"Remember, when you get there, strike directly—no trash talk, no formations, just plain old kill and plunder! We only brought five days' worth of dry rations on this trip! Don't get greedy, hit and run. However many men you take out, bring that many back—if even one is missing, I'll hold you all accountable!"
With that, the sense of urgency immediately kicked in.
"Yes!"
The five of them felt a sudden tension, but Fang Zhiyi didn't give them any more time to think. He assigned the manpower on the spot and they set off.
"Chief, I hear that Fang fellow is personally leading troops into the grassland!"
"Hmph... trying to catch us out here on the steppe? He must be dreaming!"
"Want me to..." The foreign tribesman made a slashing gesture with his hand.
The chief shook his head: "This is prime grazing season; the clansmen are all out herding scattered across the land. Have some men keep an eye on them. We'll lie low for now."
"Yes."
But just then, shouts erupted from outside. The chief overheard someone yelling about an enemy attack.
He sprang up and stepped out of his tent, only to see several warhorses charging into the tribe. There was no formation to speak of—these men simply hurled torches at every tent they passed and slashed at anyone trying to run.
Many of the tribe's warriors were scattered far and wide tending to the herds. The camp was undermanned at that moment and couldn't organize an effective counterattack. What baffled the chief even more was—how in the world did they find them?
The chaos lasted less than half an hour before the raiders, Jin soldiers, simply rode off—and took their water and grain with them.
The chief was in a daze the whole time.
"They're gone?"
"Chief, they're gone."
"They... just left like that?" The chief looked at the warriors who had finally mustered behind him.
"Chief, let's chase them!" someone shouted. Looking out, fires blazed everywhere across the camp, and the sound of weeping filled the air.
"Slow down!" The chief had a thought. "When have the Jin ever been this reckless? A sudden raid and they don't linger? This is bait! There's probably a trap outside waiting to lure us into a pursuit!"
"Huh? Then what do we do?"
"Round up everyone. We move out tonight and find a new camp!"
Fatty Liu led his men a good fifty or sixty li before realizing no one was chasing them. The tension eased considerably.
The soldiers laughed and jibed at each other about how pathetic their enemies had looked. For some, it was their first taste of close combat—one man nearly dropped his blade, another managed to toss his torch onto the head of one of his own.
Fatty Liu reined in his horse. Strange, he thought—before this, riding had always felt uncomfortable. But after that good charge, he found he'd gotten used to it.
"Leave two hundred men to haul the loot back to camp. The rest of you, follow me!"
No one questioned him. His force split in two—some turned back, the rest pressed on behind him.
Fang Zhiyi sat by the campfire, staring at the flickering flames, when Little Hei came rushing back, breathless.
"That cook's gone mad—he took three hundred men and charged back into the fight!"
Fang Zhiyi paused, then smiled. "Now there's a find..." He'd originally planned a strategy of relentless harassment, using these scattered tribes as live-fire training for his vanguard battalions. Who knew he'd spot a diamond on the very first day?
By dawn, the dispatched men returned.
Only Fatty Liu's group had yet to come back.
Many soldiers excitedly swapped tales of last night's raid. By now, they regarded Fang Zhiyi with complete reverence—the General had to be a god descended to earth, otherwise how else could he know where those packs of wild jackals camped?
But there were also those who came back looking battered. Two groups had lost more than half their men and brought back no plunder. They just stood there, silent.
Fang Zhiyi strolled over with ease.
"Zeng Jiaye, I gave you five hundred men. Tell me, why did only a little over a hundred come back?"
Zeng Jiaye gritted his teeth. "I—I—I gave poor orders! I'll accept the punishment!" He dropped to one knee.
But Fang Zhiyi's eyes turned cold. "Stand up! No kneeling!"
Zeng Jiaye looked up, bewildered.
Fang Zhiyi lowered his gaze to meet his eyes. "A man's knees are worth more than gold. If you must kneel, don't kneel to me—kneel to the several hundred brothers who died under your command!"
Zeng Jiaye was shaken. Last night, surrounded, he hadn't cried. When he watched friends he knew die under a hail of arrows, he hadn't cried. But now, tears suddenly poured out.
Fang Zhiyi raised his head and swept his gaze across the crowd. "Men die in war. It's a fact of life."
Everyone was watching him.
"Dead brothers are still watching you, waiting for you to avenge them! Those of you who survived, think hard—where did it all go wrong? Was it your training? Your carelessness? Or are those wild jackals better than you?"
He walked over to a young soldier who had a fresh gash across his cheek. He reached out and tightened the boy's loose jerkin.
"There's no shame in losing a battle. What's shameful is losing your spirit. Every one of you was personally chosen—every one of you has the mettle to earn a noble title! Don't let a single defeat break you!"
"Plenty of people can handle victory. But only those who can swallow defeat come out on top in the end."
The soldiers stared, stunned, as the hulking figure slowly turned toward the grassland.
Fang Zhiyi looked in that direction—the way the Zeng Jiaye's unit had come back. Under everyone's gaze, Fang Zhiyi suddenly dropped to one knee. "You are all my sworn brothers! I brought you out and got you killed—that failure is mine. I bow to you all as my apology!"
That bow shocked every soldier present.
Zeng Jiaye was weeping like a child. "General, it's not on you! I was too rash—it's my fault!"
Fang Zhiyi rose and looked back at him. "Cry if you must. And when you're done crying, go report to the quartermaster for your flogging."
"Yes!"
Ma Xingwen, too, responded without hesitation—stripping off his armor on the spot. "This humiliation! I'll carry it to my grave!"
"Gotta admit, that's the real deal," Little Hei remarked.
Meanwhile, the tribe that Fatty Liu had raided was now truly in a quandary. They'd thought moving camp would fix things. But no sooner had they picked a new spot to pitch tents than those bastards came back—this time more ferocious, no longer bothering to steal, just killing everything that moved and burning everything in sight, then riding off.
But the more they acted this way, the more convinced the chief was of his theory.
"Bait! It has to be bait! Do not pursue! Heighten our guard!"
Fatty Liu headed back to camp in perfect contentment.
When he saw the state of things back at base—and Zeng Jiaye lying flat on his belly, unable to get up—something in Fatty Liu's heart skipped a beat.
When he finally stood before Fang Zhiyi, he quickly plastered a grin on his face: "General, we made out like bandits!"
But Fang Zhiyi's face was stone cold. "What did I say before we set out?"
"Uh..."
"SPEAK!"
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."
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
uld barely embark on the path to immortality. Just as he was on the verge of death, his golden finger awakened. No matter whether it was poison, drained blood and vital energy, diminished lifespan, or any other physical debuff caused by paying a price—once midnight passed, everything would be refreshed. From then on, whenever someone asked what kind of person Chu Ran was, the answer was simple: Forbidden arts that other cultivators dared not learn? Chu Ran would learn them. Prices that even demonic cultivators dared not pay? Chu Ran would pay them. Lifespan that even righteous cultivators dared not burn? Chu Ran would burn it. All the blood essence in his body? Take it. Want both his hands and feet? He would cut them off and send them to you. You say he’s finished? He wasn’t built to sit idle. You think he’s gone mad? No—he was simply waiting for midnight. From that day onward, Chu Ran would respect neither Heaven nor Earth, bow to neither gods nor ghosts. He had only one wish: For midnight to arrive a little sooner.
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.
