The cold wind blew past.
His weathered, aged face was etched with complexity and melancholy.
Chu Kuang lowered his head and glanced at the silver-white spear in his hand.
In his mind, he couldn't help but recall the scene from that morning on the training field, where he had pulled out all the stops to show off his "Subtle Entry" spear intent in a bid to recruit Su Yu.
At the time, he'd been feeling pretty pleased with himself.
Thinking he could shake this kid up.
Thinking he'd come running over and call him master.
And then what?
The kid just whipped out a "Materialization"!
Turning emptiness into substance!
Interfering with reality!
What the hell!
Chu Kuang covered his face, feeling his old cheeks burn with shame.
"Clown..."
"So this old man was just a clown..."
Chu Kuang let out a long sigh, his voice filled with boundless regret and bitterness.
He'd thought his Subtle Entry spear intent could lure this prodigy over to the spear division.
But.
But...
Ugh!!!
This kid didn't need a master at all!
He was a monster all on his own!
Chu Kuang shook his head, hoisted his spear onto his shoulder, and turned away dejectedly.
His silhouette looked particularly forlorn.
Meanwhile.
In the inner ring of the capital.
Inside a sprawling, antique-style luxurious estate.
The Chen Family Mansion.
Bang!
The front gate was shoved open violently.
Chen Feng burst into the estate's main hall like a madman — hair disheveled, eyes bloodshot.
In the very center of the hall.
A dignified middle-aged man in a dark gold robe sat upright in a rosewood armchair.
He was holding an ancient, cracked jade slip, his brows slightly furrowed, powerful spiritual fluctuations ebbing and flowing around him — clearly in the midst of arduous mental deduction of some profound martial art technique.
The head of the Chen family.
A Martial King–level powerhouse: Chen Tiannan!
"Rushing around in a panic — what kind of spectacle is this?!"
Chen Tiannan frowned, and an invisible pressure befitting a Martial King instantly engulfed the entire hall.
Chen Feng's legs gave out, and he collapsed to his knees.
"Dad!"
Chen Feng's voice was shrill and wailing.
"Save me! Dad, please save me!"
Chen Tiannan's face darkened as he looked at his son in this pathetic state.
"What happened?"
Chen Feng knelt on the ground, trembling violently all over.
He swallowed hard and forced the words out with great difficulty.
"I... I had a duel with someone at school..."
"I lost..."
Chen Tiannan let out a cold snort.
"Losing is losing!"
"Victory and defeat are common in battle. Go back, train hard, and win it back!"
"Crying and sniveling — what's the point of that?"
"But..."
Chen Feng raised his head, his face filled with utter despair.
"I lost the jade slip of Formless Calamity Blade... to him..."
BOOM!
Chen Tiannan's aura erupted violently!
The thousand-year-old red sandalwood armchair beneath him instantly turned to dust!
He shot to his feet, eyes wide, glaring at Chen Feng.
"What did you say?!"
"You lost the Chen family's Heaven-tier clan-protecting technique to someone else?!"
Chen Tiannan shook with fury.
That was the very foundation of the Chen family's standing!
It was a priceless treasure he had nearly given half his life to retrieve from an abyssal secret realm!
"That's not all..."
Chen Feng cowered into himself, his voice growing smaller and smaller.
"I also... I also owe him a hundred billion in cash..."
"Vice Principal Nie Changkong personally vouched for it, giving me three days to come up with it..."
In the hall.
Dead silence.
Chen Tiannan felt his brain buzzing.
His vision blurred and darkened.
Lost the Heaven-tier technique?
And lost a hundred billion in cash?!
"You..."
Chen Tiannan pointed at Chen Feng, his finger shaking violently.
"Just what kind of monster did you go and pick a fight with?!"
"Was it a top prodigy from the senior class? Or some freak from a Martial Emperor clan?"
Chen Feng lowered his head, not daring to meet his father's eyes.
"It was... a freshman..."
"His name is Su Yu..."
"From Jiangcheng... blood energy value... one thousand points..."
Buzz.
A million wild thoughts stampeded through Chen Tiannan's mind.
What?!
You lost your family's technique?
You lost a hundred billion?
And you were beaten by a freshman?!
A freshman!
Did he even have a thousand blood energy points?!
You're a sophomore with three thousand blood energy and martial master cultivation, and you got instantly one-shot by some kid under one thousand?!
Where does that leave the Chen family's pride?!
"USELESS!!!"
Chen Tiannan roared.
The fury of frustrated hopes utterly consumed his reason.
He stepped forward and appeared before Chen Feng in an instant.
SLAP!
A thunderous slap struck Chen Feng's face.
Even restrained, a Martial King's enraged strike was terrifying beyond measure.
Chen Feng flew through the air like a kite with its string cut!
He slammed hard into one of the hall's load-bearing pillars.
Blood sprayed from his mouth.
Half his face instantly swelled to the size of a pig's head.
Several teeth were blasted out.
"Dad..."
Chen Feng clutched his face, sprawled on the ground, whimpering.
"I didn't want this..."
"He comprehended Materialization spear intent!"
"I couldn't block it!"
Only now did it hit Chen Feng — Su Yu's spear wasn't some martial art technique at all; it was Materialization spear intent!
And it was precisely because of that Materialization spear intent that he'd been crushed with such absolute dominance!
"A hundred billion — what do I do? If I can't produce it, Vice Principal Nie will definitely expel me on the spot!!"
The moment Chen Tiannan heard the words "Materialization spear intent," his pupils contracted sharply.
Eighteen years old, with Materialization spear intent?
No wonder Nie Changkong had stepped in personally!
For a prodigy like this, the top brass of the Capital Martial Arts University was absolutely grooming him as a future war god!
Chen Tiannan inhaled deeply several times, forcibly suppressing the rage in his chest.
What else could he do?
Refuse to pay?
Nie Changkong was a Martial Emperor — the living embodiment of the entire university's will!
If they dared to welch, the Chen family would be erased from the capital by tomorrow!
"What else can I do?!"
Chen Tiannan gnashed his teeth as he looked down at his son, who couldn't be propped up even if nailed to a wall.
His eyes were full of disappointment and suppressed fury.
"If you default on the debt, are you trying to get our Chen family blacklisted from the entire capital?!"
He yanked his sleeve back sharply.
Then turned and strode toward the estate's underground vault.
"I'm going to get the money!"
"Within three days, we'll sell everything if we have to — but we will scrape together that hundred billion!"
Chen Tiannan turned his head to fix his gaze on Chen Feng, his tone icy, yet carrying unmistakable resolve.
"Not only will we scrape together the hundred billion — I'm also going to pull two three-thousand-year Blood Spirit Ginsengs from the vault and send them over as well!"
Chen Feng, clutching his swollen face, stared in disbelief.
"Dad... are you crazy? Those are meant for your charge to Martial Emperor! You're going to give them as a gift to him?!"
"What the hell do you know?!"
Chen Tiannan kicked Chen Feng over and bellowed.
"Eighteen years old with Materialization spear intent — he is destined to become a Martial Emperor!"
"Is this the kind of existence who stands at the peak of the Dragon Kingdom? Someone a piece of trash like you can afford to provoke?"
"Those two Blood Spirit Ginsengs are our family's offering to forge a connection with him!"
Chen Tiannan's heart indeed bled.
A hundred billion in cash would nearly drain every drop of the Chen family's liquid assets, even forcing them to sell off several key holdings.
But if it meant resolving this grudge, or even planting a single good impression in the mind of a future invincible war god...
This money was worth spending.
"Once the money is raised, you'll come with me to Jingwu in person to offer a humble apology with a whip on our backs!"
Chen Tiannan coldly tossed out those words, then turned and strode toward the estate's underground vault.
"If he refuses to accept it, I'll break your legs on the spot!"
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?!
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!
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.
