The child turned to look at her, thinking it over carefully.
"I don't know. I don't have a home."
He lowered his head, a little forlorn. "But the teacher said everyone should have a place to go back to."
The room fell silent. Outside, the wind rustled the eaves, and a few grains of sand rolled in through the crack under the door. The atmosphere suddenly felt immensely bleak.
Chen Guan looked at the child. "Then what do you think counts as home?"
The child set the charcoal stick on the table and instinctively reached for the half-eaten flatbread tucked inside his clothes, his face full of yearning. "Having food to eat, a place to sleep at night, and not being chased away."
He paused, then added, "And the teacher being there."
Guan Jinyue looked at Chen Guan. She didn't say anything, but he could tell she had many questions she wanted to ask.
A twelfth-rank immortal, now sitting at a wobbly wooden table with a missing leg, defining home through half a hard flatbread.
The contrast made it hard to connect him with that Beidou figure from the outside world.
Chen Guan picked up the charcoal stick on the table and wrote a single character on the wooden plank.
Door.
He had learned this character from the Tongxuan Turtle. If the child said it was wrong, he could just claim it was a foreign script—an easy way to retreat if needed, or push forward if not.
The child leaned in to look, blinking. "Teacher, why do we have to learn this?"
Chen Guan stared at the character for "door." "Because if you want to go home, you first have to find the door."
The child nodded and carefully memorized the character.
Guan Jinyue stepped inside the room, leaning against the wall, trying not to draw attention.
She knew Chen Guan was probing.
After writing three characters, the child carefully put the plank away.
"Teacher, aren't we going out today?"
Chen Guan looked toward the door. The sky was choked with yellow sand; it was hardly suitable for going out.
"Going out?"
The child looked a little confused. "You said yesterday we’d go to the city gate today."
Chen Guan took the cue without missing a beat.
"Let's go now."
The child immediately stuffed the half flatbread into his clothes, grabbed a short wooden stick, and rushed to the door.
After a couple of steps, he turned back to look at Guan Jinyue.
"Is big sister coming too?"
Guan Jinyue glanced at Chen Guan.
"I'm coming."
The child gave an "mm" and then quickly asked, "Does big sister know how to fight?"
Guan Jinyue had no idea why he was asking, but answered honestly, "A little."
The child's eyes lit up even more.
"Then can big sister beat the bone collectors?"
Bone collectors?
The two exchanged a glance. That term didn't exactly sound like it referred to good people.
"Are they coming today?"
The child shook his head.
"I don't know."
He gripped his short stick nervously. "Big sister must be a refugee from another city, right? Every time they come, they say they're going to take my bones."
Guan Jinyue frowned. She had already taken a dislike to these so-called bone collectors without even meeting them.
Chen Guan recalled the first ring of murals outside—the city in darkness, the kneeling beings, the faceless robed figure on the platform.
If that memory corresponded to an era before the Lord of Nothingness ascended to godhood, then the so-called bone collectors might not just be common thugs.
What kind of era was that old age, really?
The three of them walked out of the low house with their own thoughts. The street beyond the alley was even more desolate than inside.
Most of the shops on both sides were closed, their doors carved with all sorts of messy symbols—some like numbers, others like marks.
Occasionally, figures could be seen peeking out from behind windows, but the moment they caught sight of Chen Guan's robe, they quickly pulled back.
Guan Jinyue said quietly, "They're afraid of you."
Chen Guan hummed in response.
This identity of a robed figure was clearly not ordinary here.
The child in front of him called him "teacher," but for now, Chen Guan felt he was probably just a literacy tutor, not some martial arts instructor. Otherwise, the kid wouldn't have asked about Guan Jinyue's fighting ability.
Maybe literacy teachers held a special status here, or perhaps it was something else entirely.
The child walked ahead, clutching his short wooden stick with the excitement of a young boy, pausing every now and then to wait for Chen Guan. His steps weren't fast, but he knew the way well.
After crossing two alleys, the city wall came into view.
The city gate was old. Beneath the archway, sand had piled up. Beyond it stretched an endless wilderness.
Grains of sand rolled across the ground, clashing against the worn threshold, then whipped up by the wind, flying off toward the distant wasteland.
The child stood beside the gate, holding his short wooden stick with both hands, standing on tiptoe to look outside.
There was no road outside.
Only a barren plain worn smooth by wind and sand. The cracked yellow earth formed vast, dry fissures. In the distance stood a few leaning stone steles; beyond them, the ground sank into a depression like a massive mouth that had long remained agape.
Chen Guan stood behind him, looking at this old city.
The city seemed small, its walls low.
But all the houses inside crowded toward the center, as if the farther you stayed from the gate, the greater your chances of survival.
Guan Jinyue raised a hand and pressed it against the stone wall beside the gate.
The wall was rough, and a layer of dust stuck to her palm.
She wiped her fingers across the wall's surface, revealing fine carvings beneath.
The carvings had been worn shallow by wind and sand, but their original arrangement was still discernible.
Guan Jinyue said softly, "There's a formation here."
Chen Guan turned to look.
The patterns on the wall bore some resemblance to the silver-blue ancient script from the circular pool, but here, their color was as dark as dried blood.
The child heard this and twisted his head around. "Big sister can read gate scripts too?"
Guan Jinyue looked at him. "You understand them?"
The child shook his head seriously. "I don't, but the teacher does."
Then he looked up at Chen Guan, as if leaving all the answers to him.
Don't look at me. I don't get it either, Chen Guan thought to himself.
He didn't live up to that expectation.
Because he knew very well that he was not the real teacher from the child's memory.
In this fragmented memory, any word that shouldn't exist might send it veering off course.
What's more troublesome was that he sensed his connection to Ba'er had been completely severed, and the forum was inaccessible. Here, he had to rely solely on himself.
Chen Guan reached out and pressed his hand over the carvings on the city wall.
They were cold.
The moment his fingertips made contact, a faint tremor came from deep within the wall. His hand was instantly repelled, the force pushing him back several steps.
The child immediately moved closer and asked in a low voice, "Teacher, can we leave today?"
Chen Guan gazed at the distant wasteland and shook his head.
Barring surprises, flying out probably wasn't possible either. This was an area to be explored later.
The light in the child's eyes dimmed, but he quickly nodded firmly.
"What about tomorrow?"
"We'll see."
The child scuffed the sand under his feet with his toe, comforting himself. "Tomorrow will do too."
After saying this, he looked up at the gate again.
"Teacher, are there really many cities out there?"
Chen Guan went along with what he said. "Yes."
"Places that won't chase people away?"
"Yes."
"Are there places where you can eat every day?"
"Yes."
The child seemed to be piecing together a map in his mind, placing every "yes" Chen Guan gave along that unknown road he'd never traveled.
Guan Jinyue watched the child and suddenly asked, "Why are you so determined to leave here?"
The child looked at her, a hint of confusion on his face.
"Because this place eats people."
The moment those words fell, several wooden windows on the inside of the city gate slammed shut at once.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
A succession of window-closing sounds rang out in a row.
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!
nto another world, I bought a slave for the first time, never expecting the silver wolf girl to be so cute... Lin Feng: I know it's cold, but you don't have to sneak into my bed! Yuna: Just sharing body warmth, if you dare do anything naughty, I'll definitely...
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.
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.
