Long Ao yawned, completely oblivious to the silent exchange between his two teammates.
“How much longer?” he complained. He was already getting tired of sitting.
In an era when teleportation arrays were commonplace, traveling by car was only suitable for short distances. It had been a long time since he’d spent an entire day on the road like this.
“We’ll stop to rest at the next service area,” the driver replied.
Left with no choice, Long Ao continued waiting in bored silence.
At ten that night, the convoy pulled into a large service area.
“Students, this is where we’ll rest tonight. I’ve already arranged the rooms,” Qian Yongnian said as he jumped down from the truck, his chubby face still wearing that same enthusiastic smile. “Get a good night’s rest so we can continue our journey tomorrow.”
He had booked the most expensive suite in the service area. A little money like this was nothing to him.
After Qian Yongnian left with his bodyguards, only the three of them remained in the room. An Changqing was the first to speak.
“I’m going outside to look around and familiarize myself with the area.” He looked at Long Ao and Chen Guan. “Coming?”
Long Ao furrowed his brows. “What’s there to see at a service area? They’re all the same.”
His mouth said one thing, but his body honestly got to its feet.
Chen Guan said nothing and silently followed the other two.
Using patrols as an excuse, the three of them easily avoided the crowds and entered a patch of pitch-black woods behind the service area.
The night wind rustled through the leaves, carrying a chill with it.
“What do you think of the transport truck’s defenses?” An Changqing stopped and asked bluntly.
“Overkill.” Long Ao folded his arms, his expression turning serious this time.
“The body is made from special steel produced by Rhino Heavy Industries. The tires are embedded with bulletproof fibers, and the chassis uses a military-grade blast-resistant structure. That’s an S-rank escort standard. And all that just to transport a few lousy bottles?”
Long Ao shook his head. “Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”
“Perhaps.” An Changqing did not pursue the subject. Instead, he turned his gaze toward Chen Guan, who had remained silent. “What did you notice?”
Chen Guan thought for a moment. “From the time we entered the expressway until we reached the service area, five hours passed. Qian Yongnian made ten phone calls, exactly once every half hour.”
The figure instantly made Long Ao’s brows draw together into a deep knot.
He could understand a rich man being busy with business, but making a call at precisely thirty-minute intervals was undeniably strange.
It did not look like he was handling ordinary business. It looked more like he was checking in with someone.
“That’s the problem.” An Changqing’s expression darkened as well. “The client has concealed the most important details from us.”
“So what do we do now?” Long Ao asked. “Turn the table over right away?”
“No.” An Changqing immediately shook his head. “We accepted the mission. Until Qian Yongnian shows his true colors, we can’t be the ones to make the first move. That’s the academy’s rule.”
His gaze swept across the other two.
“My suggestion is that we continue on.”
“But from now on, we need to be careful about everything.”
Long Ao snorted, which amounted to an acceptance of the plan.
The three reached an agreement. Without wasting any more words, they turned and walked out of the woods.
Meanwhile, several hundred kilometers away…
In a noisy underground bar, a woman in a trench coat sat in a corner with a kraft-paper envelope in front of her.
Suddenly, a waiter approached like a ghost, set down a photograph, then bowed and withdrew.
Santai picked up the photograph.
It showed the enormous black transport truck parked in the service area.
She pursed her lips. It was only some wealthy businessman. Why had he insisted on seeking her out?
“Hey!”
Her voice caught the waiter’s attention. He hurried over and bowed as he asked, “Is there anything else you need?”
“Go back and tell that man this is the last time. If he bothers me over trivial matters like this again, I won’t let it slide. I’ve been very busy lately—I don’t have time to take private jobs.”
With that, Santai casually stuffed several banknotes into the waiter’s breast pocket.
When the waiter saw the money, his smile became even more obsequious. “Of course. I’ll make sure your message reaches him.”
After the waiter left, Santai picked up the wineglass on the table and drained the red liquid in a single gulp.
…
The journey the next day was dull and tedious.
The scenery on both sides of the expressway repeated itself endlessly, making everyone drowsy.
Long Ao stuck his head out of the window, letting the fierce wind whip his shoulder-length hair about in an attempt to fight off the monotony. An Changqing continued reading intently from his electronic reader.
Chen Guan leaned against the window, seemingly resting with his eyes closed. In reality, his spiritual power had silently spread ahead, covering the hundred-ton heavy hauler in front of them just as it had the day before.
Qian Yongnian remained in the passenger seat.
But his condition was completely different from yesterday.
The smile had vanished from the fat man’s face, replaced by an anxiety that was visible to the naked eye.
The sweat on his forehead never seemed to dry, and the string of agarwood prayer beads in his hand spun rapidly between his fingers.
The most important change was his phone.
From the moment they set out that morning, the phone began ringing every fifteen minutes instead of every half hour.
The terrain ahead began to rise and fall. The flat expressway gradually disappeared into a range of rolling mountains. Several conspicuous characters appeared on a roadside sign:
Blackwind Mountain Tunnel Complex.
Chen Guan stared at the name on the sign and felt that something was not right.
Unpleasant memories surged to the surface.
“This tunnel complex is sixty-three kilometers long,” An Changqing said softly as he swiped through the map in his hand. “It’s the most remote section of the entire route, and the one with the weakest signal.”
To Chen Guan’s ears, that statement carried a completely different meaning.
Wasn’t this exactly the kind of place where accidents happened most often?
The convoy plunged into the entrance of the first tunnel. The light was swallowed in an instant, leaving only the orange ceiling lamps flashing past overhead one after another.
The roar of the engines reverberated through the narrow space, making the atmosphere even more oppressive.
Three minutes later.
The shriek of brakes tore through the silence of the tunnel.
The immense inertia threw the three people in the vehicle violently forward.
“What happened?” Long Ao was the first to frown.
Before the driver could answer, Qian Yongnian’s distorted scream came through the vehicle’s intercom.
“The road—the road is blocked!”
His voice was filled with undisguised panic.
“A tanker truck is lying across the road. It looks like it overturned.”
“Turn around!” Qian Yongnian practically shrieked. Fear had made his voice sharp and piercing. “Turn around! Hurry!”
There was no need for him to shout. The experienced driver was already wrenching the steering wheel, attempting to turn the vehicle around in the relatively narrow tunnel.
But it was too late.
Chen Guan glanced back at the truck’s rear. At some point, several black off-road vehicles had appeared at the tunnel entrance without a sound.
They were lined up in a row, their dazzling headlights forming a blinding band of light in the darkness and completely sealing off the retreat.
This was no accident.
It was a planned ambush.
Creak.
The sound of car doors opening was magnified several times in the dead-silent tunnel.
One figure after another leaped from the black off-road vehicles behind them.
The leader stepped out from the group.
He wore no mask, revealing a sharply defined face.
A massive aura burst from his body.
He was a sixth-order expert.
Chen Guan nodded inwardly. It was more or less the same as what he had sensed.
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...
lanned to earn money steadily and take life at a slower pace. But he never expected... his father's remarriage, and the stepmother bringing along a dependent, would completely disrupt his life's plans...
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.
