"Frosty block..."
Little Li suddenly felt a lump in his throat.
At least our Autumn Water Pavilion still had one reliable person.
He lifted his foot, intending to jog over, but after a moment's thought, he trudged forward with great effort, moving slowly before plopping heavily into a chair by the table. His body relaxed as if he had just shed a thousand-pound burden.
"Huh? This kid was practically sprinting earlier—what's wrong now?"
"Did his condition worsen?"
Shang Wu and Qin Yuzhi exchanged awkward glances.
They had assumed Li Mo wasn’t in serious trouble. Had they known, they wouldn’t have teased him.
"Let’s check his temperature first."
Ying Bing unscrewed the head of a doll-shaped container and pulled out a bronze object covered in tiny holes, resembling a feather shaft stripped of its plumage.
It was a little trinket she had acquired as spoils during her demon-slaying exploits in the southern borderlands.
The moment Li Mo gripped it, frost began spreading across its surface, transforming it into an icy feather—proof that his body temperature was dangerously low.
"Hold it in your mouth," Ying Bing instructed.
Li Mo obeyed, only for the feather to instantly turn red, flames flickering from the bronze shaft—now proof of an alarmingly high internal temperature.
"So... he’s caught in an ice-and-fire paradox?" Shang Wu blinked.
"Like cures like..." Qin Yuzhi smacked her forehead. "You did sneak those Snow Spirit Ginseng roots yesterday, didn’t you?!"
"......"
Li Mo ignored them, stealing a glance at Frosty Block’s expression instead.
"How do you feel now?" Ying Bing asked softly, lowering her gaze.
"I... I’ll manage."
Li Mo—the so-called "Hammer Tyrant" whose physique rivaled that of a calamity beast—forced a frail smile. "Maybe it’s just a minor cultivation misstep. I know my own body best."
"Wuwu, my precious disciple, don’t you dare collapse on me!" Shang Wu panicked.
Qin Yuzhi raised a finger, finally offering something sensible:
"Given his current state—internal heat raging while externally frostbitten—treatment should follow the principle of 'inside out.' So, we tackle the yang energy first?"
"But how...?"
She blinked, turning to Frosty Block for answers.
Li Mo’s eyes widened slightly. Since when had Qin Yuzhi become so... perceptive? Or rather, so enlightened?
This was downright terrifying.
Not to be outdone, the inaugural Best Actor of the Golden Statue Awards refused to fall behind.
Li Mo shook his head and sighed. "Maybe I just need to sleep it off. I’ll recover on my own."
"?"
Ying Bing remained expressionless, gathering a wisp of inner energy at her fingertip to probe his meridians and diagnose the issue properly.
But before her hand could reach him, Li Mo intercepted it, clasping her palm weakly.
Little Li seemed utterly drained, his gaze dimming slightly.
"If... just if... something really is wrong, promise me you’ll take care of Hammer Baby. I swore I’d find it a pretty little companion..."
"Disciple dear, take a swig of firewater! Whenever I’m sick, sweating it out always does the trick."
Shang Wu hastily poured him a cup of liquor.
Giving a patient strong alcohol? To "sweat it out"? Well, coming from his master, this was somehow perfectly logical...
Cough!
The moment the liquor touched his lips, Li Mo erupted into coughs.
The spilled drink hit the ground—first freezing into frost, then... bursting into flames?!
What kind of flammable ice was this?!
Honestly?
The Golden Statue Awards’ Best Actor was slipping today. His performance felt over-the-top, almost... guilty.
Even a child faking a cold to skip school could’ve done better.
But there’s a saying: "Fear breeds blindness."
"Let Xiao Yue play with it then..."
Frosty Block suspected Little Li was faking—he had tricked her into feeding him for three days back in the southern borderlands, after all.
Yet, seeing him so listless, her usually calm eyes flickered with unease.
What if it was real?
He had been forging in lava veins daily, wearing that indestructible pure-yang robe (because nothing else survived the heat).
Even an Inner Landscape Realm cultivator would struggle without proper protection...
"What in the world... is this performance?"
Xue Jing strode into the courtyard, medical kit in hand, and froze at the sight of Autumn Water Pavilion transformed into an emergency ward.
He turned to Elder Hanhe and Elder Zeng, baffled.
"What’s going on here?"
Elder Zeng paused. "Huh? He was like this when we carried him over."
Elder Hanhe nodded. "Doesn’t seem any worse than before..."
"Old Xue, thank heavens you’re here! Quick, examine him!"
Shang Wu hurriedly vacated her seat.
Li Mo: "!"
Oh no. The actually competent one had arrived.
Elder Hanhe and Elder Zeng... so they hadn’t fled? They’d gone to Dan Ding Peak to fetch backup?
Did they have to be this reliable?!
"Hmm... These symptoms... peculiar."
After a thorough inspection, Xue Jing frowned.
"Logically, with yang energy this rampant, external frost shouldn’t form. How can he be freezing outside while burning inside...?"
"Oh, that! Almost forgot."
Elder Zeng smacked his forehead, suddenly remembering.
He reached into Little Li’s pocket and pulled out a frigid, intricately patterned ore—ten concentric rings marked its surface.
Xue Jing stared. "Millennium Frost Silver Ore? Why in the world did you two put this on him?!"
This stone, found in the icy depths of lava veins where extreme yang birthed yin, was a rare forging material—used in weapons like the Heavenfrost Sword. Its counterpart was Blazing Copper Ore.
"The kid was scalding us!"
Elder Hanhe grumbled, showing his slightly reddened palms. "Carrying him burned my hands! Had to cool him down somehow."
"...So his 'external frost' was manually induced...? Seriously?"
Mystery solved: Li Mo’s icy condition was the result of literal ice therapy.
Silence engulfed Autumn Water Pavilion.
Dead leaves rustled in the cold wind. A stray crow flew overhead, its grating caws almost like mocking laughter...
The atmosphere couldn’t have been more awkward.
"Oh... so that’s it... I’m fine, haha! Told you..."
Without the frost ore suppressing him, Li Mo’s body temperature skyrocketed again, yang energy radiating heat.
Yet somehow, he now felt an inexplicable chill.
He turned stiffly—only to meet Frosty Block’s serene, utterly expressionless face.
Not good.
"It’s good that you’re alright."
Ying Bing spoke softly, then turned and walked upstairs.
"It’s over..."
Little Li muttered. Maybe he wasn’t completely unharmed after all...
Xue Jing scribbled a prescription. "Here, take some cooling herbs. You’ve been overindulging, and your yang is out of control. Rest properly for a few days, understood?"
"Right. I still have a weapon to forge—gotta go."
"Take two days off."
Elder Hanhe and Elder Zeng chimed in.
"Thank you for your concern, Elders."
"Ah, no need for thanks. Just doing our duty."
The two elders tactfully retreated from the scene of the crime.
"Hmph." Even though Shang Wu wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, she could tell her disciple had been faking it earlier. With a disgruntled snort, she retreated to her room.
"Tsk."
Qin Yuzhi glanced at him and shook her head—looks like the young lad had crashed and burned.
In the end, only Little Li was left standing there, frozen like a statue, utterly alone.
A song involuntarily rose in his heart:
"Snowflakes drift~ the north wind howls~~"
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?"
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
lities. One day, Qi Yuan was buying groceries when he unfortunately came face-to-face with a monster. Just when he thought he was going to die on the spot, he suddenly heard the monster's thoughts... "This aura, he's definitely not an ordinary master!" "So terrifying, so terrifying." "A fight with my back against the wall, I can't take it anymore." Qi Yuan: Ah, no one told me that my awakened ability isn't telepathy, but rather the stronger my enemies imagine me to be, the stronger I truly become. PS: Zhou Hai in the first chapter is not the protagonist.
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.”
