“Are you all deaf?” He stood up in anger.
But a person slowly walked out—it was Mu Ling.
“Perfect timing, Mu Ling. I need you to immediately…”
Mu Ling, his face dark and sullen, interrupted him: “Your Majesty, you swore this war would be won. Why have so many soldiers lost their lives? And where are those expensive firearms we invested in?”
The King of Liao was stunned, then erupted in fury: “Are you questioning me? Have you forgotten your place?”
“I haven’t forgotten. I am the Chancellor of Liao.”
The King stared at that face, laughed in exasperation, and spat: “Chancellor? A sham chancellor! I say you are one, or else you’re nothing!”
“Your Majesty, you have lost your mind.”
“How dare you! Guards! Drag him out and give him fifty—no, a hundred strokes of the rod!”
A hundred strokes was a death sentence for anyone.
But the King’s order was given, and no one moved.
“Where are they? Guards!” He looked around and suddenly realized his trusted men were all missing.
“Your Majesty, I have already dealt with the corrupt officials who have been clouding your judgment,” Mu Ling said slowly.
“You…” The King suddenly sensed danger.
“Guards! The King has gone mad. Escort him back to his chambers!”
At Mu Ling’s command, a squad of guards rushed in, grabbed the King, and dragged him backward.
“You—this is treason!” he shouted, struggling furiously but unable to break free.
As the King’s voice faded away, Mu Ling turned to the assembled ministers: “I propose we apologize and seek peace with the Zhou kingdom. Who agrees? Who opposes?”
The court officials exchanged glances but remained silent.
That very night, the King of Liao suffered a relapse of madness, hacked himself over a hundred times with a blade, and died in his palace.
Fang Zhiyi, who was en route back to the capital, also received the news.
He merely chuckled and tossed the paper out of the carriage window.
Seated across from him was a man with an utterly ordinary face.
“Your Highness, as you predicted, Mu Ling is no easy character either. Our paid informants noted that on the very night the King died, several squads of men in black raided our brothers’ homes, but they’ve all pulled back now.”
Fang Zhiyi just smiled.
When Wang Qingzhi reported that the King of Liao was looking to smuggle ironware through him, Fang Zhiyi had grown cautious. After a few deals, he indeed discovered that the other party was dabbling in firearms, fully exposing his identity as a time-traveler.
Everything that followed was staged. The real person to back was Mu Ling, not Xue Qingsong. Xue Qingsong, after all, was merely a Zhou native; reaching the Ministry of Personnel was about as far as he could go. To elevate him, Fang Zhiyi had his hidden agents in Liao continuously buy loyalties, spending gold and silver lavishly to push him up step by step. The goal was to embroil him in purging the faction of the stubborn Prince Zuo, and at just the right moment, turn him into a stepping stone for Mu Ling.
Once the firearm secrets were leaked, the time-traveler’s overbearing mentality was bound to offend the established nobility of Liao even further. When he prepared to start a war, that’s when Mu Ling would rally popular support—and with the ministers who had taken bribes, the whole affair went almost without a hitch.
“Your Highness, even though Liao is now seeking peace, they will still be a threat eventually,” Zhu Hong muttered from the corner.
Fang Zhiyi grinned broadly: “I can prop up one Xue Qingsong in Liao’s court, and I can spend money to create a second or a third Xue Qingsong.”
“Your Highness, don’t mention that. We still have to account to His Majesty for the deficit in the state treasury.”
“Ahem, this is no time for dampening the spirits.”
Just then, Fang Zhiyi’s expression suddenly changed. Zhu Hong sensed something wrong and immediately waved his hand. Tan Jiu leaped out of the carriage in a flash.
But he saw nothing suspicious—front and back were full of escort guards.
Inside the carriage, Fang Zhiyi was staring at the contorting form of Little Hei, looking grim. Little Hei’s body twisted into all sorts of shapes, as if something was kneading it, then its once-tiny frame suddenly swelled to twice its size.
“Hahaha, that idiot really thought he could catch me!”
When that familiar voice came, Fang Zhiyi breathed a sigh of relief.
Little Hei turned to look at him and synced with its own clone’s memory: “Brilliant! I knew you wouldn’t come out on the losing end.”
“Did you… leave yourself a backup?” Fang Zhiyi asked.
Little Hei was quite proud: “Obviously! That thing was on my tail relentlessly. You don’t know how close it was—if I’d been a second slower, you’d never see me again.” It paused. “And you’d never see Yue Anyao either.”
Fang Zhiyi rolled his eyes. “Ready now?”
Little Hei stretched contentedly: “Almost. Now I just wait for a signal.”
Fang Zhiyi didn’t ask how it had done it; he could see Little Hei had been put through the wringer this time.
Little Hei looked at him again: “Just do what you need to. Even though I need time to recover, I can still protect you.”
It took three months before a new King of Liao was chosen. Just when the candidate was being decided, the highly respected Mu Ling died bizarrely in a latrine.
The government of Liao, already leaderless, was thrown into turmoil once more.
In the end, a child from the original royal family inherited the throne.
To guide him, three regent ministers were appointed to the court.
Looking at the intelligence reports, the Emperor scratched his head in confusion: “Prince Qi, I must say, the situation in Liao feels strangely familiar. Yes, yes—just like our father’s time, almost identical!”
Fang Zhiyi chuckled: “Just wait. The bombs we’ve planted for them will probably go off in a few years. After all, their foundations aren’t as deep as those of Great Zhou.”
“Uh… what is a ‘bomb’?” The Emperor looked at Fang Zhiyi with curiosity.
Fang Zhiyi realized he’d slipped up and immediately changed the subject, starting to ask about the Emperor’s need for an heir.
This Emperor was a peculiar one when it came to romance; he insisted on waiting for the one he truly loved.
It made Fang Zhiyi wonder if the man was caught in some sweet-love story script.
But his mind was elsewhere anyway, waiting only for Little Hei to recover. To confuse that unknown entity, Little Hei had actually thrown its original body to the thing. As it put it, it could always grow a new body—it was admirably carefree.
Then, out of the blue, the Emperor announced his grand wedding. Fang Zhiyi was somewhat surprised.
How had he not gotten word ahead of time?
It felt strange.
Since the Emperor was about to marry, as Prince Qi, he ought to offer congratulations. But when Fang Zhiyi arrived at the long-unvisited palace gate, he was stopped.
Looking at the unfamiliar faces, Fang Zhiyi raised an eyebrow, said nothing, and simply turned away.
“Looks like you’re not as popular as you thought,” Little Hei quipped lazily.
Fang Zhiyi sighed: “It’s not that I’ve lost my touch. It’s that the man sitting inside is starting to act more and more like a true Emperor.”
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!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
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?!
u Chenyuan transmigrated into a female-oriented novel about a real and fake heiress, becoming the CEO elder brother of both. Unfortunately, the entire Lu family—including himself, the CEO—were mere cannon fodder in the story. Determined to save himself, Lu Chenyuan took action. The spoiled, attention-seeking fake heiress? Thrown into the harsh realities of the working class to learn humility. The love-struck real heiress? Pushed toward academic excellence, so lofty goals would blind her to trivial romances. As for the betrayed, vengeful arranged marriage wife… the plot hadn’t even begun yet. There was still time—if he couldn’t handle her, he could at least avoid her. "CEO Lu, are you avoiding me?" Mo Qingli fixed her gaze on Lu Chenyuan. For the first time, the shrewd and calculating Lu Chenyuan felt a flicker of unease.
