Hu Shaoyou still hadn’t woken up.
Hu Shaoyou’s parents, however, were frantic.
They rushed forward to stop the assault.
“Don’t hit my son! Don’t hit him—he’ll feel the pain!”
“You’re striking him so hard—you’ll hurt him!”
Su Jin’s sobbing abruptly stopped.
She turned to look at Hu Shaoyou’s parents.
Her expression was strange.
Deep in her eyes lurked contempt and disgust, yet her face wore a mask of naïve, profound sympathy.
She said: “Hu Shaoyou is already a dead man. How can a dead man feel pain?”
Hu Shaoyou’s parents fell silent instantly.
But they recovered quickly.
They scrambled to cover their mistake: “He—he doesn’t feel pain, doesn’t feel a thing—we just blurted that out in our panic! But still, don’t defile his corpse like this!”
“Yes, yes! Our daughter-in-law already said she’ll pay—she’ll compensate you! Tenfold, a hundredfold! If you’ve got grievances, take them up with her! Don’t take it out on our son’s body!”
Even Gu Qing pulled on Su Jin’s sleeve.
“Lady Su Jin, I thank you for your sympathy. But Shaoyou is already dead—pursuing this further is pointless. He…”
“Did nothing to wrong me!”
Hearing this, Su Jin couldn’t help but feel a tinge of regret.
Ah, this Gu Qing—so sharp and intelligent. If only she could join the Demon-Suppression Bureau, with a bit of training, she’d see through anything.
A pity—this woman clearly held some important purpose for the Duke. So Su Jin said: “Sister speaks so fondly—it seems you and Hu Shaoyou had a very good relationship?”
“Yes. Our relationship was always good.”
Gu Qing answered mechanically. But after she finished, she paused briefly, a trace of confusion flickering across her face, though it soon settled into certainty.
A person like Su Jin knew instantly there was more beneath the surface. She pressed on: “That good?”
“Did you never quarrel?”
“That would make me quite envious, sister.”
“Quarrels… we did have them,” Gu Qing said. “But most were trivial and passed quickly. Only… the last time—that one was rather fierce.”
“The last time?”
Gu Qing wondered how Su Jin could be so curious—especially at a moment like this. But she understood that if she could please Su Jin, the Duke might concede to her request.
So she continued: “Some time ago, my husband met a woman—where, I don’t know—and wanted to marry her in as a concubine.”
“At first, I refused.”
“I lost my parents early, and my relatives are scattered. The Gu family has only me. Using the property my ancestors left behind, I took Shaoyou—who had nothing at the time—into my family as a son-in-law. Before we married, we made a pledge, drawn up in an official document.”
“Shaoyou could never take a concubine.”
“The children we had—one son would be chosen to carry on the Gu family line.”
“Shaoyou broke that oath. I couldn’t allow it.”
“Later, worn down by the arguments, I began to relent. But just as I was about to agree, I found that the woman’s background was unclear—she couldn’t even explain her own origins!”
“So I refused outright.”
“Because of this, Shaoyou and I had a serious conflict—it nearly led to divorce.”
“But not long after, Shaoyou came to me and said he’d been bewitched by a demoness and realized his mistake. He said he’d abandoned that woman and asked to reconcile with me.”
“After that, he treated me better than before—cherished me all the more.”
Hearing this, Su Jin understood the situation fully.
Of course, Ren Tianye also caught the nuances.
He looked again at Hu Shaoyou, still lying on the ground playing dead, and thought: What a son of a bitch—he can really take it. He said to Gu Qing: “I never expected you to be such a magnanimous woman.”
“A fine woman like you, and Hu Shaoyou still wanted a concubine? A man who married into the family, having such delusions?”
“This Duke can hardly stand it.”
Saying this, Ren Tianye walked up to Hu Shaoyou’s “corpse” and slammed a fist down, striking him hard. With a crunch, he cursed: “Hu Shaoyou! With such a good wife—how could you not cherish her?”
He struck a second fist.
He went on cursing: “And you dared to find another woman outside! Absolutely shameless!”
A third fist hit home.
“This Duke has seen much in life, but a man like you…”
Ren Tianye knew well the weight of his own fists.
After all, the coffin was nearly split apart.
But Hu Shaoyou still kept his eyes shut, his deathlike stillness unwavering—Ren Tianye nearly doubted himself.
Still, a trickle of blood leaked from the corner of Hu Shaoyou’s mouth.
Ren Tianye steadied himself.
He sighed and said, “If you weren’t already dead, I would have sought justice for your wife. But since she loved you so deeply, and now that you’re gone, she’ll have to live out her days alone in loneliness…”
“How can this Duke sit idly by?”
“So be it. You’re dead anyway. Leave something behind for your wife—something for her to remember you by in her remaining years.”
Then Ren Tianye bellowed:
“Wang Ming!”
“No—Zhang Shi!”
Zhang Shi burst in: “Your Grace, what do you order?”
Ren Tianye said: “Give this woman, Gu Qing, a keepsake—something to remember her husband by.”
“A keepsake?”
“Correct,” Ren Tianye said. “Something Hu Shaoyou can leave behind.”
“Understood!” Zhang Shi grinned and drew a short knife from his belt.
Hu Shaoyou’s parents, seeing this, turned white with terror and, as if fearless, rushed forward to stop him.
“No, no! You can’t treat my son like this! He died fighting—he shouldn’t be humiliated after death!”
“Impossible! Absolutely not! He defended the city with all his strength—how can you treat him like this?!”
If they hadn’t said that, Zhang Shi might have felt some restraint. But those words lit a fire in him—that bastard Hu Shaoyou had defended Yuancheng against none other than Zhang Shi himself!
He’d made him march back and forth—twice!
And emptied out the granaries, armories, and treasuries!
Mercy?
What mercy?
So Zhang Shi put his full strength into it.
And once Zhang Shi exerted himself, how could Hu Shaoyou’s parents stop him?
…
Crunch!
A cucumber fell.
Wang Ming caught it and muttered: “The City of Source still has fruits this fine. The Gu family is rich—they even plant them right outside their door.”
He glanced inside.
He’d already started building a bonfire outside; he wondered how things were going inside—had they finished yet?
All this waiting was boring him.
But soon, it got interesting.
Inner sobs and screams tore through the house:
“My son—my son…”
“My so—”
Frowning, Wang Ming wondered: What’s all that?
What’s happening?
He was about to go in when a horse galloped up. He looked closely—it was Lu Shuang.
“General Wang Ming!”
Lu Shuang dismounted and said: “Are the Duke and General Zhang Shi inside? I’ve found some information and need to report it to them.”
Wang Ming nodded. “They’re inside.”
“Go on in.”
“Thank you, General Wang Ming!”
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?!
iemie, male, Race: Moon. Hobby: Collecting anomalies. At first, he thought he possessed two systems: the Crimson Rainbow Moon and the Clear Cold Frost Moon. One day, he discovered that he himself could also become a system for others, holding the chessboard of fate. The Eighth Epoch, also known as the Eternal Moon Epoch. Humans, witches, elves, bloodline descendants, specters, demons, and spirits together compose a new history. Walking the path on behalf of the moon, before he knew it, Chen Miemie's footsteps were followed by all manner of strange and wondrous anomalies. As time passed, many titles circulated about him—The King in Yellow, Lord of Anomalies, Heart of the Eternal Moon, and more. "Me? I'm just a traveler who enjoys collecting interesting creatures," Chen Miemie said.
u Chenyuan transmigrated into a female-oriented novel about a real and fake heiress, becoming the CEO elder brother of both. Unfortunately, the entire Lu family—including himself, the CEO—were mere cannon fodder in the story. Determined to save himself, Lu Chenyuan took action. The spoiled, attention-seeking fake heiress? Thrown into the harsh realities of the working class to learn humility. The love-struck real heiress? Pushed toward academic excellence, so lofty goals would blind her to trivial romances. As for the betrayed, vengeful arranged marriage wife… the plot hadn’t even begun yet. There was still time—if he couldn’t handle her, he could at least avoid her. "CEO Lu, are you avoiding me?" Mo Qingli fixed her gaze on Lu Chenyuan. For the first time, the shrewd and calculating Lu Chenyuan felt a flicker of unease.
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
