially Zhu Zeyu—have him come with me to the western suburbs.”
“Yes.”
From Zhu Yan’s perspective, Jin Rongxu narrowed his eyes and said nothing more.
Nearly ten seconds passed before he drawled, “Guan En, tell me. Do you think I’ll be able to successfully obtain the 【Hunter】’s ability this time?”
Zhu Yan raised one eyebrow.
Fortunately, Jin Rongxu was merely anxious to the point of rambling, complaining in a scattered manner.
“The Seer’s ability is practically malfunctioning. He can only see one result and a tiny bit of the process.”
“How the hell am I supposed to act during the process?”
“Every time that Zhu Zeyu is around, I end up having bad luck, while nothing ever happens to him.”
“But his ability is pretty good too. There’s no way I can let him go.”
“I can’t feel at ease when the 【Hunter】 is nowhere to be found.”
Guan En lowered his head and did not answer immediately.
Finally, he asked, “Captain Jin, are you satisfied with the abilities of the other players we selected?”
“I can arrange for some of them to be sent to the western suburbs shelter. That way, if—just in case—the 【Hunter】’s side fails, we’ll still have backups.”
But Jin Rongxu waved his hand irritably.
“I’m satisfied with the 【Hunter】. If I can obtain all three of the 【Hunter】’s abilities this time, I’ll be completely satisfied.”
He suddenly turned his head and looked over, as if he were staring straight at Zhu Yan through 【Walking Corpse】’s eyes.
“You three, make sure you coordinate properly when the time comes.”
“The Seer said very clearly that the key to the open-beta dungeon is wordplay and resistance to attacks.”
Good. Wordplay.
Zhu Yan committed that to memory.
“I didn’t give you all those bottles of enhancement potions for nothing.”
Jin Rongxu let out a cold laugh. “Make sure you protect yourselves. Don’t let your health bars hit zero.”
Zhu Yan was speechless.
This guy was a complete incompetent. How had he managed to command everyone’s respect?
He listened for a while longer, but apart from more warnings, Jin Rongxu revealed nothing else useful.
Zhu Yan sighed and climbed out of bed.
“I’m going out for a walk. The dorm is a little stuffy.”
He found a terrible excuse, then fished the canister of aerosol from his ring.
Since he had nothing better to do, he would rather make a trip to 【Narrative Stage】 and experience this thing called 【Baptism】.
“Call me when Xu Tongguang and Chen Zhaoxing arrive.” Zhu Yan climbed down from the bed. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“You only need to come back for dinner,” Yang Zhanbai’s voice came from nearby. “Xu Tongguang and Chen Zhaoxing replied to me.”
Zhu Yan was spraying the aerosol over himself.
At those words, he raised his head.
“What did they say?”
“Oh.” Yang Zhanbai sounded a little downcast. “Xu Tongguang said it would be best if his family were dead. As for Chen Zhaoxing…”
He swallowed. “…He said his parents probably wouldn’t survive anyway, so there’s no need to worry about them.”
Zhu Yan could more or less understand.
Their personalities and abilities offered some clues.
Xu Tongguang’s ability to reflect injuries was quite similar to the embodiment of pent-up resentment.
Chen Zhaoxing seemed poorly socialized and extremely bad at expressing himself—or perhaps simply unwilling to do so. His family had probably influenced him to some extent as well.
Zhu Yan carefully sprayed the aerosol over his entire body. Then he walked over to Yang Zhanbai’s bed and patted the edge to comfort him.
“It’s all right. There are all kinds of people in the world.”
“…Come back for dinner,” Yang Zhanbai mumbled. “Uh, I invited the two of them too, so don’t you dare bail on us.”
All he could do was pray that the 【Baptism】 would not take too long.
Zhu Yan called out an acknowledgment, grabbed his dormitory door, and hurried toward the fast-travel passage.
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
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?"
ions, keeping it grounded and realistic】 After quitting his job, office worker Su Yang accidentally binds with the "Enjoy Life System." As the name suggests, simply by indulging in life's pleasures, he can earn random rewards from the system—no need to spend money on beautiful women or grovel before anyone. Just enjoy, and the money follows, making it all about effortless fun. The system comes with a scanning feature, allowing him to establish a favorability bond with women rated 85 points or above. Every 20-point increase in favorability unlocks additional rewards. After suffering through over twenty years of hardship, Su Yang trembles with excitement, his dull eyes suddenly gleaming with newfound hope. "Enjoy life? How hard could that be?"
