Everyone was stunned.
A sudden scream rang out as a crossbow bolt, seemingly coming from nowhere, embedded itself into the commander’s shoulder, just missing his armor.
“Assassins! Protect the Empress! Seize Prince Qi!”
In response came more short crossbow bolts, but the nearest armored guards had already closed in on Fang Zhiyi. In the next instant, Fang Zhiyi twisted to dodge an attack, turned, and struck the guard’s wrist with his hand, sending the sword flying. He caught the blade midair.
“Look, if it were that cold-blooded Emperor, I could understand—I might even feel relieved. But me? I can’t stand being played for a fool.”
He struck out with his left hand, and a guard crumpled to the ground clutching his throat.
“You say I’m the one attempting assassination? That’s not entirely out of the question.”
The Empress was dumbfounded. She watched as Prince Qi and Leng Shaobai, shielded by the crossbow fire, actually carved a path straight through!
The group of guards numbered fewer than twenty and had been caught completely off guard by the sudden upheaval.
The Empress gritted her teeth. At least she had come prepared.
“Men!”
At her call, a troop of armed guards appeared from around the corner.
“Prince Qi, didn’t expect this, did you? I have my own escort,” the Empress said with a triumphant smile, then pointed at Fang Zhiyi. “Prince Qi has committed an offense against his superior. Kill him!”
Fang Zhiyi let out a laugh. “You really want to go this far? Your pettiness knows no bounds.”
“So what? You know the rule: among we transmigrators, only one can survive. I won’t leave a menace like you around.”
A swordsman tried to attack from the side, but another blade blocked his path. Leng Shaobai’s face twisted with fury. “You’re looking for death!” He dispatched the man swiftly. “My Prince, I don’t understand half of what you’re saying, but let’s run! They’ve got too many!”
The Empress covered her mouth with an exaggerated laugh. “You’re skilled, but do you never tire? I tell you, today is your day to die!”
Fang Zhiyi hefted his sword and stepped forward. “Too many? You’re challenging me to a numbers game right outside Prince Qi’s mansion?”
A sharp whistle split the air.
Leng Shaobai was stunned. The Empress was stunned too.
The trembling street vendor nearby suddenly tore off his stall’s cover and pulled a sword from a crate. The shopkeeper at the wine shop leaped up, retrieving a weapon from behind the signboard. Even the customers who had been watching from the wine stall changed their expressions at the whistle, pulling out hidden weapons from nowhere.
A crossbow bolt whistled past Leng Shaobai’s cheek, and he turned to see an attacker crumpling to the ground.
“And you talk about how you used to run the Operations Hall?”
A stooped figure carrying firewood slowly set down his carrying pole and removed his bamboo hat.
“Pfft. You couldn’t even die properly!” Leng Shaobai cursed. “Who do you think you’re fooling?”
Zhu Hong let out a grating laugh.
“Kill them! They’re nothing but rabble! Kill them! Kill Prince Qi, and I’ll reward you handsomely!” The Empress was panicking now. She’d never imagined that the area outside Prince Qi’s mansion could be filled with his people. How was that even possible?
But no matter—this would just make it easier to claim Prince Qi was plotting rebellion.
Then screams erupted from behind her. The Empress whipped around to find that another group of oddly dressed, armed rebels had appeared from the rear!
“You want a numbers game? Who was it? Let me see!” Old Dog’s voice rang out in the distance. “Listen up, everyone! Someone’s trying to take away our livelihood! What do you say?”
“No way!”
“Then what do we do?”
“Crush them!”
Finally, the Empress was truly terrified.
She had come today intending to kill Fang Zhiyi, but she never expected a prince who spent all his time cooped up at home to command such a force! It looked like there was an entire street’s worth of people!
As she turned in panic, she saw Fang Zhiyi grab a guard’s arm and twist—there was a crisp snap. Then he drove his blade straight into another guard’s gut before kicking him away. The kills were swift, brutal, and unnerving.
Another guard swung his sword at him. Fang Zhiyi, as if anticipating it, sidestepped just in time, his free hand instantly latching onto the guard’s throat. With a slight squeeze, a crack sounded, and the guard went limp, collapsing to the ground. Even as he did this, Fang Zhiyi raised his sword to block a second strike and then—incredibly—headbutted the man hard. A sickening crunch followed as the attacker let out a pained scream and collapsed.
In less than a minute, Fang Zhiyi stood only a few steps from the Empress!
“System! System! Give me something to save myself, right now!” The Empress was desperate, regretting her overconfidence.
“Host, this system can only provide tools for seducing men and charm enhancements. Everything else, you must handle yourself,” the System replied flatly.
“If I die, you won’t benefit either!”
The System’s voice stayed mechanical. “The host may purchase the Seduction Aura on credit to make these men fall for you. Would you like to buy it with borrowed points?”
“Buy it!” At this point, she had no other choice.
But just as the System was about to apply the aura, a slender tentacle suddenly shot out from behind Fang Zhiyi, snatching the System away and dragging it off.
“System?” The Empress was stunned.
From behind Fang Zhiyi came crunching and chewing sounds. “Tastes awful, but at least it’s a little nourishment.”
Ignoring Little Hei for the moment, Fang Zhiyi kicked the wheel of the carriage beside the Empress, while his blade whistled past her face and lodged itself into the carriage’s opposite side.
“Say that again. Who are you going to kill?”
The Empress’s face twisted into an ugly smile. “We’re both transmigrators. Can’t you be a little understanding? I’m just a woman…”
“Does being a woman mean something?” Fang Zhiyi looked at her with amusement.
But the Empress’s eyes darted toward something behind him. One of her trusted men was bringing his sword down on his back. The blade never reached him. The man and his sword were kicked aside, and a group of four or five immediately swarmed him.
Listening to her men’s screams, the Empress felt utterly defeated.
“Can we negotiate?”
Fang Zhiyi’s gaze was mocking. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you.” He’d figured it out by now—this transmigrated woman’s system was probably one of those romance-strategy types, standard for palace intrigue.
Lucky he was always cautious. Some of his hidden operations had never been exposed, still bringing in money.
Otherwise, today might have ended very differently.
“Your Majesty! Something terrible has happened!” A eunuch came sprinting into the Imperial Study. “A riot has erupted outside Prince Qi’s mansion! The Empress is there too! Prince Qi has truly rebelled! Your Majesty!”
The Emperor stared at him in a daze and then, after a moment, asked, “Who rebelled? Second Brother rebelled?”
The eunuch faltered. “Prince Qi has rebelled! When the Empress sent men to arrest him, he led those rioters in open rebellion…”
The Emperor rubbed his forehead, feeling an immense headache coming on.
The eunuch watched the Emperor, suspecting he might still be hungover from last night’s drinking.
After a long moment, he looked up again at the eunuch.
“How did the Empress end up there? And why did she order the arrest of Prince Qi?”
The eunuch looked at the Emperor with some confusion: “Your Majesty, have you forgotten? The court officials all impeached Prince Qi for harboring disloyal intentions, and at that time, you yourself said that Prince Qi...”
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
e school belle recognized by the whole school, a genius girl from the kendo club. She also has a hidden identity, the youngest legendary demon hunter. Chen Shuo just transmigrated and found himself turned into a weak, helpless little vampire. He was caught by Su Xiyen and taken home at the very beginning. Since then, Chen Shuo's life creed only had two items. "First, classmate Su Xiyen is always right." "Second, if classmate Su Xiyen is wrong, please refer back to item one." Many years later, Chen Shuo, who had turned back into a human, led a pair of twins to appear in front of all the vampires to share the secret of how he turned back into a human. "It's simple, I tricked a female demon hunter into becoming my wife!"
y came from. The chests contained supplies, currency, class-change scrolls, skills, talents… and even godhood! The laws of the world were completely rewritten. This became a world where everyone gambled with their fate! Some people, despite having nothing, opened a divine artifact and rose to the top, eventually ruling the world. Others went bankrupt, opened nothing but worthless junk, and leaped from skyscrapers in despair. Lin Ye arrived in this world from another reality, utterly bewildered. “What is going on? Why is everyone a gambling addict?!” “Opening chests? No way. I refuse to gamble. I’ll start with myself!” Until— On his first chest, he obtained a Mythic Talent: Void Incarnation! He could become completely intangible, pass through all things, and reduce everything to nothingness! … On his fiftieth chest, he obtained a Mythic Weapon: Blade of Karma! With a single slash, karma shattered, twisting the universe and overturning the myriad phenomena of creation! … On his ninety-ninth chest, he obtained a Mythic Divine Treasure: Primordial Purple Energy! It could split open the heavens and earth, create all things, and evolve countless worlds with a single thought! Lin Ye: “Now that I think about it… shouldn’t someone have told me that every chest is guaranteed to contain something Mythic?!”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
