"Little Hei, I've noticed something."
Little Hei scratched its head: "Go ahead, Host."
Fang Zhiyi grabbed it: "You haven’t been assigning tasks lately?"
Little Hei looked somewhat embarrassed: "Host, you already know the tasks were fake..."
"Even games need an end goal, right? Huh?"
Little Hei pondered for a moment: "Well, everything you’ve done seems to fit the conditions. Honestly, I feel like the worlds you’ve passed through have improved a lot."
"And another thing! What’s with this appearance?" Fang Zhiyi shook Little Hei vigorously.
Though still pitch-black, Little Hei had now taken on a humanoid form—specifically, the shape of a little girl. And the more Fang Zhiyi looked, the more familiar it seemed!
"Hehe... Out of all the worlds, I thought Yue Anyao was the prettiest... Don’t you like it, Host?" Little Hei wriggled free and spun gracefully in place.
"Fine... Do as you please." Fang Zhiyi waved his hand dismissively.
When Fang Zhiyi opened his eyes again, he found himself still floating in midair.
"What’s going on?" Before he could react, a series of images flashed before his eyes like scenes from a film.
On the Dragon Boat Festival in the 18th year of the Republic, the square in front of the opera stage in Qinghe Town was packed with people. Fang Zhiyi, his face painted for the performance, was singing the line "Red silk veils the face as the lute strings snap" when his gaze was drawn to a figure by the riverbank. The person seemed to be pressing something into the water. Just as the drumbeats paused, the faint cry of a baby echoed through the air.
Fang Zhiyi’s heart lurched, reminded suddenly of his own sister who had died young. He hurriedly finished his part and retreated backstage. The Old Troupe Leader, though confused, quickly signaled two other martial actors to take over. Fortunately, the townsfolk here weren’t seasoned opera-goers, so no one noticed the switch.
Not long after, Fang Zhiyi emerged from the river, soaked to the bone, cradling a baby girl with utmost care.
A spectator nearby, puffing on a long pipe, sneered: "An actor meddling in others’ affairs—aren’t you afraid of losing your voice?" The words were cruel—for an opera singer, losing one’s voice meant losing one’s livelihood—but Fang Zhiyi ignored them.
His focus was entirely on the infant in his arms. He gently wiped the water from her face, and only when she cried again did the weight in his chest ease.
That night, he brought the baby back to the rundown temple where the troupe was staying. He cleared a relatively clean room, changed the child out of her soaked swaddling clothes, and used his savings to buy goat’s milk from the town. Once everything was settled, he watched the peacefully sleeping infant before drifting off himself.
But before dawn, the sound of pounding fists erupted at the door. Moments later, seven or eight burly men barged in, clubs in hand, followed by a hunchbacked old man.
The old man’s eyes landed on Fang Zhiyi—and the baby. His face twisted in fury: "You’ve ruined my fortune! Beat him!"
Fang Zhiyi shielded the infant as the blows rained down. Within moments, a sickening crack echoed—his arm had snapped. Outside the temple, villagers gathered to watch, but none intervened. Even his fellow troupe members stood silently by.
"That actor must have a death wish, crossing Squire Ma’s family!"
"Exactly! The blind fortune-teller said that girl’s birth chart curses her father. She should’ve been disposed of."
Others egged them on: "Hit him harder!"
When Fang Zhiyi was on the verge of collapse, the Old Troupe Leader finally rushed forward: "Please, sirs, have mercy! He won’t survive this!"
The thugs hesitated, glancing at Squire Ma. The old man met Fang Zhiyi’s blood-streaked gaze—his face still half-painted, eyes bleeding yet unyielding. A chill ran down Squire Ma’s spine. With a cold snort, he turned and left, his lackeys trailing behind.
The crowd dispersed.
Fang Zhiyi died that same day. The Old Troupe Leader, moved by sentiment, enlisted a few martial actors to carry his body out for burial under cover of night. In their homeland, it was said that actors who died unjustly must be buried after dark—or else invite misfortune.
When the group returned from the mass graves, the Old Troupe Leader remembered the baby. Staring at the child Fang Zhiyi had died protecting, he hardened his heart and led the troupe away before sunrise.
The horror began on the seventh night after Fang Zhiyi’s death—the night of the "Return." The sound of opera singing suddenly echoed from the abandoned stage, though the troupe had long since left. A night watchman, curious, crept closer—only to see a lone figure in bloodstained robes, sleeves fluttering, singing softly to itself.
"The moon bends, the boat sways, fear not the river’s chill~"
The watchman died that night, his corpse sprawled before the stage, skin mottled with blue-black patches.
Whispers spread through the town: The actor had returned. He had come for vengeance.
The rumors proved true. Every seven days, the stage would ring with song, and sodden footprints would appear from the wings to the backstage—as if someone were pacing. And with each performance, another life was claimed.
First was Zhao Si, the villager who had spotted Fang Zhiyi rescuing the baby. Then one of Squire Ma’s thugs. Every week, another death—each more gruesome than the last.
Panic gripped Qinghe Town. But Fang Zhiyi’s luck ran thin: A wandering Taoist arrived, and after accepting Squire Ma’s silver, he performed rites to seal the stage. From that day, the singing ceased, and the killings stopped.
Yet the Taoist himself was later ambushed and slain by bandits on the road.
Eighteen years passed. The town had nearly forgotten the tale—until Squire Ma’s son, Ma Xiaolou, decided to throw a lavish celebration for his father’s 79th birthday. He hired a renowned opera troupe and ordered the stage restored. The old legends? Mere superstition, he scoffed.
The troupe arrived, but the aged leader seemed uneasy. He murmured cryptically to Fang Xiuyun: "This place... you should see it for yourself."
Fang Xiuyun didn’t understand—until the night’s performance began. The moment she sang her first line, her body was no longer her own.
The celebratory lyrics twisted into something darker:
"Seven feet of silk sleeves, now ropes of vengeance; ten years upon this stage, my coffin~"
Terror gripped her, yet she couldn’t stop her own voice. A mournful wail escaped:
"Oh Earth, you blind judge—how dare you call yourself Earth!
Oh Heaven, you mistake the wise for fools—shame on you, Heaven!"
The words carried a chill that made the villagers shudder.
Backstage, the Old Troupe Leader trembled as he raised a hand: "It’s him... It’s him!"
Fang Zhiyi had finally found his moment. After the song ended, the slaughter began. The villagers now knew—the legend was real. The actor’s vengeful spirit still haunted them.
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."
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?!
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...
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.
