【You let out an awkward laugh and put on a stern face.】
【“You still have to keep adventuring with me. As for who I’m going to promote, I already have a list.”】
【The Myriad Soul Banner immediately drooped, looking utterly dejected.】
【“Oh, come on, bro! You’re already a second-tier Star Lord. What’s the point of adventuring anymore? Why don’t we just settle down here?”】
【At this point, your influence was actually quite formidable.】
【You controlled two second-tier stars and three third-tier stars.】
【Although each of them appeared to have its own master and was managed by a different faction, you were the true power behind them all.】
【You could now say that you possessed a stellar-level faction!】
【Year Forty-Seven, age seventy-three.】
【A great number of the Heavenly Dragon Kingdom’s senior ministers and regional governors had died, yet the country as a whole did not fall into chaos.】
【Most of the ordinary people in the middle and lower classes were human. Humans had no interest in whether those alien lords lived or died.】
【The humans also understood their own position. Their strength was still weak, and they had only just secured enough food, warmth, and basic conditions for cultivation. This was not the time to stir up trouble.】
【Moreover, the Kindling Society was secretly guiding matters among the people, ensuring social stability.】
【The various alien factions stirred for a while.】
【But you swiftly appointed replacements for every vacant office. They were all trusted subordinates you had chosen long ago.】
【These people were merely average in ability, and their cultivation was nothing special. They had only one particularly outstanding quality—they loved flattering you.】
【To outsiders,】
【it looked as though a group of sycophants had risen to power through slick tongues and relentless flattery of the emperor.】
【Wasn’t it obvious who had killed Ya Dada and the others?】
【Whoever benefited from their deaths was obviously responsible!】
【The new batch of court ministers had all been carefully selected by you. They were relatively mild toward humanity—or, more accurately, they simply did not care.】
【They did not care about ancestral rules or any such nonsense. As long as the humans did not rebel, they would faithfully carry out every policy you established.】
【These flatterers would never contradict you, either. As long as you did not help humanity too openly—as long as you refrained from slapping “I’m human too” across your face—they would assist you in governing Firelight Star according to your wishes.】
【After observing them and listening to their inner thoughts for a year, you were certain that you had chosen the right people.】
【As for whether circumstances would change ten years, twenty years, or even a century from now…】
【As long as humanity could cultivate peacefully for that long, it would be difficult for the alien ruling class to cause much trouble by then.】
【After all, the Kindling Society existed among the people. They would make effective use of every available force.】
【The Ironblood Sect.】
【A second-rate sect on Firelight Star.】
【Before the war of unification began, they controlled the territory of several villages and towns. The Firewood Sect was one of their subordinate vassal forces.】
【Now that the world had been unified, the Heavenly Dragon Kingdom had established new rules: all land belonged to the Heavenly Dragon Emperor, and no sect or faction was allowed to retain territorial autonomy.】
【The Ironblood Sect had once lived fairly comfortably by exploiting the people in its territory and squeezing its subordinate forces.】
【Now, however, it had no territory left.】
【More than half of its own disciples had been dragged into the war as cannon fodder, never to return.】
【With humanity rising rapidly under the court’s support, they were no longer easy prey.】
【The remaining members of the Ironblood Sect were living from hand to mouth, miserable beyond words.】
【“Sect Master! We can’t even get a proper drink these days. If you can stand this kind of life, the rest of us can’t!”】
【Ironblood Sect Master Bull Tri-Horn sighed as he sipped the tea in the large bowl in his hands.】
【“What are you planning to do?”】
【“We’ll go rob the town at the foot of the mountain!”】
【“Wouldn’t that make us bandits?”】
【“That’s what we used to do!”】
【“Back then, it was called collecting taxes. Now only the imperial court is allowed to collect taxes. If we take even a scrap of the people’s wealth, our entire clan will be executed… Damn it, the laws hanging over our heads are harsher than those imposed on humans! What kind of race is actually ruling this country?”】
【“Heh. At any rate, it isn’t us bull-headed folk!”】
【A mastermind emerged among the bull-headed men. He pointed one hoof toward the sky, and a light bulb seemed to shine above his head.】
【“Sect Master, Sect Master! I have an idea! We can knock out some officials, put on their uniforms, and pretend to be them while collecting taxes in the town below! Then we’ll have money to buy meat and liquor!”】
【Bull Tri-Horn looked at the bland, tasteless tea in his bowl, then smashed it onto the ground.】
【“Good! That’s exactly what we’ll do!”】
【Dozens of bull-headed men grabbed their weapons. But just as they reached the mountain gate, a mass of black clouds descended from the sky. The terrifying pressure left them unable to move.】
【“Th-this…”】
【Bull Tri-Horn raised his head and took a closer look.】
【Standing atop the black clouds, lightning swirling around him and clad in a black dragon robe, was none other than the current Heavenly Dragon Emperor.】
【“Oh, gods! The emperor is here!”】
【“Long live His Majesty! Long live His Majesty! Long, long live His Majesty!”】
【“We failed to welcome Your Majesty from afar! What a terrible offense!”】
【Bull Tri-Horn and the others dropped to the ground in perfect unison.】
【You swept your gaze over them and pronounced their sentence with an impassive expression.】
【“Every member of the Ironblood Sect has committed the capital crime of impersonating officials to collect taxes. The sentence is immediate execution!”】
【Bull Tri-Horn froze.】
【“Your Majesty! We didn’t do it! We—we only intended to! We haven’t actually done anything yet! Surely that doesn’t warrant the death penalty?”】
【“Intending to do it is forbidden too! Death penalty!”】
【You raised your hand, summoning thunderclouds that filled the sky. Black lightning reduced the mountain where the Ironblood Sect stood to level ground—this was Si Duo Duo’s divine art.】
【The Ironblood Sect was no more.】
【Among the pile of charred steaks, you found a lightning-shaped horn wrapped in faint electric arcs.】
【That horn had previously been attached to Bull Tri-Horn’s forehead.】
【But it was not a natural horn. He had found it somewhere and attached it to his forehead himself, allowing him to unleash several electrical techniques.】
【“I blasted it with that much force, yet there isn’t even a mark on the horn. This thing definitely has a story. I failed to investigate it in the previous simulation. I’ll look into it this time…”】
【You put the horn away.】
【With that, everything that needed to be done on Firelight Star was finished.】
【Now, all you had to do was wait for A-Dou to be born.】
【Year Forty-Eight, age seventy-four.】
【After eliminating the old generation of powerful nobles, you no longer needed to devote yourself to political intrigue at court.】
【Your mind became much more relaxed.】
【You were surrounded by a crowd of flatterers who showered you with sweet words every day. Their work abilities were basically adequate as well, and they could help shoulder much of the burden of governing the kingdom.】
【You decreed that court would convene only once a month, when you would listen to your ministers’ reports.】
【The rest of the time, you could do whatever you wanted.】
【If you felt like doing something productive, you could simply lie atop the resources of the entire planet Firelight Star and cultivate.】
【If you wanted to relax, your subordinates would come up with all kinds of entertainment for you.】
【Being an emperor was unbelievably comfortable.】
【There was only one unpleasant thing.】
【The harem.】
【Every day, you had to look at a group of heavily made-up female dragonkin. They made your stomach turn.】
【So you never go to the imperial harem.】
【The common folk widely proclaim that the Heavenly Dragon Emperor has no interest in women and devotes himself entirely to state affairs, working thirteen double-hours a day. Truly, he is an emperor without equal throughout the ages!】
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
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.
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
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.
