But his illusions were quickly shattered.
Before dawn the next day, someone woke him up rudely. Fang Zhizu opened his eyes blearily to see his eldest brother, Zhang Xiong.
"Big Brother?"
"Still sleeping! Get up and feed the chickens!" Zhang Xiong said impatiently. He tossed the basket in his hand onto Fang Zhizu’s bed, muttering curses as he returned to his own room.
Fang Zhizu was dazed. Me? Feed the chickens?
By what right? Fang Zhizu lay back down indignantly. He was the youngest son of the family! They expected him to work the moment he returned?
By now, the novelty of his return had begun to fade. What filled his mind instead were his biological father’s cold eyes, his angry shouts, the dilapidated house, and his crude eldest brother... He had never been treated like this back at the Fang household!
The more Fang Zhizu thought about it, the angrier he became. He grumbled about one person then another, eventually pulling the covers over his head to go back to sleep.
But before long, his door was kicked open with a loud bang. Zhang Daming stood at the threshold, fuming with rage. "You little brat! You dare to slack off when I told you to feed the chickens!" As he spoke, he stepped forward and ripped the quilt off Fang Zhizu.
Fang Zhizu jolted upright and shouted back, "Why should I have to do it? Why don’t Big Brother and the others do it?"
Zhang Daming was so enraged he raised his hand to strike him. Fortunately, Wang Ling hurried forward to pull him back, though she also said, "Sangou, just be a good boy and go feed the chickens. Don’t make your father angry."
Last night, after counting the gift money they had collected, she had discussed the matter with her husband. Their conclusion was to send Fang Zhiyi to town to find a job. He was educated; surely he could find a good position. But as for this third son... he was a bit disobedient and needed to be properly disciplined.
Watching Fang Zhizu climb out of bed with a pout, muttering, "I have a name, it’s not Sangou..."
Zhang Daming exploded. He kicked him hard in the backside. "You don’t have the surname Zhang? Let me tell you, don’t think that just because you ate city food for a few years, you’re actually some young master!"
Fang Zhizu was stunned. Things hadn't been like this just yesterday. The pain brought tears to his eyes instantly.
At that moment, he saw Fang Zhiyi walking past while stretching. He couldn't help but point at him and ask, "Then why doesn't Brother have to feed them?"
"Oh, Ergou is up?" Wang Ling noticed Fang Zhiyi getting up and immediately smiled. "What would you like to eat? Mom will make it for you."
Fang Zhiyi looked over at the scene. Seeing Fang Zhizu clutching his rear, he laughed inwardly. Whether in the original plot or now, you’re just a tag-along. Did you really think you were someone special?
"Anything is fine."
"Alright then." Only in this moment did Wang Ling act more like a biological mother.
Seeing Fang Zhizu standing there in a daze, Zhang Daming gave him another kick. "Still staring? Get lost and feed the chickens!"
"Brother..." Fang Zhizu was starting to feel regret.
But Fang Zhiyi looked at him and said, "How can you make Mom and Dad angry the moment you get home? You have to be obedient." He even shook his head, wearing an expression of profound disappointment.
Fang Zhiyi’s words immediately signaled his stance to Wang Ling and her husband. From that point on, they no longer showed any courtesy to Fang Zhizu.
While Fang Zhiyi finished his breakfast and did some light exercise, Fang Zhizu finally finished feeding the chickens. Since he had never done such work before, he naturally received another round of scolding.
"Brother..." Fang Zhizu had clearly been crying. He walked over to Fang Zhiyi’s side sheepishly. "Take me home..."
Fang Zhiyi was taken aback. This was only the beginning. He couldn't even last a single day?
"Go back to what home? Isn't this your home?" Fang Zhiyi raised his voice. "You can't be like this, Sangou. Mom and Dad worked so hard to bring you into this world and went through so much trouble to find us. You want to leave as soon as you get back?"
The three people inside the house heard him clearly.
Fang Zhizu was stunned, looking at Fang Zhiyi in disbelief.
"You little brat, what do you think you’re doing?" Zhang Daming was the first to jump out. He kicked Fang Zhizu’s backside, sending him sprawling to the ground.
"Yesterday you were calling us Mom and Dad, and today you refuse to do a single thing for the family? You want to go find the human traffickers who kidnapped you, don't you?" Wang Ling dropped her facade completely. "They’re the ones who spoiled you!"
Fang Zhizu, after all, was someone whose rebellious phase had lasted nearly eight years. He gritted his teeth and shouted, "You said you would treat me well, but instead you hit me and make me feed chickens! They might be traffickers, but they never made me work! What kind of biological parents are you!"
Zhang Daming was furious. He reached for a thin bamboo switch. Seeing this, Fang Zhiyi hurried to stop him.
"No, no, no, no." He snatched the bamboo switch from Zhang Daming’s hand.
Fang Zhizu’s eyes brightened slightly. At least his own brother was still looking out for him.
"Use this." Fang Zhiyi handed over a wooden club instead.
........
Fang Zhizu received his first beating since being sold by his parents. Indeed, no matter how much he had acted out in the past, the Fang parents had never struck him once, always trying to persuade him with kind words.
Fang Zhizu’s miserable screams echoed through the surroundings. Unfortunately, their house was some distance from the village, so no one came to intervene.
Zhang Xiong had just woken up. He stepped out and laughed at the sight. "This little bastard should have been thrashed long ago." He was the one least happy about his two brothers returning. If it weren't for the thought that one could work and the other could make money, he would never have agreed to it.
Fang Zhiyi shook his head. "I told you before, one must put filial piety above all else. How could you be like this, Sangou?"
Fang Zhizu lay prone on the bed that day, unable to move. Zhang Daming had struck with extreme cruelty, nearly breaking the wooden club. This beating truly terrified the usually fearless Fang Zhizu.
Not only that, but as he lay injured on the bed, no one brought him medicine or food.
"Medicine? What medicine? What child doesn't get a beating when they’re disobedient? Just endure it and it’ll pass." This was said by Wang Ling, the person he felt closest to.
Fang Zhiyi didn't know what his ungrateful younger brother was thinking in the room, but he felt very refreshed today. Truly, it takes a wicked person to deal with another wicked person.
"Son, when are you going to the town to look for a job?" Zhang Daming got straight to the point.
Wang Ling gave him a nudge and said to Fang Zhiyi with a smile, "You know that your father and I can't do much labor anymore, and your eldest brother has nothing to do. This family depends on you."
Zhang Xiong ate his meal with a dark face, saying nothing. If it weren't for the money, he would have flipped the table long ago.
Fang Zhiyi took a mouthful of rice and smiled. "Let me rest for a couple of days. I need to think carefully about how to make the most money—the kind that can make our family rich all at once."
Hearing the word "rich," except for Zhang Xiong who looked skeptical, the faces of the Zhang couple lit up. Wang Ling, in particular, wouldn't stop praising Fang Zhiyi for his capability.
The sounds of these praises reached the ears of the suffering Fang Zhizu in the inner room. He felt like killing Fang Zhiyi right now.
Why am I lying here while you’re out there eating? Why are we both their sons, yet they treat you so well and treat me like this?
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?!
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
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...
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!
