Zhao Hu couldn't be bothered to entertain him. With a wave of his hand, several young, able-bodied men stepped forward and pinned down the father and son.
Both he and Sun Jiahao were tied up. The other people who had come to get their food watched with expressions of amusement, though some looked panicked.
"Let go of my son..." Old Hag Sun rushed over upon hearing the news. "You are bullies! Bandits! You..."
Zhao Hu pointed a finger at her. "Take this old thing too!"
"You... mmm..." Old Hag Sun's mouth was quickly covered.
All three were dragged onto a rubber raft. The Sun family's daughter-in-law wanted to step forward to say something, but an older woman beside her yanked her back. "What, are you addicted to being bullied by them?"
The daughter-in-law looked at her glaring husband and mother-in-law. Remembering how she was still being ordered around and humiliated by their family even now, she lowered her head and stepped back.
Everyone was confused until they saw the raft stop at the base of another building. Zhao Hu threw the three of them off, thoughtfully untying their ropes first and carefully placing the ropes back on the raft. In this day and age, everything had to be conserved.
Survival instincts kicked in, and the three members of the Sun family struggled to swim toward dry ground. Fortunately, they had been thrown off very close to the building.
"A lot of people died in that building before," someone muttered.
"Crazy, they're all crazy."
From behind Zhao Hu came the loud curses of Old Hag Sun, insulting his ancestors to the eighteenth generation. Zhao Hu merely picked his ear. He was just following Fang Zhiyi's orders, and he knew that whatever Fang Zhiyi arranged was usually foolproof.
"How can you do this! We are all one community! It's one thing for you to enjoy some privileges, but to actually throw them out! They are human beings too! They have their own rights!" Just as Zhao Hu docked, a man stood up.
Zhao Hu looked up and sized him up, finding him unfamiliar. He figured the man must be one of those neighbors who usually hid in their own apartments.
Seeing him stay silent, the man put his hands on his hips. "I thought you set up this committee to protect everyone's interests. Looking at it now, you're just a dictatorship!"
Fang Zhiyi's voice drifted down from above. "That's right, it is a dictatorship. What about it?"
The man turned around, his face full of arrogance. "I originally thought you were good people. Bah, bullshit!"
Fang Zhiyi wore a smile. "Good people? Good people deserve to be morally kidnapped by you? Good people owe you and should risk their lives for you? By the way, when exactly did I ever say I was a good person? I'm quite curious." He winked at Zhao Hu.
Before the man could react, he was suddenly pinned down by Zhao Hu, and two young men stepped forward to tie him up.
"Since you already know we're the bad guys, who gave you the courage to speak to me like that?" Fang Zhiyi teased.
"Don't waste breath on him. Let him go pursue his human rights somewhere else," Chen Rui chimed in. He had clearly seen the reality of their situation. If Fang Zhiyi hadn't stepped up that day, this building would probably have descended into chaos long ago.
Zhao Hu and the others made another trip. All the spectating residents of Building 17 watched as the man hurled abuse, but then several fierce-looking men appeared behind him. He started begging for mercy, even bursting into tears.
"If anyone feels this is unfair, you can go pursue fairness elsewhere. I won't stop you, really." Fang Zhiyi walked away without looking back.
The residents looked at each other, clicking their tongues, before dispersing to resume whatever they had been doing.
From a distance, Chen Rui looked at the place where the Sun family had been dropped off. At this moment, Old Hag Sun was gesturing wildly, talking to the people in that building and pointing back toward them. He felt a bit uneasy.
Night fell. The rain was still coming down, though it was much lighter than in previous days, and the water level had stopped rising.
Over a dozen dark figures clutching pieces of wood jumped into the water. Their target was Building 17.
That old woman had said that everyone in Building 17 had enough to eat, with both meat and vegetables. This tempted them. Why should Building 17 get to live the good life when they were all in the same residential complex?
The thugs stood up one by one in a tenth-floor living room of Building 17. The leading man pulled out a kitchen knife tucked into his waistband.
"Brothers, let's rob them!" At his shout, a flashlight beam suddenly snapped on, hitting him squarely in the face. Blinded by the glare, the man squinted. "Who! Who's there!"
"Your daddy." Zhao Hu walked down the stairs, his face full of anger. In his hand, he held a spear crafted by Fang Zhiyi, which was essentially a mop handle combined with a kitchen meat cleaver.
Seeing only one person, the intruders instinctively revealed vicious expressions, but they quickly froze. Behind Zhao Hu, many more people appeared one after another. The staircase was soon packed, and judging by the sounds, even more people were coming down the corridor.
"Y-you..."
"Did that Sun family only tell you we have food, but forget to mention that we're pretty united?" Zhao Hu sneered.
"You..."
"Beat them to death!" someone shouted.
The group at the front raised their homemade spears in unison and charged. Some of the panicked intruders turned and ran. Facing opponents who outnumbered them and were better equipped, they had completely lost their will to fight.
"What are you panicking for! We've killed people before! Can't you see these guys' hands are shaking?" the leading man bellowed.
He was right. Unlike these thugs, most of the residents in Building 17 had no blood on their hands. Even when facing these robbers, they were a bit afraid.
The man's shout snapped his accomplices back to reality, and they began to brandish their knives, confronting the residents of Building 17.
"What are you standing around for? Attack! There's food, drinks, and women!" The man's face twisted, his eyes gleaming like a vicious wolf.
But just as he finished speaking, an axe came spinning through the air and buried itself directly into his face. The man, who had just been trying to rally his troops, fell backward into the water, splashing wildly.
For a moment, everyone froze, unanimously looking at the figure in the stairwell.
"Why waste your breath on them? Don't tell me you feel sorry for these guys," Fang Zhiyi said, clapping his hands together.
Zhao Hu roared, "Attack!"
With Fang Zhiyi taking the lead, they finally mustered up their courage.
Fang Zhiyi didn't make any further moves. He just watched. The able-bodied young men in Zhao Hu's guard unit were more decisive than the rest. From their initial hesitation to their subsequent fluidity, it seemed they had finally crossed that mental hurdle.
Only a few of the thugs who had come from Building 14 managed to swim back desperately. Looking at the corpses before them, many people threw up.
"Don't throw up now, or you'll just end up with an empty stomach," Fang Zhiyi said nonchalantly. Hearing this, some actually clamped their hands tightly over their mouths.
"Tsk, in the original plot you guys were pretty ruthless when it came to killing. Why have you all turned into good people now that I'm here?" Fang Zhiyi muttered to himself, turning around to go home and sleep.
uld barely embark on the path to immortality. Just as he was on the verge of death, his golden finger awakened. No matter whether it was poison, drained blood and vital energy, diminished lifespan, or any other physical debuff caused by paying a price—once midnight passed, everything would be refreshed. From then on, whenever someone asked what kind of person Chu Ran was, the answer was simple: Forbidden arts that other cultivators dared not learn? Chu Ran would learn them. Prices that even demonic cultivators dared not pay? Chu Ran would pay them. Lifespan that even righteous cultivators dared not burn? Chu Ran would burn it. All the blood essence in his body? Take it. Want both his hands and feet? He would cut them off and send them to you. You say he’s finished? He wasn’t built to sit idle. You think he’s gone mad? No—he was simply waiting for midnight. From that day onward, Chu Ran would respect neither Heaven nor Earth, bow to neither gods nor ghosts. He had only one wish: For midnight to arrive a little sooner.
shall grant"] ["Inscribing the glory of our race upon tombstones"] ["All that is threatened, I shall protect"] How his younger sister sees her brother: A brother who only makes eye contact once a day, mostly fading into the background as he tinkers with who-knows-what in his room all day. Their life paths should have remained largely separate. Until one day. Su Qi created an equipment card for his never-met "online girlfriend." His sister fell into silent contemplation upon receiving the "white stockings." [Card can be upgraded] [Upgrade by fulfilling any of the following conditions] [Condition ①: Consume one hundred higher-tier cards] [Condition ②: Complete one 'Heart-Pounding Adventure'] What constitutes a Heart-Pounding Adventure? [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Beginner Level): Equip the card and invite 'Su Qi' to admire it.] [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Easy Level): Equip the card, invite 'Su Qi' to touch it, and analyze the equipment's texture.] [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Entry Level): Equip the card and invite 'Su Qi' to...] [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Challenge Level): Freely combine the words 'Brother' 'Out' 'Brother' 'Me' 'Please' into a complete sentence...] "Please help me analyze both teams' mistakes in this match, brother..." His sister exhaled in relief—surely... surely there couldn't be anything more difficult? [Heart-Pounding Adventure (Suicide Mission Level): Sneak a peek at the names of the galgames in 'Su Qi's' hidden E-drive folder]
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."
