That night, she had an incredibly realistic dream where she was killed by a man she didn't know.
And the cause of it all was Sun Xiaomei.
Cold sweat soaked through Chen Xuan's pajamas. She gasped heavily for air, her gaze involuntarily drifting to her best friend who was still sleeping soundly beside her. She gave a bitter smile; she was being a bit too sensitive.
In the dream, Xiaomei wasn't married but was dating a wealthy man, whereas in reality, she was married to Lin Zhou, and Lin Zhou was a pauper.
"Good advice can't save a doomed soul. I told you there was no need to make a special trip," Fang Zhiyi said, leaning back in his executive chair with utmost leisure.
Little Hei was somewhat puzzled. "Is there something wrong with this woman's brain too?"
"Ah, you just don't understand human emotions. For some people, kindness and trust in others are carved right into their bones."
Little Hei looked at Fang Zhiyi, feeling that he had been quite idle lately. "I don't know if she's kind or not, but you certainly aren't very kind. Honestly, compared to Lin Zhou, the things you do are even more terrifying."
Fang Zhiyi smiled. "Exactly. Haven't I said it before? To deal with a toxic parasite, you either cut ties immediately, or you act even more like a parasite than he does. I really dislike that Lin Zhou. The way things are for him now is exactly what he deserves."
The Lin Zhou he spoke of had just been released.
He was truly down and out now. Not only was he penniless, but he didn't even dare to go home. After thinking it over again and again, he chose to contact Fang Zhiyi. If it hadn't been for him, he never would have gone gambling in the first place!
However, Fang Zhiyi's phone couldn't be reached once again.
Lin Zhou didn't know where Fang Zhiyi lived now either. After turning it over in his mind, he decided he wanted to go home first. His clothes smelled sour, and pedestrians on the street were actively avoiding him, which made Lin Zhou feel very uncomfortable.
But when he knocked on the door and no one answered for a long time, he suddenly remembered that he had already mortgaged the house. Just as he was about to leave in dejection, the door suddenly swung open, and a kitchen cleaver came right at his face.
"I told you! If you want my house, I'll hack you all to death!" Father Lin's furious voice rang out.
Lin Zhou was scared silly. "Dad! Dad! It's me!"
The cleaver stopped just a hair away from the tip of his nose. Seeing him, Father Lin tossed the cleaver aside with a backhand motion. Lin Zhou let out a sigh of relief. "Dad... I..."
Smack! A resounding slap echoed, and then Lin Zhou's hair was grabbed. Father Lin began to unleash his full fury. Having made his living doing manual labor, he still possessed considerable strength despite his older age.
"You bastard! I should have strangled you to death back then! You're exactly like your mother!"
If Lin Zhou's past beatings were just a father disciplining his son, then today, Father Lin truly wanted to beat him to death.
Lin Zhou felt his face go numb, and he took several heavy punches to the chest. His mind was filled with nothing but sheer terror.
Fortunately, Father Lin's furious cursing drew the attention of the new neighbors next door, and so the Lin father and son were once again invited into the police station.
When the police officer saw the two of them, he scrutinized them for a moment before sighing in exasperation. "Are you father and son addicted to being detained?" Coincidentally, he was the one who had handled Father Lin's arrest, and he had also handled Lin Zhou's arrest. Even though Lin Zhou looked somewhat unrecognizable, the officer still managed to identify him as the young man who had just been released earlier that day.
Father Lin cursed continuously as he recounted the family's miserable affairs. The officer felt helpless—no wonder they were father and son.
"Even though you are father and son, your actions already constitute assault. Young man, do you want to press charges?" Family disputes were notoriously difficult to settle, as everyone knew.
Sure enough, despite his resentment, Lin Zhou thought about how he would still need to rely on his old father in the future, and ultimately shook his head.
But Father Lin showed no appreciation, still muttering curses under his breath.
After receiving a stern lecture, the father and son walked home one after the other. Even when they reached their doorstep, Father Lin was still saying, "Get the hell out of here. I don't have a son like you! When I die, I won't need you to take care of my affairs!"
Lin Zhou was scheming about how to sweet-talk the old man into calming down.
But when they stepped up to the door, the sight before them nearly caused Father Lin's blood vessels to burst.
The door and walls were covered in foul-smelling red liquid, spelling out slogans like "Pay Your Debts" and "Home of a Deadbeat." Without a second thought, it was obvious that this was the work of the gang trying to seize the house.
Lin Zhou was stunned at first, but when he saw Father Lin turn his head to glare at him while panting heavily, he immediately knew he should run.
He ran for his life until Father Lin's curses gradually faded away.
However, just as he paused to catch his breath, he was grabbed by someone else.
"Kid, your dad is squatting in that house and refusing to leave, so you're the one who has to pay back the money." The man patted his face. "Tsk, tsk, that old dad of yours hits pretty hard. But taking a beating is basically plastic surgery for you anyway. Let's go, come back with us and let's talk about whether you're paying up or handing over the house."
Trembling, Lin Zhou was dragged away by them. When they passed an intersection, he spotted an opportunity and made a run for it. Whether it was sheer luck or not, he actually managed to escape.
But he didn't know where to go, so he could only wander the streets.
Today was just his lucky day, though, because he was cornered by people yet again.
"Kid, it's time you paid back the money you owe our casino."
Lin Zhou was practically numb by now. How had his life become so miserable?
After taking a few more hits, he suddenly broke down and started screaming, incessantly cursing everyone he knew. His deranged appearance actually startled the thugs. Seeing pedestrians glancing over from a distance, the men feared drawing unwanted trouble, so they dropped a few harsh threats and left.
"Don't think you can run away every time. If you can't cough up the money next time, we won't hold back!"
Lin Zhou slumped weakly to the ground. His phone had also fallen, its screen shattered. He picked it up, wanting to try calling Fang Zhiyi or Sun Xiaomei again, but the phone rang first.
"Kid, the money you borrowed is due. If you don't pay it back..." Lin Zhou hung up the phone.
He wanted to cry but no tears would come.
Because in just that short moment, several more calls came in, all from people demanding debt repayment.
At this point, Lin Zhou was entirely consumed by despair. He struggled to his feet and, as if having made a decision, began walking in a certain direction.
The Sun family was eating dinner. When a knock sounded at the door, Sun Xiaoming impatiently walked over and opened it without even glancing through the peephole. "Who is it? Picking this time to come..."
He was kicked violently, sending him crashing to the floor. Hearing the commotion, Father Sun and Mother Sun stood up simultaneously.
"Who are you!"
Lin Zhou paused for a moment, then let out a wretched laugh.
It was no wonder he was mistaken for a homeless man. Right now, his face was completely swollen and bloodied, his clothes were torn, and his pants were covered in filthy stains.
"I am your creditor!" He flashed the knife in his hand, which he had just stolen from a late-night food stall when the owner wasn't looking.
"Lin Zhou? What are you trying to do..." Mother Sun was both shocked and furious.
But the knife in Lin Zhou's hand did not hesitate. Accompanied by Sun Xiaoming's agonizing scream, he took a stab wound to the body and instantly fainted.
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."
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.”
lity and could only live as an ordinary mortal. He only wished to live a peaceful life. Yet he didn't know— The dog he adopted, because it ate his food, became a legendary demon king. The kitchen knife he casually forged became a peerless divine weapon, causing numerous experts to fight desperately for it. The young disciple he took in became an immortal lord that led an era, due to cultivating the techniques Ye Feng taught him. Even the skeletons he looked down on the most were ominous demon kings that suppressed countless worlds. Many years later, looking at the void shattered with a punch, Ye Feng murmured to himself: It turns out the peerless kings were myself all along...
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.
