Fang Zhiyi froze for a long while. Looking at his parents with their heads bowed in front of him, he called out cautiously, "Dad? Mom?"
Fang Shucai didn't dare to answer right away. He stared at his son for a moment, and only after seeing that his eyes had indeed returned to normal did he whisper, "Son?"
Fang Zhiyi nodded. "I really didn't do it. Grandpa told me to do it. He said otherwise these people would always think I'm a pushover... I also thought it wasn't good, but I couldn't just ignore Grandpa's words..."
Fang Shucai lowered his head and nodded after a moment. "Listen to your grandpa. After all, he is your grandpa, and my dad."
Only Li Qingmei remembered what Fang Zhiyi had said earlier. "Son, when you helped them out before, they didn't even give you a sip of water?"
Fang Zhiyi bit his lip and smiled foolishly. "Not exactly, Grandpa was exaggerating. I did drink some water. It's mainly that I hurried back right after helping out."
Li Qingmei, after all, wasn't Fang Shucai. Her expression turned ugly. "And they call themselves relatives. You helped them, and not only did they not keep you for a meal, they didn't even offer you a sip of water. Fang Shucai, are these the relatives you talk about?"
Fang Shucai muttered, "I didn't know either... Son, why didn't you say anything before?"
Fang Zhiyi's voice was a bit quiet. "I thought it wasn't a big deal. If I said it, it would make our family look petty."
"These bastards, do they really think our family is easy to bully?" Li Qingmei exploded. She was an honest woman, but she wouldn't just sit in silence watching her son get bullied.
When the relatives called again, Li Qingmei directly snatched the phone. "No time! Not going! Doesn't your family have sons and daughters? Can't you do it yourselves?"
Looking at his mother's state, Fang Zhiyi was a bit dazed. So his parents would stand up for him too?
"See that? When you are wronged, you have to speak up, not just work foolishly. That little bit of face you care about is worth jack shit," his grandpa's voice rang out.
Fang Zhiyi nodded gently.
What he didn't expect even more was that his usually honest father went out right after dinner that day, and when he returned, he was holding a few hundred yuan, which he slapped directly into Fang Zhiyi's hand.
"Dad? What is this?" Fang Zhiyi was very confused.
"The wages for helping your cousin last time! I went straight to their house to ask for it! Hiring a worker costs several hundred a day, but when it comes to you, they use the 'relative' excuse? On what grounds? Does our family eat their food or wear their clothes?" The flush on Fang Shucai's face hadn't faded, showing how agitated he had been. "But don't blame your uncle's family. Your uncle just found out about this too. When I left, he had already kicked your cousin to his knees."
Fang Zhiyi's eyes reddened slightly as he clutched the money in his hand.
"You... hurry up and go back to work tomorrow."
Fang Zhiyi's feelings of being touched were abruptly halted. "Why?"
"Damn it, when I look at you now, I don't know whether to call you son or dad!" Fang Shucai looked incredibly aggrieved. During dinner, he had wanted to show some care for his son, but as soon as he opened his mouth, Fang Zhiyi had roasted him, making him too scared to even utter a word. "Is your grandpa still there?"
Seeing Fang Zhiyi nod, Fang Shucai put on a miserable face. "Dad, pah, son, pah... well, ah! I've done everything I should do now, shouldn't you let your grandson off the hook?"
Fang Zhiyi stared blankly at his dad. After a long while, he said, "Dad, Grandpa says... says..."
"Says what?"
"None of your damn business."
Fang Shucai almost passed out from anger.
Fang Zhiyi really left the next day, practically pushed out the door by the Fang couple. They had learned that Fang Zhiyi wouldn't harm his grandson; he was just worried and wanted to take a look. They figured they might as well let Fang Zhiyi take his grandpa to his workplace to have a look. Maybe once the old man was satisfied, he would leave on his own.
"Grandpa, this is great. Now I can't even go home," Fang Zhiyi said, feeling a bit melancholy.
"None of my damn business. Don't just stay at home all day. Go out, eat, drink, and have fun!"
Fang Zhiyi returned to his rented apartment, waiting to report to his new company tomorrow. Thinking about changing environments, he felt inexplicably nervous. Fortunately, he could communicate with his grandpa in his mind. Listening to his grandpa's arrangements, Fang Zhiyi gradually calmed down and unknowingly fell asleep.
"Looking at it this way, not everyone in the Fang family is a bastard," Fang Zhiyi sighed emotionally as he watched the grandson he had randomly acknowledged fall asleep.
Little Hei said, "They never were all bad. In fact, there are quite a few good people around this kid. It's just that he always tends to overthink things and get stuck in a rut, and he always manages to run into those scumbags who take advantage of him. It's like his personality is especially prone to attracting bad people."
"Not gonna lie, it's pretty relaxing this time. I don't have to do a lot of things myself," Fang Zhiyi felt inexplicably satisfied.
"I never expected you to pretend to be someone else's grandpa. If the real one knew, he would probably crawl out of his grave to fight you to the death."
"When you're out and about, you give yourself your own identity," Fang Zhiyi didn't feel he was in the wrong at all.
Fang Zhiyi was still very honest. On his first day of work, his honest aura attracted the department supervisor. Zhao Qian placed a stack of materials that needed organizing on his desk. "You're new here, so you need to do a bit more. That way you can get the hang of things faster later on, understand?"
Fang Zhiyi nodded, his face full of smiles. "Okay, Supervisor."
After Zhao Qian left satisfied, the person next to Fang Zhiyi said, "Buddy, if I were you, I'd run. The last guy who sat here was driven away just like this."
"Why is that?"
"What do you mean why? She doesn't do a damn thing herself and throws all her work to the newcomers, but she takes all the credit. Tsk tsk, I advise you to start thinking about jumping ship as soon as possible." The man looked at Fang Zhiyi with some sympathy.
Unexpectedly, Fang Zhiyi just gave an honest and simple smile. "It's fine. I'm not very familiar with it anyway, so doing a bit more is fine."
Seeing him like this, the colleague just shook his head and went back to slacking off.
He watched as Fang Zhiyi began to frown and process those documents. He had previously only done factory work and wasn't very familiar with computers, so right now he could only do it slowly, bit by bit.
By the time work ended, Zhao Qian appeared in front of him again. "Are you done?"
Fang Zhiyi felt a bit embarrassed. "Supervisor, I'm not quite familiar with this, so I'm a bit slow..." Seeing Zhao Qian's expression turn ugly, Fang Zhiyi hurriedly promised, "I'll work overtime and finish it in a bit!"
Zhao Qian looked at his sincere expression and slowly nodded.
"You're not going to intervene?" Little Hei was full of doubts.
"No. He really isn't familiar with it, so just treat it as practice." Fang Zhiyi watched his grandson struggling to compare lines of data. "Although this kid doesn't have any special talents, his strength lies in being grounded and willing to work hard. If he wants to stand out and succeed, he has to eat the bitterness he's supposed to eat."
Little Hei nodded.
Fang Zhiyi gradually settled down in the company. He focused wholeheartedly on completing his work, and he gradually became proficient at processing those data files. Since he arrived, Zhao Qian's job had become increasingly leisurely, and at the same time, she didn't forget to keep stringing Fang Zhiyi along with empty promises.
Cheng's father told him he was getting remarried—to a wealthy woman. Cao Cheng realized his time had finally come: he was about to become a second-generation rich kid. Sure, it might be a watered-down version, but hey, at least he'd have status now, right? The wealthy woman also had four daughters!! Which meant, starting today, Cao Cheng gained four stunning older sisters?? But that wasn't even the whole story... "My name is Cao Cheng—'Cheng' as in 'honest, smooth-talking gentleman'!"
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."
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
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.
