Inside the top-secret conference room.
A deathly silence reigned.
At that instant, the air itself seemed to freeze solid.
Huo Zhenshan’s hand, holding his teacup, stiffened in midair.
The tea in the cup even rippled faintly as his muscles tensed without warning.
The imposing demeanor Nie Changkong had just put on instantly collapsed.
Those eyes of his, accustomed to weathering storms and waves, now widened round. His eyeballs nearly fell straight onto the table forged from deep-sea meteorite iron.
The two men stared at Su Yu as though he were an alien.
Their minds buzzed.
Cash it out?!
A nation-defending battle armor set, and a future slot for a god-tier mech.
And you want to convert them into cash?!
Nie Changkong felt his blood surge in his chest, his throat going dry.
He stared fixedly at Su Yu’s hard, stern, utterly serious face.
This kid wasn’t joking!
He meant it!
“Su Yuan…”
Nie Changkong swallowed, his voice trembling.
“Do you know what you’re saying?”
“That’s nation-defending battle armor!”
“That’s a mech capable of increasing combat power tenfold, perhaps even a hundredfold, in the future!”
“That is a national treasure forged from the finest stellar meteorite iron and abyssal artifacts that Great Xia has to offer!”
“Is that something money can buy?!”
Huo Zhenshan set down his teacup as well.
The brows of this nation-defending Martial Saint drew tightly together, forming a deep furrow.
He looked at Su Yu.
His eyes were filled with incomprehensible disbelief.
“Young Su Yuan.”
Huo Zhenshan’s voice was low, carrying the oppressive authority of a man who needed no anger to inspire fear.
“For ordinary people, money may indeed be able to buy almost anything.”
“But for high-ranking martial artists, especially those at the Martial King or Martial Emperor level…”
“Money is nothing more than a meaningless string of numbers!”
“The truly top-tier resources, heavenly treasures, divine weapons, and rare armaments are all obtained through barter or exchanged for military merit!”
“What use do you have for so much money?”
Su Yu sat in his chair.
His expression was calm, still as an ancient well.
What use?
To top up, obviously!
As long as he had money, the system could conduct limitless deductions, allowing him to grow endlessly stronger.
Once his vitality reached ten billion, a hundred billion, a trillion!
His body itself would become the strongest mech!
One punch could blast apart an abyssal plane!
Naturally, Su Yu could not possibly say any of that aloud.
He merely looked at Huo Zhenshan, his tone entirely candid.
“Martial Saint Huo, everyone follows a different path toward the Great Dao.”
“I like money.”
“So money is all I want.”
Huo Zhenshan fell silent.
He looked into Su Yu’s deep, clear eyes, which held not the slightest hint of wavering.
For a moment, he was speechless.
However—
Before Huo Zhenshan could continue trying to persuade him, Su Yu’s next action dealt this nation-defending Martial Saint a second devastating blow.
Whoosh.
With a flick of his wrist, Su Yu took out the Demon Saint-grade demon core Huo Zhenshan had just given him from his storage ring.
A fist-sized black crystal.
It radiated a heart-palpitating aura of abyssal origin.
It lay quietly on the table of deep-sea meteorite iron.
Su Yu extended two fingers and placed them on the demon core.
Then he gave it a gentle push.
He slid this priceless Demon Saint-grade demon core back in front of Huo Zhenshan.
“Martial Saint Huo.”
Su Yu raised his head, his eyes brimming with undisguised anticipation.
“Since you said this thing is priceless on the black market…”
“Then…”
“Could I trouble the military to buy back this demon core as well?”
“Could you settle it all in cash together with the battle armor and the mech slot?”
Boom!
It was as if an invisible thunderbolt had crashed down inside the top-secret conference room!
Huo Zhenshan was stunned again.
His face, as steady and unyielding as some primordial mountain range, began to twitch uncontrollably.
His blood pressure shot through the roof in an instant!
A Demon Saint-grade demon core!!!
Huo Zhenshan roared inwardly in utter despair.
This was a Demon Saint-grade demon core!
It contained the purest abyssal origin and the laws of the Great Dao!
For any Martial Emperor—or even Martial Saint—stuck at a bottleneck, this was an invaluable treasure!
As long as one removed its violent energy, then slowly absorbed it and comprehended its mysteries—
It could greatly deepen a martial artist’s understanding of martial will!
It could save a martial artist a full century of arduous cultivation!
A hundred years!
A hundred years of relentless refinement, day and night!
A hundred years of life-and-death enlightenment!
This was a gulf of time that martial artists had to fill with their very lives!
And now—
You were telling him that you wanted to trade this priceless treasure, capable of saving a hundred years of cultivation, for money?!
Could a hundred years of cultivation be measured in money?!
How much money could buy back a hundred years of youth and insight?!
Huo Zhenshan stared at Su Yu.
He even suspected that this peerless prodigy, who could kill a Demon Saint with a single spear thrust, had had his brain squeezed out of shape by the Demon Emperor’s pressure during the battle just now.
This was simply beyond reason!
What a waste of heaven-sent treasure!
Nie Changkong, seated beside them, had already given up thinking altogether.
He covered his face with both hands and leaned back in his chair.
He wore the despairing expression of someone thinking, “I don’t know him. He’s not a student of our Capital Martial University.”
The conference room sank into a dead silence that lasted a full three minutes.
Only the faint black glow emanating from the demon core slowly flowed through the air.
Huo Zhenshan drew a deep breath.
He forcibly suppressed the urge to slap Su Yu awake.
He closed his eyes.
Thoughts raced through his mind.
Calm down.
I have to stay calm.
Huo Zhenshan repeatedly reminded himself.
The young man before him was no ordinary martial artist. He was a supreme prodigy who could confront a Demon Emperor head-on at the age of eighteen.
For a genius of this caliber, perhaps it was understandable that his way of thinking differed from that of ordinary people?
Huo Zhenshan began forcefully talking himself into it.
In truth, looking back across the history of Great Xia’s martial world—
The truly formidable martial artists who stood at its pinnacle often had all sorts of strange quirks.
For example, the Overturning-Seas Martial Emperor who guarded the Eastern Sea.
Despite possessing cultivation capable of overturning rivers and seas, he was obsessed with collecting bits of scrap metal from the ocean depths.
He even gathered the skulls of high-ranking sea beasts, turning them into exquisite figurines that filled his entire Martial Emperor palace.
Then there was the Winter Martial Emperor, who had once guarded the northern abyssal frontier.
He was decisive in killing and cold-hearted by nature.
Yet in private, he had an unusual fondness for knitting sweaters from beast fur.
He even forced every legion commander under his command to wear a pink sweater he had personally knitted before heading to the front lines to kill enemies.
To ordinary people, such eccentricities were bizarre to the extreme.
Some might even call them perverse.
But once one reached the Martial Emperor realm, one could live as one pleased. So long as no harm came to humanity, such hobbies were hardly a problem.
Huo Zhenshan opened his eyes again.
His gaze settled once more on Su Yu.
This “Su Yuan” before him possessed combat strength comparable to a Martial Saint and absolutely had the potential to ascend to the rank of Martial Emperor in the future.
He liked money.
He was obsessed with wealth.
He would even give up divine weapons, rare armaments, and cultivation resources for the sake of money.
That… seemed to be nothing more than a particularly unusual quirk, didn’t it?
At least it was far more normal than enjoying murder and arson, or wearing pink sweaters.
Having worked through this point, the knot in Huo Zhenshan’s heart loosened somewhat.
He looked at Su Yu, and his expression regained its authority and calm.
“Su Yuan.”
Huo Zhenshan spoke, his voice echoing between the walls of deep-sea meteorite iron.
“Do you truly want nothing but money?”
Su Yu nodded without hesitation.
“Nothing but money.”
Huo Zhenshan fell silent for a moment.
He raised a finger and lightly tapped it against the tabletop.
“Very well.”
“Since you insist, the military can meet your demand.”
“But before that, there is something I must make clear to you.”
Huo Zhenshan looked at Su Yu. His tone was remarkably calm, yet it carried the weight and gravitas unique to a pillar of a great nation.
“Su Yuan, the Great Xia’s Dragon Coins are fundamentally different from the fiat currency of peacetime.”
“They are not merely a string of virtual figures in the banking system, created at will with the military’s approval. Nor are they worthless paper printed on the flimsy backing of credit.”
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.”
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
] [Lone Wolf, No Male Gaze] [Protagonist is pursued early on; extreme protagonist-stans, stay away!] The "Carnival Paradise" descends and slowly devours the real world in the form of a game. By chance, Zhu Yan awakens the talent [Roleplay], becoming one of the first beta players. He thought he could develop safely, but after clearing the first instance, he is branded by humanity as the chief culprit behind the game's spread—a traitorous villain. A villain? Who would ever... become one! He'll be the villain! From then on, Zhu Yan is not only a player but also a lackey for the Carnival Paradise. Between the straight path and the crooked path, he chooses the con. With his left hand, he dons the villain's mantle, staging scenes within instances, infuriating players who decry him as a despicable traitor, all while the game happily promotes him. With his right hand, he joins the non-human organization "Fangcun Mountain," which opposes the Carnival Paradise, transforming into a mysterious player who slaughters game bosses, earning cheers of "Long live the expert!" from fellow players. Gradually, Zhu Yan rises to become an S-rank human player in Fangcun Mountain's archives, while also being the Carnival Paradise's certified top game Boss. But when the final war erupts and both major factions place their hopes in him— Players tag his various aliases: "Experts, this offensive depends on you." The Carnival Paradise's supreme Boss throws an arm around his neck: "Bro, you're the iron, I'm the steel; you can't let me down again!"
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?!
