A trace of genuine emotional fluctuation appeared in Chen Guan's eyes.
He wasn't acting.
He slowly stood up, shielding the heavily injured and unconscious Long Ao behind him, facing the two approaching Tier 7 powerhouses alone.
The night breeze fluttered the hem of his clothes, and the black coffin on his back looked exceptionally heavy under the glow of the neon lights.
"A dying struggle."
Qisha sneered, just about to make another move.
Chen Guan moved.
His figure instantly blurred, splitting into ten, then a hundred. Hundreds of Chen Guans carrying coffins rushed toward Pojun and Qisha from all directions.
Illusion technique, Night Parade of a Hundred Demons.
"A cheap trick."
Qisha's spiritual force field expanded once more, acting like an eraser that instantly wiped away all the illusions.
The real Chen Guan was still standing in his original spot, not having moved an inch.
Pojun's patience had run out. He dashed in front of Chen Guan in a single stride, his fist as large as a clay pot carrying devastating power as it aimed straight for Chen Guan's head.
In his view, capturing him alive just meant leaving him with a breath of life. Did it matter if he was crippled or not?
This time, there was nowhere to run.
The wind from the punch was already pressing Chen Guan's hair to fly backward.
The color of flames already reflected in the depths of Chen Guan's eyes.
Right at this moment, Long Ao, who was supposed to be unconscious, had woken up at some unknown point. Using his last bit of strength, he pulled something out from his chest pocket.
It was a jade box carved with intricate dragon patterns.
He looked at Chen Guan's back.
"Chen Guan, take the person in your coffin... and survive!"
"I will make up for my grandfather's mistakes."
Long Ao's voice was hoarse, carrying the stench of blood, yet it brooked no argument.
Without waiting for Chen Guan's response, he pressed hard with his thumb and directly flipped open the jade box carved with dragon patterns.
There was no earth-shattering phenomenon. Inside the box was only a single suspended drop of golden liquid. Even though it was just a drop, it rhythmically pulsated like a living heart.
[What is that? Long Ao's trump card?]
[Looking at the dragon patterns on the box, could it be some treasure of the Long family?]
[At a time like this, who cares what it is? A good cat is one that catches mice.]
Countless thoughts flashed through Chen Guan's mind.
His original plan was simple: just use the raging flames to incinerate everything. Baal had not resisted him just now.
It was just that the side effects would be more severe, and he had already prepared to exchange popularity points for healing medicine.
However, Long Ao's actions disrupted everything.
At this moment, Long Ao had already tilted his head back and swallowed that golden drop of a heart into his stomach.
The skin all over his body instantly cracked, and streaks of golden light shot out from the fissures in his flesh.
His crippled right arm was reshaped at a visible rate, the broken bones emitting teeth-aching cracking sounds as they forcefully reconnected.
Golden energy wrapped around his entire body like flames.
"Courting death."
Pojun's fist didn't pause for a fraction of a second. To him, this was nothing but terminal lucidity before death. He wanted to use this punch to completely crush these two brats who didn't know the immensity of heaven and earth.
The wind from the punch arrived, and an aura of destruction blew right into their faces.
Just then, that mass of golden humanoid flames moved.
Long Ao raised his newly reshaped right fist. Above the edge of his fist, the golden light condensed into a blurry phantom of a dragon's head. Facing Pojun's attack, he threw a punch.
There were no superfluous techniques, only a collision of pure strength.
Boom!
The muffled sound of the impact turned into tangible sound waves that swept across the entire abandoned industrial zone.
The concrete ground beneath their feet cracked like a spiderweb. Countless pieces of rubble were swept up by the air currents and then ground into powder.
The cruel smile on Pojun's face froze.
A tremendous force transmitted from his knuckles. His punch, powerful enough to collapse a building, was actually forcefully blocked and even pushed back.
His tall body uncontrollably slid backward three steps, each step leaving a deep footprint on the ground.
He steadied his posture, his eyes beneath the metal mask filled with disbelief.
This power... was infinitely approaching Tier 7!
A Tier 3, even if he took forbidden drugs, couldn't possibly burst out with this level of power in an instant.
[Tears in my eyes, is Bro Long finally going to break away from the Bro Nine Gates?]
[I am willing to call you the strongest!]
[Bro Coffin leveled up, Bro Long also leveled up, is it time for Bro An next?]
[An Changqing is still a Bro?]
The bullet comments disappointed Chen Guan; they didn't provide any valuable information.
However, the most urgent task right now was to deal with the people in front of him.
...
A kilometer away, on the roof of a building.
White Tiger still maintained his posture of watching a show, but the look in his eyes had changed.
At the exact moment Long Ao swallowed the Dragon Blood Marrow and the golden light erupted, something in the inner pocket of his suit suddenly became scalding hot.
He took it out.
It was a palm-sized, completely crimson token carved with a flying bird totem.
At this moment, this Vermilion Bird token was emitting a scorching heat. The flying bird totem in the center of the token lit up, as if it were about to come alive, echoing the golden pillar of light shooting into the sky in the distance.
White Tiger's cynical expression completely disappeared, replaced by a look of sudden realization.
He looked down at the endlessly trembling token in his hand, then looked toward the figure bathed in golden light in the distance.
"So..."
"You are the Vermilion Bird."
...
In the center of the battlefield.
The aura around Long Ao was still climbing: Tier 3, Tier 4, Tier 5... Finally, it steadily stopped at the peak of Tier 6, just one step away from crossing the threshold of Tier 7.
His physique expanded a full size, his torn muscles bulging. Golden dragon qi circled around him, emitting an overwhelming might.
Pojun refused to believe it and charged forward again.
He couldn't accept being forced back by a low-tier brat. Black and red demonic power wrapped around his arms, raising his strength to the absolute limit.
The two crashed into each other once more.
The muffled sounds of flesh-on-flesh combat rang out endlessly. The golden dragon qi clashed fiercely with the black and red demonic energy. Every exchange of blows kicked up fierce winds, tearing apart the surrounding steel pipes.
Long Ao completely transformed into a battle beast. His attacks didn't distinguish between friend or foe; a furious punch even brushed past Chen Guan's body and slammed into the ground, smashing out a large crater.
Chen Guan could only continuously retreat to avoid the shockwaves of their battle.
He looked at Long Ao, who seemed like a mad demon, and for the first time felt the helplessness of a plan going off the rails.
As expected, this was Long Ao's spin-off story.
In this situation, he didn't dare to get close either; the raging flames would hurt Long Ao.
"His condition isn't right," Qisha's cold voice rang out in Pojun's mind. "This power is eroding his sanity and life. He won't last long."
Pojun forced Long Ao back with a punch and also noticed the problem.
Although Long Ao's attacks were ferocious, they lacked any order and relied entirely on instinct. Moreover, the cracked wounds on his body not only failed to heal but tore even wider. Golden blood continuously seeped out, only to be evaporated by the violent spiritual energy.
He was burning his own life force.
"Drag this out until he dies!"
Pojun and Qisha instantly reached a consensus.
Pojun no longer clashed head-on with Long Ao. Instead, he used his rich combat experience to start skirmishing, continuously draining Long Ao's stamina. Qisha, meanwhile, released spiritual interference from the sidelines, accelerating the collapse of Long Ao's sanity.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, Long Ao's movements began to turn sluggish.
The golden light on his body flickered erratically. His body had already reached its absolute limit, and the berserk power of the dragon blood was violently backfiring against his internal organs.
Pfft.
Long Ao violently spewed a mouthful of golden blood. He fell to one knee, propping himself up with a fist against the cracked ground, gasping heavily for air.
"It's over."
Pojun seized the opportunity. With a flash of his silhouette, he appeared behind Long Ao. Wielding dense demonic energy, he chopped his hand down like a blade toward the back of Long Ao's neck.
If this strike landed, Long Ao would undoubtedly die.
Chen Guan was already prepared to make a move, and a phantom silhouette of flames had already surfaced around him.
Right at this moment.
Long Ao's body suddenly stiffened, a trace of struggling clarity flashing through his eyes.
He seemed to have remembered something. Exhausting the last bit of his strength, he turned his head to look in Chen Guan's direction.
His body was like a balloon inflated to its breaking point. Golden light surged wildly from every wound, on the verge of completely losing control and exploding.
And in that exact split second, a gentle yet undeniably powerful voice directly crossed the distance of space and echoed deep within Long Ao's chaotic mind.
"Do you want to live?"
"Do you want to save him?"
The voice paused, carrying an unparalleled sense of temptation.
"Then, accept my invitation. Become one of us, and I will grant your wish."
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.
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!
pression Bureau] Transported to a fantasy world overrun by demons and monsters, Gu Qingfeng becomes a jailer in the Demon Suppression Prison of the Great Yan Dynasty's Demon Suppression Bureau. From this point on, bizarre cases frequently occur in the Demon Suppression Prison, once known as hell on earth and infamous for its gloomy, terrifying atmosphere! Why do the demons and monsters in the prison wail miserably every night? Why has the corpse demon, capable of transforming into various beauties, donned black stockings and switched careers to become a foot massage therapist? Why has the eye demon, expert in soul-snatching and illusions, turned into a VR headset? Why is the fox spirit performing otaku dances? Are all these occurrences a twisted expression of demonic nature, or a descent into moral depravity? After peeling away layer upon layer of mystery, all clues ultimately point to a jailer named Gu Qingfeng. Gu Qingfeng: "Hehehe... My dear demons and monsters, whose card shall we flip today?"
