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.”
with countless casualties. As a top-tier gamer, Liu Xuan volunteered to join the fight, intending to dominate with his skills, but instead he obtained the hidden class: [Pacifist]. Unable to attack. Unable to use active skills. Fortunately, with each level gained, he acquired a new passive skill. And so, armed with a body full of passives, Liu Xuan slaughtered his way through the battlefield of ten thousand races! [You attacked Liu Xuan] [You gained the debuffs: 'Poison', 'Fear', 'Burning', 'Bleeding', 'Freeze', 'Silence', etc.] [Your attack speed has been reduced by 99%] [Your armor and magic resistance have been reduced by 99%] Warriors of the Ten Thousand Races: How the hell am I supposed to fight this?!
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
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.
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."
