However, no matter what he was after, he shouldn't torture people like this, right?
To Long Ao, who hated reading and writing, a five-thousand-word self-reflection was an extremely harsh punishment.
An Changqing sat to the side, carefully wiping his longsword with a soft cloth.
Hearing Long Ao's complaint, he paused his wiping.
"You don't understand." An Changqing shook his head. "This isn't a punishment."
"If it's not a punishment, what is it? A reward?" Long Ao rolled his eyes in annoyance.
"It's a form of protection." An Changqing sheathed his sword and looked at Long Ao, his gaze like one looking at an unenlightened child.
"Haven't you noticed? From the very beginning, Chen Guan has been too calm. Facing the Demon King, facing life and death, his emotions didn't fluctuate at all. Is that normal?"
Long Ao froze for a moment. "He... hasn't he always been like that?"
Scenes flashed through his mind.
It seemed that Chen Guan was already like this when they first met, so naturally, he didn't think there was anything to make a fuss about.
"That's different." An Changqing shook his head. "Before, it was silence. But at the top of the Myriad Demon Tower, it was dead stillness, a dead stillness where even despair had burned out. His mind was stretched to its absolute limit."
"Long Ao, you can't assume that just because he's always been this way, his current state is normal."
An Changqing stood up and paced a few steps around the room.
"Instructor Jing made him write a self-reflection not to punish him, but to give him a space to be alone, a window to vent. It allows him to pour out all those suppressed feelings through words. This is a form of psychological counseling. At the same time, the format of a self-reflection is also a reminder to him that he is still a student."
Long Ao was completely dumbfounded by what he heard, his mouth hanging open for a long time.
So... that was how it was?
He recalled Chen Guan's constantly expressionless face and those eyes that betrayed no emotion.
It seemed An Changqing made some sense.
Chen Guan was indeed the most unique person he had ever met. He couldn't just ignore the other party's psychological needs just because he was used to it.
"I understand." Long Ao nodded heavily, a touch of admiration in his eyes. "Instructor Jing... really has good intentions."
He had misunderstood entirely. White Tiger was a good person.
An Changqing said no more. He just looked out the window toward the confinement room where Chen Guan was, his gaze complex.
He didn't know the root of Chen Guan's problem, and given the other's personality, he didn't dare ask too much.
However, before coming to the Northern Frontier, his father's assistant had sent him a message saying that they had bought a supreme treasure capable of healing the human soul.
Although he didn't know the exact situation of the person in the coffin, being unconscious most likely meant soul damage. If that person could wake up, Chen Guan might be able to step out of his depression a bit.
When they returned this time, he would think of an excuse to hand it over to Chen Guan logically.
...
At eight o'clock in the morning, right on the dot.
Chen Guan, holding his self-reflection, knocked on the door of Instructor Jing's office.
"Come in."
A lazy response came from inside.
Chen Guan pushed the door open and entered. Instructor Jing was sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed, drinking goji berry tea.
The office was a mess, with documents, weapon parts, and snack bags piled everywhere.
"Finished writing?" Instructor Jing lifted his eyelids and pointed at the desk.
Chen Guan didn't speak. He walked over and neatly placed the manuscript paper on the corner of the desk.
Instructor Jing put down his teacup, somewhat surprised, and picked up the manuscript paper to take a look.
"Whoa, that's quite a lot."
What an honest kid.
He casually flipped to the first page.
At first, the expression on his face was still that cynical laziness.
But as he read on, the smile on his face slowly faded.
His page-turning speed grew faster and faster, and his brows furrowed tighter and tighter.
The office was so quiet that only the rustling sound of pages turning could be heard.
Chen Guan stood in place like a sculpture.
Finally, Instructor Jing turned to the last page.
He closed the manuscript paper, looked up, and sized Chen Guan up and down with an unprecedentedly bizarre look in his eyes.
In his eyes, there was three parts surprise, three parts confusion, and four parts of the absurdity of having seen a ghost. It was enough to turn a living person's eyeballs into a pie chart.
He remained silent for a long time before tapping the stack of self-reflections on the desk, making a dull thud.
"Student Chen Guan."
Instructor Jing leaned forward, resting his chin on his intertwined fingers.
He looked up and stared intently at Chen Guan.
"Do you... have some sort of massive misunderstanding about the word 'self-reflection'?"
Chen Guan looked at Instructor Jing's pie-chart face that was about to crack and answered rigidly, "Reporting to the instructor, five thousand words. I've confirmed it. It's only more, not less."
Instructor Jing slammed the manuscript paper heavily onto the desk. The dull thud failed to shake Chen Guan's expression in the slightest.
He leaned back into the sofa and let out a sigh that sounded somewhere between a toothache and constipation.
He casually flipped open another page and read it out in a cadenced tone filled with one hundred and twenty percent disgust.
"When the blood of my comrades dyed my eyes red, I finally understood that the darkness in this world is not the darkness of the night, but the despair of being unable to light up the dawn. My scythe is trembling. It yearns to sever the chains of destiny, but can only wave in vain in the mire of reality."
Instructor Jing looked up, his eyelids twitching. "Long Ao was just blasted away. Right now, he's alive and kicking, asking the nurse for a chicken leg. Whose blood dyed your eyes red?"
Chen Guan's face remained unchanged. "Art comes from life, but it is higher than life."
[Higher than life hahahahaha! Chen Guan, my internet mouthpiece!]
[Instructor Jing: I asked you to write a self-reflection, and you gave me a poetry recitation?]
[With this writing style, it's a pity he's not an author. The whole piece is nonsense, yet it seems to say something. What a master of padding.]
[Dying of laughter. I feel like I'm looking at myself submitting my graduation thesis. My advisor's expression was exactly the same as Instructor Jing's.]
Bullet comments rolled rapidly across his retina, and the backend popularity points were jumping upward at a gratifying speed.
In this place without An Changqing, the bullet comments were actually still monitoring him.
He had found the traffic code again.
Instructor Jing obviously didn't want to discuss literary creation with him anymore.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and pushed aside the stack of self-reflections that could serve as a murder weapon, as if he were dealing with some biochemical weapon.
The air in the office quieted down.
That lazy and uninhibited aura faded from Instructor Jing. He sat up straight, and those eyes that were always half-squinted fully opened.
"Chen Guan." His voice sank, devoid of its previous playfulness. "You are very smart. Your progress is even faster than I imagined."
Chen Guan remained silent. He knew that the real conversation was only just beginning.
"That set of data analysis from Southern Dipper, in my eyes, is just a load of bullshit."
White Tiger intertwined his fingers and rested them on his lap. Not caring whether Chen Guan actually knew Southern Dipper or not, he continued on his own, "He can analyze your combat model and your mental resilience, but he can't analyze what a person hides in their bones."
"Aren't you curious? Why did we ultimately choose you?"
"You should be more curious about why I chose to join you."
Chen Guan threw the question right back at him. White Tiger choked on his words for a moment. Damn it, he actually was curious about that.
To say it was just a desperate measure out of a fear of death wouldn't be right either. Who knew what kind of demonic arts this kid possessed, but he simply couldn't be killed.
Curse it all, he actually let the kid show off and get away with it.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
transmigrates into the role of a villainous rich second-generation kid in an urban fantasy novel, and gets bound to a god-tier choice system. Right at the start, he catches the female lead stealing exam papers! This triggers the villain's choice options! [Choice 1: Pretend you didn't see anything] [Choice 2: Loudly call her out, drawing everyone's attention] [Choice 3: ...] And thus, a twisted villain is born. To avoid getting killed by the protagonist, he has no choice but to take down all the protagonists first. Jiang Che: Nobody understands being twisted better than 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.
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!
