When Chenpi returned again, ready to officially explain the project to Chen Miemie, Chen Miemie acted like a jerk and conjured up a plate of overly fragrant pineapple roast chicken right in front of her.
“Wow, crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, so delicious~” Chen Miemie put on a show of “polishing off a big drumstick in three bites.”
Chenpi smelled the tempting aroma and almost drooled. She had seen plenty of delicious food before, but she had never encountered anything that smelled this good.
“You—you—take that roast chicken away, now!”
Chen Miemie ignored her, instead tearing off the other drumstick and holding it right under her nose. “Want a bite?” he asked.
Chenpi had to muster an immense amount of willpower to shove his hand away. “Hmph, I’m not eating that.”
“Oh,” Chen Miemie said and continued eating by himself.
His little performance left the two black-suited onlookers utterly dumbfounded.
Chen Miemie spat out a bone. “I’ve heard about your situation. Why hold back so much? Just eat if you want to. The worst that can happen is you shrink a bit more.”
Chenpi raised an eyebrow. “If you know that, why are you tempting me?”
Chen Miemie shook his head repeatedly. “What, you think you’ve got it rough? Think back to how great it felt when you regained your youth earlier. You’ve already lived that much longer than most people—you’ve more than made up for it. Others would envy you.”
“You don’t know a damn thing. I can’t die yet.”
“Oh? What, are you going to save the world, or is this city doomed without you?”
“Hmph, I’m a man with ambitions. I need to finish my research!”
“What research?”
“Eternal youth. Immortality.”
This was the second time Chen Miemie had heard the word “immortality” from Chenpi.
“I’ve heard you’ve been researching it for thousands of years. Doesn’t seem like anyone’s a fan of your work.”
“My direction is spot on. I’ve already completed 99% of it. I’m just one tiny breakthrough away from success.”
“Go on, tell me about it.”
Chenpi slipped into researcher mode.
“I myself am a living example. I can extract certain special components from my blood. Through experiments, I’ve found that it’s a kind of inert cell—it barely divides and can survive for a long time.”
Chen Miemie’s eyes lit up. “Not bad—you’ve even made it down to the cellular level.”
But Chenpi, now in researcher mode, wasn’t one to gloat.
“Finding the active ingredient isn’t enough. The problem comes during the transplant stage. When I implant my cells into another person’s body, it causes their physique to collapse—basically, they explode and die.”
Chen Miemie grew interested. “What’s your Mystery level now? Could it be that the incompatibility is due to a Mystery that’s too high?”
“I’m at Mystery 3.”
Chen Miemie gave him a look that said, “Are you kidding me?”
“You’ve cultivated for thousands of years, and you’re telling me you’re only Mystery 3?”
Chenpi showed no sign of joking.
“I’m down to Mystery 3 now. As my age has reversed, so have my body, some of my memories, my Mystery level—even my mind.”
Chen Miemie immediately veered off-topic. “And you still dare to go out in public? With your strength so low and your status so high, someone could kidnap you and extort a fortune from the Book Seal Hall.”
“As long as I don’t leave the city, no one can take me,” Chenpi said with certainty.
Chen Miemie’s look turned sly. He wanted to test that claim.
“Alright, back to business. Since you’ve been stuck on this transplant bottleneck for so long, and you came to find me this time, how do you plan to break through?”
Chenpi spread his hands. “I don’t know.”
“You’re the project lead. If you don’t know, who does?”
“Because I can’t figure it out on my own. That’s why I sought you out. I’m not just looking for Chen Miemie—I’m looking for the Owner of the Mystery Shop. This is my commission; it’s up to you, the shop owner, to figure out.”
Chen Miemie was stunned. Could you even do that? Had Chenpi been possessed by a scapegoat octopus?
It took him a while to snap back.
“No way. Only people who come to my shop count as my customers. This doesn’t qualify.”
“How doesn’t it? The shop rules don’t say that someone I meet outside isn’t a customer. We met, I have a request, you’re the shop owner—if you agree, the commission is established.”
Chen Miemie thought it over and realized, surprisingly, that seemed to be true.
“Wait a minute—how do you know the shop rules?”
Chenpi’s gaze was deep. “How could I not? What secret in this city escape my knowledge?”
Chen Miemie decided science really wasn’t his forte. “You said it yourself—only if I agree does the commission count. So, I refuse.”
“You’ve already agreed.”
“When did I—” Chen Miemie’s cowlick shot straight up. “Damn it, I’ve been set up.”
Chenpi flashed a sly smile. “That’s right. You agreed to join my project team and promised to help me complete my research. So you’ve already accepted my commission.”
Chen Miemie felt thoroughly tricked, his face dark as iron. “And the cost? Can you afford to pay the price?”
“I just want the research completed. You can keep the results.”
Chen Miemie shook his head. “I don’t need your research results.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Chenpi, you don’t even want the results yourself. Surely wealth and power aren’t what you’re after either. Why are you so desperate to finish this research, no matter the cost?”
“Yeah… it’s an obsession, a pursuit, or maybe a promise—who knows?” Chenpi didn’t give a clear answer.
Chen Miemie walked out of Chenpi’s lab.
In his pocket, he carried several test tubes of blood.
The blood had been freshly drawn by Chenpi on the spot.
Pure Water had already run an analysis: “There really is a peculiar component in the blood. According to my analysis, 33.3% of the component comes from a special physique, 33.3% from an extremely high Mystery level, 33.3% is akin to a bizarre ability, and the remaining 0.1%…”
“What about the 0.1%?”
“I’m not entirely sure. From how it behaves, that last 0.1% resembles something like… a Blessing.”
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?!
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!
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.
world slacker. But a genius female disciple just had to get clingy, insisting that he take her as a disciple. Not only that, she was always making advances on him, thoroughly disrupting his peaceful slacker life...
