“I never told you this, did I? I had a senior apprentice brother who supported me by hauling heavy loads on his back,” Wang Qianyue said, still muttering to himself as he watched those malevolent spirits closing in. “But later, he disappeared too. Some said the imperial court took him away. I don't know. But from that moment on, I had to survive on my own. I was afraid I'd get taken too, so I could only wander from place to place alone.”
“But my master once said that I could never hold on to money…” He suddenly turned his head and flashed Little Mouse a smile uglier than a cry. “Before I met you, I only had myself to feed. When I botched a job, I'd take a beating and that was that. But later on, that wouldn't do—you were still a little kid. You needed to eat.”
“I was planning to save up enough money to go to the capital and find some high-level expert to figure out what was going on with you.” He swallowed hard. The spirits were getting impatient. “Then I'd formally take you as my disciple, and you'd look after me in my old age. But now it looks like…”
He suddenly shoved Little Mouse. “RUN! Get out of here now!”
The moment he turned around, the spirits could no longer contain themselves. With screeching howls, they pounced.
“Sigh.”
“For a swindler of the Blue Dao, you're not really a bad man.”
Wang Qianyue, who had squeezed his eyes shut, instinctively opened them and looked at Little Mouse before him. The little guy no longer wore that lazy, dazed expression. Instead, his eyes were sharp and fierce.
He clasped his hands together, forming hand seals at blinding speed.
“Five Thunder True Source, gather into my body!”
The spirits that had nearly reached Wang Qianyue all froze, looking up at the roof. A terrible premonition welled up within them.
“Golden Thunder breaks armor, Silver Thunder shatters souls, Copper Thunder pacifies the domain, Iron Thunder sweeps the dust, Tin Thunder seals the demons!”
A blaze of golden light erupted from Little Mouse's eyes.
Wang Qianyue's mind went blank.
“Five Thunder True Art!”
A colossal boom descended from the heavens, tearing straight through the broken shack.
The batch of spirits didn't even manage a scream before they were annihilated in the blaze of lightning.
After who knows how long, a person crawled out of the rubble, covered in dust and soot. Every time he moved, he let out a groan.
“Little Mouse! Little Mouse!” Wang Qianyue hadn't forgotten his fake disciple.
Then a hand patted him on the shoulder.
“I have a name. It's Fang Zhiyi.”
Wang Qianyue turned around and saw that Little Mouse was fine. He let out a huge sigh of relief. “You scared me half to death! You—you said that book was useless! You lied to me?”
Even at a moment like this, he still didn't suspect Little Mouse.
“And Fang Zhiyi? I'm still—huh?” Wang Qianyue suddenly stared at Fang Zhiyi, his brow slowly knitting together. “Fang Zhiyi… that name sounds really familiar…” His gaze drifted to the book tucked into Fang Zhiyi's belt. “I—I remember now! The person who wrote this book was named Fang Zhiyi!”
“Sin, sin! If you want a name, I'll give you one. Don't go around using other people's names!”
Fang Zhiyi looked at him with a hint of helplessness.
“I wrote that book.”
Wang Qianyue looked at him in confusion.
“Ah, brings back memories. Back then, to earn some money for my junior disciples, I had them write a bunch of these books to sell according to my requirements…” Fang Zhiyi flipped through the book. “Just by looking at this crappy handwriting, I can tell Jiang Mubai wrote it. You got unlucky. If you'd gotten the one I wrote myself, dealing with those spirits would've been a piece of cake.”
Wang Qianyue's jaw dropped.
What had he just heard?
Jiang Mubai?
“You—you—you really are that Fang Zhiyi! Impossible! Fang Zhiyi ascended to immortality long ago! Every cultivator in the world knows that!”
Fang Zhiyi whacked him on the head with the book. “Ha? Since when did I ascend to immortality without knowing about it?”
But on second thought, he supposed it made sense that later generations would invent some fantastical ending for him.
“H-he… Jiang Mubai… Jiang Mubai is—is the current Grand Preceptor!” Wang Qianyue stammered. Now, looking at Little Mouse, all his previous casualness was gone.
This was a giant figure from a hundred years ago! The legendary Fang Zhiyi, who could supposedly soar through heaven and earth and was capable of anything!
“Grand Preceptor…” Fang Zhiyi's eyes darkened as he turned to look in a certain direction—toward the capital.
Wang Qianyue wanted to say more, but suddenly Fang Zhiyi crouched down, his face full of panic. “Master! Master! Are you alright, Master?!”
“Hey, cough, cough—my neck, my neck… what are you—?” Wang Qianyue was completely baffled by Fang Zhiyi's antics. But a moment later, he saw a dozen or so people racing toward them.
The man at the lead wore a proper orthodox Daoist robe. His gaze swept over the surrounding wreckage, then he bent down, touched a charred piece of wood, and brought his fingers beneath his nose to sniff. His expression changed instantly.
“Powerful lightning arts!” He looked at the disheveled Wang Qianyue, narrowed his eyes, and gave a slight bow. “Well met, fellow Daoist.”
Wang Qianyue was a swindler after all. He caught on before Fang Zhiyi even gave him a signal.
“Well met, well met. There were too many spirits here, so I had no choice but to…”
Wang Qianyue thought he was done for, because these people took him and Fang Zhiyi back to the city. But they didn't lock him up. Instead, after a short rest, they “escorted” them toward the capital.
No matter what he said along the way, they wouldn't answer, and they even kept their distance from him.
But they were clearly wary of him. The whole journey, they kept him sandwiched between them.
Fang Zhiyi, meanwhile, had reverted to being that little mouse—lost and confused, dull and dim-witted.
Wang Qianyue couldn't figure out what this great master was planning, so he just played along. He was doomed anyway—one prefect's death combined with a hundred innocent lives meant he'd need a hundred heads just to cover the executions.
After a full twenty days on the road, Wang Qianyue arrived in the capital for the first time. It was far more bustling. But he barely had time to look around before he was handed over to a different group of guards in dark armor, and then led into the Grand Preceptor's Hall.
This was the place that governed all the mystical arts of the realm—the very place that sought immortality for the emperor. Along the way in, there were checkpoints upon checkpoints. Unless you had status, you couldn't get in even if you turned into a fly.
Wang Qianyue's heart was full of dread. He had no idea what awaited him until he saw the familiar incense altar and kneeling cushions.
A Taoist who called himself a protector smiled and greeted him, first warmly asking about his master and his background.
Luckily, Wang Qianyue had already crafted his story during the journey. He simply played the part of a reclusive expert. He did have a master, after all—the man was just dead. He tweaked a few details and launched into a string of tall tales and smooth talk. The other man didn't seem suspicious.
What Wang Qianyue couldn't understand was why Fang Zhiyi didn't reveal his identity. After all, the current Grand Preceptor was his own junior disciple—that nearly hundred-year-old Jiang Mubai!
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."
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.
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
