Wang Qianyue watched Fang Zhiyi stroll over as if taking a leisurely walk in a garden. Behind him emerged several great demons, all of them oddly shaped. If he hadn't seen them with his own eyes before, he would have thought it was an illusion. The zither walking around was one thing, but how did that tree demon get in here?
In a flash, the iron chains binding him were easily snapped by the demons. Fang Zhiyi walked over to his side, bending down as if to say something, but the next moment he suddenly struck out and grabbed the Life-Stealing Demon's body.
The Life-Stealing Demon's earthworm-like form twisted and writhed frantically, but within moments, its body crumbled to ash inch by inch.
Only then did Fang Zhiyi raise his head and look at Jiang Mubai, who was sitting up in the coffin.
"Damn it, back then I only taught you to keep the world in your heart, didn't I? And look what they've done to you!"
Wang Qianyue watched as this young man, with an air of old-fashioned authority, scolded the mummy-like National Preceptor. Somehow the scene just felt off.
"Junior Uncle..." Jiang Mubai stammered.
"Little Peach Blossom!" Fang Zhiyi waved his hand, and the tree demon understood. A root stretched out and crept into the coffin, and within moments, Jiang Mubai's complexion improved somewhat.
"Junior Uncle! I, I, I..."
Fang Zhiyi frowned. "What's with all the stammering! Stop crying! Say what you need to say!"
"I, I was wrong!" Jiang Mubai's aged face was full of anguish. "I caused Senior Brother's death, I caused Second Senior Brother's death too, I..."
"With Li Buyan's skill level, I can't think of anyone else besides you who could have brought him down. Tell me something I don't know." Fang Zhiyi raised his wrist to check the time, only to find there was no watch. "Let me tell you, those out there can't hold on much longer."
Jiang Mubai recounted what had happened earlier. Everyone wanted to cultivate the Dao, but cultivators were still human, and humans had selfish desires. After Fang Zhiyi disappeared, some cultivators tried to raise demons like he did, but they either suffered backlash or lost their lives. Word spread, and before long, rumors began circulating among cultivators that Li Buyan and the others possessed a true immortal's secret manual. Li Buyan, being the stubborn type, never bothered to explain, and the rumor only grew wider.
That was the spark that ignited the great chaos.
In the ensuing slaughter among cultivators, Zhao Yichen was surrounded and attacked, ultimately meeting his death.
Only Li Buyan and Jiang Mubai survived.
But soon after, Jiang Mubai was summoned to the capital because the reigning emperor wanted to see him. Somehow, he ended up becoming friends with the emperor.
This emperor had only taken the throne a few years prior. Unlike the previous one, he was a good ruler—diligent in governance, caring for the people, and laboring for the nation.
By that time, Jiang Mubai's heart was as good as dead after the great chaos. Watching the emperor waste away day by day, he finally offered to do something, and so the emperor bestowed upon him the title of National Preceptor.
In his early years as National Preceptor, Jiang Mubai served with great dedication—suppressing evil spirits and capturing dark cultivators.
But with the great chaos just over and so many cultivators dead, there wasn't much he could do beyond praying for the people.
Then he heard news that the emperor had fallen ill.
Jiang Mubai wasn't surprised. This emperor was destined for a short life. But when he saw the emperor lying on his dragon bed, unwilling to die, Jiang Mubai felt a pang of pity. Cultivators were not supposed to meddle in mortal affairs, but after all this time, he had witnessed the emperor's deeds with his own eyes.
If the man died like this, it would be a waste.
At that moment, the emperor's left and right guardians begged Jiang Mubai to find a way. On instinct, Jiang Mubai wanted to ask his master, but his master was gone. His junior uncle was gone too. His senior brothers...
He thought for a day and a night, and finally came up with a method to extend the emperor's life.
It was life-linking—tying his own life force to the emperor's. He had a hundred years of lifespan, so giving up twenty years was nothing. Twenty years! The emperor could accomplish so much with that.
But he forgot that human nature is greedy. The poor covet money, the rich covet power, officials covet high positions, and emperors covet longevity...
What he never expected was that he himself, a man ready to die, would be forcibly brought back to life—using the lives of other cultivators.
They had obtained a thing called the Life-Stealing Demon, and the method for refining it was said to be extremely cruel.
But for the sake of imperial power, cruelty could not be called cruelty. It was simply "fate."
From that moment on, Jiang Mubai became a walking corpse—unable to die, unable to resist.
All because that emperor wanted to live.
Life-stealing required cultivators of high cultivation, and so they thought of Li Buyan. Li Buyan, stubborn as ever, rushed over when he heard his junior brother was on the verge of death. Jiang Mubai tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth, no words came out.
That day, the emperor, the guardians, and the high ministers all put on a grand performance in front of Li Buyan, framing Jiang Mubai's situation as a matter of duty to the people and the world. Li Buyan looked at his little junior brother, and in the end, agreed to transfer his life force.
"Junior Uncle once said that the path you choose for yourself is the path," Li Buyan said.
He gave his life to Jiang Mubai, and Jiang Mubai's heart turned to ashes.
Wang Qianyue, sitting on the ground, had been listening with great interest. But a sudden dull thud made him jump. He looked up and saw that Fang Zhiyi had just smacked Jiang Mubai on the head!
"Grandmaster! Don't hit him! You might kill him!" Wang Qianyue scrambled to his feet to intervene.
"Kill him? If I killed him, I'd still find a way to keep hitting!" Fang Zhiyi glared at Jiang Mubai. "Do you know why I hit you?"
Jiang Mubai shook his head. "Junior Uncle, I deserve it!"
"Because you're an idiot!" Fang Zhiyi paced back and forth. "A complete idiot! Of the three of you, only Zhao Yichen had any brains, and he died! You two dunderheads actually managed to survive!"
Jiang Mubai lowered his head.
"Enough of this useless talk! Did I or did I not teach you that if something erupts suddenly, there must be a cause?"
"Junior Uncle, you mean..."
"The Great Chaos!"
"There was a cause. I've reflected on it. At the time, our reputations were too great, and it drew the envy of other cultivators..."
Fang Zhiyi raised his hand again, but looking at this frail old man, he reluctantly lowered it.
"Are you a pig's brain? Did I not also say: if you don't understand why something happened, think about who benefits the most!"
Jiang Mubai didn't dare to respond.
But Wang Qianyue suddenly slapped his thigh. "Grandmaster, I get it!"
Fang Zhiyi glanced at him.
Wang Qianyue said, "Before the Great Chaos, cultivators were everywhere. Practitioners roamed freely, punishing evil and rewarding good... cultivators' reputations were massive—they even overshadowed the court!"
Jiang Mubai turned his head to look at this man he didn't recognize.
"And after the Great Chaos ended, this good-for-nothing—no, no, this National Preceptor—worked for the emperor, gathering up all the surviving cultivators... and the world fell back under the court's control..."
Jiang Mubai's pupils shrank violently!
Fang Zhiyi looked at Wang Qianyue and nodded. Then he turned back to Jiang Mubai with a face full of disgust. "I'm not hitting you because you were tricked. I'm hitting you because after all this time, you never once stopped to think about who started all of this!"
"The court... the emperor... they..." Jiang Mubai muttered to himself.
"An idiot to the core." Fang Zhiyi turned and walked away.
"Hey? Grandmaster, what about your junior nephew?" Wang Qianyue was left confused.
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?!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
m back to his original world. In the end, he realized he had overthought things. [Hey, why is Shen Manni, the female lead, acting strange? Shouldn't she be fawning over the male lead at this point?] [Zhou Qiaoqiao, are you sick? Weren't you supposed to break off your engagement today?] [Damn it! An Youyi, please do your job as an undercover agent and sell my information to the protagonist, you idiot!] ... At this moment, Xu Mo himself didn't know that these female leads had already heard his inner thoughts. Then they decided not to play by the rules. Xu Mo: Please respect my profession as the big villain!
