In the palace, at the shift change, Li Shanxiang yawned and gave a few instructions to the young eunuch taking over for him. Then he went back to his room, changed clothes, and prepared to leave the palace. Although he was a eunuch, his position wasn't low. Maybe if Wu Shizu also met with an accident, he could even compete for the top spot.
Whenever he thought of Wu Shizu, Li Shanxiang was filled with resentment. He had once been Liu Xian's trusted man. Who would have guessed Liu Xian died suddenly? And then this Wu Shizu rose to power and now targeted him at every turn. Life was not easy.
Damn those Ningxi partisans! If not for them, Liu Xian wouldn't have died.
Cursing under his breath, he left the palace gates. The imperial guards on duty only nodded at him, which made Li Shanxiang feel good. Now, us eunuchs could truly be said to stand just one step below the emperor and above everyone else.
Thinking about seeing his newly wedded wife soon, the gloom in Li Shanxiang's heart lifted a little.
"Heh heh, my little beauty, your man is back!" Gently pushing open the door before him, Li Shanxiang's grin stretched from ear to ear. But the next moment, his smile froze.
There was no little beauty in the room. Instead, there were two grim-faced men with dangerous looks.
"Who are you!" Li Shanxiang immediately grew uneasy.
"Eunuch Li, don't get so worked up. Let's sit down and have a nice chat." The voice behind him made Li Shanxiang jump. He turned and saw a stooped man standing behind him, smiling without a trace of warmth.
"Guards—"
Before he could finish the call, the man kicked him into the room.
"Save your breath, Eunuch Li. Were you calling for them?" Zhu Hong kept that eerie smile on his face. As he spoke, the two men sitting by the bed reached out and pulled open the bed curtains. There on the bed lay the two young eunuchs Zhu Hong had left here. When they saw Li Shanxiang, they looked on the verge of tears.
"How dare you! Do you know who I am—"
Zhu Hong cut him off bluntly: "Of course we do. Why would we go to all this trouble if we didn't?"
"You... you're from the Ningxi faction..." Li Shanxiang suddenly realized. "Have you thought about the consequences?"
Zhu Hong curled his lip. "Say something meaningful. We've got nothing to fear from consequences. People like us—we're dead men already."
Li Shanxiang froze.
Zhu Hong suddenly pulled out a letter. "Didn't expect such a bonus. A former confidant of Liu Xian's, and here he is in contact with the Ningxi faction. Tsk."
Li Shanxiang stared at the letter in his hand, and his mind went blank.
That was the letter he had prepared a few days ago, thinking that if Wu Shizu kept targeting him, he would just switch sides and surrender to the Ningxi faction. After all, serving anyone was the same in the end.
"That letter... that letter isn't—" He clearly remembered burning the letter after reading it. Could it be?!
Zhu Hong kept smiling. "Blame yourself for being too stingy. You could afford to take a wife, but you couldn't spare pocket money for your underlings. No worries—you don't have money, but we do."
Li Shanxiang's heart plunged into an icy abyss. He glared wide-eyed at the two young eunuchs on the bed.
"Eunuch, I had no choice. They... they threatened my parents!" one of the young eunuchs wailed.
Zhu Hong rolled his eyes. "Bullshit. Didn't we give your parents money?"
Li Shanxiang's heart sank like a stone.
He had clearly fallen into these people's trap. But who were they?
In earlier years, the Imperial Surveillance Bureau had been mightily formidable; nothing in the world escaped their eyes. But in recent decades, the Bureau itself had been riddled with corruption. Whatever power remained was all used against the Ningxi faction, and their intelligence network had mostly fallen apart.
Li Shanxiang squinted, carefully studying the three men in the room, but he couldn't place any of them.
"Stop staring, Eunuch Li," Zhu Hong said again. "You shouldn't know me."
"What do you want? Money or your life?" At this point, Li Shanxiang was ready to gamble.
But Zhu Hong shook his head. "We're just common folk. We don't want your money or your life. On the contrary..." He waved a hand, and one of the men took out a bundle of banknotes and set them before Li Shanxiang. "We're here to give Eunuch Li some silver."
Li Shanxiang stared at the banknotes on the table, his mind racing. But no matter how he turned it over, he still had no clue.
"Eunuch Li." Zhu Hong suddenly stood up. "From what we know, things haven't been going well for you lately, have they?"
He walked over to Li Shanxiang, reached out, and lightly patted his shoulder. "But we do have a way to put great power in your hands..."
Shock rippled through Li Shanxiang's heart. Being a eunuch, especially one who had seen the heyday of the eunuch faction, he knew full well the taste of wielding authority.
"What... what nonsense are you spouting! Did Wang Changlin send you fools to win me over?"
Zhu Hong smiled. "Understood, understood." He turned and made a gesture to one of the men. The man moved in an instant, his short blade ending the life of one young eunuch with a single strike. The other eunuch who had betrayed Li Shanxiang trembled in terror.
"He shouldn't be a problem anymore. Now Eunuch Li can speak freely."
Seeing that these people killed without batting an eye, Li Shanxiang couldn't help swallowing hard.
"Who exactly are you people?"
Hearing the softening in his tone, Zhu Hong smiled and extended a contract. Li Shanxiang looked at it in confusion. When he saw the signature and the thumbprint on the document, he drew in a sharp breath. The name written there was none other than his elder brother's, who lived far away in the south!
Zhu Hong seemed to read his thoughts. He then pulled something else from his pocket—a small rattle-drum.
When Li Shanxiang saw that child's toy, the blood in his veins ran cold.
That was a gift he had chosen himself when his brother wrote to tell him a child had been born into the family. He had even written a large "blessing" character in gold lacquer on it!
"What have you done to my brother!" Li Shanxiang couldn't stay seated. But the moment he rose, one of the men pushed him back down into the chair.
"Calm down, Eunuch Li. We haven't done anything. Just like it says on that contract, we gave your elder brother some shares. From now on, dividends will be delivered to him every year. As for this..." Zhu Hong shook the rattle in his hand, and the little trinket let out a soft thump-thump. "The subordinate I sent to handle things thought it was interesting and brought it back on a whim. Don't worry—I've already punished that man severely."
With that, he shoved the rattle into Li Shanxiang's hand.
"Eunuch!" The young eunuch who had kept silent tried his best to stay away from his dead companion and said fearfully, "Just agree to them! Besides you, many of us have already..."
Zhu Hong glanced slowly at the young eunuch, who immediately lowered his head.
But those unfinished words shattered the last shred of hope in Li Shanxiang's heart.
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?!
with countless casualties. As a top-tier gamer, Liu Xuan volunteered to join the fight, intending to dominate with his skills, but instead he obtained the hidden class: [Pacifist]. Unable to attack. Unable to use active skills. Fortunately, with each level gained, he acquired a new passive skill. And so, armed with a body full of passives, Liu Xuan slaughtered his way through the battlefield of ten thousand races! [You attacked Liu Xuan] [You gained the debuffs: 'Poison', 'Fear', 'Burning', 'Bleeding', 'Freeze', 'Silence', etc.] [Your attack speed has been reduced by 99%] [Your armor and magic resistance have been reduced by 99%] Warriors of the Ten Thousand Races: How the hell am I supposed to fight this?!
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!
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.
