Boom!
The terrifying explosion arrived belatedly. The sound wave transformed into a tangible wall, pushing a scorching current of air that swept across the entire pier.
Long Ao instinctively raised his hands to block his face, but Chen Guan grabbed him, steadying his posture.
The shipping container beneath his feet let out an overwhelmed groan. Its metal edges were curled up by the shockwave, torn apart, and hurled high into the sky.
He looked up, his mouth hanging open unconsciously.
The night sky was completely illuminated by a miniature mushroom cloud radiating an ominous red glow.
The life force of a Tier 7 powerhouse was compressed to its absolute limit in an instant and then released. The result was a low-yield natural disaster.
River water poured backward, the pier crumbled, and steel melted in the raging flames.
And the man who caused all of this was standing right beside him, calmly watching that flower of destruction.
Chen Guan's profile flickered in the firelight. There was no horror, no ecstasy, only a chilling indifference.
Long Ao's heart pounded wildly. He wanted to say something but couldn't utter a single syllable.
[Holy shit! Holy shit! It blew up! It actually blew up!]
[Brother Coffin makes his move and directly uses a Tier 7 powerhouse as a firework. This is the most hardcore scene I've seen all year.]
[So cool! Art is Patrick Star! No, wait, art is Greedy Wolf! I'm willing to call this firework the strongest!]
[Look at Brother Coffin's expression. Calm, too calm. This is the demeanor of a true big shot, treating a Tier 7 as if they were nothing.]
[Upstairs, stop talking nonsense. He must be heartbroken. Another life has passed away because of him. Even if it's an enemy, he can only bear this pain silently by himself.]
[Isn't the filter of the guy upstairs a bit too thick?]
Chen Guan ignored the waterfall of comments refreshing in his vision; his attention was entirely focused on another set of data.
That was his Popularity Points, which were changing every single second.
The numbers jumped wildly at an unprecedented speed. In just over ten seconds, it broke through the 60,000 mark and was still growing.
The audience was very satisfied.
Sharp police sirens echoed from deep within the city, drawing closer and becoming increasingly dense.
"Let's go," Chen Guan spoke, his voice slightly muffled by the lingering echoes of the explosion.
"What was that just now..."
Long Ao still felt a sense of unreality. Just how many tricks was Chen Guan hiding?
He wanted to time-travel back to their academy days and kick his past self to death for ever worrying about Chen Guan.
Who the hell was he worrying about?!
Chen Guan didn't explain. With a wave of his hand, the black box returned to his grasp, surprisingly completely unscathed.
Then, he grabbed Long Ao's arm, turned, and leaped off the shipping container, cleanly hiding themselves without leaving a trace.
A hundred meters away from the corner where they vanished.
White Tiger pushed up the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose, the lenses reflecting the distant firelight.
He looked with great interest at the slowly dissipating mushroom cloud, then glanced in the direction Chen Guan and Long Ao had left.
"A fine piece of work, but the mess won't be easy to clean up," he muttered to himself, a playful smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
Several armored vehicles bearing the Great Wall insignia had already arrived at the blockade line. Heavily armed official personnel were evacuating bystanders.
A man who looked like a Patrol Captain noticed White Tiger strolling leisurely toward the blockade. He immediately stepped forward and barked, "Restricted area! Step back!"
White Tiger didn't stop. He casually pulled an ID badge from the inner pocket of his suit and flashed it in front of the man.
The Patrolman's expression changed instantly. He straightened his body, gave a standard salute, and stepped aside to open up a path.
White Tiger retracted his ID badge and sauntered into the devastated core of the explosion, his back as relaxed as if he were strolling through his own backyard.
He had many identities; he could be anyone.
...
Jiang City, Queen's Casino.
Inside the most luxurious suite on the top floor, the air was so oppressive it felt almost solid.
In front of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, a withered figure sat on a throne-like sofa. He was the Cult Master of the Embrace of Flesh and Blood, Blood Butcher.
In the air before him, a holographic projection was playing the scene at the pier.
The final image transmitted back by the drone was that rising mushroom cloud, after which the signal cut off and the screen turned to static.
Crack.
The wine glass in Blood Butcher's hand, carved from a single block of crystal, silently turned to powder and slipped through his withered fingers.
"Greedy Wolf... is dead."
His voice was filled with fury, and fine cracks appeared on the surfaces of the expensive decorations in the room.
In the shadows of the suite, two figures knelt silently on the ground.
One was burly and heavily muscled, looking like a small mountain even while kneeling; this was one of Blood Butcher's Protectors, Pojun.
The other was as thin and long as a bamboo pole, shrouded entirely in black robes with a faint, almost non-existent aura; this was the other Protector, Qisha.
Both were Tier 7 powerhouses, the sharpest blades in Blood Butcher's hands.
"Cult Master, Greedy Wolf was too reckless," Pojun spoke in a muffled, booming voice. The two never got along normally, so naturally, he had nothing nice to say now.
"He wasn't reckless; he was greedy." Neither joy nor anger could be heard in Blood Butcher's voice. "The power of that box exceeded my estimates. Just who is behind that kid? And why hasn't Lin Jiu been caught yet?"
He had already reined in his loss of composure. Standing up, he paced over to the window, looking down at the bustling nightscape of Jiang City.
"The ritual can wait no longer. I don't have much time left."
"I don't care what methods you use. Bring that coffin-carrying kid back to me. I want him alive. As for that Lin Jiu, just kill him."
His gaze pierced through the endless night, locking onto a specific direction.
"That box must be retrieved!"
"Yes."
Pojun and Qisha's voices overlapped, and then both of their figures vanished.
The terrifying pressure in the room slowly dissipated. Blood Butcher looked out the window, flames of madness burning in his eyes.
He had plotted for a long time and absolutely would not allow his efforts to fall short at the final hurdle.
...
At the other end of the city, deep within the abandoned subway tracks.
Water droplets seeped from the ceiling, echoing with a drip-drop sound in the empty tunnel.
Long Ao leaned against the cold wall. He looked at Chen Guan not far away, who was leaning against a load-bearing pillar with his eyes closed, as if dozing off.
"What exactly... what was that move?" Long Ao finally had the time to ask clearly. "You detonated a Tier 7?"
Chen Guan neither opened his eyes nor answered.
His consciousness was immersed in his system panel.
[Name: Chen Guan]
[Identity: First-year student at Huaqing Academy]
[Abilities: Life Type - Fortitude, Mental Type - Illusionist, Mythological Type - Reverberation]
[Special Skills: Military Close Combat (Blue), Heavy Weapon Mastery (Green), Scythe Specialization (Blue), Breath Concealment (Blue), Stargazing Meditation (Blue)]
[Attributes:]
[Strength: 20.7]
[Stamina: 12.5]
[Agility: 15]
[Intelligence: 15]
[Spirit: 35]
[Popularity Points: 88450]
Nearly ninety thousand Popularity Points, along with the Breath Concealment skill that had automatically leveled up at some unknown point.
This was the largest fortune he had ever seen since his transmigration. A seventh-tier firework had yielded unimaginably rich returns. Some deaths are as light as a feather, while others carry the weight of a mountain.
Clearly, Greedy Wolf's death was worth a lot.
He did not hesitate in the slightest. Deep... Sys, add my points.
[Spirit: 40]
The price of the stat points seemed to have stopped inflating; even now, it was still ten thousand popularity points for a single stat point.
Chen Guan deeply missed the days when he could add a point with just one thousand popularity points. He chose not to spend his remaining thirty thousand points.
He could clearly hear the sound of every single water drop falling in the tunnel, see the trajectories of the floating dust in the air, and smell the rust from the pipes a hundred meters away.
The entire world was constructed in his mind into an incredibly detailed three-dimensional map.
It was just a pity that this map was in black and white.
This was the sense of absolute control brought about by a high Spirit attribute; there was a distinct gap of power between every tier.
He opened his eyes.
Buzz.
A faint vibration sounded in the silent tunnel.
Chen Guan took a phone out of his pocket.
The screen was lit up, indicating a new message.
It was from an unknown number.
He opened the message.
The content was very simple, consisting of only a picture and a single line of text.
The picture quality was grainy, taken from a tricky high-angle perspective.
In the image, two figures were slipping into an inconspicuous, abandoned subway entrance, one after the other.
That was exactly what he and Long Ao looked like just a few minutes ago.
Below the picture was a line of cold text.
[You have been locked onto.]
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?!
and couldn't return to the real world. Finally, I gave up and decided to go with the flow, only to discover that writing a diary could make me stronger. Since no one could read it, Su Luo wrote freely, daring to pen anything and everything. Female Lead #1: "Not bad. This diary helped me steal all the protagonist's opportunities. I just want to get stronger." Female Lead #2: "I don’t care about reaching the peak of the cultivation world. Right now, I just want to enjoy the chaos." Female Lead #3: "What? Everyone around me is a spy? I’m the Joker Demon Lord?" ... It’s so strange. Why is the plot completely off track, yet the ending remains the same? Are you all just messing with me?!
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
