"Your Highness!" Leng Shaobai looked at the man before him.
Fang Zhiyi turned to look at him. Leng Shaobai did not avoid Fang Zhiyi’s gaze. Li Zizai furrowed his brow, about to speak, when Fang Zhiyi clapped his hands and laughed, "Good!"
"I like that look in your eyes." Fang Zhiyi stepped closer and warmly patted Leng Shaobai on the shoulder.
But in the next moment, his hand suddenly shifted momentum, striking straight toward Leng Shaobai’s temple!
Leng Shaobai judged the move in the blink of an eye, ducking to dodge, but Fang Zhiyi’s attack didn’t stop. Leng Shaobai had no choice but to raise his arm to block. After three consecutive moves, sweat broke out on his forehead. Ye Chengtian had never mentioned that the Prince Qi possessed such hidden skills!
Standing nearby, Li Zizai was equally stunned.
As Fang Zhiyi’s palm transformed into a fist, smashing straight toward Leng Shaobai’s chest, Leng Shaobai knew clearly: if that blow landed, he would surely die on the spot!
But then he made a move that even Li Zizai hadn’t anticipated. Leng Shaobai threw himself flat onto the ground, rolling several times before scrambling back up, dirty and disheveled.
Though it wasn’t the most dignified escape, it allowed him to dodge Fang Zhiyi’s heavy punch.
"Your Highness! This humble one’s life belongs to you, and you may take it if you wish. But may I know why I must die?" Leng Shaobai steadied his breath and asked with clasped hands.
Fang Zhiyi raised an eyebrow. "Why would I want your life?"
"But just now, Your Highness—"
"Li Zizai recommended you as head of the Action Hall. As your prince, I had to test your skills myself," Fang Zhiyi said with a grin. "Get up. To dodge three moves is no small feat, and you even avoided the fourth. A pity, though—you didn’t strike back."
"Your Highness, this humble one is a death warrior by trade; naturally, I dared not raise my hand against you."
Fang Zhiyi’s face turned cold. "Death warrior? Death warrior? Are you treating my words as hot air?"
"Huh?"
"I said before: you are all my brothers in arms!"
Leng Shaobai froze for a moment, then lowered his head.
"I had intended to send something to your family, but Li Zizai told me you have none left."
Leng Shaobai raised his eyes. "My parents died young, and my only brother starved to death. With nowhere else to go, I drifted onto the streets and was eventually taken in by Ye Chengtian."
"Do you hate it?" Fang Zhiyi suddenly asked.
The question came out of nowhere, catching both Leng Shaobai and Li Zizai off guard.
"Your Highness... hate what?"
Fang Zhiyi let out a cold laugh. "Hate this world. Hate those officials who take pay but do nothing. Hate those cruel clerks who extort the people. Shouldn’t you hate all that?"
Leng Shaobai gritted his teeth but said nothing.
"I’m just letting you know what I aim to do," Fang Zhiyi’s voice lingered in Leng Shaobai’s ears. "I want to restore clarity to this world. By then, no one will starve to death, no one will be bullied, and no one will have to sell themselves into servitude as a death warrior just for a mouthful of food."
Leng Shaobai didn’t fully grasp what this prince meant to accomplish, but he understood one thing: His Highness was a man of great ambition.
"Leng Shaobai is willing to go through fire and water for Your Highness!" He suddenly dropped to one knee.
Fang Zhiyi quickly helped him up. "That’s too much, too much. No need for all that ‘fire and water’ nonsense. From today on, you will be the head of my Action Hall. Are you willing?"
Leng Shaobai nodded.
"Your Highness, what do you need me to do?"
Fang Zhiyi flashed a sly smile. "What? Why, spend money, of course."
"Huh?"
---
The shops on the outskirts of the capital had all been bought by Ye Chengtian back in the day, staffed entirely with his own people.
But on this day, when a regular customer walked in, he asked in confusion, "Hey? The owner changed?"
A clerk who was sweeping the floor turned around and gave a stiff smile. "Yeah, changed. The old owner had trouble back home and sold the place."
Nearby, another clerk quietly covered a smear of blood on the wall.
Ye Chengtian’s shops weren’t all clustered together, so the sudden change of hands barely drew any attention.
Fang Zhiyi’s first step had gone off without a hitch.
"Your Highness, everything is handled," Leng Shaobai said, stepping before Fang Zhiyi and respectfully presenting a stack of ledgers with both hands. Fang Zhiyi waved dismissively, and the scribes he’d selected to manage accounts took them away.
"How is it? Getting used to things?"
Leng Shaobai smiled. "Yes, as you instructed. Those willing to talk were negotiated with—those who weren’t, we dealt with. Many of Ye Chengtian’s former men accepted our bribes and sided with us. As for the stubborn ones who refused to join or hand over their accounts, I had the brothers... take care of them."
Fang Zhiyi nodded. "Well done. Go collect a thousand taels of silver to distribute among the brothers."
"Thank you, Your Highness!" Leng Shaobai immediately bowed.
"What’s there to thank? The brothers earned it." Fang Zhiyi gazed into the distance. "The takeover is just the appetizer. The real trouble comes next, and I’ll need the Action Hall to pull its weight."
"To the death!"
"There you go again. ‘To the death’? Can you die a thousand times, or can I?"
"...Uh."
---
In Fengyang County, near the southwest, a new pawnshop named Lucky opened its doors. On the very first day, trouble showed up.
A few local thugs sauntered in.
"Shopkeeper, where you from, eh?" The ringleader, One-eyed Dragon, lounged uninvited into a chair.
The shopkeeper’s face was expressionless. "The capital."
"Oh, the capital!" One-eyed Dragon’s tone dripped with mockery. "Then do you know our rules here in Fengyang?"
The shopkeeper shook his head. "I don’t."
"Then let me tell you." One-eyed Dragon leaned forward. "If you want to do business here, you pay me silver every month. Got it?"
The shopkeeper still shook his head. "No I don’t. I already paid my rent."
One-eyed Dragon’s face darkened. "You don’t get it, huh? You’re being pretty damn ungrateful!"
The thugs spat out their threats and left.
The shopkeeper paid them no mind. He just silently went about his work, occasionally pulling out a little booklet and studying it, as if memorizing something.
That night, in a small house in town, One-eyed Dragon drank wine with two of his friends, ranting about the day’s events. "That bastard was too cocky! Did he just brush me off?" He smacked the table. "I thought he had some backing, but the boss said he’s just an outsider!"
"We’ll mess him up tomorrow!"
"If they don't bleed some silver, the boss can make sure they never leave Fengyang County!" With that, One-eyed Dragon slammed the table again. Clearly, his boss had sent him to make trouble.
But just as the group was bragging, a sudden knock came at the door.
"Who’s there?" One of the thugs cursed under his breath and stomped over to open it. But the moment he pulled the door open, he froze solid.
"Skinny Monkey? Who is it?"
'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.
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!
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.”
