Fang Zhiyi nodded and plopped down onto the seat, feeling exhausted.
Strangely, there had been no one at the Roland sisters' home, and Mia still hadn't returned. Considering the labyrinthine streets of the lower city, Fang Zhiyi had no choice but to wait.
"Host, I can provide tracking," the system offered, sensing his impatience.
Fang Zhiyi hesitated. Just once shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Just as he was about to agree, Guan Xiong suddenly patted his shoulder. Fang Zhiyi looked up to see a familiar figure approaching slowly, carrying something in her arms.
When Mia came closer, even Guan Xiong’s expression twisted in shock.
Mia’s face was blank—perhaps she didn’t know what expression to wear. Holding the corpse, she simply stared at Fang Zhiyi before finally speaking in a hollow voice: "Can you help me get justice from them?"
Fang Zhiyi met her gaze and nodded slowly.
The disappearance of the Roland sisters had enraged the Jackals, who took their anger out on the girls’ parents—both had already been seized by the gang.
The sisters, unable to remember their way, wandered the streets alone until they caught the attention of a group of traffickers. Recognizing the two as wanted targets, the traffickers grew excited. In the ensuing chase, the sisters fell into a garbage pit one after another.
For Mia, no one knew the landfill better. By the time she arrived after gathering information, only one body remained—the other, she was told, had been buried beneath the trash.
Knowing the Jackals wanted the sisters alive, the traffickers had no choice but to pretend nothing had happened. If word got out, they’d be in deep trouble.
That night, the group sat around a fire, grumbling about their lost fortune. Suddenly, a voice cut through the darkness: "How much is a life worth?"
"A life? Probably—wait, who are you?!" The man barely reacted before a blow struck his chest. His breath hitched, consciousness slipping away.
Fang Zhiyi’s icy gaze swept over the others.
"You looking to die?!" One man drew his knife, but his limbs went weak—along with his companions’. Mei Ming nervously clutched a small vial, peeking out from behind Fang Zhiyi.
A tall, lean figure emerged from the back door, dragging a subdued man. He nodded at Fang Zhiyi.
"I don’t know how many atrocities you’ve committed, so the punishment might not be enough."
Fang Zhiyi leaned closer to the firelight, the flames casting shadows over the terrified faces.
By the next day, rumors spread through the lower city: the human trafficking ring operating near the landfill had been wiped out, their corpses strung up on lampposts. Residents stepping outside were met with a grisly sight.
Ye Xiao, busy settling disputes among his men, received the report.
"All the bodies were skinned—neck down," the subordinate gestured. "But the doctor said it was an amateur job. The cuts were messy, like multiple attempts."
Ye Xiao frowned.
"And the kids locked in their hideout were all freed."
"Find out who did this," Ye Xiao ordered. He had bigger plans—to unite the lower city, giving him leverage to negotiate with the upper districts. And then there was that girl...
A flicker of longing crossed Ye Xiao’s eyes.
The subordinate continued, "We found the Roland sisters’ bodies. Looks like they were taken by those bastards."
Ye Xiao’s frown deepened before he finally said, "They’re all dead, right?"
The subordinate nodded. After a moment, Ye Xiao added, "No matter. I’ve already found replacements for the old man."
In the sewers, Mia handed Fang Zhiyi a communicator. "This is the receiver. If someone uses it, you’ll hear them."
Fang Zhiyi nodded. "And then?"
Mia patted her large bag. "Then you do the job. I take 70% of the spoils." She never expected Fang Zhiyi to be so lethal—like a natural-born killing machine.
Fang Zhiyi rolled his eyes at her greed. Though days had passed, the Roland sisters’ fate still weighed heavily on Mia.
His team, however, had grown. A burly man named Wang Meng joined, along with Dace, an apprentice from an underground clinic. With Mei Ming and Guan Xiong, he now had four followers—all future key players under Ye Xiao. The "system" had revealed much of the future to him, guiding his moves.
Since witnessing Fang Zhiyi’s skinning technique, Guan Xiong had become noticeably more cautious around him.
The system still relentlessly pitched its features.
"You’ve already recruited several people ahead of time. Next, you should take over some factions. I have targets for you," it urged, frustrated at gaining nothing from Fang Zhiyi.
Fang Zhiyi remained silent.
Then his communicator beeped.
He glanced down and pressed the green button.
"My... my brother’s dead. They tricked him into testing drugs. Can you avenge him? I’ll pay any price."
Fang Zhiyi eyed his idle team and slowly pressed the red button.
That night, in an underground clinic:
"Take these for a month, and you’ll get 10,000 Leke," the bald doctor said, grinning at the two men before him. Leke was the currency of the wasteland city. "You’re the right age for it."
The younger man hesitated. "Any side effects?"
The doctor waved dismissively. "Side effects? My drugs don’t have side effects!"
The older man gritted his teeth and pressed his thumb to the contract.
Seeing this, the younger man followed suit.
After scheduling their next visit, the doctor tucked away the contract gleefully. "Heh, this new drug for the upper city just needs final tweaks. The last test subjects were too weak—couldn’t even last half a month."
The door creaked open. The doctor turned to see his former apprentice, Dace.
"Why’re you back, you waste?" he sneered. "Too scared to inject test subjects, and now you’re crawling back for food?"
Dace adjusted his crooked glasses. "No. I came specifically for you."
"For me?" The doctor scoffed. "You should be grateful I didn’t turn you into a test subject."
A young man stepped out from behind Dace. The doctor squinted, sniffing the air. "Sewer stench... and blood. Brought muscle to rob my clinic?"
As Fang Zhiyi advanced, the doctor remained unfazed. "I’m the Jackals’ physician! You dare—" His words died as two masked figures were hurled into the room, crashing at his feet.
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?!
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!
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."
