After agreeing to Wang Yanran's request, Ye Chuan followed Luo Xi back to the classroom and immediately took out his phone to start refining pills.
In the animated display on his phone, the alchemy furnace clattered and shook, the flames inside burning fiercely. If Ye Chuan hadn’t known the furnace had a 100% success rate, he might have thought it was about to explode from the violent shaking.
After some adjustments, he managed to refine a simplified version of the Marrow-Cleansing Pills by reducing some of the required materials and tweaking the formula slightly.
[Item: Marrow-Cleansing Pill (Beauty Edition)
Effect: Expels impurities, improves complexion, and slightly enhances affinity with spiritual energy.
Alchemist: Ye Chuan]
The low-grade version of the Marrow-Cleansing Pills was complete.
Well, since it only slightly increased spiritual energy affinity, it could indeed be called a Beauty Pill. And it did improve cultivation speed—he wasn’t lying about that. Though it probably couldn’t compare to the ones he and Luo Xi had taken.
"Easy peasy, another forty million in the bag. The materials for this low-grade version only cost a few thousand," Ye Chuan mused, feeling rather proud of his alchemy skills. Though he wasn’t a true alchemist, he had a knack for adjusting material ratios.
Thanks to the Qingyun Sect’s herb garden, he could freely experiment with refining techniques. Even minor changes in ingredient proportions affected the final product.
Still, he had to control the supply to ensure each pill could be sold at a premium.
Ye Chuan had materials for other pills as well. Aside from keeping some for himself, refining the rest into sellable pills would bring in an astronomical sum.
The only downside was that the few pill recipes he knew were low-tier—effective only a few times before losing potency. He needed more advanced formulas.
"Pill recipes… I need more pill recipes," Ye Chuan muttered, already envisioning the fortune he could make with a wider variety.
He had to stir things up in the Qingyun Sect!
A glance at his bank account showed only a little over a million left.
"Wait, I’ve earned so much recently, so why does it feel like I’m not saving anything?" He suddenly wondered if he’d been overspending. But then again, skipping those power-boosting treasures didn’t seem wise.
After all, Bai Qianshuang had already jumped two cultivation realms.
Seemed worth it. Soon, his home wouldn’t just have a Golden Core-level "nuke," but a Nascent Soul-level one.
Who knew? Maybe even an Empress-level "nuke" wasn’t out of the question.
"Chuan, can you pick up my clothes for me this afternoon? The custom-made ones," Luo Xi suddenly spoke up, clasping her hands together.
Since her classes ended later than his, she was worried the shop might close if she went too late, so she wanted Ye Chuan to grab them first.
"Sure," Ye Chuan agreed without hesitation—it was on his way anyway.
"Thanks!" she beamed.
By afternoon, the sky was tinged with a soft orange hue.
As Ye Chuan headed to the parking lot, he suddenly felt someone’s gaze on him.
Pausing mid-step, he turned around—
Behind him stood a little girl clutching a rabbit plushie. She couldn’t have been older than ten, her pale complexion and slightly dazed eyes giving off a frail, sickly impression.
Whose kid is this?
Ye Chuan: "…"
The little girl: "…"
"Who are you?" Ye Chuan asked.
The girl tilted her head. "Who are you?"
"Why were you staring at me?"
She blinked in confusion. "Why were you staring at me?"
Seeing her parrot his words, Ye Chuan raised one hand—and she mirrored the action.
Amused, he took a sudden step back, then spun around and performed a mock "Iron Mountain Charge" stance.
The girl: "…"
Her body stiffened, arms twitching as if struggling to mimic the move. In the end, she just hugged her plushie tighter.
"Can’t do it, huh? Kid, being a copycat won’t get you far in life. Are you a teacher’s child?" Since they were still on school grounds, Ye Chuan didn’t overthink it. He patted her head and walked off, leaving the girl standing there, watching him silently.
A short while later, a middle-aged woman rushed over in a panic. "Miss Qingqing, you can’t just run off like that!"
The girl, still sounding dazed, replied, "Qingqing came to find someone… Didn’t run off."
"Find who?"
"Don’t know," she shook her head. "He left."
"Don’t know…? Ahem—Miss Qingqing, let’s go back, okay?" The woman sighed, clearly used to the girl’s antics.
"Mm." Qingqing nodded but kept glancing in the direction Ye Chuan had gone as she was led away.
---
Arriving at the parking lot, Ye Chuan spotted Wang Yanran.
"Ye Chuan, it’s pretty hot today, isn’t it?" she remarked, fanning herself with a hand.
"Hm? Yeah."
"Do you have AC in your living room?"
Ah…
Now he got it. She was hinting at wanting to stay longer in his place—because of the Spirit Gathering Array.
"Yeah, you can hang out for a bit," he replied without calling her out. He’d already said she was welcome before.
Wang Yanran smiled.
Back in the urban village, Ye Chuan stopped by the tailor’s shop to pick up the clothes. But this time, he noticed something different about Xiao Bai, the stray cat the elderly seamstress had taken in.
Aside from looking chubbier, the most obvious change was that its head was completely bald—as if deliberately shaved.
"Here to pick up the clothes," Ye Chuan said. The old woman recognized him and handed over a bag containing the finished garments.
"By the way, why is Xiao Bai bald now?" he asked.
"Yesterday, I was burning some joss paper in the brazier, and it jumped in," the seamstress explained helplessly. "Its fur got singed, so I had to shave it off."
Ye Chuan picked up the cat, barely holding back a laugh as he snapped a photo and sent it to Luo Xi.
Her reply came quickly—
Luo Xi: Oh no! What happened to Xiao Bai’s fur?!
Ye Chuan: The owner was burning joss paper, and it jumped into the fire.
Luo Xi: Is it hurt?
Ye Chuan: Just the fur got burned. Maybe we should wash it with soap.
Luo Xi: Does soap help fur grow back?
Ye Chuan: Nah, but it’ll make its head slippery. Useless, but fun.
Luo Xi: "…"
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.
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!
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!
