Chen Chang'an never expected things to unfold in such an unpredictable manner. Initially, he had assumed that even if the pearl wasn’t in the tomb of the Nine Nether Emperor’s beloved wife, it would at least be under the Emperor’s control. The worst-case scenario he had envisioned was a direct confrontation with the Nine Nether Emperor to forcibly retrieve the pearl.
But now, seeing the Emperor’s reaction, Chen Chang'an realized he had underestimated the situation. What puzzled him most was—who else besides himself could possibly be interested in the pearl? Someone who would go so far as to marry the Nine Nether Emperor just to obtain it?
To earn the favor of the Nine Nether Emperor, this wife of his must have been extraordinary. Yet, why would such a person sacrifice so much for a pearl that held no value to anyone else?
"Your wife isn’t dead?" Chen Chang'an asked with a frown.
"Hahahaha!"
"So, you’ve heard the rumors circulating outside?"
"False, all of them! Nothing but baseless gossip!"
"My adopted son would never dare to have an affair with my wife."
"They wouldn’t, and they couldn’t!" The Nine Nether Emperor laughed loudly.
But Chen Chang'an could see through it—the Emperor’s laughter held no joy, only endless fury in his eyes. It was understandable. The Nine Nether Emperor, the second most powerful figure in the Tai Xuan Realm, a being who had lived for tens of thousands of years, had been deceived by a woman. How could he remain indifferent?
What Chen Chang'an couldn’t comprehend was why the Nine Nether Emperor had allowed such rumors to spread unchecked. Did he truly not care at all?
"I’m curious—what kind of woman could move your heart?"
"Was she beautiful?" Chen Chang'an probed.
Instead of answering, the Nine Nether Emperor countered, "Tell me, why are you also interested in that pearl?"
"I’ve studied it before. Aside from its beauty, it’s utterly useless—no energy fluctuations, impossibly hard. Why do you all covet it?"
"I don’t know what my wife’s intentions were, but I can tell you this: that pearl originally belonged to me."
"It was lost due to certain circumstances, and now I merely seek to reclaim it."
"Moreover, in the entire Tai Xuan Realm, only I can use it. Anyone else who obtains it would find it worthless."
"So, I’m even more curious about what your wife wanted with it," Chen Chang'an said, his brow furrowing.
"I sent people to investigate, but..."
"For nearly a thousand years, there’s been no trace. Even the men I dispatched lost their lives."
"It seems I’ve underestimated her all along."
"Her background is shrouded in mystery, likely tied to a formidable hidden faction. I never imagined that within the Tai Xuan Realm, there could be a force even I knew nothing about."
"Finding that pearl won’t be easy for you."
Hearing this, Chen Chang'an’s frown deepened. The last two pearls were proving far more difficult to locate than he had anticipated—even entangled with a hidden power unknown to the Nine Nether Emperor himself.
Could such a faction have existed longer than the Nine Nether Emperor?
Did his own master know of them?
"Why do you suspect this is a hidden faction?" Chen Chang'an asked.
"Because they managed to place someone so strikingly similar to her by my side. That means whoever is behind this knows me, understands me—and may have lived even longer than I have."
"A figure like that, lurking in the shadows for so long—do you really believe they haven’t built a secretive organization?"
From the Emperor’s words, Chen Chang'an caught a crucial detail: "similar to her."
Who would have thought the Nine Nether Emperor was such a sentimental man?
"You never remarried because... she’s gone?"
"That’s all in the past."
"So, you refused to ascend, waiting for her reincarnation?"
"Waiting for tens of thousands of years?"
"I’ve told you all I can. Now, leave."
The Nine Nether Emperor didn’t answer further, dismissing Chen Chang'an outright. Some secrets were buried too deep in his heart to share.
Understanding this, Chen Chang'an didn’t press further. With Da Huang, he departed the Nine Nether Hall.
Once they were gone, the Emperor took out a portrait, gazing at the figure depicted with tender longing.
"Yi, I truly thought she was you. I was deceived... You wouldn’t blame me, would you?"
The woman in the portrait, Yi, was the only love of the Nine Nether Emperor’s life—a woman who had died saving him long ago.
The Emperor had long possessed the means to ascend, but he had deliberately severed that path, forever confining himself to the peak of the Emperor realm.
Every time he secluded himself, it wasn’t for cultivation—it was to reminisce.
Five thousand years ago, a woman who looked identical to Yi had appeared, rekindling the long-dormant emotions in the Emperor’s heart.
Her mannerisms, her habits—everything mirrored Yi’s.
That was why the Nine Nether Emperor had broken his own rule and married her.
Yet, how could he have known it was all an elaborate scheme? The goal: that mysterious pearl.
The Emperor knew—had he not been so blinded by joy, he would have seen through the deception.
Had he not clung to her so fiercely, delaying her escape for millennia, she would have vanished the day after obtaining the pearl, just as she eventually did.
As for the rumors outside, none held a shred of truth. They were merely wild speculations, growing more absurd with each retelling.
But the Nine Nether Emperor no longer had the will to address them.
"What now?"
"The trail for the pearl has gone cold. Where do we even start looking?"
"The Nine Nether Emperor searched for a thousand years and found nothing. What if someone’s already used it?" Da Huang asked worriedly after they left the hall.
"Used?"
"No one but me can use it."
"But then why go through such lengths to obtain it?"
"What’s the purpose?" Chen Chang'an couldn’t make sense of it.
"Could it be... for you?"
Da Huang’s words left Chen Chang'an even more bewildered. For him?
Aside from his master, who would go to such extremes for his sake?
Where there’s strangeness, there’s a scheme—and this situation had indeed taken a bizarre turn.
"Could the Nine Nether Emperor be lying to you? Maybe he doesn’t want his disgraceful deeds to spread?" After a moment, Da Huang voiced another suspicion.
Lying?
Chen Chang'an didn’t think so. A figure like the Nine Nether Emperor had no reason to lie—nor would he stoop to it.
"Stop guessing wildly."
"This pearl is undoubtedly coveted by someone with ill intentions."
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
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!
