Thirty minutes later, the piercing end bell rang.
Less than forty people were still left standing in the arena.
Black Crow looked at the rankings on the light screen and announced expressionlessly: "...An Changqing, third; Long Ao, fourth; Su Yuehe, nineteenth; Chen Guan, thirty-second; Liu Feiyu, fifty-fourth."
Everyone thought the opening ceremony was over, but another figure walked out onto the high platform.
The man wore a crisp instructor's uniform and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses.
He wore a gentle, friendly smile on his lips, which seemed completely out of place with the grim atmosphere of the arena.
He was no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, looking refined and elegant.
However, the moment he appeared, Chen Guan's eyelids twitched uncontrollably.
Why did he feel so familiar...
The instructor clapped his hands gently, the crisp sound drawing everyone's attention to him.
"Good work, students."
His voice was mellow yet carried clearly to everyone's ears.
"Did I miss the best part?"
His gaze swept gently across the arena, lingering for a moment on the face of every survivor.
His expression was like someone admiring a collection of perfect masterpieces.
The smile on his lips deepened, but the meaning behind it was unfathomable.
"Let me introduce myself. My name is Jing, and you can call me Instructor Jing. Some people are very good at hiding themselves in the sand, thinking they won't be discovered."
His words caused several students hiding at the edges of the arena to tense up.
Instructor Jing pushed up his glasses, a glint of light flashing across the lenses.
He continued in that gentle tone, "This is a type of wisdom, knowing how to avoid risks. It is worthy of praise."
He paused, his tone still gentle, but his words sent a chill down everyone's spine.
"But you have forgotten that this is a training camp."
"And my duty is to take every piece of gold that is unwilling to remain silent yet vainly attempts to hide itself..."
His gaze pierced through the crowd and landed straight on Chen Guan.
Like a scalpel slicing through tissue, it peeled him away from the rest of the crowd.
"...and pluck them out of the sand, one by one."
He pointed a finger through the air in Chen Guan's direction.
The smile on his face was bright, but that only made him look even more dangerous.
"I will personally help you... shine."
Before Instructor Jing's words even faded.
In the training ground, everyone's heads turned in unison.
Nearly a hundred gazes wove into a net, firmly trapping Chen Guan in the corner.
Some smart individuals had already connected the dots from earlier, their faces turning ugly.
This person who had hidden throughout the whole process was finally plucked out. He would be thrust under everyone's scrutiny, with nowhere to hide.
[Here it comes, the instructor is personally targeting him.]
[My Guan is in danger. This instructor is a total hypocrite, hiding his rotten core behind a fake smile.]
[Hahaha, that's what you get for playing safe. Now you've been made an example of. Public execution.]
[Why do I feel a bit excited? I just love seeing Brother Guan forced to work. So thrilling.]
An Changqing frowned deeply and took a step forward. "Instructor Jing, Chen Guan is just introverted. He didn't mean to hide."
The smile on Instructor Jing's lips did not diminish in the slightest, nor did his gaze shift away from Chen Guan for a second.
He simply raised his hand and pressed down lightly in the air, and a heavy pressure immediately descended.
An Changqing's body sank, his throat feeling as if something was blocking it.
They opened their mouths but couldn't make a sound.
"I admire your team spirit," Instructor Jing said gently. "But right now, it is individual time."
He pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose.
A pale reflection from the ceiling lights flashed across the lenses, devoid of any warmth.
"In order to better tap into every student's potential, we will conduct a second test, called Deep Sea Listening."
As soon as his announcement ended, the metal floor in front of everyone split open.
A spherical cabin, three meters in diameter and cast entirely from matte black metal, rose smoothly.
Its outer shell was seamless, with only a tightly closed cabin door right at the front.
"The tester will enter the cabin, which will be completely dark and filled with high-pressure turbulent currents. What you need to do is rely solely on your hearing to capture and touch randomly appearing sound sources within three minutes. The sound sources will appear as extremely brief beeps, each lasting no more than 0.1 seconds."
These harsh rules caused a collective gasp of cold air across the training ground.
Darkness, high-pressure water currents, and those fleeting sounds...
This tested not only hearing but also one's body control, spatial awareness, and reaction speed in extreme environments. Those with lower mental strength all grimaced in distress.
"Of course, for the sake of fairness, and to give our lucky one a stage to show himself."
Instructor Jing's gaze was pinned back onto Chen Guan.
"Student Chen Guan, you will be the first to take the test. Moreover, your test difficulty will be tripled, the sound source intensity weakened by seventy percent, and the turbulent pressure doubled."
"Oh, by the way, if you fail, you will be sent back."
These words made the red-haired girl, who had been spacing out the whole time, shift her gaze over, casting an intrigued glance.
How was this a test? It was clearly murder.
Facing Instructor Jing's piercing gaze, Chen Guan's Adam's apple bobbed, but he ultimately remained silent.
He understood that any argument would only become an excuse for the other party to push further, only adding to his amusement. Besides, why did this kind of sick sense of humor feel somewhat familiar?
The sense of deja vu was getting stronger.
Chen Guan walked silently toward the black metal sphere.
Under everyone's sympathetic or gloating gazes, he placed his coffin at the door and walked into the testing cabin himself.
The cabin door closed, letting out a muffled mechanical locking sound.
Immediately after, the entire surface of the sphere lit up with faint blue data streams.
The internal feed was projected onto the giant light screen in the center of the training ground.
It was a pitch-black space isolated from all light, with only the loud rushing sound of water echoing within.
"Test, begin," Instructor Jing announced softly.
Inside the cabin, Chen Guan felt himself being swallowed by freezing, bone-chilling rapids.
The force of the water surged from every direction, tearing at his body and making it impossible to stand steady.
Universal Visualization Technique.
The thought flowed through his mind as he closed his eyes in the endless darkness.
The outside world was a raging sea, but his heart was a silent starry sky.
In his perception, the entire spherical cabin transformed into a miniature model of the universe.
The water currents were surging galaxies, and he himself was a solitary boat navigating those galaxies.
Buzz...
A faint beep, so weak it was almost swallowed by the sound of the water, appeared to his back left and vanished.
On the light screen, everyone watched as Chen Guan was pushed back and to the left by a current.
His body tumbled uncontrollably in the water, looking as though he was about to smash into the cabin wall.
However, just as he lost control of his body and his hands flailed in the water...
His fingertips, at an impossible angle, tapped precisely on a specific spot on the cabin wall.
[Sound source captured successfully.]
The mechanical notification chimed.
You could hear a pin drop in the training ground.
Everyone stared intently at the oddly postured figure on the light screen.
Could this... really work?
Buzz...
A second sound source appeared in the upper right.
Chen Guan's body was lifted once again, swept up by another current of water.
His limbs flailed wildly as he floated upward in a contorted posture.
Then, his forehead happened to bump right into the second sound source.
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!
and couldn't return to the real world. Finally, I gave up and decided to go with the flow, only to discover that writing a diary could make me stronger. Since no one could read it, Su Luo wrote freely, daring to pen anything and everything. Female Lead #1: "Not bad. This diary helped me steal all the protagonist's opportunities. I just want to get stronger." Female Lead #2: "I don’t care about reaching the peak of the cultivation world. Right now, I just want to enjoy the chaos." Female Lead #3: "What? Everyone around me is a spy? I’m the Joker Demon Lord?" ... It’s so strange. Why is the plot completely off track, yet the ending remains the same? Are you all just messing with me?!
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.
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.
