Su Xun finally understood.
The two men and the ghost were all disciples of his Grand Master, making them Zhao Chengyang’s senior martial brother and sister.
When he saw the Eldest Senior Martial Uncle offering incense to the Grand Master, Su Xun asked, “Why…”
Gu Qingnan cut him off. “Your master knew that he was fated to live and die alone. He didn’t want to implicate us, so he deliberately kept his distance.”
Su Xun fell silent. His Eldest Senior Martial Uncle was incredibly perceptive—she knew what he wanted to ask before he had even finished speaking.
Suddenly, Gu Qingnan clutched her chest, her brows drawing tightly together. Even Liu Lang’s usually lecherous face showed a rare trace of concern.
But he did nothing. He knew his senior sister’s temper.
“Junior brother, I know you’re short of money, but even if I gave you some, you wouldn’t be able to keep it,” Gu Qingnan said after she had recovered.
Liu Lang looked unconcerned. “Oh, please. If I were short of money, I’d just go beg outside your company.”
“Your mouth is still as sharp as ever.” Gu Qingnan looked at Liu Lang. “All these years, Zhou Zheng still hasn’t found any trace of our master. Those people in the Underworld seem to know something, but they refuse to say.”
“Now our junior brother has disappeared too. How interesting.”
Liu Lang looked somewhat melancholy. “Do you think we’ve embarrassed our master so much that he’d rather take our junior brother away than come see us?”
Gu Qingnan rolled her eyes. “I can’t speak for the others, but you certainly have.”
She paused and looked at Su Xun. “When your master was still here, I didn’t take proper care of him as his senior sister. But I’ll make sure your affairs are handled properly.”
Su Xun was confused. He had no idea what the Eldest Senior Martial Uncle meant.
Gu Qingnan did not explain. She merely patted him on the shoulder, then gave Liu Lang a meaningful look.
Liu Lang put an arm around Su Xun’s shoulders. “From today onward, I’ll give you some extra training on behalf of your master! What kind of Taoist priest can’t beat a ghost?”
Su Xun glanced at Liu Lang, suspicion stirring in his heart.
But before long, his prejudice based on Liu Lang’s appearance was shattered. Liu Lang was incredibly powerful—powerful to the point of being completely unreasonable.
Unlike his master, who did everything by the book, this Third Senior Martial Uncle dealt with evil spirits and ghosts like a street thug picking a fight. Sometimes he even beat up people. Of the five commissions Su Xun accompanied him on, the police detained Liu Lang three times.
“What the hell was that? He drove someone to suicide and still had the nerve to shout at me!” Liu Lang complained indignantly as he came out.
Su Xun felt he was beginning to understand why Liu Lang was poor.
Every time he earned money, he spent it compensating someone else. How could he not be poor?
Still, there was no denying that what Liu Lang taught him was practical.
“Some ghosts are extremely devious. You have to be even more devious than they are. Who says a fight has to follow a set of moves? If you win, that’s all that matters! Of course, if you can’t beat them, run. Got it?” In Liu Lang’s eyes, running away was as ordinary as eating, drinking, or breathing. At the end, he would always add, “That’s what your Grand Master taught us!”
By staying with Liu Lang, Su Xun learned methods completely different from those he had learned from his master. The Third Senior Martial Uncle taught him less about exorcising ghosts and more about protecting himself.
Although some of those methods were, to put it mildly, rather unsavory.
Just as Su Xun had grown accustomed to his Third Senior Martial Uncle’s violence and absurdity, his ghostly and intimidating Second Martial Uncle arrived.
He merely glanced at Liu Lang before taking Su Xun away.
Su Xun began another new experience: helping the underworld enforcers collect souls and searching for evil spirits hiding among the living. Sometimes, he even had to face attacks from several evil ghosts at once.
Yet he remained calm. The Second Martial Uncle was clearly much more reliable than the Third Senior Martial Uncle. Though he rarely spoke, simply standing beside him made Su Xun feel completely at ease.
“No matter what kind of situation you find yourself in, you must make an accurate judgment. Whether they are human or ghost, everyone has a weakness.” Zhou Zheng paused, then looked at Su Xun. “Especially when they believe victory is already theirs. That’s when the weakness they reveal will be most obvious.”
Su Xun nodded.
The Second Martial Uncle did not teach him techniques for warding off evil either. He said that Su Xun’s master had already taught him enough; what he lacked was experience.
What Zhou Zheng taught him instead was about the laws of Heaven, cause and effect, and good and evil.
It was the first time Su Xun had ever gained such a clear understanding of the world.
Not long after, a car arrived to pick Su Xun up. As Zhou Zheng watched him get inside, a rare look of sympathy appeared on his face.
Su Xun was taken to the Eldest Senior Martial Uncle, who was lying in a hospital bed. Even in her condition, her face remained cold and impassive.
“I’ve dealt with the person who wanted to take over your shop,” Gu Qingnan said. Her voice was not loud, but it was perfectly clear. After a pause, she continued, “However, he gave up someone else’s name. You may be interested.”
Su Xun took the note she handed him. The moment he glanced at it, he felt dazed.
“He… Wang Lei couldn’t possibly…”
“People change.” Gu Qingnan interrupted him. “Very few people remain unchanged. Your master was one of them.”
Su Xun stared at the name on the note, slowly crushing the paper into a ball.
Gu Qingnan merely said, “This is your own affair, so I won’t interfere.” She took a deep breath and then struggled to sit up.
Su Xun hurried over to support her, but Gu Qingnan raised a hand to stop him.
“No need. I can manage.”
With great effort, Gu Qingnan leaned against the headboard. “There are things I know that I can’t teach you, and what they taught you is more than enough.”
Su Xun nodded.
To be honest, the senior martial uncles who had suddenly appeared had all treated him very well.
“But since you’re here, you might as well do something for me instead of making the trip for nothing.” Gu Qingnan turned to look out the window.
Su Xun went from being a Taoist priest to becoming Gu Qingnan’s assistant. Gu Qingnan directed everything remotely from her hospital bed while he ran around handling matters. He often had to read documents late into the night, and whenever he encountered something he did not understand, he had to ask her immediately.
Su Xun’s head was spinning. He was beginning to understand why the Eldest Senior Martial Uncle had become so ill. With a workload like this, even a healthy person would eventually collapse!
He also understood the expression Zhou Zheng had worn at the time. It seemed that all of them knew the Eldest Senior Martial Uncle was a workaholic.
Even so, he gritted his teeth and persevered. Under the Eldest Senior Martial Uncle’s guidance, he gradually got the hang of things.
The only thing was that the tasks she assigned him involved breaking up her assets and donating them piece by piece.
Su Xun had never seen so much money in his life, but he never reached out for any of it.
He had always been a person with few material desires.
After finalizing all the details of a charitable foundation, Su Xun went to the Eldest Senior Martial Uncle’s hospital room as usual to give his report. But when he entered and saw the Third Senior Martial Uncle standing there, his gaze shifted to the bed, and the documents in his hands fell to the floor.
The Eldest Senior Martial Uncle was dead.
For some reason, Su Xun felt tears welling up.
During those days, he had been extremely busy. His three senior martial uncles had been very strict with him, but he knew they had been doing it for his own good.
He had known that the Eldest Senior Martial Uncle would die, but when the day finally came, Su Xun still found it difficult to accept.
He waited earnestly for her soul to appear, but the Third Senior Martial Uncle said, “There’s no need to wait. According to the Underworld’s procedures, she has to go through the same process as an ordinary ghost.”
As he spoke, the Third Senior Martial Uncle lit a cigarette.
“Things are different now. Back when your Grand Master was around, your Eldest Senior Martial Uncle would have become an official the moment she went down there.”
He gave a bitter smile.
Su Xun looked at him, thinking about the Grand Master he had never met.
Liu Lang walked over to the window and looked outside. Several cars were scattered around the vicinity. Su Xun had noticed them earlier, but his Eldest Senior Martial Uncle had said there was no need to worry about them.
“A storm is brewing,” Liu Lang suddenly said with a laugh.
Su Xun didn’t understand.
Gu Qingnan’s funeral was a simple affair. She had never married in her lifetime, devoting herself to business and charity. Yet when she passed away, hardly anyone came to see her off.
Su Xun remained in front of the coffin, burning paper offerings. Liu Lang sat by the entrance, smoking one cigarette after another. Then, as a cold wind swept through, Second Martial Uncle Zhou Zheng appeared as well. He merely glanced around before taking his place beside Liu Lang.
The man and the ghost exchanged no words, as though both were lost in thought.
Su Xun’s mind was in turmoil. He remembered what his master had said about the Five Afflictions and Three Deprivations, and he also thought about his own fate—destined to be lonely and without a spouse. Could it be that he had brought about his Eldest Senior Martial Uncle’s death?
He glanced at the Third Senior Martial Uncle standing by the door, then lowered his head and continued burning the paper offerings.
Suddenly, however, footsteps sounded. Su Xun turned and saw someone enter and offer a stick of incense to the deceased Eldest Senior Martial Uncle.
Neither of the two uncles at the entrance even turned their eyes toward the visitor.
Then another person came in.
Su Xun was bewildered. It was already nighttime—why would anyone come to pay their respects at this hour?
He instinctively looked outside, and what he saw left him stunned.
At some point, dozens of people had gathered in the open space beyond the entrance. Their expressions varied, but all of them had a gleeful, almost mocking look in their eyes.
Liu Lang sighed and tossed away the butt of his cigarette. After a moment, apparently unable to bear wasting it, he bent down, picked it up, and took one last deep drag before saying, “Stop pretending. Haven’t you all been waiting for this day?”
Su Xun stared at him in astonishment.
“Your Grand Master offended these people terribly back in the day. Guess why they never dared to lay a hand on us.” Liu Lang turned back with a smile and pointed at the coffin. “Because your Eldest Senior Martial Uncle was still here.”
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.
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!"
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.
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."
