Yin Chen’s gaze swept across the empty dining hall.
“Is there a better place to talk than this?”
An Changqing stepped forward, his tone gentle yet carrying its own weight of pressure.
“Mr. Yin, please calm down. Now is not the time to assign blame.”
He looked at the middle-aged man who looked on the verge of collapse.
“But we do need to know the origin of that symbol. It’s connected to seven deaths—and possibly more victims to come.”
“I…”
The middle-aged man opened his mouth, glancing at An Changqing, then at the hostile expressions of Long Ao and Hong Yuan, and finally his eyes landed on his own Young Master.
“I’ll talk. I’ll talk.”
Surrendering all resistance, he slumped onto the carpet.
“It was three years ago.”
His voice drifted, sinking into distant memories.
“Back then, strange things also happened in the restaurant—but different from now.”
Long Ao, lacking patience, cut straight to the point.
“How was it different?”
“Those people weren’t like this time. They didn’t disappear—they went mad on the spot.”
The middle-aged man hugged his arms, still trembling.
“Someone would suddenly snap while eating, attacking everyone around them. Completely insane. Their strength would become terrifying—several security guards couldn’t hold them down.”
“When their strength was spent and they collapsed, they were ruined, as if their vitality had been drained dry. They became living corpses.”
Yin Chen’s brows furrowed tightly.
“How have I never heard of this?”
“Because the Old Master suppressed everything.”
The middle-aged man let out a bitter laugh.
“Back then, the Old Master handled it himself. He said that thing was a malevolent spirit and told me not to meddle or speak of it again.”
“And this symbol?”
An Changqing pointed at the mark revealed in the frost on the glass.
“That was the seal the Old Master set down back then.”
The middle-aged man’s voice turned tearful.
“He said that as long as the seal held, that thing would never get out. But now… how did it break out?”
Hong Yuan hoisted her battle-axe with a cold snort.
“Seals fail eventually. What’s so surprising?”
“No, it’s different.”
The middle-aged man shook his head frantically, his face growing even paler.
“The Old Master’s seal wasn’t ordinary.”
Yin Chen sensed something coming. He stared at his Second Uncle and asked, word by word,
“What do you mean?”
“The Old Master, back then… back then…”
The middle-aged man’s teeth chattered. After a long pause, he finally whispered in a voice barely audible,
“The Old Master used a living person as the array’s core to seal it completely.”
A living person as the array’s core.
The brutality behind those four words made An Changqing’s and Su Yuehe’s faces darken instantly.
Yin Chen’s body froze, his chest heaving with rage.
He had always taken pride in his family, never knowing that behind their glory lay such a cold-blooded past.
“Who was that person used as the array core?”
“I don’t know.”
The middle-aged man shook his head in bewilderment.
“All I know is that she volunteered. She was a young girl. I only saw her from a distance and didn’t dare ask anything else.”
Chen Guan, who had been silent until now, finally spoke.
“If it was meant to be an eternal prison, why did the seal fail now?”
The middle-aged man was caught off guard by the question.
“I don’t know! Maybe it was the restaurant’s recent renovation, or some equipment interfering…”
His voice faded, because even he knew how flimsy that excuse sounded.
But he truly couldn’t think of another reason. He was just an ordinary man with no knowledge of the supernatural.
Chen Guan didn’t press further. He simply stared quietly at the glass pane.
Yue Teng’s words echoed in his mind again:
“No matter where he is, the remnants of his power will seek him out on their own.”
Perhaps the seal’s failure had nothing to do with renovations or equipment.
It was because he had arrived.
On the other side, Yin Chen’s usual perfect composure had shattered completely.
The family he prided himself on, the glory he often boasted about—it was all built on the life of a young girl.
“A living person as the array’s core.”
Yin Chen repeated those four words, his expression worsening. “Second Uncle, I need an explanation.”
“She was an extremely rare psychic-type ability user. She used her own soul as a vessel, and together with the Old Master’s seal, they completely suppressed that thing.”
The middle-aged man sat collapsed on the floor, his gaze unfocused, afraid to meet Yin Chen’s eyes. He quickly added, “But that girl volunteered. I swear it.”
Long Ao, hot-tempered, couldn’t help but interject.
“Volunteered? A young girl coming forward to be an array core? Your Yin family sure know how to pat yourselves on the back.”
The middle-aged man was choked into silence, trembling as he looked at Yin Chen.
An Changqing stepped forward and grabbed Yin Chen’s shaking shoulder.
“Yin Chen, calm down.”
An Changqing’s voice was steady, cutting to the core. “This isn’t the time to dig up old scores.”
“What matters now is figuring out why the seal loosened and how to deal with it.”
Yin Chen closed his eyes, his chest heaving violently. When he opened them again, the fury had been suppressed, replaced by his usual rationality.
Just then, Su Yuehe, who had been glued to her laptop, suddenly spoke up.
“The situation might be more complicated than we think.”
She turned the laptop screen toward the group.
The screen displayed a complex three-dimensional structural diagram. Countless lines, like a spiderweb, spread across the virtual model of the Oriental Pearl Tower.
The convergence point of all those lines was the revolving restaurant beneath their feet.
“This seal isn’t just one symbol on the glass.”
Su Yuehe pointed at a blinking red dot on the screen.
“It’s connected to the entire building, and even to the deep-buried spiritual vein of this city.”
“If we use brute force to destroy it, it could trigger a chain reaction, with disastrous consequences.”
While everyone was discussing the seal and the spiritual vein, Chen Guan stood silently before the glass.
He felt more and more clearly that Yue Teng’s words weren’t what was working this time. What was resonating wasn’t his grey energy or the black mist.
It was… Old Ji.
It was Old Ji’s presence that was accelerating the seal’s decay.
…
Far away in the Northern Regions, within a hall of frozen ice,
a silver-haired, black-eyed girl opened her eyes.
Her gaze pierced through endless space, landing on the distant city.
Guan Jinyue sensed it.
Deep within the seal on that tower, there was a presence so familiar it was branded into her bones.
Faint, yet real.
It was the aura of her younger sister. She also felt a powerful, foreign force eroding the seal from the outside.
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."
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!
] [Lone Wolf, No Male Gaze] [Protagonist is pursued early on; extreme protagonist-stans, stay away!] The "Carnival Paradise" descends and slowly devours the real world in the form of a game. By chance, Zhu Yan awakens the talent [Roleplay], becoming one of the first beta players. He thought he could develop safely, but after clearing the first instance, he is branded by humanity as the chief culprit behind the game's spread—a traitorous villain. A villain? Who would ever... become one! He'll be the villain! From then on, Zhu Yan is not only a player but also a lackey for the Carnival Paradise. Between the straight path and the crooked path, he chooses the con. With his left hand, he dons the villain's mantle, staging scenes within instances, infuriating players who decry him as a despicable traitor, all while the game happily promotes him. With his right hand, he joins the non-human organization "Fangcun Mountain," which opposes the Carnival Paradise, transforming into a mysterious player who slaughters game bosses, earning cheers of "Long live the expert!" from fellow players. Gradually, Zhu Yan rises to become an S-rank human player in Fangcun Mountain's archives, while also being the Carnival Paradise's certified top game Boss. But when the final war erupts and both major factions place their hopes in him— Players tag his various aliases: "Experts, this offensive depends on you." The Carnival Paradise's supreme Boss throws an arm around his neck: "Bro, you're the iron, I'm the steel; you can't let me down again!"
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.
