The blood-red blade light tore through the entire ghost-god legion with devastating force, obliterating everything in its path.
At last, it crashed violently into the enormous torii that served as the source of it all.
Boom!
The gigantic torii symbolizing the Gate to the Underworld began to disintegrate inch by inch the instant it came into contact with the blood-red blade light. It scattered into a sky full of inky-black specks of light, like the last fireflies dying on a midsummer night.
Under that single slash, the ghost-god legion was completely annihilated!
The arena returned to daylight.
Only Hiiragi Aokashi remained standing there, utterly alone.
The black swamp beneath his feet faded away along with the torii, revealing the shattered alloy floor tiles below.
Pfft!
A mouthful of blood sprayed from Hiiragi Aokashi’s lips.
His shikigami legion had been forcibly erased with such overwhelming violence that he, connected to them by his soul, suffered devastating backlash as well.
His body swayed. He had to use his already-broken folding fan to support himself against the ground to keep from collapsing on the spot.
He raised his head and stared blankly at the figure approaching him step by step, scythe resting on his shoulder.
The scythe had already returned to its original, simple black appearance. The earth-shattering slash from moments ago looked as though it had never existed.
“I… I lost…”
Hiiragi Aokashi’s lips moved weakly, his voice hoarse, like air leaking from an old bellows.
He had lost.
He had lost so completely, so thoroughly, that even the foundation he had been most proud of had been torn up by the roots, swallowed whole as his opponent’s spoils of war.
This battle had never been on the same level.
His so-called Night Parade of One Hundred Demons had been nothing more than child’s play before his opponent.
After this battle, what he had lost was not merely his dignity, but the foundation he had built over the years.
What was an onmyoji without his shikigami?
Chen Guan walked up to him and stopped, looking down at him from above. He did not mock him. He did not even show the slightest joy at his victory.
His gaze was as calm as if he were looking at a stone by the roadside.
That indifference was more despairing to Hiiragi Aokashi than any insult.
Was his all-out performance not even worthy of praise in the other man’s eyes?
That student from Northern City, who was clearly weaker than him, had at least received his opponent’s approval…
Was he really that worthless?
“Winner: Huaqing Academy, Chen Guan.”
The referee’s trembling voice finally broke the deathly silence that had fallen over the arena.
Hiiragi Aokashi could no longer hold himself up. His knees gave way, and he collapsed to the ground, losing consciousness completely.
Chen Guan turned around, his scythe resting on his shoulder, and walked toward Huaqing Academy’s rest area.
The entire circular arena was silent as the grave.
Tens of thousands of spectators, all the participating students, all the teachers—even An Changsong on the chairman’s platform—stared fixedly at the departing figure with the eyes one would use to look at a monster.
An Changsong knew that anyone capable of unleashing such a terrifying attack was clearly no longer an ordinary talent trapped in a shallow pond.
He had come to understand something.
The era that belonged to Chen Guan had arrived.
Only after Chen Guan’s figure had completely disappeared into the passage leading to the rest area did the noise that had been suppressed to its absolute limit erupt like a volcano, exploding across the arena.
At the same time, the atmosphere in Huaqing Academy’s rest area was strange.
Those who were not familiar with Chen Guan all turned their gazes toward him, while An Changqing and Su Yuehe, who knew him well, went to meet him.
Shan Heng followed behind them with a bottle of water in his hand, but froze with his arm suspended in midair, unsure whether he should hand it over.
“Chen Guan, you…”
An Changqing struggled to speak, but found himself unable to organize his thoughts. Should he congratulate him?
That scene had been less a victory than a one-sided slaughter. Even he had felt his soul scream in the face of that final streak of blood-red light.
If it had been him, could he have withstood it? He asked himself honestly.
His friend had secretly grown stronger again—and not by just a little. He had become absurdly powerful.
“I’m fine.”
Chen Guan’s reaction was eerily calm. He naturally took the water from Shan Heng, twisted off the cap, and took a sip before walking straight back to his seat and closing his eyes.
He acted as though the battle that had shattered everyone’s understanding of the world had been nothing more than stepping outside and crushing a few ants.
Su Yuehe looked at him. Her clear eyes, which always seemed to hold the light of the stars, were now shrouded in darkness.
She could sense that after the battle, the aura around Chen Guan had become even more… distant.
So distant that she instinctively felt a trace of chill.
Su Yuehe’s perception was not mistaken. Chen Guan was not resting at all.
His consciousness had long since sunk into the system interface. Before his eyes, rows of scarlet data streamed rapidly across the display.
[The Netherworld Reaper has been detected consuming a large quantity of high-quality soul energy. The total energy has reached the evolution threshold.]
[Evolution commencing…]
[Evolution complete.]
[Congratulations. Your weapon, the Netherworld Reaper, has increased in quality. Its quality has risen from “Purple” to “Red”!]
As the light faded, a brand-new weapon interface appeared clearly before him.
[Divine Ghost Reaper (Red · Growth-Type): Forged around a core of Netherworld Cold Iron and Soul-Eating Crystal, this ominous weapon was born after being steeped in the boundless resentment and soul power of the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. It thirsts for more souls—and for souls of greater strength.]
[Attached Skills:]
[1. Soul Withering (Passive): Wherever this scythe points, all things wither. It continuously suppresses and weakens spiritual entities. Any creature killed by this weapon will have its soul completely devoured and transformed into nourishment for the weapon’s growth.]
[2. Netherworld Strike (Active): Consumes spiritual power. The next attack will inflict powerful soul damage and cold-air corrosion, with a high chance of directly severing the target’s soul connection.]
[3. Scarlet Lunar Eclipse (Active): Releases all the soul energy stored within the scythe to unleash a scarlet blade of annihilation. The blade light devours everything in its path and uses it to grow stronger. Its power has no upper limit.]
[Warning: This skill places an enormous burden on the user, and the soul resentment released may attract the attention of certain entities. Use with caution.]
Compared with advancing in the tournament, the scythe’s upgrade was what delighted Chen Guan most.
He had possessed a purple-quality scythe for a long time.
Although it was a growth-type weapon, Chen Guan had rarely encountered opportunities to cause destruction on a large scale throughout his journey. Even rarer were high-quality spiritual entities like the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, so the weapon’s progress had long since stagnated.
This time, thanks to Hiiragi Aokashi, it had achieved a spectacular breakthrough, skipping the gold quality entirely and ascending straight to red.
The improvement in the scythe’s material alone was worth celebrating, but the enhanced skills were even more astonishing.
The original abilities had been strengthened, and it had gained a new skill: Scarlet Lunar Eclipse. That was presumably the attack Chen Guan had unleashed moments ago.
As for the warning displayed on the interface, Chen Guan did not take it to heart.
The greater the risk, the greater the reward. That saying held true no matter the circumstances.
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."
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
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!
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.
