"You..." Fang Fengqi wanted to curse right then and there. He was unwilling to curse at Fang Zhiyi, who was, after all, his imperial father, but facing Teng Shuchang, he threw caution to the wind.
However, what met him was a hard slap to the face from Fang Zhiyi.
The resounding smack made even Teng Shuchang flinch. Looking at Fang Fengqi, who had fallen to the ground, he inexplicably felt that Fang Zhiyi was going a bit too far.
"Get out of my sight! Dexiang! Throw him out! Throw him out! I never want to see him again from this day forward!"
Fang Fengqi's eyes cleared up a bit after taking the slap, while Dexiang stood there at a loss for what to do.
"Today, in front of General Teng, I am telling you: I would rather pass the throne to General Teng than give it to you!"
Teng Shuchang waved his hands repeatedly. "I couldn't possibly, I couldn't." He suddenly remembered his own business, but Fang Zhiyi remained highly agitated. "You've learned to challenge your own father, haven't you? With General Teng as my witness today, from now on, I am not your father, and you are not my son! Dexiang! Kick him out!"
With red eyes, Dexiang helped the Crown Prince up and glanced back at Fang Zhiyi.
Fang Zhiyi glared at him. "What are you looking at? Do you think I'm joking? I never take back my words! Tell him to get lost! Never let me see him in the palace again! If you ever appear before me, I'll beat you to death!"
Fang Fengqi clutched his face, glaring at Fang Zhiyi with deep hatred.
The guards stationed at the door blocked Dexiang and the prince. Teng Shuchang watched the emotionally wrought Fang Zhiyi kick over a palace lantern nearby, then waved his hand, signaling the soldiers to make way.
"Your Majesty, he is your son after all..."
"I have plenty of sons!" Fang Zhiyi was still fuming. "Which emperor doesn't have a few sons? What's the big deal?"
"True, true..." Teng Shuchang could hold back no longer. "Um, our ruler has written me a letter."
Hearing this, Fang Zhiyi's eyes lit up. "Is it to pass the throne to you? I knew it! Men, prepare the abdication..."
Teng Shuchang hurriedly covered Fang Zhiyi's mouth. "No, no, no."
Fang Zhiyi looked a bit deflated. "Setting everything else aside, the first moment I saw you, I thought you were fit to be an emperor. How is it not you? Does your king want to come and rule himself? That works too..."
Looking at this absurd emperor before him, Teng Shuchang smiled bitterly and shook his head. "Your Majesty, our King's intention is for you to continue being the emperor, with me temporarily assisting you."
"Huh?" Casting his image aside, Fang Zhiyi plopped down on the floor cross-legged. "No, what are you people thinking? You won the war, yet you still want me to be the emperor. Wasn't the war fought for nothing then?"
Teng Shuchang didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but he still carefully crouched down beside him. "The main issue is that the people of the Li State do not accept us." He looked at Fang Zhiyi's face. "After all, they don't understand the painstaking efforts of our Great Mang, so we must trouble you to continue sitting in this seat."
Fang Zhiyi gave him a sidelong glance and, after a moment, yelled impatiently, "Fine, fine. So what do I need to do?"
Teng Shuchang looked at Fang Zhiyi and said, pausing after each word, "Issue an imperial edict. Tell the citizens of the capital to stop causing trouble. This is for their own good. If it weren't for me keeping things under control, your capital would have already become a river of blood."
His words carried a heavy threat, but Fang Zhiyi seemed completely oblivious to it.
"Those unruly peasants, right? They have absolutely no sense of propriety." Fang Zhiyi thought for a moment. "Alright, I'll write you an edict right now."
"Not for me, for the common people."
"Sure, sure, whatever works." Fang Zhiyi waved his hand, scrambling up from the floor and heading straight for the desk.
Watching his back, Teng Shuchang suddenly felt that the people of the Li Dynasty were truly a bit pitiful, being stuck with such an emperor.
But that was none of his business; what they wanted was the hearts of the Li Dynasty's people.
"The Emperor issued an edict?"
"Yes, telling us to behave ourselves and go about our business, and not to make trouble for the bandit army of the Mang State."
"The Emperor is truly... foolish!"
After the imperial edict was issued, the entire capital fell into a strange atmosphere. Some gnashed their teeth, some cursed the Mang State, and some wept in silence.
But Fang Zhiyi was the Emperor of the Li Dynasty after all. They could rebel against the Mang army, but they still had to give Fang Zhiyi some face.
What happened next placed a heavy boulder upon everyone's hearts.
Accompanied by Teng Shuchang, Fang Zhiyi announced the news that from now on, they would co-rule with the Mang State.
Anyone with a discerning eye could see that this was a trick by the Mang State. They merely wanted Fang Zhiyi to be a puppet emperor, yet Fang Zhiyi seemed completely indifferent to it.
Soon, a new imperial court was assembled. It included former officials as well as newly promoted, unfamiliar faces. However, everyone acted with extreme caution. They knew the current situation was delicate. The Emperor had become a puppet controlled by others; if they made a mistake, how could things end well for them?
There was only one exception: a man named Xie Wanyuan. Because of his unyielding and upright nature, Xie Wanyuan had offended the previous emperor before Fang Zhiyi even ascended the throne and was dismissed from office. Due to his excellent reputation, Teng Shuchang sent people to find him and pulled him back into the court, knowing that such a person could better stabilize public sentiment.
Facing Fang Zhiyi's demand to levy taxes, Xie Wanyuan stepped forward.
"Your Majesty, for whom is this tax being levied?"
Fang Zhiyi sat casually, without the slightest semblance of seriousness. "It's being collected for military expenses, of course. Need you even ask?"
"Then may I ask Your Majesty, for whose army?"
Fang Zhiyi picked his ear. "For my Great General Teng's army, naturally."
Teng Shuchang glanced at Fang Zhiyi and nodded in approval.
"May I ask Your Majesty, why should the people of our Li Dynasty give their taxes to the army of the Mang State?"
Xie Wanyuan's voice was neither servile nor overbearing, yet it revealed a stubborn resolve.
Teng Shuchang's expression darkened.
Fang Zhiyi looked at Xie Wanyuan. "Because... Guards!"
Two soldiers walked in. They first glanced at Teng Shuchang, and only after Teng Shuchang nodded did they cup their hands in salute to Fang Zhiyi.
"Drag him out! Acting like you've been drinking fake wine all day! I asked you to figure out a way to collect taxes, not to come running to me asking this and that."
The two soldiers grabbed Xie Wanyuan by the arms, but Xie Wanyuan's mouth still didn't stop. "Your Majesty! The masses may pay taxes to the Li Dynasty, but they must not pay taxes to a bandit army..."
"You motherf..." Fang Zhiyi jumped up, searching for something on the desk. He finally grabbed the imperial seal and was about to throw it. Fortunately, Teng Shuchang, sitting to the side, was quick-witted and hurriedly stopped him. "Absolutely not, absolutely not."
"What the hell is this! He doesn't know what's good for him at all," Fang Zhiyi cursed under his breath.
Teng Shuchang found it somewhat amusing, and the anger ignited by Xie Wanyuan just now dissipated quite a bit. "Lord Xie is straightforward by nature, which I admire. He just can't wrap his head around it for the moment. Your Majesty shouldn't hold it against him."
Fang Zhiyi, however, suddenly turned to look at him. "Let me ask you something."
villain is the number one simp for the book's leading female protagonist, Shen Wan'er. As expected, he later becomes a tool for the main character to show off and slap faces, ultimately meeting a tragic end with his family ruined and his life in shambles. Fortunately, he awakens the [Universal Pure Love System], which allows him to earn points by performing acts of pure love. To change his fate, Gu Yan makes a decisive choice to seek warmth and companionship with the book's biggest villain—Cold Qingqiu. ........... My name is Leng Qingqiu. To find the murderer who killed my parents years ago, I deliberately blinded myself so that everyone would lower their guard around me. Just as I was secretly accumulating power and capital according to my initial plan, a man walked into my world. "Lengleng, Qingqing, Qiuqiu, which nickname do you prefer?" I don't like any of them. You'd better leave quickly! "Why aren't you saying anything? How about I call you my baby wife?" Leng Qingqiu thinks to herself, this man is truly annoying! (Stubborn pure love warrior + single female lead + true pure love + 1v1)
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."
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.
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.
