The boy quickly put on an apologetic smile. "Young Master Mo, I wasn't cursing at you, I was cursing at Fang Zhiyi... He really doesn't know what's good for him. You follow him around every day, yet he still pulls a long face. He really thinks he's somebody."
"Do I need you to tell me that? He's my buddy, you..." Mo Xuan wanted to declare his stance in front of everyone.
But before he could finish, a dark figure darted out from beside him. The cursing student instantly flew backward and planted face-first into the flowerbed.
Fang Zhiyi pulled back his fist and shook it out.
The scene fell dead silent. It was break time, so quite a few people were lingering in the corridor. They looked at the scene in bewilderment, wondering if their eyes were playing tricks on them. Did that notorious good-for-nothing really just punch someone into a flowerbed?
"You, pay his medical bills," Fang Zhiyi tossed the words at Mo Xuan.
Mo Xuan froze for a moment, then nodded. "Got it, boss."
"What the hell are you looking at? Looking for your daddy? All of you, get lost!" Fang Zhiyi strode toward the library, pointing and cursing at the crowd of onlookers blocking his path. At his gesture, the crowd immediately parted to make way.
It wasn't until Fang Zhiyi disappeared from sight that everyone finally breathed a sigh of relief.
"Barbarian!"
"There's no way someone like him will ever earn the favor of the gods."
"He scared me to death! His eyes were so fierce."
"Thank goodness I never provoked him."
Fang Zhiyi knew perfectly well how to act under different circumstances. In this world where strength reigned supreme, there was absolutely no need for him to play the humble coward.
Mo Xuan found himself astonished by him once again today. His eyes shone brightly as if he had discovered a rare treasure. If he could win Fang Zhiyi over to his side, wouldn't he be invincible?
Spotting a girl sitting not too far away, whose eyes were hidden behind thick bangs as she focused entirely on the book in front of her, Fang Zhiyi walked straight over and plopped down right across from her.
"Hey, do me a favor."
The girl looked up in surprise. She remembered Fang Zhiyi; her only impression of him was that, like her, he loved reading and used to get bullied. Lately, however, the bullies in their class seemed terrified of him.
"What is it?"
Fang Zhiyi casually tossed a book over and pointed at a specific page. "You read a lot. Help me analyze what the missing text on this moth-eaten page might be."
The girl was a bit bewildered. She looked at where Fang Zhiyi was pointing. This was an ancient history book, and much of its content had already been proven false. It was likely just some ancient person's fabricated tales, after all, how could such an old world actually exist? She flipped through the tattered book. The records inside were mostly absurd and fantastical, with claims like "people could sit in iron boxes and fly into the sky," "rice could be cooked without firewood," and descriptions of various inexplicable monsters.
However, she had a good impression of Fang Zhiyi. Unlike the classmates who goofed around all day, he shared her love for books. The girl carefully examined the moth-eaten page, then flipped through the preceding and following pages. Finally, she pointed to a fragmented, hand-drawn map in the book. "Based on the context, as well as a book I read before called the Records of the Empire's Rise, this page is probably saying that the continent we live on now used to be several different landmasses. For some unknown reason, they eventually merged together. Look at this map, the islands and continental plates drawn here look completely different from the shape of our continent today."
She paused for a moment before adding, "But books like this aren't very credible. The author didn't even leave a name. It's probably just the imagination of someone from ancient times. No era has ever lacked people with wild imaginations."
Fang Zhiyi nodded. "Understood. Thank you."
Just then, Mo Xuan, who had followed them over at some point, leaned in and glanced at the two of them. "Oh, this book? I've read it."
Fang Zhiyi looked him squarely in the eye for the first time.
"You've read it?"
Mo Xuan nodded vigorously. "My family has a library too, and there's a book similar to this one... It was full of ridiculous stuff. Like, it said there was this animal with long, slender limbs and patterns on its body, but its neck was even longer than its legs, and it survived by eating leaves off trees. I mean, listen to that, does that even sound real?"
Fang Zhiyi frowned. He had noticed a few unusual things over the past few days, which was exactly why he had been spending all his time in the library.
Hearing Mo Xuan's words, his heart began to pound, a rare occurrence for him. "What else?"
Seeing his serious expression, Mo Xuan suddenly grew a bit flustered. "Uh, well... Oh right! There was this other thing. It was a drawing of a person sitting in some weird contraption, flying in the sky. My grandpa said people in the past just made it up to scam some publishing money. It's way too bizarre."
Fang Zhiyi fell silent for a moment. "Take me to your house."
Mo Xuan was taken aback. "To my house?"
"That's right."
Mo Xuan grinned so widely that his smile nearly reached his ears. Did this mean Fang Zhiyi was finally warming up to him?
Watching the two boys hurry off, the bespectacled girl felt a bit puzzled, but she quickly buried her head back in her book.
Fang Zhiyi wasn't surprised by the sheer luxury of Mo Xuan's estate. Truth be told, compared to the mansions of the nouveau riche he had seen before, Mo Xuan's home could even be considered modest. Perhaps this was just a reflection of their backward industrial era.
He walked into the Mo family library and immediately buried himself in searching through the books. At first, Mo Xuan helped him look, but soon he grew restless, looking exactly like a student with a short attention span.
As Fang Zhiyi focused on reading those "leisure books," an utterly absurd hypothesis began to form in his mind.
"Hey, are you planning to make friends with the male protagonist? You aren't going to kill him?" Little Hei asked.
Fang Zhiyi shook his head. "There's no need to kill him. Compared to those truly disgusting scumbags, he just has dumb luck. Sure, he's a womanizing stallion who abandons his friends for pretty girls, loves to show off, and flaunts his superiority... Actually, maybe I should just kill him." Just listing it out made his teeth itch with annoyance.
But then he glanced over at Mo Xuan, who was dozing off in a chair nearby. Seeing the drool pooling at the corner of Mo Xuan's mouth, Fang Zhiyi shook his head again. Killing an idiot didn't really seem to have any point.
"I feel like the stuff you're reading is awfully familiar..." Little Hei said, hovering around Fang Zhiyi with crossed arms.
Fang Zhiyi suddenly let out a laugh. "If my theory is correct, then this world is truly insane."
"Mom... Mom..." Mo Xuan mumbled in his sleep, still drooling. Fang Zhiyi glanced back at him just in time to see Mo Xuan lean too far and fall to the floor with a loud thud. He quickly scrambled up, rubbing his eyes. It took him a long moment to fully wake up. He looked at Fang Zhiyi with a dazed, almost idiotic expression. "How did I fall asleep?"
"I'm done reading. You can clean this up," Fang Zhiyi said, standing up. But after a second thought, he added, "Thanks." He didn't have any particular plans for the protagonist anymore; this guy really was simple-minded.
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."
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"
