Baal's fragmented voice came from the depths of Chen Guan's mind.
"Kid, this place is more troublesome than I thought. Something down there is interfering with the rules. I won't be able to extend my perception far."
Chen Guan raised his right hand. The black mark on his palm was cold and sharp, biting into his skin.
"How far is far?"
Baal answered reluctantly. "Far enough that if something sets its sights on you, I might not know until a moment after you do."
Chen Guan flicked his wrist lightly.
"That doesn't sound like something the Demon God Sovereign would say."
Baal let out a short laugh, the usual carefree amusement missing from its tone.
"The Demon God Sovereign is just a fragment now."
Chen Guan stared down into the well. His expression was grim. Even if Baal was only a fragment, His power was undeniable.
Guan Jinyue couldn't hear Baal's encrypted communication, but she sensed something off from Chen Guan's reaction. She raised her hand and sliced open a silver rift in the air. The edges of the rift buzzed with fine vibrations as they contracted inward.
"I'll scout ahead."
Chen Guan stepped back half a pace to give her room.
Guan Jinyue extended her fingers and touched them lightly forward. The spatial rift descended along the mouth of the well. Silver light stretched along the edge of the dark seawater, but only three meters down, it began to twist and distort. The silver threads were compressed into thin lines, then snapped apart inch by inch.
She withdrew her hand immediately.
Shards of broken silver light rolled back along her fingertips. Inside her sleeve, her hand curled slightly. A layer of white frost formed over her knuckles, and her palm lost all color from cold.
Chen Guan looked at her hand. "Backlash?"
Guan Jinyue tucked her hand back into her sleeve, her body perfectly still. "I can handle it."
Chen Guan watched the last traces of scattered spatial light fade away. He wasn't convinced.
"Being able to handle it doesn't mean it's worth handling."
He picked up the water-repelling bead that Yin Chen had given him before their departure, weighing it in his palm.
"Hope this works."
Chen Guan had never expected to use that thing here. He raised his right palm toward the well's opening, trying to spread his newly acquired emotional perception downward.
The black mark held no warmth.
The well was completely empty.
Chen Guan lowered his hand. The result didn't surprise him.
"Time to go down."
Just as the two of them were about to step onto the edge of the well, the wind and snow parted on the other side.
"Well, well, Chen Guan. Skipping class all the way to the Forbidden Zone of the Northern Frontier?"
The tone was utterly casual.
So casual it sounded like a teacher at the edge of a playground, thermos in hand, catching a lazy student slacking off.
Chen Guan didn't move the hand holding his scythe, but he lifted his eyelids.
Fine silver light flickered in the air around Guan Jinyue. The spatial rift didn't fully open, but it coiled inside her wide sleeves, ready to cut across toward the far side of the well.
On the other side of the well's mouth, there was a protruding black rock platform on an ice wall.
Chen Beixuan sat there, wearing a dark coat that was absolutely not warm enough. In his hand, he held a sausage. Frost coated its surface, and bite marks revealed frozen chunks of ice. He shook the sausage at Chen Guan, his posture loose and carefree.
"Want one? Northern Frontier specialty. Tastes better when it's frozen solid."
Chen Guan stared at him, struck silent for a moment.
Was he dreaming?
Even if this was a dream, it had to be a nightmare. That infamous Devil Teacher had actually shown up here.
"Teacher."
Knowing when to bend was wisdom. Chen Guan called out obediently.
Chen Beixuan nodded with satisfaction.
"Still recognize your teacher. Guess you haven't gone completely wild out there."
Guan Jinyue's gaze lingered on Chen Beixuan, then shifted to the black rock platform beneath him, and finally to the ice layers buried in the wind and snow around them.
"Who are you?"
She looked deeply wary.
Chen Beixuan pulled the sausage away from his mouth and extended his other hand, completely at ease.
"I'm Chen Beixuan, a teacher from Huaxia Academy."
Hearing that, Guan Jinyue only grew more alert.
"How does a schoolteacher get past the blockade of the Yaozu and sit here by the entrance to the ice sea?"
Chen Beixuan tapped his knee with the frozen sausage, producing a crisp sound.
"Tourism in the Northern Frontier. Fishing on the side."
Guan Jinyue looked at the ice wall behind him, bare of anything.
"Where's the fish?"
Chen Beixuan pointed downward at the well.
"Right here."
Chen Guan followed his finger and glanced into the well. "That's a pretty frugal fishing method, Teacher. You don't even need a line."
Chen Beixuan grinned. "You young folks don't get it. Real fishing is about fate. If the fish wants to eat me, it'll come out. If not, I'll just enjoy the view of the sea."
Guan Jinyue watched him warily. Silver light shimmered along the edge of her sleeves.
Chen Guan finally couldn't take the nonsense anymore. "Teacher, has the physical training course at Huaxia Academy evolved into field practice by the sea?"
Chen Beixuan took another bite of the frozen sausage. When it didn't budge, he tossed it aside in disgust.
"The academy's budget is tight. Teachers have to pay out of pocket to show students the world. Sounds pretty touching, doesn't it?"
Chen Guan nodded.
"Yeah, so touching I almost want to report you back home for adding unauthorized classes."
Chen Beixuan aimed a finger at him in a mock reprimand. "That's ungrateful of you. I'm doing this for your good, and you want to report me."
Chen Guan looked at the rock platform beneath Chen Beixuan, untouched by the wind and snow, and spoke bluntly.
"Then you got here awfully early, Teacher."
Chen Beixuan shoved his hands into his coat pockets, leaned back against the ice wall, and smiled at him.
"Early birds catch students."
Chen Guan met his eyes.
"And early students start wondering where the teacher's overtime pay comes from."
Chen Beixuan clapped his hands.
"Nice. Been out in the world. Your tongue's quicker than your fists now."
Guan Jinyue had no patience for this endless banter. She stepped forward half a stride, and a thin, jagged rift crept silently across the ice toward Chen Beixuan.
"Chen Guan. He's stalling."
Chen Guan didn't deny it.
"I know."
Chen Beixuan pressed a hand to his chest, his face a mask of feigned grievance.
"That hurts, Miss Guan. I'm just a poor, lonely human, freezing my ass off in the Yaozu's forbidden zone. Running into familiar faces after all this time—what's a little chitchat?"
Guan Jinyue clenched her fist, her eyes fixed on him. "You know who I am."
Chen Beixuan tapped his temple. "Remembering student profiles is basic professionalism. You're not my student, but you've gotten pretty famous lately."
Guan Jinyue's spatial rift flickered sharply with silver light inside her sleeve. "If you know that, how dare you sit here and wait for us?"
Chen Beixuan sighed, looking up at the gray-white sky.
"When you hit middle age, there's always some dirty job you can't get out of."
Chen Guan looked down at the inner wall of the well. The ice around the mouth was unnaturally clean. The snow powder blown in by the wind always veered away when it reached the edges.
He picked up a black stone and tossed it toward the well.
The moment the stone crossed the boundary, it deflected midair, skidded along the ice wall, and eventually landed not far from Chen Beixuan's feet, rolling a few times before stopping.
Chen Beixuan watched the stone.
"Littering. Deduction from your participation grade."
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.
end. Thus one must continue to cultivate, and become a saint or great emperor, in order to prolong one's life. Chen Xia, however, completely reversed this. Since his transmigration, he has gained immortality, and also a system that awards him with attribute points for every year he lives. Thus between the myriad worlds, the legend of an unparalleled senior appeared. "A gentleman takes revenge; it is never too late even after ten thousand years." "When you were at your peak I yielded, now in your old age I shall trample on you." - Chen Xia
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
