Fang Zhiyi's business had been expanding continuously, while Laughing Maitreya's share grew increasingly smaller. Watching newcomers receive dividends nearly equal to his own, he grew resentful and seized the chaos to set his own plans in motion.
The rebellions among the sects had nothing to do with him—he lacked the strength for such schemes. Instead, he chose to target Mei Ruoxue, knowing full well that Fang Zhiyi would eventually hand everything over to her. A mere girl, he thought, letting greed and bitterness drive him to a fatal mistake. Everything unfolded as he predicted: Fang Zhiyi, consumed by rage, embarked on a path of vengeance.
But he hadn’t anticipated Fang Zhiyi’s survival. According to his intelligence, the ancestral masters of those sects were formidable, yet they had only managed to leave Fang Zhiyi severely wounded.
His carefully laid plans crumbled. With Mei Ruoxue unconscious and Fang Zhiyi supposedly dead, he had intended to leverage his knowledge of the business to seize control. Yet, against all odds, the Demon Sect intervened.
Desperate, he sent his most trusted subordinate.
Fang Zhiyi watched as blood trickled from the corner of the fat man’s mouth, recognizing his choice of a dignified exit.
With that, everything came to an end.
The Demon Sect’s rescue of Fang Zhiyi came with a price—they wanted the business.
Fang Zhiyi studied the Demon Sect’s leader before him, a stark contrast to the man he’d met at the martial school. Now, shrewd calculation gleamed in his eyes.
"Has the world’s will faded? The Child of Fortune is dead, so the world returns to normal? Even these background characters are stirring to life?" Fang Zhiyi asked Little Hei, who had only returned the day before, his form bloated and grotesque, resembling some monstrous creature.
After a long pause, Little Hei replied gruffly, "Yes."
Silence stretched between them.
Fang Zhiyi suddenly laughed. "Little Hei, what exactly are you?"
Little Hei remained silent, none of his former simplicity remaining.
"Never mind," Fang Zhiyi said abruptly. "Take the business if you want it. I’m tired."
The Demon Sect leader nodded. "I’ll arrange for someone to attend to your daily needs."
Across the land, Shunfeng Courier and Shunfeng Premium resumed operations, though with heightened security and many unfamiliar faces. Rumors spread that the Demon Sect now held the largest stake in Shunfeng Courier.
This disgusted many in the martial world, prompting numerous former employees to resign. Yet, the impact was minimal—the Demon Sect’s disciples filled the vacancies. Only Jiang Rou remained, managing everything behind the scenes. The Demon Sect knew nothing of the business, leaving the seemingly frail woman as its public face. The martial world settled into an eerie stability.
The Jianghu Daily made no mention of these events, instead publishing trivial news.
Fang Zhiyi no longer appeared in public, staying instead in the old campus of the martial school, keeping watch over the unconscious Mei Ruoxue. A taciturn servant, assigned by the sect leader to monitor him, followed him everywhere.
Students came and went as usual, while Fang Zhiyi lost himself in thought, occasionally chuckling to himself.
Then, one day, a long-absent figure stood before him, bowing respectfully. "Headmaster."
Fang Zhiyi looked up.
Jiang Rou’s hair was tied up, giving her a more capable appearance.
"I’ve regained control of the business."
Jiang Rou, ever Fang Zhiyi’s most brilliant student, had never stopped learning. While her peers had left, unwilling to bear the shame of working for the Demon Sect, she remained unfazed. Fang Zhiyi had taught her that force wasn’t always the answer.
She diligently executed the plans Fang Zhiyi had drafted but never implemented.
Performance evaluations, insurance policies, six-day workweeks—under her guidance, these measures were enacted one by one.
The Demon Sect’s followers, caught in Jiang Rou’s system, grew increasingly busy, sometimes forgetting their true allegiances.
Finally, during a meeting, Jiang Rou opposed the Demon Sect’s third proposal to raise shipping fees.
It was her first act of defiance. The attending elder, faced with her icy demeanor, grew furious—but then he noticed something alarming. The Demon Sect members hesitated at his commands.
The elder left in haste, rushing to report to the sect leader.
After hearing her account, Fang Zhiyi rose like an old man, rubbing his back. "You’ve worked hard. Leave the rest to us." The attendant beside him paled—then his neck was snapped.
The Demon Sect’s forces stormed the city gates, a scene eerily reminiscent of Lin Muran’s arrival years ago.
The sect leader spotted Fang Zhiyi standing alone beneath the city wall.
"Headmaster Fang, what brings you here?" he mocked. These years of Fang Zhiyi’s absence had pleased him—but now this woman dared manipulate his followers?
Fang Zhiyi smiled. "I had to make time. My student is in trouble—how could I ignore it?"
The sect leader’s face darkened. "You dare oppose the Demon Sect? Have you forgotten who saved you?"
Fang Zhiyi shook his head. "I haven’t. But you’ve been repaid tenfold. Haven’t you profited enough these years?"
"Do you have a death wish?"
Fang Zhiyi laughed. "I’ve lived long enough."
The sect leader raised his hand, signaling his men forward. They knew Fang Zhiyi’s strength and didn’t underestimate him.
"Who dares touch our headmaster?" A cry rang out as a dozen old men leaped down from the wall.
Fang Zhiyi glanced at them. "I owe you all an apology."
Lu Zhaoran snorted but said nothing.
He Wugui grinned. "We’ve lived long enough. These years with you showed us wonders we’d never seen—worth it!"
"Exactly. I was already at death’s door. What’s there to fear?"
The sect leader sneered. "A few old men think they can stop me?"
Fang Zhiyi sighed. "Do you know your flaw?"
The sect leader paused.
"Before you awakened, your followers were merely unruly. Then they grew reckless. Now, with wealth and power, they terrorize the martial world." Fang Zhiyi spoke slowly. "Extremes invite downfall."
"Enough nonsense!"
"Who dares touch our headmaster? The Thousand Mechanisms Pavilion’s elite disciples stand with him!" A group charged forth, saluting Fang Zhiyi before turning hostile gazes toward the Demon Sect.
"The Hundred Pleasures Hall’s master has arrived!" A flamboyant entrance, followed by a crowd.
"The Crescent Moon Pavilion of the Mystic Moon Tower comes to vanquish the Demon Sect!"
"The Beggars’ Sect, thirteenth-generation disciples, stand guard for our headmaster!"
Fang Zhiyi’s smile twitched.
"You! Hold it! Which class were you in? You graduated to become a beggar?"
The man scratched his head awkwardly. "No, Headmaster. The Beggars’ Sect is just a name now. We handle transport—canal shipping, mostly."
Fang Zhiyi nodded in approval.
As more names were called, even the prepared sect leader’s expression darkened further.
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."
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!"
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
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.
