Guan Jinyue's foot stepped back half an inch, but the direction she moved backward only brought her closer to Chen Guan.
Chen Beixuan finally let his gaze fall on her.
"Miss Guan, no need to be so tense. I'm not here to arrest you."
Guan Jinyue didn't let down her guard.
"That's not for you to decide."
Chen Beixuan spread his hands.
"Fair enough. A lot of the time, what I say doesn't count, which is exactly why I hate overtime."
Chen Beixuan took two steps toward the ice barrier. The silver-blue light threads parted on their own to let him through, then closed again behind him.
He stopped about a dozen meters in front of Chen Guan.
Through the transparent ice barrier, his eyes landed on both of them: "Talk. Why do you have to go into the ruins? Do you even know what's inside them?"
"And you—I'm baffled. Haven't I let you take the Cold Jade several times already?"
Chen Beixuan looked up at Guan Jinyue, his tone puzzled, but she stood on guard as if facing an enemy.
Chen Beixuan immediately raised a hand and waved it.
"Easy now. Teacher here just reads a lot of files; I don't have a hobby of spying on your little sister."
Guan Jinyue stared at him. "You even know about Xiao Heng."
Chen Beixuan sighed.
"Miss Guan, you've been running around among the demon clans for so long. Do you really think nobody's been keeping tabs on you?"
Guan Jinyue said nothing.
Chen Guan broke their standoff.
"Teacher, what will it take for you to let us go down?"
Chen Beixuan leaned forward a little, looking into Chen Guan's eyes through the ice barrier.
"There are no treasures or inheritances down there. No benefits for leveling up and fighting monsters."
He paused before continuing: "Student Chen Guan, Teacher is giving you a sincere piece of advice."
He pointed into the distance.
"Go home, take a hot shower, and get some sleep. Let the grown-ups handle the Ice Sea."
Chen Guan stayed silent. His silence was his answer.
After a moment of hesitation, Chen Beixuan sighed and turned around. "Since you're so set on it, then wait for me."
Without waiting for Chen Guan's reply, his figure vanished.
A moment later, he appeared in a secluded corner, a black token now in his hand.
Silver-blue runes spread outward from the token. Chen Beixuan pressed his palm onto it, finally dropping his flippant tone.
"Beidou, that kid Black Tortoise insists on going through the door. What do we do?"
There was no signal here, isolated from the world, but the token in his hand wasn't affected by signal issues and could still communicate freely.
After a long pause, the token lit up, and Beidou's voice came through: "Kongchen, what happened?"
Chen Beixuan raised a hand to rub his brow.
"What else could happen? I caught a student skipping class."
The token's other end didn't entertain his nonsense.
Chen Beixuan sighed again.
"Chen Guan is at the entrance to the Ice Sea."
Beidou remained quiet on the other end.
Chen Beixuan continued.
"And he brought along a lady with a billion-dollar bounty on her head."
After saying that, he himself found it ridiculous.
"Don't even get me started. This kid Black Tortoise really doesn't pick his routes—just barely escaped the destruction of the Magic City, they're still holding his funeral out there, and he turns around and charges into the Northern Border restricted zone."
Finally, Beidou's voice came through the token.
"Is the one with him Guan Jinyue?"
"Yes."
Sensing the danger in Beidou's tone, Chen Beixuan hurriedly added, "He just barely made it out of the Magic City alive, still carrying Baal’s mark, and his mental state isn't stable."
"Guan Jinyue is being hunted by the demon clans now, and there are people on the human side who want to crush her too."
"You told me to guard this place, so I came. You told me to wait for someone who might or might not show up, so I did that too."
"But whether or not Chen Guan and Guan Jinyue are the people you're looking for, they should not go down there right now."
There was a moment of silence on the token's other end. Beidou wasn't swayed by his tone.
"But what if they are exactly the ones I'm looking for?"
Chen Beixuan helplessly rubbed his forehead: "Bro, how on earth do you figure? Why would you think two eighteen-year-old kids are the people you've been searching for for tens… no, hundreds or even thousands, maybe ten thousand years?"
He knew Beidou had lived a very long time.
So long that even some archives inside the Great Wall only dared to record his existence with codenames.
So long that neither he nor White Tiger really knew which era Beidou, the second-in-command of the Origin Group, had come from.
Beidou held many secrets, like this ruin beneath the Ice Sea.
This was the place Beidou had asked him to watch over, because his abilities were just right to suppress the disturbances here.
He had altered the rules of this place, keeping ordinary demon beasts from getting close, and traveled back and forth frequently, relying on spirit beasts lent to him by a colleague.
Beidou said that what lay below was connected to an old friend from his era, and he firmly believed that old friend would return to this place.
At first, Chen Beixuan didn't think much of it. After all, Beidou was a genuine immortal—having a couple more immortals wasn't surprising.
But gradually, things started getting stranger.
A few petty demon beasts, some cunning spirits, and now even a pair of eighteen-year-old kids had become strong candidates in Beidou's eyes for being his thousand-year-old friend.
That was why Chen Beixuan had initially tried to dissuade them.
What exactly made them strong candidates!
Beidou let out an almost inaudible sigh. "Do as I say."
Those who hadn't experienced it, who hadn't witnessed it firsthand, would never understand.
Not even the eleventh-rank Chen Beixuan, someone ordinary people considered at the top of the world, could understand.
"Here you go again."
Chen Beixuan leaned his back against the black rock, his tone laced with irritation.
"All you long-lived people have that same problem, don't you? You run into something and make others guess."
"I may be Kongchen, but I'm not a fortune-teller's bamboo tube."
Beidou didn't take his complaint. "I want to see if he can make it there."
Chen Beixuan looked up at the gray-white sky and said in a deep voice, "Fine, I'll listen to you one more time. You'd better be sure about this."
"If he can't make it, then bring him back."
Hearing that, Chen Beixuan couldn't be bothered to curse anymore. Beidou was still his nominal superior, and besides, he owed Beidou a favor.
He put the token away, raised a hand to brush the snow off his coat, and his figure appeared again at the edge of the sea well.
Chen Guan was still standing in front of the ice barrier, Guan Jinyue hadn't left either, and both of them looked at him.
Chen Beixuan's face regained its unserious expression.
"Congratulations, you two."
Chen Guan looked at him. "Teacher, who did you just ask for instructions?"
Chen Beixuan winked. "The principal."
With that, he raised his hand and pressed his palm against the center of the ice barrier. Silver-blue light flowed along the lines of his palm, spreading outward.
As he gave a gentle push, the transparent ice barrier opened from the center to both sides, revealing the dark, heavy water surface of the once-sealed sea well.
The water made no sound. The swirling undercurrents clung to the well walls, stretching downward straight to the heart of the earth.
Chen Beixuan stepped aside half a pace.
"After you, two young students."
Chen Guan peered into the depths of the sea well, then took out the Water-Repelling Pearl. Moisture from the icy sea fell onto the pearl's surface, quickly forming a thin layer of frost. He held it in his palm, and a transparent film of air spread out from the pearl, clinging to his clothes to form a thin insulating layer.
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.
lities. One day, Qi Yuan was buying groceries when he unfortunately came face-to-face with a monster. Just when he thought he was going to die on the spot, he suddenly heard the monster's thoughts... "This aura, he's definitely not an ordinary master!" "So terrifying, so terrifying." "A fight with my back against the wall, I can't take it anymore." Qi Yuan: Ah, no one told me that my awakened ability isn't telepathy, but rather the stronger my enemies imagine me to be, the stronger I truly become. PS: Zhou Hai in the first chapter is not the protagonist.
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!
