Facing the old man’s probing gaze, Chen Guan’s mind raced as he sifted through excuses that might get him off the hook.
He couldn’t exactly say it was the newbie gift package that came with transmigrating.
That would be way too ridiculous.
In the mental realm, Baal let out a raucous laugh and urged him to hurry up and invent some earth-shattering family legend to fool these mortals.
Still, despite egging him on, Baal was curious about the coffin’s origins as well.
After knowing Chen Guan for so long, Baal knew nothing about his past.
Chen Guan chose to ignore the devil who loved watching a good show and never minded stirring up trouble. Instead, he threw out a catch-all answer.
“An heirloom passed down by my family.”
Old Wang’s hand, holding the electronic pen, froze in midair. The smile on his face stalled at the corners of his mouth.
White Tiger leaned against the nearby alloy workbench and let out a snort, helping to defuse the situation.
“Don’t give him such a hard time. This kid is incredibly guarded. You might as well expect me to work for you for free as expect him to tell you everything, right down to his underwear.”
Old Wang shook his head helplessly and turned toward the massive control console at the back. He tapped rapidly across the screen, bringing up a high-resolution holographic projection.
Chen Guan’s attention was drawn to the image that appeared in midair.
The scene was cast in a cold, gray-blue hue. A black coffin lay half-buried in the frozen earth, while the surrounding snow had been scorched into a ring of charred, radiating marks. The exposed surface of the coffin was covered in a chaotic pattern of ancient carvings.
Old Wang pointed the red tip of his electronic pen toward one corner of the lid, his expression gradually turning solemn.
“We extracted the residual energy fluctuations around the valley and collected some dust that had flaked off the coffin’s surface. Comparative analysis shows that the material is highly similar to darksteel, but its molecular structure is fundamentally different.”
Chen Guan frowned slightly, waiting for him to continue.
“Ordinary darksteel is an inert material produced through high-pressure forging. But the substance on this coffin displays the characteristics of living tissue.”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.
Chen Guan dug his fingernails into his palm. He could understand the coffin behind him—where his true body lay—being called a living thing. But the identical coffin in the Northern Frontier was alive too?
Old Wang turned his gaze back to Chen Guan, his eyes gleaming with the characteristic obsession of a researcher.
“Chen, may I perform a simple nondestructive scan on the heirloom behind you?”
Chen Guan immediately took half a step back, his face wary.
“No. My family has a rule: it can’t be touched by any external force.”
Regret flashed across Old Wang’s face, but he did not press the matter. White Tiger clapped his hands at just the right moment, dispelling the somewhat stifling atmosphere.
“All right, Old Wang. I didn’t bring him here to be your lab rat.”
With both hands in his coat pockets, White Tiger grinned cockily. “I just wanted to bring this kid over for a close-up look. I’ve told you, so I’m heading in.”
“Go, go.” Old Wang waved him away irritably, looking as though he wanted nothing more than to drive them out.
White Tiger led Chen Guan through a passage on the other side. The alloy door shut behind them, completely cutting off Old Wang’s gaze—a gaze that seemed eager to slice open both man and coffin for research.
White Tiger pressed the elevator button nearby, his carefree, irreverent expression returning. His voice echoed through the empty corridor.
“That’s just how Old Wang is. The moment he sees something new, he wants to take it apart and have a look. If you’d stayed any longer, he’d probably have started asking about the composition of your heirloom.”
When Chen Guan was there, it was Old Wang; when he wasn’t, it was Old Wang. White Tiger’s level of courtesy adapted to the circumstances.
Chen Guan stepped sideways into the elevator and glanced at him without replying.
“Come on. I’ll take you to see the real thing.”
The elevator doors slid open to either side. White Tiger stepped aside to clear the way and teased, “Let’s hope that precious family heirloom of yours doesn’t switch sides at the last moment and run off with the other one.”
Chen Guan still didn’t answer. With a creature like White Tiger, the moment you responded, he would never stop.
Chen Guan had his own method for dealing with White Tiger.
A few minutes later, the elevator stopped at an underground platform.
A black all-terrain armored vehicle was parked on the tracks. Chen Guan climbed into the passenger seat and settled the coffin in the back again before turning toward White Tiger in the driver’s seat.
“Where are we going?”
White Tiger pushed the starter lever forward, and the engine rumbled to life.
“The outskirts of the valley.”
“The restriction field around that place is extremely unusual. Ordinary aircraft malfunction as soon as they get close, so we have to use this old-fashioned metal can instead.”
The armored vehicle entered a pitch-black tunnel. Even while driving what he called an old-fashioned metal can, White Tiger handled the vehicle with remarkable steadiness. He might have been unserious with his words, but there was no denying that he was an incredibly capable man.
It was just a shame he couldn’t open his mouth without ruining it. The moment he spoke, his aura as an expert vanished without a trace.
In the mental realm, Baal yawned and chuckled. “Not bad. Lord Bael is starting to like this kind of spectacle.”
His curiosity about the coffin only grew.
The armored vehicle traveled through the tunnel for fifteen minutes before a glimmer of light finally appeared ahead.
The vehicle burst out of the tunnel, and a vast valley blanketed in wind and snow came into view.
The sky was leaden gray. Cold wind whipped snowflakes against the armored vehicle’s bulletproof windshield, producing a soft rustling sound.
More than a dozen enormous rune pillars stood around the valley. Icy-blue light flowed across their surfaces, forming a translucent shield visible to the naked eye and enclosing the entire area.
White Tiger parked outside the shield and cut the engine.
“We’re here. Get out.”
The two of them pushed open the doors, and the biting wind immediately poured into their clothes.
Chen Guan raised his collar and looked through the veil of flowing light toward the center of the valley.
A black coffin lay half-buried in the snow, radiating a deathly silence and an ominous pressure.
White Tiger walked to the edge of the shield and knocked on the layer of light.
“See that?”
“This formation was laid by the Great Wall’s finest rune master. Its main purpose is to prevent whatever’s inside from breaking loose—and to keep anything outside from sneaking in and causing trouble.”
He turned toward the center of the valley and continued explaining.
“The most important part is the restriction that thing carries on its own. No one can touch it.”
Chen Guan withdrew his gaze from the formation and asked curiously, “Have you tried?”
White Tiger shrugged with perfect openness. “Of course.”
“I had one of my summoned beasts try. The moment a seventh-tier wind wolf touched the inner restriction, it turned to ash on the spot.”
He spread his hands and sighed. “Poor little Sweetheart. I tried it myself too. The result of forcing my way in was getting blasted three hundred meters away. Hitting the ground face-first doesn’t feel very good.”
Chen Guan looked at White Tiger in astonishment. Even an eleventh-tier expert had been made so thoroughly helpless by a single restriction.
In Chen Guan’s mind, White Tiger had always been obnoxious, but omnipotent.
This was the first time he had seen the man completely at a loss.
“So no one can get inside?”
White Tiger nodded firmly.
“Not at the moment.”
“All detection equipment—even Old Wang’s prized instruments—loses its signal the instant it enters.”
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.
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!
lity and could only live as an ordinary mortal. He only wished to live a peaceful life. Yet he didn't know— The dog he adopted, because it ate his food, became a legendary demon king. The kitchen knife he casually forged became a peerless divine weapon, causing numerous experts to fight desperately for it. The young disciple he took in became an immortal lord that led an era, due to cultivating the techniques Ye Feng taught him. Even the skeletons he looked down on the most were ominous demon kings that suppressed countless worlds. Many years later, looking at the void shattered with a punch, Ye Feng murmured to himself: It turns out the peerless kings were myself all along...
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!
