Zhao Chengyang said nothing. He merely looked at the people before him with a relaxed expression.
“Old Fourth Zhao! All these years, you’ve been opposing us, openly or otherwise, haven’t you? Today I’m telling you: I’m taking this kid’s life—and yours too!” The fake Daoist pointed at Zhao Chengyang. “Today, you’ll kneel and kowtow to us to apologize!”
Su Xun turned around. “Huh? Why do I have to die while he only has to apologize?”
But soon, he saw Wang Lei hanging nearby, and had no mind to quibble over that anymore.
“Let him go!”
The fake Daoist gave an eerie laugh. “Let him go? Of course we will. But everything has to wait until this is over.”
Su Xun was puzzled. “Is my life really that valuable? Why are you so determined to come after me?” He remembered that Zhao Chengyang had also said his destiny was unusual.
“Hahaha, you think I’m the one who wants to come after you? I’m not interested in wasting my time with a lone star like you!” the fake Daoist cursed angrily. “Kid, you still don’t know? The people who want you dead aren’t me, this Taoist—they’re your own parents!”
“What?” Su Xun stared at him in disbelief.
“Fine. I’ll let you die knowing the truth. Your rotten father came to me and asked me to change his younger son’s fate. And what fate would be more suitable than yours?”
Su Xun felt as if he had been struck by lightning.
He remembered that they had left in a hurry before his grandfather’s funeral was even over. His younger brother had always been in poor health, and none of the many hospitals they had visited had been able to improve his condition...
Now he recalled how he had walked out of that room alive that day. His father’s expression had still been one of disgust, but beneath that disgust had been a trace of surprise...
“You—you’re lying!”
“This Taoist may not be a good man, but I never tell lies!” the fake Daoist said smugly. “One hundred and twenty thousand yuan. Your father paid me in cash to trade your life for your brother’s. What I didn’t expect was that there would be someone in your village who also wanted you dead. But man proposes, Heaven disposes—and you really are hard to kill. Old Fourth Zhao saved you.”
He paused briefly. “But that’s as far as it goes. Kid, this matter wasn’t worth going to such lengths over originally, but you just had to offend this Taoist.”
Su Xun’s head buzzed.
He had always known that his parents favored his brother, but he had never imagined they could be biased to such an extent.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder.
Zhao Chengyang let out a long breath. “Finished?”
“Old Fourth Zhao, stop pretending. Back when our master was still alive, no one dared provoke you. But Fang Zhiyi has been dead for so many years now. I advise you to stop meddling in other people’s business.” As he spoke, he pointed toward a figure not far away. “A few days ago, you helped the Yuan family relocate their graves and ruined Daoist Zhang’s soul-binding array, nearly causing him to suffer a backlash.”
“And that one over there—Lame Ma. You exorcised the little ghost he was controlling, so he failed to complete the job and someone broke his other leg.”
“And...”
The fake Daoist began listing them one by one.
Zhao Chengyang looked up. Apparently, more or less everyone here held a grudge against him.
“You want to protect this kid? Then I’ll tell you right now—it’s impossible! Unless you can deal with every one of us! Zhao Chengyang, even your senior sister wouldn’t dare say something like that, would she? Hahahahaha!”
His laughter was wild and arrogant.
But the next moment, the sound of police sirens made his smile freeze.
It also brought Su Xun back to his senses. He stared at Zhao Chengyang beside him, his face filled with shock.
“Zhao! You’re breaking the rules!” the fake Daoist exclaimed when he realized what had happened.
Zhao Chengyang frowned, looking utterly righteous. “Rules? This is a society governed by law. Who says I have to follow your underworld rules?”
A large number of police officers stormed into the courtyard. The sinister-looking practitioners of the dark arts were instantly dumbfounded. As the officers shouted, “Don’t move!” they either put their hands over their heads and squatted down, or, if they couldn’t squat, simply lay flat on the ground.
They had imagined countless possibilities. They had even set up a powerful formation here specifically to deal with Zhao Chengyang.
But who could have imagined that he would call the police?!
“Kidnapping, extortion, intimidation, grave robbing... Tsk, tsk. There may even be fraud charges. You’ll probably be in prison for quite a while.” Zhao Chengyang shook his head. Then he turned and saw Su Xun’s blank stare. “What? As a good citizen, when you discover a crime, you should report it to the police immediately. Understand?”
Su Xun nodded.
This was completely different from what he had imagined. Shouldn’t the two sides have begun fighting with spells, with him helping Zhao Chengyang defeat the villains and rescue Wang Lei in the end...?
“What are you standing around for? Go check on your friend.”
“Oh, right!”
The very next day, the news reported that the police had cracked a major kidnapping and extortion ring based on a tip. The investigation into further evidence was still under way.
Su Wenqiang stared at the news, his hands trembling uncontrollably.
“It’s over. That—that master has been arrested!”
“Huh? What do we do now? What about our money? Can we go ask him for it?”
“Ask for your ass!”
A fit of coughing came from inside the house, and the couple turned to look toward the room.
“It’s all your fault! Why did you believe that master? Hurry and go to the police station. Tell them—tell them we were scammed!”
“All right! I’ll go right away. You go give our son his medicine!”
Su Xun stared blankly at Zhao Chengyang, who was sitting in front of the cameras in a suit and explaining the dangers of feudal superstition to the public. Su Xun couldn’t help admiring him. How did Zhao Chengyang manage to lie so smoothly without even batting an eye?
But more than that, Su Xun wanted to know what was happening to him. The fake Daoist had been arrested, yet the ghost haunting him was still lingering nearby.
“Your situation really is quite rare... Why don’t you just get used to it? Some people are simply born with yin-yang eyes.”
Su Xun wore a troubled expression, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Wang Lei had already recovered from the kidnapping and thrown himself into his sales business with even greater enthusiasm. To make himself fit the part, he had even bought a Daoist robe and started wearing it. Zhao Chengyang merely laughed and offered no opinion.
At that moment, Wang Lei happened to be carrying two newly acquired statues past them. After hearing what they were saying, he remarked, “What’s the big deal? If you’re really worried, you could just take Boss Zhao as your master.”
Su Xun watched Wang Lei walk away, then looked at Zhao Chengyang.
“What he said isn’t a bad solution,” Zhao Chengyang said after a pause. “Most importantly, your destiny is particularly well suited to cultivating the Dao.”
At the mention of his destiny, Su Xun’s eyes darkened, and he once again thought of his parents.
He still couldn’t understand why they had treated him that way.
In a daze, Su Xun became Zhao Chengyang’s disciple. Besides him, there was also Wang Lei. Wang Lei had purely wanted to use Zhao Chengyang’s reputation to make more money, and after shamelessly begging Zhao Chengyang to accept him, he was taken on as a nominal disciple.
“You’d better think this through. Once I accept you, you might never be able to find a wife,” Zhao Chengyang warned him.
“What good is a wife? I want money! No, I mean, I want to dedicate myself to helping my master’s business flourish!” Wang Lei declared righteously.
Anyone else would have kicked him out on the spot. But Zhao Chengyang merely laughed—and agreed.
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!
e school belle recognized by the whole school, a genius girl from the kendo club. She also has a hidden identity, the youngest legendary demon hunter. Chen Shuo just transmigrated and found himself turned into a weak, helpless little vampire. He was caught by Su Xiyen and taken home at the very beginning. Since then, Chen Shuo's life creed only had two items. "First, classmate Su Xiyen is always right." "Second, if classmate Su Xiyen is wrong, please refer back to item one." Many years later, Chen Shuo, who had turned back into a human, led a pair of twins to appear in front of all the vampires to share the secret of how he turned back into a human. "It's simple, I tricked a female demon hunter into becoming my wife!"
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."
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.
