His solemn demeanor was so convincing that even the emperor bought it, and even went so far as to reach up and touch his own face—thankfully, he’d been too busy lately to bother with makeup.
Suppressed laughs kept leaking out from the crowd, and Wei An finally lost it: “You—you scoundrel! Your Majesty! I demand this man be punished! Fang Zhiyi shows no respect for the sovereign and hoards military power for himself!”
“Hold on, miss, what right do you have to file a complaint against me? I hoard military power? I disrespect the sovereign?” Fang Zhiyi suddenly rose to his feet, and the pressure emanating from his imposing frame made Wei An instinctively take a step back.
“You wouldn’t dare lay a hand on me, would you!”
“This general doesn’t strike women.” Fang Zhiyi waved a dismissive hand.
Wei An nearly choked on his rage—what did Fang Zhiyi mean by calling him a woman over and over again!
But Fang Zhiyi ignored him and turned to the emperor: “Your Majesty, your servant led the border troops to repel the grassland invaders, sacrificing tens of thousands of elite soldiers in the process! After that, we fought them for months, and I reported every single engagement to Your Majesty in writing!”
The emperor was momentarily at a loss for words. That much was true—Fang Zhiyi’s reports had never stopped coming. It was just the content that... well...
“He says I disrespect the sovereign? Have you ever seen a man who disrespects the sovereign writing letters to the emperor every few days?” Fang Zhiyi planted his hands on his hips, his gaze sweeping over the assembled officials like a tiger’s. “I hoard military power? I returned to the capital with only a few dozen attendants!”
“Your Majesty! I, Fang Zhiyi, have a clear conscience! If I risk my life at the front lines, and yet someone schemes against me from behind, word will spread—what will the border soldiers think? What will the civil and military officials think? What will the people of this empire think?”
The emperor was struck silent. What Fang Zhiyi said... seemed to make a certain amount of sense.
“Your Majesty, this woman isn’t slandering me—she’s slandering you! She wants to tell the world that Your Majesty employs the wrong people and can’t see clearly who to trust!”
“I am not a wom—” Wei An was about to explode.
But the emperor suddenly thundered: “Silence! Marquis of Ding’an, you have some nerve! In front of me, you dare slander General Fang? He was personally appointed Border General by the late emperor! Now he returns to court victorious, and you would place me in a position to be cursed by the entire realm?”
Though he didn’t care for Fang Zhiyi either, the man’s words just now were pointed and clear. If he let Wei An press charges, this could become a real disaster.
What an idiot!
“I—I—”
“Guards! Drag him out!”
The court assembly welcoming Fang Zhiyi came to a chaotic end.
Fang Zhiyi finally got to meet the original body’s younger sister—no, rather, his own subordinate.
The two sat across from each other, staring blankly.
After a long pause.
“I told you to do whatever you wanted, so you went ahead and cooked up a formula, sold it to a few noble families through a middleman, and had them open shops with it?”
Fang Yunlan nodded vigorously: “Boss, I get it—if we want to deal with them, we start by dividing them, then stir the pot, stay hidden in the background, and they won’t even know how they died...”
Fang Zhiyi sighed: “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant for you to just keep your head down...” He glanced at Fang Yunlan’s eager expression and swallowed the rest of his sentence. Fine. Her approach wasn’t a bad one either.
“It’s just... what I meant by ‘do whatever you want’ was: anyone who bullied you before, slap them without a second thought; anyone who glares at you, kick them without hesitation. Understand? That way, when you stir up trouble, I’ll have the excuse I need to make a move...”
“Ah? That—that’s not good, is it? That’s...”
“I have over a hundred thousand elite border troops.”
“But Prince Min...”
“I have over a hundred thousand elite border troops.”
“And the Marquis of Ding’an...”
“I have over a hundred thousand elite border troops.”
“What about the emperor...”
“I have...”
“Boss, I know you have the border troops, but I can’t just run wild because you hold military power! I’m not some villain!” Fang Yunlan couldn’t hold it in anymore.
Fang Zhiyi laughed: “Who says we’re not villains? You think you’re the heroine of your own story?”
“Uh...”
“The point of work is to get the job done. Nobody’s grading you on your moral standards.” Fang Zhiyi stood up. “Hah, if I were the imperial consort, the emperor’s head would already be hanging in the imperial garden by now.”
“But... if I go too far, won’t I just die?” Fang Yunlan finally said the words out loud.
Fang Zhiyi stared at her steadily: “Precisely because you die that I’ll have my reason to raise an army. Isn’t that obvious?”
Fang Yunlan’s eyes went wide as she stared at her boss. That was ruthless!
“Don’t look at me like that. In this line of work, all that matters is achieving the goal... I’ve died plenty of times myself.”
Watching him leave, Fang Yunlan hurriedly called out: “Boss—no, big brother—where are you going?”
“To stick up for you. I hear there’s someone named He who crossed you? Don’t worry—before I head back to the border, I’ll take care of it for you.”
Fang Yunlan stared blankly as Fang Zhiyi walked away, and a giant question mark surfaced in her mind once again.
Something felt off. She just couldn’t put her finger on it.
A major incident shook the capital. Fang Zhiyi had just submitted a memorial citing urgent border military matters as grounds to leave, when—without warning—he led his men to smash He Yinqing’s cosmetics shop, reducing even the intricate devices inside to splinters.
Not only that, but the servants Wei An had dispatched to keep order got a beating as well. Fang Zhiyi was utterly reckless.
“Tell your master: mess with my little sister again, and next time I’ll beat him within an inch of his life!”
He Yinqing watched her cash cow get destroyed, hopping around trying to reason with Fang Zhiyi and demand compensation. But Fang Zhiyi gave her a firsthand lesson in what it meant to deal with a military man.
You talk. I smash. Mutually exclusive.
When he was done, he dusted off his hands with satisfaction and walked away with his men, completely missing the venomous look in He Yinqing’s eyes. This was a woman who could go after even the original owner’s foster parents! There was no way she’d just swallow this.
She barely needed a moment to scheme before she went straight to Wei An at the patrol camp.
Wei An was still nursing his grudge over being punished because of Fang Zhiyi. The moment he heard what Fang Zhiyi had done, he was furious.
“Men! Rally the troops! Follow me... to arrest the culprit!”
The fruits of their training showed. The patrol camp’s several thousand men assembled in less than a quarter of an hour—a sight that filled Wei An with satisfaction.
He knew full well what the emperor feared, but he didn’t care. Fang Zhiyi—a crude, rough-hewn soldier—how dare he call him a woman? And on top of that, smash Qingqing’s shop! Anyone who bullied Qingqing deserved to die!
“Follow me out of the city!”
The patrol camp’s massive procession naturally drew attention from all sides—some watched with relish, some with private calculations. By the time word reached the palace, the patrol camp was already chasing Fang Zhiyi out of the city gates.
The emperor flew into a rage. Had the Marquis of Ding’an lost his mind? But a few words from Prince Min calmed him down.
“If Wei An takes troops without authorization to intercept and kill Fang Zhiyi... and if it succeeds, Your Majesty only needs to weep dramatically, then sentence Wei An to punishment. This way, your problem is resolved.”
“You really are cunning.”
] This is a dark fantasy-themed dating simulation game. The main gameplay involves containing various monster girls and investigating the truth of a world shrouded in mist alongside your companions. However, due to his love for the dark and bizarre atmosphere, Luo Wei ended up turning a dating game into a detective mystery game. Women? Women only slow down his quickdraw! To Luo Wei, the female leads in the game are more like tools to perfectly clear levels and squeeze out rewards. For Luo Wei, flirting with every girl he meets and then discarding them is standard procedure. Worried about characters losing affection points? No need. With his maxed-out charm stat, Luo Wei is practically a "human incubus." A little psychological manipulation and those points come right back. It's a bit scummy, but the paper cutout heroines in the game won't actually come at him with real cleavers. However... Luo Wei has transmigrated. He's accidentally entered the second playthrough of this game. His past actions have caused all the girls to transform into terrifying yanderes. Due to the game's setting, most of the heroines he once contained are "troubled girls." Obsessive, twisted, mentally unstable, all aggressive yanderes... The type who will kill you if they can't have you... Luo Wei wants to cry but has no tears left. "I really just want to survive..." In short, this is a story of battling wits and engaging in a love-hate relationship with yanderes.
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!
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?!
] [Lone Wolf, No Male Gaze] [Protagonist is pursued early on; extreme protagonist-stans, stay away!] The "Carnival Paradise" descends and slowly devours the real world in the form of a game. By chance, Zhu Yan awakens the talent [Roleplay], becoming one of the first beta players. He thought he could develop safely, but after clearing the first instance, he is branded by humanity as the chief culprit behind the game's spread—a traitorous villain. A villain? Who would ever... become one! He'll be the villain! From then on, Zhu Yan is not only a player but also a lackey for the Carnival Paradise. Between the straight path and the crooked path, he chooses the con. With his left hand, he dons the villain's mantle, staging scenes within instances, infuriating players who decry him as a despicable traitor, all while the game happily promotes him. With his right hand, he joins the non-human organization "Fangcun Mountain," which opposes the Carnival Paradise, transforming into a mysterious player who slaughters game bosses, earning cheers of "Long live the expert!" from fellow players. Gradually, Zhu Yan rises to become an S-rank human player in Fangcun Mountain's archives, while also being the Carnival Paradise's certified top game Boss. But when the final war erupts and both major factions place their hopes in him— Players tag his various aliases: "Experts, this offensive depends on you." The Carnival Paradise's supreme Boss throws an arm around his neck: "Bro, you're the iron, I'm the steel; you can't let me down again!"
