"Irena is my employer."
"She is my most trusted partner. We are no longer just in a simple employer-employee relationship."
"We’ve faced life and death together, crossed dangerous territories, and survived landslides blocking our path."
"We’ve forced our way across raging rivers when bridges collapsed."
"We’ve even been ambushed by assassins sent by dark forces, narrowly escaping death."
Ye Chuan spoke slowly, his eyes carrying a mix of nostalgia, sorrow, and stubbornness.
"How could I take you there if I suspected you were a danger?"
"So?" Kaiaolen wasn’t sure what Ye Chuan was getting at.
"You’ll have to add more gold coins." Ye Chuan raised his head.
Kaiaolen: "…"
"You… I… you… sigh." Kaiaolen raised a finger, struggling to find words before finally exhaling in resignation.
"Fine. I’ll pay."
"As a lord, you wouldn’t be stingy, right?" Ye Chuan added.
"You!"
After receiving a hefty bag of coins, Ye Chuan weighed it in his hand with satisfaction—probably around a thousand or so?
"Ten thousand succubus summons. Not bad."
"Succubus?" Kaiaolen looked at Ye Chuan in confusion.
"Never mind."
Kaiaolen felt a surge of frustration in his chest. Truthfully, as a lord, he kept taxes low to ensure his people could live in peace, so he wasn’t particularly wealthy.
Seeing Ye Chuan’s money-grubbing attitude only made him angrier.
He barely had any personal funds left—most of the treasury went into developing the territory.
"Then, after you, Dragonborn." Now that he had the money, Ye Chuan upgraded Kaiaolen’s title from "little dragonborn" to "Dragonborn."
With that, he summoned a portal and placed it on the ground with a soft click.
"A door? Teleportation magic?" Kaiaolen’s eyes widened in realization. "Is this how the princess was taken?"
"You could say that."
The portal was quite handy—if not for the fact that recharging its uses required gold, Ye Chuan wouldn’t have to be so frugal with it.
Ye Chuan pulled the door open, revealing a dark forest on the other side, faintly illuminated by moonlight.
Kaiaolen was astonished. Despite living for centuries, he had never seen such a seamless method of spatial travel. He’d encountered spatial magic before, but nothing this effortless, requiring no incantations at all.
Stepping through, he found himself in a mountain range outside the city of Milar. He could even see his own city in the distance—without even feeling the usual spatial distortion.
"Your rank may not be high, but your spatial magic is extraordinary. More impressive than any archmage I’ve met." Kaiaolen couldn’t help but praise.
"Thanks. Oh, by the way, this teleportation service is also chargeable."
Kaiaolen: "…"
He immediately regretted his compliment. "Young man, you’re pushing it."
"Just kidding. You already paid earlier." Ye Chuan grinned at Kaiaolen’s unamused expression.
"Why aren’t you laughing?"
Kaiaolen remained stone-faced.
He wasn’t just not laughing—he wanted to punch Ye Chuan and remind him of the might of a dragonborn’s fangs.
Kaiaolen glanced around and noticed a flicker of firelight uphill, so he strode toward it.
…
Meanwhile, on the other side, Irena sat on a rock, lost in thought. Since the armored figure beside her didn’t speak, she had no choice but to wait in silence.
The night was dark, and the forest felt eerie, with occasional growls from beasts or monsters lurking nearby.
When Ye Chuan left, a few monsters had indeed appeared, but Della crushed them all with a single swing of her hammer.
"I appreciate your protection, but it’d be nice if you could clean up the corpses too." Irena forced a smile as she eyed the massive monster carcasses nearby.
The stench of dead monsters would only attract more.
More corpses meant more monsters. If not for her worry that Ye Chuan wouldn’t find her, Irena would’ve left already.
Della remained silent, clutching her hammer.
She had no soul—her power resided in the armor, and Ye Chuan’s orders were simply to protect Irena.
Just then, a rustling sound caught Irena’s attention.
"Miss Della, someone’s coming," Irena whispered urgently.
But Della seemed to sense something and vanished in a streak of black light.
"Miss Della?!" Irena froze. "D-Did the summoning time run out?"
The footsteps grew closer, sending chills down her spine. She stumbled back, raising her hands to cast a spell.
As a first-tier nature mage, her abilities leaned more toward support—combat was not her strength.
A shadow emerged from the bushes.
Irena’s arms faltered mid-motion. "Lord Kaiaolen?"
Her face paled. Had she been found?
Then she noticed Ye Chuan standing beside him.
"Sir Ye? Why are you two together?"
"Oh, he paid me, so I brought him to you." Ye Chuan smirked.
Irena was stunned. Had she been sold out for money?
Just as she was about to spiral into panic, Kaiaolen spoke. "Princess, it’s been years. You’ve grown so much."
Hearing his tone, Irena blinked in surprise before her expression brightened.
"Lord Kaiaolen… you believe I’m not a monster now?"
"He always believed you," Ye Chuan cut in. "He just had monsters around him, so he had to play along."
"Really?!" Irena’s tension dissolved instantly. "Thank goodness…"
Seeing her relief, Kaiaolen seemed remorseful. "Your Highness, tell me everything you know first."
Irena recounted everything—how she witnessed her father consuming people, how the royal family had turned into monsters.
"This is worse than I imagined." Kaiaolen’s frown deepened.
An entire empire’s king and most of the royal family, all parasitized by monsters—with no way to identify them.
Kaiaolen felt a headache coming on.
"Lord Kaiaolen, what should we do?"
Kaiaolen studied Irena’s worried face, reminded of how she used to cling to his cloak as a child. A faint smile tugged at his lips.
"There’s only one solution."
"What is it?"
"Raise an army. March on the capital."
ng to die together with you." Lin Xuan is dead, his body thrown into the river by his scumbag lover and her accomplice. She, the president of the Su Group, is decisive, ruthless, and ice-cold. For three days and three nights, she had his body fished out of the river, and without hesitation, she kissed the bloated corpse of Lin Xuan. She laid down beside him in a cold coffin, their fingers intertwined, a smile lingering on her lips as she closed her eyes. The noble and cold-hearted woman, only bending for one man—Lin Xuan. Lin Xuan, with his golden finger, is reborn and returns to the day of his wedding to the treacherous woman. Su Qiang comes to steal the bride. Lin Xuan's eyes light up, eager to pledge his loyalty on the spot, but instead, her kiss transfers a glass of drugged wine into his mouth, causing him to pass out... 【Male Protagonist with Single Female Lead】【Yandere Tycoon】【Action-Packed】【True vs. Fake Heir】
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?!
ose... to cooperate with the protagonist! Shen Yuan: I have a system! Protagonist: What? System: Holy crap, you're just spilling it out like that? Shen Yuan: Let's team up, we'll split the system rewards! Protagonist: Fifty-fifty split? Shen Yuan: No way! Protagonist: What!? I'm the one getting beaten up, and I don't get half? Shen Yuan: Forty-sixty split, I get forty, you get sixty! Protagonist: Deal! Big brother, come on, hit me! As long as it doesn't kill me, beat me like you mean it! Shen Yuan: Don't worry... I will definitely protect all of you! No one but me can lay a finger on you! Guard our Heaven's Chosen Ones! I'm the only one allowed to bully them!
