To maintain his persona, Fang Zhiyi grabbed a quick bite and then wandered outside, aimlessly strolling around.
Hu Xiulian, having slept her fill, went to the kitchen to find something to eat but was greeted by a complete mess. Before leaving, Fang Zhiyi had specifically told the elderly couple not to bother with it, so Fang's Father and Fang's Mother didn’t say much. Fang's Mother grumbled as she went to help her second son tend to the vegetable seedlings in the field, while Fang's Father silently tinkered with his old antiques.
Hu Xiulian cursed under her breath as she started cleaning up, but no one paid her any attention.
This routine continued for several days.
Fang Zhiyi still kept up his habit of scolding his daughter at the slightest provocation, though he rarely resorted to physical punishment anymore. Instead, after yelling, he would shut her in her room to reflect on her behavior.
This frustrated Hu Xiulian. She was lazy by nature and had hoped to boss Fang Xiaolian around with chores. But seeing Fang Zhiyi’s lingering anger, she inexplicably felt a bit intimidated. She thought about asking Fang Zhiyi’s mother for help, but remembering the money the old woman had, she could only mutter to herself and do the work alone.
Once or twice was fine, but having to do it every day soon wore Hu Xiulian out.
“Look at you! You don’t like being told off, do you?” Fang Zhiyi yelled, hands on his hips. Fang Xiaolian kept her head down, not daring to look at him. Even Liu Wen and Liu Wu, who had just stepped through the gate, heard the roar. They had come to realize lately that their stepfather had a terrible temper. Though he always smiled at them, hearing Fang Zhiyi’s shouts still made the two boys tremble inside.
Hu Xiulian tried several times to cut in, but Fang Zhiyi cut her off each time.
“Husband, forget it. Maybe let Xiao Lian help…” She hoped to get Fang Xiaolian to take over her chores.
“See that? Your mother’s pleading for you! And you’re just standing there! It makes me furious!” Fang Zhiyi immediately looked around for something handy to use. Fang's Mother rushed over to stop him: “What are you doing, son? Forget it, just let Xiao Lian reflect on her own.”
Fang Zhiyi took the out: “Get out, get out! Go reflect by yourself!”
Fang Xiaolian lowered her head and went back to her room, silently pulling out a book.
Even entering with her left foot got her scolded? Dad was being totally unreasonable!
Still, reflecting gave her peace, at least she didn’t have to do any chores.
Seeing Fang Zhiyi still fuming as he paced around, Hu Xiulian trudged out the door with a grim face. Spotting her two sons, she thought for a moment and said, “Xiao Wu, help Mom with something.”
Liu Wu hesitated, looking reluctant: “What?”
“Help Mom chop the pigweed.”
“Why? I never did that before.”
Hu Xiulian looked at her son, who had grown taller: “What, not willing to help around the house?”
“I still have homework to do!”
“Finish the chopping first, then do your homework…”
Before she could finish, Fang Zhiyi came out. When he saw the two boys, his anger softened a little: “Back home? Uncle Fang will cook for you!”
The moment he said that, all three—Hu Xiulian included—rushed to stop him.
“Zhiyi.”
“Uncle Fang.”
“Don’t bother, just rest!”
Recently, Fang Zhiyi had taken a strange liking to the kitchen, spending mornings and evenings there. But the food he made were atrocious—either undercooked rice or scorched greens, and the worst was when fresh bugs would show up in the dishes.
Liu Wen had racked his brain trying to figure out how Fang Zhiyi managed to burn the vegetables while keeping the bugs fresh.
Fang Zhiyi obviously wasn’t about to tell him that he picked out the bugs and put them in afterward.
Strangely, though, the three members of the Fang family would frown at the meals but eat them all without a word.
Hu Xiulian’s take on it was that these Fang people were just used to poverty—born to suffer hardships.
“Look how well-behaved those two kids are! And then that little brat! Drives me crazy!” Fang Zhiyi’s voice suddenly rose again, making Liu Wu jump in fright.
Hu Xiulian, who had been about to suggest letting Fang Xiaolian help, found her words stuck in her throat once more.
“You two go study hard. Don’t let your parents’ hopes down. Go on,” Fang Zhiyi urged the boys. Liu Wen dashed off to his room, while Liu Wu looked to his mother for help: “Mom, maybe you could cook today…”
Hu Xiulian dropped what she was doing and turned around just in time to see Fang Zhiyi head into the kitchen. She plopped down in defeat.
“This lunatic! Xiao Wu, how about you help Mom…”
“Mom, I have homework too.” Liu Wu bolted as well.
At that moment, Hu Xiulian’s heart sank. How could her own sons be like this? Gritting her teeth, she muttered curses under her breath, her eyes turning vicious.
The Fang household fell into a strange atmosphere.
Fang Xiaolian was scolded almost every day and sent to lock herself away. The elderly couple, who had been tiptoeing around, found themselves more relaxed, even smiling in conversation. Their two step-grandsons also treated them more respectfully. Fang Zhiyi remained his idle, good-for-nothing self—to outsiders, the Fang family seemed unchanged. But only Hu Xiulian knew that she had become the de facto workhorse, shouldering all the chores.
She dared not offend the elderly couple, couldn’t boss around Fang Xiaolian, couldn’t bring herself to make her sons work, and most certainly couldn’t touch Fang Zhiyi. All the odds and ends piled onto her shoulders.
The worst part? She had thought the old couple had finally accepted her. But when she asked them for money, they claimed Zhiyi had taken it all. When she turned to ask Fang Zhiyi, he looked shocked: “If I had money, would I be loafing around every day?”
It all started one morning. Unable to stomach another of Fang Zhiyi’s weird breakfasts, Liu Wen ran out of the house and happened to see Fang Xiaolian buying a flatbread on the street. He told Hu Xiulian, and she instantly understood: the elderly couple had been giving money to that worthless girl!
After a month of playing nice, Hu Xiulian finally exploded.
She shrieked so sharply that Fang's Father jumped.
“Great! Before you married me in, you said you’d treat me well. Now that you have money, you give it to that good-for-nothing instead of me?”
“What are you talking about, Xiulian?” Fang's Father frowned.
“You know exactly what I mean! You two are biased!” Hu Xiulian planted one hand on her hip and pointed the other at Fang's Father.
Fang's Mother came over: “What’s wrong?”
“You gave money to Fang Xiaolian, didn’t you? Just to bully my sons?”
Fang's Mother waved her hands repeatedly: “No, no, no! We only gave her some pocket change because she goes to school hungry every morning…”
“Stop pretending! You never saw me as part of the family!” Hu Xiulian yelled. “You don’t care about your own son, you just fawn over that little wretch, don’t you?”
Fang's Mother panicked: “That’s not true! The money is all put away, right under my pillow, really.”
Fang's Father tried to stop her, but it was already too late.
. 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?"
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?!
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!
