"You... when did it start?"
Zhu Hong grinned. "When Eunuch Li and that man surnamed Zhou were fighting for power, my master saw that you had no time to manage the lower ranks. He thought them pitiable, so he rewarded them with a meal."
His tone suddenly turned cold. "But there were those who refused to eat, so I had to force it down their throats."
"They receive their salaries from the emperor. How could they—"
Zhu Hong laughed again. "In this world, who hates having too much money? And lucky for them, my master has plenty."
Li Shanxiang hesitated. A figure he had overlooked suddenly surfaced in his mind.
"Prince Qi!" he gasped, staring at Zhu Hong in horror.
Zhu Hong looked mildly surprised. "Unexpected, Eunuch Li. Truly sharp-minded."
"B-but isn't he just running a business?" Li Shanxiang knew, of course—ever since Prince Qi had been cast out of the court, he had turned back to managing the shops Ye Chengtian had previously set up. No one bothered to stop him.
Zhu Hong nodded. "What we're discussing now is a business deal, too."
"You... let me think." Li Shanxiang's mind was in turmoil. The court was already unstable, and now this sudden appearance of Prince Qi made his head spin.
Unexpectedly, Zhu Hong simply turned and said, "Then please consider it carefully, Eunuch. Cooperate with Prince Qi, and your future will be free from worry."
With that, he walked straight out. The two burly men hoisted the now-cool corpse onto their shoulders and left without looking back.
Li Shanxiang watched the three disappear. They just... left like that?
Weren't they afraid he would expose this? If Prince Qi was scheming behind the scenes, what exactly was he after?
"Eunuch," a terrified young eunuch whispered cautiously.
Li Shanxiang shot him a glare. "You wait right here!" He strode off, his mind racing. This was too strange—he had to get back to the palace immediately.
All the way, Li Shanxiang felt someone was tailing him. Every time he turned around, there was no one.
A terrible feeling.
Only when he stepped through the palace gates did his heart finally settle.
Prince Qi, was it? So he dared to threaten him? A disgraced prince, daring to offend the Imperial Supervision Office?
Now that the danger had passed, rage surged within him. But as he walked a few steps, he came across several patrolling young eunuchs.
"Eunuch," the lead eunuch greeted with a bow. Li Shanxiang didn't even glance at him, his mind still churning over how to handle this.
Then, a faint voice came from behind.
"Eunuch, please consider it carefully."
He whirled around. "Halt!"
The eunuchs all stopped and turned to look at him.
"Who just spoke?"
The eunuchs exchanged glances.
"Eunuch must be tired. None of us spoke."
Li Shanxiang flew into a rage. He raised his hand and slapped the eunuch nearest to him, completely missing the flicker of resentment in the man's eyes.
"Get lost!" he barked, then stormed further into the palace.
The imperial guards at the inner courtyard gate nodded to him. Li Shanxiang didn't acknowledge them and strode straight through.
Only when he reached his own room did he finally let out a breath. But the next moment, his eyes landed on the silver banknotes and the rattle placed on his desk—and his blood ran cold.
He hadn't taken these things when he left!
How did they end up here, deep inside the palace, faster than he had returned?
He dashed out the door and headed straight for the imperial guards at the gate. The guards rotated every two hours—they must have seen who entered his room!
But just as he was about to ask, he stopped himself.
How had he not considered it? The only people who could have walked into his room, planted those items, and left right under the guards' noses... were the guards themselves.
Had Prince Qi gone this far? How many people did he control?
Everyone had underestimated this greedy prince!
While the eunuch faction and the Ningxi faction were locked in battle, he had quietly embedded his own pieces across the board.
Doubts flooded Li Shanxiang's mind. No ordinary guard would dare act so brazenly. If they had done this, it meant someone higher up was compromised, too.
And then he recalled the eunuchs he had met earlier. His heart began pounding again.
Staring at the rattle in his hand, he finally made up his mind.
Why not join whoever paid best? A fool turns down a good deal.
What if Prince Qi actually succeeded?
As Li Shanxiang retreated into his room, a pair of eyes watching from the shadows slowly shifted away.
——
Zhu Hong drummed his fingers on a wooden token, his face expressionless. Only when his subordinate entered and nodded did he finally let out a sigh of relief.
The prince had taken a huge gamble.
Thankfully, it had paid off.
"How do you plan to proceed?"
"Same method. Win over some low-rank eunuchs first, gather intelligence, then—"
"That won't work."
"Prince, why not?"
"The palace is different from the outside world. Those minor officials we've tied to us maintain contact and share common interests. But the court is different. The eunuch faction is even more treacherous. You can't guarantee that a eunuch who takes your silver won't report you."
Zhu Hong fell silent.
"My point is," Fang Zhiyi continued, "target the most likely defectors directly. I hear Liu Xian's trusted men have been suppressed."
"I understand."
"No, you don't. This can't be done openly. You have to break him psychologically first." Fang Zhiyi's gaze turned deep and calculating. "Let him know many have already joined us. Then... spend a little silver to have the right person say the right thing. Bribe an insider to deliver a 'gift' for us. After all, presenting gifts to a eunuch isn't unusual."
"Let Li Shanxiang's own imagination do the rest." Fang Zhiyi smiled. "His perception of our strength will be our greatest asset."
"But what if he doesn't play along?"
"Don't worry. Even if he doesn't take the bait, he won't sell us out. We've already warned him. Unless he wants a complete falling-out."
——
Zhu Hong stood up, muttering to himself, "Prince, Prince... you're truly a genius."
Li Shanxiang, once on the fringe, had suddenly become active again. He had discovered a key advantage: Prince Qi was genuinely wealthy. And in Li Shanxiang's book, money could solve almost anything—wooing officials, building camaraderie with overlooked eunuchs under Wu Shizu's command.
This was his specialty.
Zhu Hong finally understood. Where the Foreign Liaison Office had failed to penetrate, a breach now existed. In time, the entire eunuch faction would belong to the prince!
And by now, Li Shanxiang had gone too far to turn back.
The moment he let go, he would die without a grave.
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!
lity and could only live as an ordinary mortal. He only wished to live a peaceful life. Yet he didn't know— The dog he adopted, because it ate his food, became a legendary demon king. The kitchen knife he casually forged became a peerless divine weapon, causing numerous experts to fight desperately for it. The young disciple he took in became an immortal lord that led an era, due to cultivating the techniques Ye Feng taught him. Even the skeletons he looked down on the most were ominous demon kings that suppressed countless worlds. Many years later, looking at the void shattered with a punch, Ye Feng murmured to himself: It turns out the peerless kings were myself all along...
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?"
