Wine Sword Immortal glanced up at Fang Zhiyi, then vanished in an instant, only to reappear moments later in his seat, picking up his wine gourd and taking a carefree swig.
Fang Zhiyi slowly looked down to see a small handful of copper coins placed before him.
Well, he had overestimated him.
"That's still quite admirable! Doing righteous deeds without leaving a name, truly the demeanor of a great hero!" someone praised.
Wine Sword Immortal looked rather pleased with himself.
Fang Zhiyi took a deep breath. "Doing good deeds without leaving a name? Then who the hell will know it was us who did it? Huh?"
Everyone turned their heads in unison to look at Fang Zhiyi, their eyes filled with confusion.
Meanwhile, the youths who had fled Rainmist City were now grumbling and cursing.
"Damn Treasure Pavilion, a bunch of cowards!"
"They actually reported us to the authorities! Aren't they afraid of becoming a laughingstock?"
"Exactly!"
"And those officials are in cahoots with them! Clearly, the Treasure Pavilion was bullying people, yet the constables came to arrest us!"
Only Hua Nongying seemed worried. "When we escaped, we injured those constables... will that..." she trailed off.
Li Wenyan reassured her, "Don't worry, Nongying. If the sky falls, your big brother will hold it up." He was confident in the influence of his family backing him.
Hua Nongying looked at the handsome youth before her and nodded firmly. Watching them chat and laugh, she felt a sense of unreality. Was this what it felt like to have companions?
"What are you spacing out for? Hurry up! I'm starving!" someone yanked her arm roughly.
"Right!"
If only they could stay this carefree forever. She liked them.
"I thought you'd just kill them outright," Little Hei said, arms crossed as he floated beside Fang Zhiyi.
Fang Zhiyi shook his head. "With their family backgrounds—this disciple, that second-generation heir—if I really killed them, wouldn't I be signing my own death warrant too?"
Little Hei nodded. "But what are you doing now?"
Fang Zhiyi was hunched over, drawing diagrams. "Making preparations."
"Preparations?"
Fang Zhiyi paused. "Actually, even without those privileged heirs, the original host's plan to rebel was a dead end from the start. Was he counting on a bunch of desperate outlaws to pull off a rebellion? Or on ordinary civilians who don't even have spiritual energy?"
He picked up the completed diagram on the table, examined it, then put it down to make a few adjustments.
After finishing the revisions, Fang Zhiyi held up the diagram again, muttering to himself, "Hoist the tiger's skin as a banner, borrow the prestige of a mighty name."
Meanwhile, the youths, now in another location, began investigating the local situation. They were now convinced the Treasure Pavilion was a major villain! Sure enough, after Ye Qingzhou, the ninth brother, conducted his inquiries, they found the largest dyeing workshop here was also a Treasure Pavilion enterprise.
"If it's the Treasure Pavilion, then there must be something fishy going on here!" Lin Wanqing stated without hesitation.
Ever since learning the Treasure Pavilion was the actual controller of the Listening Rain Pavilion, the youths had firmly labeled the Treasure Pavilion as evil.
The plot node from the original story remained unchanged. As usual, Lin Wanqing encountered that hurried delivery boy, who accidentally dirtied her clothes but didn't apologize. Furious, with just a thought, the poison from her fingertips transferred onto the boy.
That night, the workshop boy itched all over, a maddening itch that seemed to seep into his very bones.
Fortunately, the workshop manager, the poison-embroiderer Yue'e, returned to the workshop, bringing with her the graduation certificate awarded by that Lord.
Though unsure of its purpose, Yue'e still solemnly found a place to display her Lord's reward before rushing to see the afflicted boy.
With one glance, she confirmed it: the perpetrator was a master of poison.
However, this didn't stump her. The "Poison Immortal Art" Yue'e practiced was known for its insidious nature; her very body carried a seven-part toxicity. Faced with such methods, she merely exerted a slight effort and eradicated the foreign poison from the boy.
Recalling the Lord's words...
"They should find their way to you soon."
She hadn't understood before, but now her admiration for Fang Zhiyi knew no bounds.
The next day, the cloth shop opened for business. Among the usual merchants and scattered customers were two unfamiliar young faces.
Just by getting close, Yue'e felt a flicker of surprise. Though young, these two radiated sharpness. The sturdy boy was at least at the Fourth Rank or above—such talent at his age was rare in the world. As for the girl...
Before Yue'e could speak, the girl suddenly smiled, a sweet smile.
"Shopkeeper, nothing strange has happened here, has it?"
Yue'e understood. Given her usual temperament, a fierce fight today would have been inevitable. Targeting a mere delivery boy? That was just bullying.
As her fingers twitched, she suddenly remembered Lord Fang's instructions and forcefully halted her spiritual energy flow. She smiled and said, "Nothing out of the ordinary. Are you two here to buy cloth?"
Lin Wanqing frowned slightly. Nothing happened? Or was she pretending nothing happened? She stared intently at Yue'e, trying to find a crack in her expression, but ultimately was disappointed, forming her own judgment.
"Truly evil people. Not a flicker of emotion even after a worker dies, treating human life like grass!"
She had come today to pick a fight. Ye Qingzhou had already discovered this workshop had taken in large quantities of hallucinogenic grass; surely they were up to something shady! But without proof, they needed the other party to offend them first, so Big Brother and the others would have a reason to act.
Lin Wanqing began unleashing her specialty, hands on hips, dripping with sarcasm as she criticized the cloth for being poor, the people for being bad, the feng shui for being awful, and the proprietress for being even worse... She talked until her mouth felt dry.
But the other party was strange. Several times she felt sure Yue'e was about to strike, but then she held back at the last moment.
It was just odd.
If pointing at someone's nose and cursing them out wasn't so undignified, she would have tried that.
Out of options, Lin Wanqing shot a disdainful glare at Zhao Jinglei beside her. This idiot didn't even say a word, just stood there like a post!
Watching her storm off, Zhao Jinglei was also bewildered. Why was she angry again?
Seeing the two leave, Yue'e let out a long sigh of relief. That was close; several times she had almost attacked... Then she felt puzzled again. What did those two youngsters want?
Who would have thought they'd return the next day, this time with an extra person. The group looked at the cloth, picking and choosing, the girl still full of cutting remarks. Yue'e was getting used to it and didn't engage, focusing instead on attending to other customers entering the shop.
From start to finish, Lin Wanqing and the other two found nothing wrong with the cloth and had to slink back to their hideout once more.
"No problems... means they've hidden the suspicious cloth," Li Wenyan quickly concluded.
"But that proprietress is like a turtle, she won't even argue with me. There's no way to pick a fight," Lin Wanqing said, feeling somewhat defeated. After all, whether they disliked the other party or wanted to uncover the conspiracy, they still needed a proper pretext.
Li Wenyan smiled. "Second Sister, you're too bound by rules. When dealing with these kinds of people, there's no need to follow the rules." His slender finger traced across the table, dipped into some tea, and wrote a single character on the wooden surface.
saw a female celebrity tied up and stuffed in the trunk! Little did he know, countless cameras were aimed at him at this moment - this was a new type of reality show. The first randomly selected passerby was caught in less than an hour. But when Xu Moru was selected, things started to take an unexpected turn. "Damn, this isn't how the script goes. This Xu Moru is too bold, he's not following the rules at all." "Crap, is this guy taking it seriously?" "The female celebrity has been scared to tears!"
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."
with countless casualties. As a top-tier gamer, Liu Xuan volunteered to join the fight, intending to dominate with his skills, but instead he obtained the hidden class: [Pacifist]. Unable to attack. Unable to use active skills. Fortunately, with each level gained, he acquired a new passive skill. And so, armed with a body full of passives, Liu Xuan slaughtered his way through the battlefield of ten thousand races! [You attacked Liu Xuan] [You gained the debuffs: 'Poison', 'Fear', 'Burning', 'Bleeding', 'Freeze', 'Silence', etc.] [Your attack speed has been reduced by 99%] [Your armor and magic resistance have been reduced by 99%] Warriors of the Ten Thousand Races: How the hell am I supposed to fight this?!
