Hong Yuan wanted to ask more, but Jing stopped in his tracks.
They had arrived at a relatively open circular clearing. In the center of the clearing was a massive steel spiral staircase extending downward.
The pitch-black entrance led to an unknown destination, and a cold, gloomy wind blew up from below.
"This is my private playground," Instructor Jing opened his arms and said proudly. "When I am bored, I like to find interesting toys from all over the world and throw them down there."
His words sent a chill down Yin Chen and Hong Yuan's spines.
Were the toys he mentioned normal toys?
This question was soon answered.
The further down they went, the faster the temperature dropped, and a foul stench hit them in the face.
The smell was extremely pungent. Hong Yuan wrinkled her nose, sneezed, and waved her hand in front of her face to fan it away.
Yin Chen walked at the very back. He tugged at his collar with one hand, burying the lower half of his face into it, his brows furrowed into a tight knot.
He absolutely hated this kind of uncontrollable, gloomy, and cold environment; it completely stripped away the elegance he was so proud of.
Chen Guan walked in the middle. The Tier 5 Lightning Cheetah, which had been so majestic in the stone forest just a moment ago, was now walking with its tail tucked between its legs, its body pressed tightly against Chen Guan's trouser leg.
It even minimized its breathing, and its four paws made absolutely no sound as it walked on the iron plates.
Seeking advantage and avoiding harm is a beast's instinct. Certain scents wafting up from below gave it the urge to turn around and flee.
At the edge of his retina, pale blue bullet comments began to scroll.
[The great White Tiger is on paid leave, casually taking his underlings to tour his personal zoo.]
[High energy ahead. Young Master Yin's worldview is about to suffer a second brutal beating.]
[Chen Guan: Expressionlessly watching his colleague show off.]
Chen Guan blinked. The bullet comments actually came to his side?
What happened?
He looked at Jing, who was walking three steps ahead wearing a red shirt with large yellow flowers. Was White Tiger going to cause trouble again?
Soon, the stairs reached the bottom.
What appeared before the three of them was an underground space so massive it felt oppressive.
Several rows of high-voltage searchlights hung from the ceiling. Some of the bulbs were broken, emitting a sizzling sound of poor contact, casting a pale and unstable light.
In all directions of the space were giant cages separated by special alloy bars. Electrified coils were wrapped around the bars, with blue arcs of electricity occasionally sparking and jumping at the joints.
"Welcome to my terrarium." Jing stopped, turned around, and opened his arms.
There was no sound at all from the surrounding cages, but the creepy sensation of being stared at by countless pairs of eyes pricked Yin Chen and Hong Yuan's skin like needles.
"The things you caught up there are called wild game." He pointed to the nearest alloy cage on his left. "These are what you call collectibles."
Hong Yuan and Yin Chen looked in the direction he pointed.
There was no light in the cage. It was not until the beam of a searchlight swept past that they clearly saw a massive, mud-like creature sprawling inside.
It had no limbs and no fixed torso. Its dark red body surface was covered in densely packed, closed slits.
When the light hit it, those slits opened in unison, revealing pale eyeballs without pupils.
Hong Yuan turned her head away in disgust. "It looks so gross."
Yin Chen did not speak. He stared at the creature; he recognized this thing.
This was a creature that should have lived in the deep sea. Its last appearance was probably during a major battle seventy years ago.
It was actually still alive, and it was locked in this underground air-raid shelter where even the vents were rusted.
Humming a little tune, Jing continued walking forward.
In the second cage lay a giant wolf with a body length of over six meters.
Its fur was a metallic silver-gray, and a row of sharp, thick bone spikes grew from the top of its head to its tailbone.
Hearing the footsteps, the giant wolf stood up. The breath snorting from its nostrils turned into tiny shards of ice and scattered the moment it touched the air.
The surrounding temperature dropped a few more degrees.
"Frostbone Wolf," Yin Chen spat out these three words.
Jing stopped, glanced back at him, and spoke in a casual tone, "Not bad, young master. You did not read all those books for nothing. This thing is hard to find. I ran to the deepest glaciers of Siberia in the middle of the night and dug for three days to get it out. It has a really stubborn temper; it cost me quite a few ropes."
Yin Chen's breathing grew heavy. The Frostbone Wolf was a mutated species that only existed in illustrated handbooks, starting at Tier 8.
They were aloof and bloodthirsty, and would definitely detonate their own demon cores if captured. He could not imagine what kind of power gap was required to dig out a Tier 8 Frostbone Wolf and lock it safely in a cage as a viewing pet.
The next ten or so minutes turned into a monster exhibition that shattered their worldviews.
A humanoid beetle with six arms; an elemental whose torso was made entirely of crimson magma; a deep-sea behemoth with only a skeleton left, yet still observing them with the ghostly fire in its eye sockets.
Any single thing in these cages could easily flatten a third-tier city if let out.
The excitement on Hong Yuan's face completely vanished. She was not stupid. In the face of an absolute power gap, the desire to fight would be completely suppressed by the instinct to survive. The palms of her hands gripping the giant axe were covered in sweat.
The Lightning Cheetah at Chen Guan's feet had completely collapsed on the ground.
The backbone of a Tier 5 demonic beast was worthless here. It buried its head deeply between its two front paws, not even daring to swish its tail, terrified of attracting the attention of any of the big bosses in the cages.
Chen Guan watched all this. These things that were legendary disasters to Yin Chen and the others were probably really just toys to pass the time for White Tiger.
At this moment, he deeply realized White Tiger's collecting addiction. These creatures, whether they flew in the sky, ran on the ground, or swam in the water, had everything one could expect.
Judging from Yin Chen's reaction, they were all rare specimens.
Chen Guan could not help but think of when he and White Tiger first met; the other party happened to be subduing some strange targets as well.
"Alright, the tour ends here." Instructor Jing clapped his hands. The crisp sound echoed in the empty underground air-raid shelter.
Yin Chen massaged the space between his eyebrows, unable to suppress his curiosity as he asked, "Instructor, so you brought us here just to show us these... contraband goods?"
Hoarding a massive bunch of mutated creatures, if brought to court, this was enough to get someone dragged out and shot for five minutes straight.
Wearing flip-flops, Instructor Jing walked over to an empty metal platform, jumped onto it, and sat cross-legged.
"Let me correct you, this is called an ecological conservation project," he began spouting nonsense with a perfectly straight face. "Of course I did not bring you here to show off. I am a proper instructor, and this time, I am here to give you some perks."
"Perks?" Hong Yuan vigilantly tightened her grip on her giant axe. Whenever she heard a good word pop out of the instructor's mouth nowadays, she felt there was a trap.
"Yes, perks," Instructor Jing said seriously. "After all, you are now members of the Special Operations Department, and more importantly, my subordinates. You can take your pick from the collectibles here."
The basement was quiet for a few seconds.
Only the broken searchlights emitted the sizzling sound of electric currents.
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
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!
uld barely embark on the path to immortality. Just as he was on the verge of death, his golden finger awakened. No matter whether it was poison, drained blood and vital energy, diminished lifespan, or any other physical debuff caused by paying a price—once midnight passed, everything would be refreshed. From then on, whenever someone asked what kind of person Chu Ran was, the answer was simple: Forbidden arts that other cultivators dared not learn? Chu Ran would learn them. Prices that even demonic cultivators dared not pay? Chu Ran would pay them. Lifespan that even righteous cultivators dared not burn? Chu Ran would burn it. All the blood essence in his body? Take it. Want both his hands and feet? He would cut them off and send them to you. You say he’s finished? He wasn’t built to sit idle. You think he’s gone mad? No—he was simply waiting for midnight. From that day onward, Chu Ran would respect neither Heaven nor Earth, bow to neither gods nor ghosts. He had only one wish: For midnight to arrive a little sooner.
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.
