Li Zhan and Qin Ran talked for quite a while, covering topics from the current war situation, cultivation practices of cultivators, sect divisions in each country, to customs and practices of each country... In short, they had a wide-ranging casual chat.
In the end, some officers came in, saying they had urgent matters to report to Li Zhan, and their first conversation came to an end.
Qin Ran led the almost asleep Li Shiyin out of the study, and could not help but heave a sigh of relief, waving away some imaginary sweat.
Seeing him like this, Li Shiyin laughed: "Wow! Master, you were nervous!"
Qin Ran glared at her and did not try to defend himself. He asked, "Where's your brother?"
"Li Shiwen is injured and still unconscious," Li Shiyin replied.
"Take me to see him..."
Li Shiyin then took Qin Ran to the bedroom where Li Shiwen was.
Knocking on the door and entering, there was only Yu Chi Zhen inside, who was embroidering by the stove. When Li Shiyin came in, she introduced to her: "Sister-in-law, this is my master."
Yu Chi Zhen got up and bowed, "Greetings, Immortal."
"Sister-in-law, no need to be overly courteous," Qin Ran replied.
Hearing Qin Ran address her as sister-in-law, Yu Chi Zhen looked at Qin Ran a few more times, and then looked at Li Shiyin. With the eyes of someone who knew better, she easily saw that there was something going on between these two.
She then smiled and said, "The Immortal is really young."
Qin Ran replied, "Just call me Qin Ran."
After some polite conversation, Qin Ran walked to the bedside and said to Yu Chi Zhen, "Sister-in-law, do you mind if I take a look at Shiwen?"
Since Qin Ran was a cultivator, Yu Chi Zhen naturally knew, and she had also heard Li Shiwen talk about him. She quickly moved out of the way and said, "Please, Immortal."
Qin Ran smiled and nodded at her. He had already realized that Li Shiwen's gentle and delicate little wife was actually very clever, with intricate thoughts.
He sat down by the bed, first simply examined Li Shiwen's exterior, then took his pulse to determine Li Shiwen's interior condition.
After quite a while, he frowned, turned around, stared at Li Shiyin and asked, "How many elixirs did you give him?"
Seeing Qin Ran frowning, Li Shiyin knew something was wrong. She stammered, "I...I don't know."
"You don't know?" Qin Ran should have known this would be the answer.
"I saw his injuries and condition go back and forth, so I gave him many elixirs..." Li Shiyin said.
"Reckless!" Qin Ran suddenly scolded, "The elixirs I gave you were for you to use. The quality is very high, the spiritual energy and potency in them is simply not something ordinary people can withstand."
"Ah?" Li Shiyin was shocked and asked, "Then...then...my brother?"
Qin Ran glared at her and scolded, "I've always told you to learn about elixir refinement, told you to learn about elixirs, but you just wouldn't listen. Now look, I gave you elixirs and you don't even know how to use them!
"Do you know, if I didn't come, your brother would have been squeezed to death by you with elixirs!"
Li Shiyin knew how to climb the pole, so she directly ignored the first half of Qin Ran's words and asked, "Master, my brother can still be saved, right?!"
This shameless rascal, Qin Ran really wanted to whip her with a leather whip. He pointed at her, too angry to speak, and directly turned back to treat Li Shiwen.
The elixirs Qin Ran gave Li Shiyin for her own use were all of the highest quality. With Li Shiyin's physique, both internal and external injuries could heal very quickly. With Li Shiwen's physique, how could he withstand it?
Therefore, to treat Li Shiwen, the potency in his body had to be extracted... Fortunately, Qin Ran practiced water-attributed elixir refinement. If he had practiced fire-attributed refinement, Li Shiwen would have been a goner this time.
...To persevere on the battlefield for a whole night, kill hundreds of enemies, survive, but ultimately be squeezed to death by elixirs from his own sister, how ridiculous would that be when thought about.
Qin Ran summoned a bubble and wrapped Li Shiwen in it, then summoned the elixir water in his body to fill the entire bubble space, submerging Li Shiwen.
He then used elixir refinement techniques, treating Li Shiwen as an ingredient, extracting the potency that had been absorbed into his body and muscles back out...
It took almost half a quarter hour before Qin Ran finished extracting all the potency. He then released Li Shiwen from the bubble, and shrank the bubble smaller and smaller, drawing out the elixir water, until finally obtaining an elixir the size of a fist that looked strange.
He flung the elixir at Li Shiyin and asked, "Don't you feel that elixirs are better than spirit stones?"
Li Shiyin caught the huge elixir, pursed her lips, and said, "No..."
This spendthrift wife!
Qin Ran felt that sooner or later he would be angered to death by Li Shiyin. He glared at her and instructed, "His soul is too abundant, currently in an over-awakened state. That is, he is actually awake, but can't actually control his body. Use your soul to call out to awaken his soul."
Li Shiyin blinked her big eyes again, trying to get out of punishment by acting cute.
She tiptoed over to Qin Ran, sat down cross-legged, floating in mid-air, and said, "Master...keep an eye on my physical body..."
"Mm." Qin Ran grunted, too lazy to even look at her.
Li Shiyin then reassuredly released her soul, going towards Li Shiwen's sea of consciousness.
Letting Li Shiyin go call Li Shiwen, Qin Ran found a place to sit down. Seeing Qin Ran finally free, Yu Chi Zhen came over to ask, "Immortal, have you seen Little Ping'an?"
She remembered Li Shiyin said she had given Li An to Qin Ran to look after. Now Qin Ran had come here, so where did Li An go?
"Oh, sister-in-law doesn't need to worry," Qin Ran replied. "I specially arranged for someone to take care of him, he will be fine."
If she remembered correctly, when she had asked Li Shiyin at the time, Li Shiyin had replied the same to her. Yu Chi Zhen therefore couldn't help but worry. She was anxious.
At this time Qin Ran looked at her and laughed, "The child is called Li An right? He has great talent in the sword... "
Yu Chi Zhen was very clever. As soon as Qin Ran started, she knew what he meant. Her gentle gaze was fixed only on Qin Ran.
"He flew his sword to my Dan Peak by himself, we really have affinity..." Qin Ran went on directly, "Would sister-in-law allow him to become my disciple and cultivate under me?"
Yu Chi Zhen said, "When Ping'an was still in my belly, Shiyin had asked me if Ping'an should cultivate. I agreed at the time. Now...of course he should cultivate too."
"Then..." Qin Ran was just about to happily agree, when Li Shiyin suddenly spoke up and said, "Master, you don't even cultivate the sword..."
Qin Ran and Yu Chi Zhen looked over at her. Her soul had returned to her body and she was standing properly by the bed again. She looked at Qin Ran and continued, "Little Ping'an should take me as Master instead!"
"Can you teach disciples?" Qin Ran asked.
"You can, Master!" Li Shiyin shamelessly replied.
"So you take in the disciple, but I help teach him," Qin Ran continued asking. "Is that what you mean?!"
Li Shiyin nodded, "Yes!"
"Why doesn't he just become my disciple directly then?" Qin Ran didn't understand.
Li Shiyin put her hands on her hips, proclaiming her authority, "You can only have me as your one disciple!"
Their master-disciple relationship had already become warped eight hundred years ago. Now, their master and disciple was more like an exclusive term of endearment. How could Li Shiyin allow others to call her master, master?
For example, Zhuifeng and Long Qi qi were actually both Qin Ran's disciples, but Zhuifeng considered himself a son, while Long Qi qi had long seen through everything. Therefore, up till now, only Li Shiyin called Qin Ran master.
It was like this in the past, it was like this now, and it could only be like this in the future.
Qin Ran looked at Li Shiyin, suddenly feeling a sense of overbearingness. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but did not get any words out.
't think I'm that capable, I'm just trying my best to stay alive. I've been kind all my life, never did anything bad, yet worldly suffering spared me not one bit. The human world is a nice place, but I won't come back in my next life. A kind young man, who wanted to just get by singing, but through repeated deceits and betrayals, has gone down an irredeemable path.
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.
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
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.
