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."
nce】【Lighthearted Comedy】【Ultimate Gentleman's Novel】【Viewer Discretion Advised for Under 16】 The mightiest human hero, Sharen Morian, is resurrected after a thousand years by his wife—the Demon King. This is not your typical hero-vs-demon-king tale.
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!
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.
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.
