The dim blue stone lamps in the circular hall went out one by one, and the ancient murals on the mottled walls began to fade as seawater soaked them.
The stone statue of a child kneeling before the blank door lost all its luster, and the seven hidden buttons carved across its chest were covered in fine white cracks.
Chen Guan stared at the statue for a long while before speaking.
"You can call me next time you're going to another door."
Chen Guan tilted his head toward the properly serious Guan Jinyue and agreed readily: "Sure, next time I find a door, I'll let you know."
Having the Demon King's Guardian volunteer to escort him—why not take that offer?
Baal let out a snide remark in the spiritual space: "Lord Xuanwu really has connections now. Even a Ten-Billion Bounty Criminal is voluntarily making plans with you."
Chen Guan completely ignored that useless comment. He turned around and saw Guan Jinyue step to the edge of the circular pool, raising her hand to press against empty air.
The binding force inherent to the ruins receded along with the complete dissipation of the illusion, and a ring of silvery-white spatial threads spread outward from her fingertips.
Space tore open in a long seam, and beyond the gap the deep, heavy darkness of the extreme ocean floor was directly exposed.
No seawater rushed in when the passage opened. Guan Jinyue stepped through the rift first, and Chen Guan followed right behind.
As they crossed the threshold, the damaged mural behind them made a scraping sound. Chen Guan looked back and saw that in the final painting, the carved stone figure without eyes had slightly lifted its face.
Even though it was only a lifeless statue, Chen Guan could sense a tangible gaze landing on his back.
Before he could inspect further, the last bit of light behind them was fully cut off, and the silvery passage behind quickly sealed shut.
The ruined corridor of the undersea ruins appeared before them again. The runes on the walls stopped pulsing, and the formerly labyrinthine maze of branching paths now appeared startlingly clear.
Guan Jinyue manipulated the spatial threads to clear the way smoothly ahead. Perhaps because they had cleared the level, her spatial abilities had recovered, and Chen Guan felt exceptionally at ease following the Demon King's Guardian.
The two walked on without encountering any further obstruction.
Chen Guan stepped out of the exit and once again ran into Chen Beixuan, who was waiting outside.
Chen Beixuan sat cheerfully on a broken pillar, his thermos still steaming.
The deep-sea water pressure was kept out half a zhang away from him. Dark blue seawater flowed around that empty space without even a ripple touching the soles of his shoes.
"Over here, over here. Welcome back. Looks like I can clock out now."
Chen Beixuan screwed the lid back on and let his gaze sweep between the coffin on Chen Guan's back and the sword in Guan Jinyue's hand.
"So, not going to say anything?"
Chen Guan asked, "What do you want to hear?"
"Like, whether Beidou called me out for slacking on the job."
"He didn't. He never mentioned you."
Chen Beixuan visibly relaxed: "When the boss doesn't chew me out, it means I'm doing a decent job."
With that, Chen Beixuan stood up, patted his pant legs for dust that wasn't there, and stretched lazily.
"Since you're both out, I won't walk you further. This ruin is sealed for now—nobody gets in, no matter who they are."
He looked at Chen Guan, his smile deepening.
"Of course, if you want to go back in yourself, I couldn't stop you."
Chen Guan caught the hint of entertainment in his tone, but there was no time to ask more questions.
Guan Jinyue raised her hand, and silvery-white spatial threads spread from her fingertips, carving a clean gash through the seawater.
On the other side of the rift was the night of the city.
In the distance, the lights of high-rises stretched into lines. The sky over North City was stained dark red by neon, completely different from the deep blue of the frozen sea.
Guan Jinyue only said, "Let's go."
Chen Guan stepped forward to follow, and then Guan Jinyue led him through the spatial rift.
The seawater was left behind, and weightlessness lasted only a moment before Chen Guan's feet landed on an abandoned rooftop in North City.
The wind cut through the high-rises, carrying the smell of city dust and the greasy smoke of late-night food stalls.
The distant lights of Huaxia Academy flickered weakly in its direction.
Guan Jinyue withdrew her hand, and the spatial threads dissipated in her palm.
She stood at the edge of the rooftop, her silver hair blown back by the night wind, with an apologetic expression: "I can only take you this far. I still have a bounty on my head, so it's not safe for me to go inside."
That statement was perfectly honest.
North City was one of humanity's core cities, and in this special period especially, Huaxia Academy was tight on the outside and guarded within; the Great Wall and the Superpower Association always had people around.
If Guan Jinyue, as Ba Er's Contractor, walked in through the front gates, she might not walk back out.
After saying goodbye to Guan Jinyue, he leapt down from the rooftop, using the walls to absorb his force a few times, and quickly landed on a street corner.
Huaxia Academy was just a few blocks away.
Normally, the academy shouldn't be this quiet at this hour.
When Chen Guan approached the school gate, he found only one duty teacher in the guard booth, holding a hot-water thermos while reading an internal notice.
When the teacher saw Chen Guan walking in from outside, he first looked up, then the cup in his hand nearly dropped.
"Ch—Chen Guan?"
Because his appearance was so distinctive, even teachers who didn't have Chen Guan in their classes recognized him.
Chen Guan stopped.
"Hello, teacher."
The teacher's face shifted through several expressions, then he immediately stood up, almost knocking his chair over.
"You're back? It hasn't even been seven days..."
His voice trailed off, growing almost nonexistent.
"Teacher, I'm a living person."
"No, no, that's not what I meant." The teacher grabbed his phone, pressing the screen several times to wake it: "Don't leave yet. I need to notify Student An and the others. They specially told me to watch for you before they left."
Chen Guan caught the problem in that sentence.
"They're not on campus?"
The teacher's gaze became even stranger.
"You don't know? Student An, Su Yuehe, Long Ao, plus Hong Yuan and Yin Chen from the neighboring Demon Capital Academy—they all went to the Northern Frontier."
Hearing that, Chen Guan had a feeling something terrible was coming, but he still pressed on: "What for?"
The teacher looked at him with a complicated expression.
"To avenge you."
In his mind, Baal slammed the table and burst out laughing.
"HAHAHAHA! Wait one more step and you could've made it back just in time for your own funeral."
Chen Guan pressed his brow with a hand. The worst case scenario had happened.
The duty teacher beside him was frantically dialing numbers, getting no answer after several tries.
"The Northern Frontier has entered temporary war-zone status. Communications are unstable."
Chen Guan asked, "How long have they been gone?"
"They left this afternoon. They just got there a little while ago."
Chen Guan felt a slight sense of relief.
With An Changqing's strength and background, nothing major would happen in a short time. Besides, Chen Beixuan was still in the Northern Frontier.
A teacher wouldn't just abandon his students, right? And Long Ao was there too. Given their usual scheming nature, wouldn't they set up a little trap for their colleague?
And with the cowardly nature of those demon beasts, there probably wasn't any major problem.
But the problem now was that he was back but couldn't reach anyone.
This situation was a bit awkward.
The tables had turned—now An Changqing and the others were giving him the cold shoulder.
Chen Guan thought for a moment, then said to the duty teacher, "Teacher, I'll head in first."
With that, Chen Guan walked into the academy. He planned to go find Simeon Ming first. As the vice dean, Simeon Ming would definitely be able to get in touch with them.
lan, the Luo family, tracked him down - along with the babies in their arms. Mo Xuan stared pensively at the paternity test results from over a dozen top institutions, both domestic and international, showing a 99.99% match between himself and the two baby girls. At 23, Mo Xuan, a doctoral student, had become the father of two three-year-old children. The kicker? The mothers weren't even the same person! He gradually realized he was being lured step by step into an elaborate trap designed by these two yandere sisters. "Be good, little Xuan. Sister's life belongs to you entirely." "Brother, if you try to run away, I'll have no choice but to tie you up." Mo Xuan: "Do whatever you want, ladies. I give up."
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!
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?!
] [Lone Wolf, No Male Gaze] [Protagonist is pursued early on; extreme protagonist-stans, stay away!] The "Carnival Paradise" descends and slowly devours the real world in the form of a game. By chance, Zhu Yan awakens the talent [Roleplay], becoming one of the first beta players. He thought he could develop safely, but after clearing the first instance, he is branded by humanity as the chief culprit behind the game's spread—a traitorous villain. A villain? Who would ever... become one! He'll be the villain! From then on, Zhu Yan is not only a player but also a lackey for the Carnival Paradise. Between the straight path and the crooked path, he chooses the con. With his left hand, he dons the villain's mantle, staging scenes within instances, infuriating players who decry him as a despicable traitor, all while the game happily promotes him. With his right hand, he joins the non-human organization "Fangcun Mountain," which opposes the Carnival Paradise, transforming into a mysterious player who slaughters game bosses, earning cheers of "Long live the expert!" from fellow players. Gradually, Zhu Yan rises to become an S-rank human player in Fangcun Mountain's archives, while also being the Carnival Paradise's certified top game Boss. But when the final war erupts and both major factions place their hopes in him— Players tag his various aliases: "Experts, this offensive depends on you." The Carnival Paradise's supreme Boss throws an arm around his neck: "Bro, you're the iron, I'm the steel; you can't let me down again!"
