Chen Guan stared at the towering ice sculpture before him in the wind and snow. The statue’s outline loomed under the gray sky, exuding an oppressive weight.
It was a giant bear standing on its hind legs, roaring, clad in thick ice armor, every muscle line clearly defined.
Guan Jinyue stopped a few hundred meters from the statue.
“This is the entrance to the saint’s altar,” she said, pointing at the pitch-black cave at the statue’s base.
Chen Guan looked around. On the empty snowfield, apart from their footprints, there were no guards in sight.
“The power center of the demon clan—usually so unguarded?” he asked, hands in his pockets, his tone casual.
Guan Jinyue shook her head.
“This is highly unusual. Normally, at least three imperial guard units are stationed here—not even a snowbird could get through.”
“Looks like your arrival made them switch up their welcome,” Chen Guan said with a light laugh.
As soon as he spoke, the black mark on his palm burned hot.
The heat surged, a hundred times more intense than before, making his hand jerk back.
Baal’s voice echoed in Chen Guan’s mind.
“Kid, a big problem’s heading your way fast.”
“How big?” Chen Guan asked telepathically.
“Bigger than everything you’ve seen combined. The one behind this power has already touched the threshold of the laws,” Baal said, yawning, clearly interested in the upcoming spectacle. “You’d better stay sharp. An existence at this level won’t be fooled by your little emotional tricks.”
Guan Jinyue’s expression shifted too—she had obviously received Baal’s warning as well.
By then, the surrounding environment had changed drastically.
The howling wind stopped.
The falling snowflakes froze midair, hanging motionless.
Another force, one not of this world, forcefully seized control of the space.
The temperature dropped by tens of degrees in seconds.
The white mist from Chen Guan’s breath froze into ice crystals and fell to the ground as soon as it left his lips.
A huge rift tore open in the thick gray clouds above, stretching for miles.
The wind and snow reversed direction—all the suspended snowflakes defied gravity, streaming upward against the sky.
The swirling snow converged at the rift, reforming into a colossal phantom that bridged heaven and earth.
It was an ice giant bear over a hundred meters tall.
Its pressure shook the entire snowfield; distant glaciers cracked with a loud roar.
The Ice Soul Bear King had arrived in person.
Even the mere phantom was enough to shatter ordinary people’s minds.
The giant bear phantom’s eyes, formed from icy blue energy, looked down.
It ignored the human beside him, fixing its gaze directly on Guan Jinyue.
“Baal’s chosen one, you have broken your oath to us,” the Bear King spoke, his voice rolling across the sky, kicking up snow from the ground.
Guan Jinyue looked up at the enormous phantom overhead.
“You know full well my purpose when I agreed to fight back then,” she said.
“I opened the passage, but I just didn’t maintain it afterward. Now, I must take her away.”
The Bear King snorted coldly, his voice summoning a fierce storm across the snowy plain.
“Rules are rules. The Northern Territory is not a place where you can come and go as you please.”
“Do you think you can run wild on my land just because of Baal’s reputation?”
The phantom raised a giant claw, blue energy gathering in its palm.
He intended to use brute force to detain this promise-breaking chosen one.
“Heh heh heh, is someone trying to bully the little guy?”
A black phantom drifted out from behind Guan Jinyue, grinning slyly.
The Bear King froze. I was just making threats—why did his patron show up directly?
Are you serious? If you’d said the old man was watching, I would never have mouthed off. I was joking, Lord Demon God.
The Bear King coughed awkwardly and backed down instantly: “I’ll give Baal his due respect.”
The giant bear phantom in the sky shrank, its vast energy compressing violently.
“Fine. If you want to take your sister’s body, that can be arranged.”
The bear phantom contracted into the outline of a normal adult male and descended from midair.
This entirely ice-and-snow-formed avatar landed less than twenty meters in front of Chen Guan.
The Bear King’s avatar, made of compacted snow and ice, stood on the soft snow. He towered a full head above Chen Guan.
His icy blue eyes first glanced with reverence at the floating Baal phantom.
“Since it is the Demon God’s wish,” the Bear King said, bowing slightly to Baal in salute, “I’ll give this face.”
He turned to Guan Jinyue.
“You may take this vessel.”
“But from today onward, your partnership with our Ice Soul Bear clan is null and void.”
“Our demon clan harbors no room for oath-breakers.”
Guan Jinyue met the Bear King’s intimidating gaze and nodded in agreement.
“Fair enough. I care only about my sister’s safety. Nothing else matters to me.”
By now, Guan Jinyue wouldn’t dare to cooperate with the demon clan again anyway.
Baal let out a string of triumphant, strange laughs.
“See? It’s so much better when everyone talks calmly. This icy wasteland is no place for swords and guns,” he said, his black phantom circling the Bear King, pleased with this sensible junior.
The Bear King’s gaze passed over Baal and Guan Jinyue, landing on Chen Guan.
His deep blue eyes fixed intently on Chen Guan, and he raised a hand.
“But this human injured over a dozen of my elite soldiers earlier. How do we settle that account?”
A black phantom slowly drifted out from behind Chen Guan, identical to the one behind Guan Jinyue.
The Bear King’s pupils shrank. Not you too, buddy...
True to his dread, the phantom behind Chen Guan quickly grinned and said, “He’s just a kid—don’t bother with him. Punish him by banning him from Crazy Thursday if anything.”
The Bear King fell silent.
Seriously? Your chosen ones even team up?
The Bear King looked left, then right. There were plenty of his bear offspring and subjects around. How was he supposed to save face now?
Should he just admit he was scared? That the enemy hada Demon God, and they couldn’t win?
The Bear King stared at the two identical black phantoms before him, sinking into a long silence.
This was an unbearable situation.
If word got out that he, the Bear King, didn’t even dare to fight, how could he ever command his unruly demon clan again?
Baal enjoyed the Bear King’s predicament for a while, then decided not to push him further. Honestly, if he were a cathe’d be clawing at him by now—extra lucky the bear was so good-tempered.
“Why aren’t you talking?” Baal floated in front of the Bear King, waving.
“Are you trying to find a graceful way out?” Baal drawled.
The Bear King’s face twitched involuntarily.
Damn Demon God.
Finally, the Bear King took a deep breath, forcing his anger down.
“For Lord Baal’s sake, I’ll let today slide,” the Bear King said, his voice calm. Gone was his earlier arrogance—all he wanted now was to have these nuisances sent away.
Face? Please. Try demanding respect from a Demon God all by yourself.
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.
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!
saw a female celebrity tied up and stuffed in the trunk! Little did he know, countless cameras were aimed at him at this moment - this was a new type of reality show. The first randomly selected passerby was caught in less than an hour. But when Xu Moru was selected, things started to take an unexpected turn. "Damn, this isn't how the script goes. This Xu Moru is too bold, he's not following the rules at all." "Crap, is this guy taking it seriously?" "The female celebrity has been scared to tears!"
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.
