The original owner’s eyes were blindfolded, and all he could hear from below were endless screams, the sound of something snapping, and the thud of heavy bodies hitting the ground.
By the time Little Hei put down his tentacles, everything was already over.
Those gaunt-faced “trainees” were all pressed tightly against the wall, staring in terror at the newcomer.
Fang Zhiyi stepped on the wrist of the lair’s leader, slightly bending down: “Are you out of your mind?”
The thugs here, including Li Lie, had all been knocked to the ground. Li Lie cradled his right hand, moaning without pause.
“If you make another sound, I’ll break your other hand too,” Fang Zhiyi pointed at Li Lie.
Li Lie immediately shut his mouth in fear.
What the hell had he brought back with him?
Fang Zhiyi nodded in satisfaction, then looked down again at the terrified leader, giving him a series of slaps across the face, each one harder than the last.
“From now on, I ask, you answer. Got it?”
The leader nodded frantically.
Fang Zhiyi pressed harder with his foot, and the leader screamed, then quickly covered his mouth.
“Do you know of any cults around here?”
The leader froze, trembling as he said, “No, no...”
Fang Zhiyi squinted, applying more pressure, and the leader screamed out: “I’ve heard of one! The Supreme God Cult! It’s also in this villa complex! We’ve always kept to ourselves, no trouble with each other!”
Fang Zhiyi laughed: “So you really do know?”
“Young brother, young brother, we’ve always stayed out of each other’s way, living in the same neighborhood, crossing paths every day... Who are you?”
“You guys... sure can endure hardship, huh?” Fang Zhiyi glanced back coldly. Though fear was on the faces of those “trainees,” there was also more determination.
“Sleep on the floor today! Be the boss tomorrow!” someone tremblingly shouted that phrase. Fang Zhiyi shook his head and turned back to stare at the leader.
“You’re pretty good at brainwashing, aren’t you?”
The leader was almost in tears: “I, I taught myself everything. Sir, please let me go. I really haven’t done anything bad. They’re free to come and go. I just charge a fee for room and board. I never forced them to stay. If you don’t believe me, ask them! I’ve never committed any serious wrongs—just when I was a kid, I couldn’t afford to use public toilets, so I peeked at people using them...”
“That’s called voyeurism, damn it!” Fang Zhiyi cursed, moving his foot away. He hadn’t planned to interrogate further. Instead, he eyed the crestfallen leader with interest.
“What’s your name?”
“I, I’m Zhou Zhengwang.”
“Want to make some money?”
Zhou Zhengwang, who had been wallowing in regret, suddenly had a gleam flash in his eyes at the mention of money.
“Of course... Sir, you...”
Fang Zhiyi cut him off with a wave: “Don’t call me ‘Sir’ or whatever. My name is Fang Zhiyi. Call me Fang.”
“Brother Fang, no—Master Fang!”
Fang Zhiyi looked at this guy—he knew how to read the room.
“If you want to earn money, listen to me. I guarantee you’ll make more with my methods than with whatever project you’ve got going.”
Whether Zhou Zhengwang believed it or not, he didn’t dare say a word. This demon before him could do whatever he wanted, and Zhou Zhengwang was only after money—he wasn’t tired of living.
Fang Zhiyi glanced at Li Lie, who was nearly passing out from pain, and beckoned him over. Li Lie hesitated.
“Get the hell over here! I broke your hand, not your legs!”
With a yell from Li Lie, Fang Zhiyi patted his hand approvingly: “Go find two sticks to bind it up. Don’t blame me if it heals crooked.”
Li Lie nearly screamed again, but Fang Zhiyi clamped his hand over his mouth.
“Quiet. Everyone, get the hell over here for a meeting! I’m going to make you all rich!”
No one here didn’t want to get rich.
They gathered around, skeptical but curious.
“Recruiting people down the line to make money is illegal, you know? A bunch of pig-brains,” Fang Zhiyi sized them up, then flashed a wolfish grin. “I’ll show you a better path.”
That night, the lights in that shabby villa stayed on until dawn.
The group went from full of doubt to beaming with excitement.
“Fang Zhiyi—no, Boss Fang! You’re a genius!”
Watching these enthralled guys scramble to follow Fang Zhiyi’s orders, Little Hei asked curiously: “I thought you’d go straight after that cult.”
Fang Zhiyi shook his head: “I just realized—even if I take out the so-called leader, I can’t just kill his brainwashed followers. They’re a problem, and messy to handle.”
“But since we know where they are, we might as well go check it out.”
At the innermost villa of the complex, a patch of farmland had been cleared. A few people in white robes were planting vegetables, their eyes hollow, muttering to themselves.
Just seeing them, Fang Zhiyi knew he had found the right place.
Little Hei ran over curiously to listen, then flew back in confusion: “These people are mindless. One moment they’re saying ‘I am guilty,’ the next ‘God will forgive me’ or something.”
Fang Zhiyi sighed, not approaching. He noticed someone obviously monitoring the area at the villa’s entrance.
“Do these people have no brains? Believing in some god talk?” Little Hei wondered. Beside him, the original owner also looked puzzled—at least he couldn’t understand why his own parents were caught up in it.
“You don’t get it... These cults first recruit followers and investigate their social backgrounds, pinpointing their weaknesses. Then they cut the followers off from normal society—no TV, no phones, probably no internet—messing up their normal perception. The pyramid schemers do the same thing.”
Fang Zhiyi turned and walked away.
“For example, they hold discussion groups, but the core members control every topic. If someone raises questions, everyone else gangs up to refute them, making the doubter question themselves.”
“Also, they tailor things to different people. Like your mom,” Fang Zhiyi glanced at the original owner. “They keep telling her her family isn’t harmonious, her life isn’t happy, because her faith isn’t sincere enough. If she gives herself fully to God, she’ll find happiness. Meanwhile, reciting meaningless scripture over and over daily—even a good person can get brainwashed stupid.”
“And the leader, he probably has his people preach he’s a divine being descended to earth—total garbage. Through packaging, personality cults, mechanical daily rituals, and repetition, they deepen the followers’ devotion to him.”
Little Hei caught on: “So it’s just repeating some bullshit over and over until followers lose the ability to think for themselves, gradually accepting the leader’s made-up stories. After that, even his fart is considered a divine oracle.”
“Exactly~” Fang Zhiyi rolled his head and cracked his neck. “Strictly speaking, this leader really knows psychology—how to control people’s minds. But his heart is too dark.”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
