Zhao Chengyang was very busy, so he simply told Su Xun to wait for him at the shop.
When Su Xun arrived, the shop’s front doors stood wide open. Incense, candles, and paper offerings were neatly arranged inside, but there was no one to be seen.
“This Daoist has quite a nerve...” Wang Lei, who had come with him, muttered. “And you, too. I told you that you’re suffering from nervous exhaustion and should go to a hospital. What are you doing here?”
Su Xun smiled bitterly. He didn’t know how to explain it to Wang Lei, but he had the feeling he had come to the right place.
The filthy things that had been following him had stopped outside, pacing back and forth. None of them dared to set foot through the doorway.
It was nearly sunset when Zhao Chengyang finally returned to the shop. His clothes were filthy, as though he had rolled around in a muddy field.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Zhao Chengyang said. His eyes immediately flicked toward the outside.
Su Xun followed his gaze and happened to see a bloodied, mangled face staring at him.
“Don’t look. He’s another pitiful soul,” Zhao Chengyang said.
He looked Su Xun up and down, his brows drawing together slightly. “Your situation is more complicated than I expected... Normally, an ordinary person would recover after being affected for a while. But you...”
Zhao Chengyang suddenly grabbed the web between Su Xun’s thumb and index finger. Su Xun was startled, but before he could react, Zhao Chengyang’s finger moved up along his arm, tapping each of his joints in turn before finally pressing against his chin.
Su Xun instinctively opened his mouth.
Zhao Chengyang narrowed his eyes. “This guy is skilled. Even I didn’t notice it.”
He released Su Xun. Su Xun was left bewildered, and Wang Lei was even more confused. Neither of them had understood what Zhao Chengyang had just done.
“You’ve been planted with a ghost lure,” Zhao Chengyang said. “The fake Daoist at your home clearly made two preparations... If we forcibly remove it, it may have some effect on you.”
“Is there a safer way?” Su Xun asked.
Zhao Chengyang looked at him. “Yes. Stay here and don’t go anywhere. Wait until he loses patience and comes looking for you himself.”
“What? But I...” Su Xun had just begun to speak when Wang Lei, standing beside him, blinked and asked, “Daoist, are you hiring?”
Zhao Chengyang turned toward Wang Lei. Wang Lei rubbed his hands together. He hadn’t expected such an unassuming incense-and-offerings shop to make so much money! Quite a few customers had come by during the afternoon, but after hearing that the owner wasn’t there, they had all left.
Wang Lei had immediately sensed a business opportunity.
Zhao Chengyang pondered for a moment. “I happen to be rather busy lately. If you’re willing, you can stay here and manage the shop for me. There’s a bed in the back.”
“No problem!” Wang Lei declared, thumping his chest.
Su Xun glanced outside, then quickly nodded as well.
He needed some time to think about everything that had happened to him.
Zhao Chengyang didn’t seem to mind having two young men join him at the shop. After giving them a few instructions, he went upstairs to sleep. Early the next morning, he hurried out again.
And so, Su Xun and Wang Lei somehow stumbled into this line of work.
One did it to stay alive; the other did it to make money.
Unlike the carefree Wang Lei, Su Xun was more observant. He soon noticed that some of the customers who came to the shop had those things following behind them. Yet whenever the customers entered, the creatures stopped outside, as though they were wary of something inside.
Zhao Chengyang was also a responsible Daoist. Regardless of who came to him or how much they paid, he would drive away the evil spirits for them. In his words, his master had taught him that cleansing demons and banishing evil was the duty of anyone who practiced the Dao.
“Those things can’t be eliminated,” Zhao Chengyang told Su Xun over a meal. “They were merely drawn here by you. Destroying them just like that would go against the natural order.”
Su Xun nodded. “The most important thing is that even if we got rid of them, others would simply continue to follow me.”
Wang Lei didn’t care. He couldn’t see them anyway. To him, this was just a business—a business that could earn him his first real fortune. Zhao Chengyang had promised him thirty percent commission on everything sold, and Wang Lei was brimming with enthusiasm.
“But why would that person want to harm me...?” Su Xun asked as he stared at the distorted ghostly faces outside. After so many days, he had almost grown accustomed to them.
“Heh.” Zhao Chengyang let out a laugh and shook his head without saying anything.
Su Xun found this baffling.
But Zhao Chengyang’s next words left him even more confused.
“Do you want to learn Daoist arts?”
Su Xun looked up at Zhao Chengyang. “Me? Me?”
Zhao Chengyang nodded. “That’s right.”
Before Su Xun could say anything, Wang Lei practically jumped up.
“I’m willing! I’m willing!”
His thoughts were much simpler. As long as he learned the basic forms, he could put on an act and fool people. Wouldn’t money then come pouring into his pockets?
But Zhao Chengyang didn’t even bother looking at him. His gaze remained fixed on Su Xun.
Su Xun hesitated for a while. “If I refuse, will you stop helping me?”
Zhao Chengyang shook his head. “No. This isn’t a bandit den.”
“I still want to find a job after this matter is resolved...”
At that, Zhao Chengyang lowered his head and continued eating.
“Mm. That’s fine too.”
The days that followed continued as usual. Wang Lei grew increasingly adept at running the shop. He even managed to talk customers into buying all the statues that had been sitting in storage. Zhao Chengyang said that he would keep only the original cost, while all the profits could go to Wang Lei.
Su Xun mostly handled odd jobs. Sometimes he prepared cinnabar and other materials for Zhao Chengyang, and sometimes he helped stamp seals onto Celestial Master talismans.
Just as he was beginning to grow tired of this life, something happened.
Someone knocked on the shop’s doors in the middle of the night. Wang Lei, so obsessed with making money that it had clouded his judgment, threw on a coat and opened the door—then disappeared without a trace.
When Su Xun sensed that something was wrong and got up to look for him, all he found was a slip of paper bearing an address.
It was obvious that the fake Daoist had run out of patience. He had kidnapped Wang Lei and wanted to force Su Xun to come to him of his own accord.
Wang Lei was Su Xun’s only friend. No matter what he did, Wang Lei always thought of him first. Su Xun couldn’t possibly remain unmoved while his brother was in danger.
He asked Zhao Chengyang for help. Zhao Chengyang merely sighed.
“You... are you really sure?”
Su Xun didn’t understand what he meant. He could only anxiously explain that Wang Lei was in danger.
Seeing this, Zhao Chengyang gathered his things and left with him.
The address led to an abandoned factory built halfway up a mountain. Zhao Chengyang’s battered car broke down halfway there, leaving the two of them no choice but to climb the rest of the way on foot.
“Hahaha, kid, you really dared to come!”
The moment they stepped into the courtyard, a wild, arrogant laugh rang out. Under the moonlight, Su Xun saw several figures scattered throughout the yard. Each of them was staring intently at Zhao Chengyang, who stood behind him.
“Zhao, I never expected you to interfere with my plans! You can’t save this kid’s life!”
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!
lan, the Luo family, tracked him down - along with the babies in their arms. Mo Xuan stared pensively at the paternity test results from over a dozen top institutions, both domestic and international, showing a 99.99% match between himself and the two baby girls. At 23, Mo Xuan, a doctoral student, had become the father of two three-year-old children. The kicker? The mothers weren't even the same person! He gradually realized he was being lured step by step into an elaborate trap designed by these two yandere sisters. "Be good, little Xuan. Sister's life belongs to you entirely." "Brother, if you try to run away, I'll have no choice but to tie you up." Mo Xuan: "Do whatever you want, ladies. I give up."
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."
