Only a few breaths had passed before Ye Feng wanted to push Xie Yuyan away from his shoulder. But Xie Yuyan seemed to have anticipated his next move and straightened herself up again.
"Sorry, Ye Feng. You had to see me make a fool of myself again."
"Xie Yuyan, you..."
Ye Feng opened his mouth but found himself at a loss for words, eventually letting out a sigh. Then, he began analyzing the situation.
"So, Xie Yuyan, what you're saying is that ever since you changed your attitude, you've been staying at Li Mucheng's estate?"
"Yes."
Xie Yuyan nodded slightly, speaking in a calm tone.
"Actually, when you fell into the river that day, I once thought about following you. It was Li Mucheng who..."
"What?! Xie Yuyan, what did you just say?!"
Ye Feng had no patience to hear the rest of her explanation. The moment he heard Xie Yuyan's intentions, a surge of fury ignited within him.
"What do you mean by 'following me'? Explain yourself clearly!"
Xie Yuyan hadn’t meant to provoke him, but she knew that if she didn’t stir his emotions now, his detached gaze would soon turn him into an unfeeling machine. If that happened, all the efforts she and the others had made would be in vain.
"I... I'm sorry, Ye Feng... I misspoke."
A look of panic flashed across Xie Yuyan’s face.
"What I meant was that no matter what, I had to find you."
"Even now, Xie Yuyan, you still refuse to be honest? What you really meant was that if I died, you wouldn’t want to live either, right?"
Noticing how Xie Yuyan’s eyes kept darting away, avoiding his gaze, Ye Feng grabbed her shoulders and forced her to face him.
"N-no, that’s not..."
"Xie Yuyan, if you don’t tell me the truth now, from this moment on, we’ll be strangers. I won’t care about anything you do ever again."
"Ugh..."
Xie Yuyan’s body trembled as if her soul had been ripped away, and she collapsed weakly into Ye Feng’s arms.
"I... I’m sorry, Ye Feng... I just didn’t want to lose you. I was willing to do anything to bring you back."
"Tell me, was what I guessed about your thoughts correct?"
"...Yes."
"And after that, what did you do?"
"After that, Li Mucheng gave me a room. Every day, I stayed there, refusing to eat or drink, trying to escape the foolish things I’d done by wallowing in grief. But in the end, it was Mucheng who woke me up and made me pull myself together to search for you."
"......"
Listening to her words, Ye Feng slowly helped Xie Yuyan sit up, his stern gaze never leaving her.
"Why would you do this? It’s all in the past. If you could just learn to let go, you wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. For someone like me, why..."
"I can let go of anything—except you!"
Xie Yuyan cut him off before he could shoulder all the blame, then tightly grasped his hand.
"Ye Feng, do you really think things would just pass? Didn’t you realize that it was your presence that saved us? Whether it was me in danger, Shen Mengli’s poor health, or Su Yuxin and Li Mucheng needing companionship—it was because of you that we found a better path."
"This wasn’t the worst-case scenario because of you. It was because of you that we had a brighter future."
"I... I’m so confused..."
Ye Feng clutched his head, his expression pained as he gritted his teeth against the mental anguish.
"Ye Feng!"
Seeing him like this, Xie Yuyan abandoned reasoning with him. She immediately stood up, moved behind him, and began massaging his temples with both hands.
"It’s okay. Just leave it to me. Relax. Everything will be fine."
Miraculously, with Xie Yuyan’s help, Ye Feng’s discomfort gradually faded. As time passed, the tense atmosphere softened into quiet calm.
"Xie Yuyan... I-I’m fine now. You can stop."
"It’s alright. Let me keep going for a while. This is the only thing I can do for you right now."
Hearing this, Ye Feng fell silent, quietly savoring this fleeting moment of peace.
"If only..."
"Shh."
Before Ye Feng could continue, Xie Yuyan gently hushed him, leaning close to his ear and whispering,
"Let the past stay in the past. Right now, I just cherish this time with you. That’s enough."
"Xie Yuyan... I know your heart isn’t as stubborn as before, but things are different now..."
"Ye Feng, please tell me what you truly feel. This isn’t the real you."
Perhaps because she knew him so well, or perhaps because their past interactions had forged an unspoken understanding, Xie Yuyan cradled his head gently and spoke softly.
"Xie Yuyan, you’re oversimplifying things. Even if what happened on the cliff never occurred, I still couldn’t..."
"How do you know without trying? Ye Feng, you’ve already taken so many steps. Why stop right before the finish line? If things are truly set in stone as you say, why not test it yourself? See if reality matches what’s in your mind."
"It wouldn’t be fair to you all! And I’ve already..."
"I love you. That’s all that matters."
"Xie Yuyan..."
She held his head against her chest, bending down as if to melt his reservations with her warmth.
"I love you, Ye Feng. I know your heart must be in turmoil right now. But we’ve been changing too. I believe that before the end comes, we’ll find a way to overcome any obstacle. So please, give us some time, okay?"
"Xie Yuyan... how could you..."
Ye Feng stared at her in disbelief. The once-proud Xie Yuyan was now humbling herself before him. What had happened to her during their time apart?
"Ye Feng, love can change a person. It’s only now that I truly understand what that means. So... please, just look at me. Watch how I change, okay?"
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?"
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?!
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.”
