It wasn't ideal to drag an old man out this late, but there was no other option now.
At night, the lights around Huaqing Academy were sparse. Most students were out on joint missions; those who remained were either asleep or in the training zones. Huaqing didn't require campus runs, so there was nobody outside.
The plane trees lining the road had shed quite a few leaves, and stepping on them produced a faint rustling sound.
As he neared the logistics department, he stopped in his tracks.
On the second floor of the warehouse ahead, one window was open.
The window was only cracked slightly.
No lights were on inside, but Chen Guan could see a shadow slip over the sill and drop in.
The logistics department at Huaqing Academy stored mission supplies, student files, and temporary holding items.
Someone sneaking in through the window at this hour—
It was hard to explain that as innocent theft.
Baal's tone was leisurely. "Well, well. You just got back, and the school's already serving you a midnight snack show."
Chen Guan glanced toward the dormitories, then back at that window.
Logically speaking, he should deal with the news of his own death first.
But a thief was right in front of him.
Catch the thief first!
Chen Guan circled around to the side of the logistics building, tapped his toes against the protruding edges of the outer wall, and quickly climbed to the second-floor window.
Inside, he could hear a cabinet door being pulled open.
And someone's suppressed breathing.
Chen Guan leaned against the window frame, in no hurry to enter.
Inside, the intruder worked skillfully—first using elemental power to sever the ground alert lines, then sending a thin stream of water into the gap of the safe.
The water snaked through the metal lock mechanism; moments later, the safe door swung open.
Chen Guan raised an eyebrow.
That ability looked a little familiar.
The person inside reached in and pulled out a black box.
The box had Huaqing Academy's temporary seal charm stuck to its surface.
Just as the intruder was about to tear off the seal, Chen Guan's voice came from the window.
"Need a hand?"
The intruder's hand froze on the box.
The next instant, a surge of water swept up from the safe door and slammed toward the window.
Chen Guan raised his hand, bracing the base of his scythe against the window frame as he leveraged himself inside.
The water rushed past his shoulder, struck the wall, and scattered a row of files into chaos.
In the darkness, the intruder spun and fled, water mist spreading underfoot, the body reduced to a streak of shadow.
Chen Guan didn't chase.
He planted the scythe on the ground and stood there, remarkably composed.
The intruder had just reached the door when the lock clicked shut on its own.
Not an ability.
Just a piece of iron Chen Guan had tossed ahead of time, wedged into the door gap.
Crude.
But effective.
The intruder turned back and sent a blade of water sweeping across the floor.
Chen Guan raised his scythe, pressed the water blade down with the flat of the blade, and snatched a stray textbook off a nearby desk, hurling it.
The book was shredded by the water mid-air.
Pages scattered everywhere.
Chen Guan walked through the rain of paper and stopped with his scythe pressed against the intruder's throat.
For someone like Chen Guan, who had fought plenty of final bosses, coming back to school made every opponent feel disappointingly bland.
The room fell silent.
Moonlight spilled in through the window, illuminating a face that looked strangely familiar.
Messy black hair, one side of his collar damp, the usual swagger of his brows dimmed by the night, leaving only a barely concealed gloom.
Liu Feiyu.
Chen Guan looked at him: "Did your family go bankrupt? Now you're stealing from the school's storage?"
Liu Feiyu recognized Chen Guan's face, and his expression was even more dramatic than the duty teacher's had been.
"You're not dead?"
"Sadly, I am not."
Chen Guan inched the scythe forward half a step.
"Want to start by explaining what you're holding?"
Liu Feiyu's fingers gripped the black box, refusing to let go.
He seemed to be calculating his chances of escape.
Chen Guan gave him a light warning: "Feel free to try."
Liu Feiyu glanced at the scythe, confirmed this was someone he couldn't beat, and finally set the black box back on the table.
"I'm not here to steal."
Chen Guan nodded, face full of belief: "Sneaking through the window into logistics, cracking a safe, taking sealed items—I guess in your book, that's called a tour."
Liu Feiyu, of course, caught the sarcasm in Chen Guan's tone, and his face darkened.
"This thing was never supposed to stay with An Changqing."
At the mention of An Changqing's name, Chen Guan's gaze dropped to the black box.
He reached out and lifted the lid.
Inside lay a token.
It was neither metal nor jade in material, and aside from that, it looked entirely unremarkable.
Chen Guan recognized it.
The unidentifiable token they had stumbled upon in the Black Wind Ruins.
At the time, they couldn't figure out its use, so they'd handed it to An Changqing for safekeeping, planning to investigate after returning to the academy. Clearly, An Changqing had found nothing, and eventually probably forgot, leaving it here to gather dust.
Which had now prompted Liu Feiyu to steal it in the middle of the night.
Chen Guan picked up the token.
As it entered his hand, the faint patterns on its surface slowly revealed a dragon shape in the moonlight.
Blue-green.
Curving and winding.
Like a dragon with its eyes still shut, coiled deep within the token.
Liu Feiyu stared at that dragon pattern, throat bobbing.
"So it's true—you can activate it."
Chen Guan looked up, genuinely surprised this time: "You know what it is?"
Liu Feiyu didn't answer. Chen Guan raised the scythe an inch, reminding him he didn't have the right to stay silent.
"When I ask questions, I'd advise you to cherish the opportunity. I don't have much experience catching thieves at night, and it's perfectly reasonable if my hand gets a little heavy."
Liu Feiyu's face shifted through several expressions before he gritted out: "The Azure Dragon Token. Don't tell me you don't know what that is."
Chen Guan looked at the token in his hand. Quite a coincidence.
Beidou had just said that the Azure Dragon seat was being saved for someone.
And now, the Azure Dragon Token was in his hands.
Talk about timing.
But Chen Guan had a new question, and he wasn't shy about asking: "Who told you about it?"
Liu Feiyu gazed at the token, the greed in his eyes hardly kept in check.
"My older brother's notes."
"Your older brother?"
The eldest of the Liu family—Liu Chengjun—a well-known businessman.
Liu Feiyu's lips twitched.
"No need to fish for information, Chen Guan. I admit I took a risk tonight, but this thing matters to me."
"So all that time you spent getting close to me—it was for this too?"
Liu Feiyu didn't deny it.
"After the Black Wind Ruins, I found out the token was a joint find, but it ended up in An Changqing's keeping. You and An Changqing are close, so I couldn't get it from him directly. I had to get chummy with you first. And even if I got my hands on it, I couldn't activate it—I still needed you."
Chen Guan thought back to Liu Feiyu's earlier two-faced behavior. So that explained it.
In all his time in this world, this was the first time Chen Guan realized that the Guiyuan Group was a hot commodity. Guan Jinyue was dying to get in, and now Liu Feiyu wanted in too.
Beidou said he was holding the Azure Dragon seat for someone. Did that someone mean Liu Feiyu? Or someone else entirely?
Chen Guan also noticed that the token was missing a corner. That was probably why it had looked so unremarkable before.
The reason it had activated now, according to Liu Feiyu, was because of him.
"You went to the Northern Border back then—was that because of this too?"
Liu Feiyu shot him a glance.
"With the Azure Dragon Token, I can get into the real inner circle and change my fate."
With that, Liu Feiyu stepped half a pace forward: "Chen Guan, I'm begging you. Give it to me."
The scythe crossed in front of him once more, forcing Liu Feiyu to stop.
ine. During your journey, you save an abandoned baby girl and become her elder brother】 【You rely on each other, becoming each other's support】 【At the end of the simulation, you shield the now-grown girl with your life, sacrificing yourself to block numerous demonic cultivators. You die, and the light in the girl's eyes fades】 …… 【Second Simulation: You are transported to a world where steam and magic coexist】 【You immerse yourself in the study of magic, obsessed with its research. One day, while out, you encounter a half-blooded demon girl wandering the streets. You take her in as your student】 【You teach the demoness what it means to be human, show her the beauty of the world, and nurture her into a miracle that surpasses even the gods】 【At the end of the simulation, you die of old age in front of the nearly immortal demoness due to your mortal lifespan】 …… One simulation after another, one encounter after another. Xu Xi suddenly felt something was off: "Wait, you said you're coming to the real world to find me?"
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!
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.
