Dentist was very proud. “What ‘Skyrail’? This is our Ring-City Birdway. Chen Miemie, you really came at the right time. In previous years, with so many tourists and so few people able to ride it, you’d have had to wait in line for at least an hour.”
Mute was delighted as well, nodding enthusiastically in agreement.
They entered the station and boarded the train.
Once aboard, Chen Miemie was even more astonished.
The entire carriage was made of a highly transparent, crystal-like material. All six sides were transparent, allowing passengers to look up at the sky, down at their feet, and all around them!
Dentist was a very conscientious guide and took the initiative to explain.
“Most vehicles are sealed up tight, with no windows on any side. That’s mainly to prevent unexpected encounters with anomalies along the way.
“The Ring-City Birdway is suspended in the air, follows a fixed route, and operates according to a strict schedule, so it won’t encounter any anomalies.
“Also, since it hangs in the air, the carriage has to be as light as possible. That’s why this sea crystal, which is both light and exceptionally sturdy, was chosen as the primary material.”
This time, Chen Miemie was truly awestruck by the beauty before him.
A crystal train suspended high in the sky moved up and down along the bird’s-nest-like edges of the city. Above was an azure sky; below, to the left, lay the beaches outside the city, while to the right stood the scattered buildings within it. The sea stretched into the distance, and people bustled nearby. Every glance revealed a different painting.
What was even more incredible was that the Ring-City Birdway did not remain outdoors the entire time.
Several sections passed through towering buildings. In some places, a passage had even been hollowed out through residential towers, allowing the train to pass straight through their middles.
Chen Miemie looked left and right, occasionally glancing down at the pedestrians below, who were tiny as ants. There was so much to see that he barely had time to sit in his chair.
“Impressive! This is truly incredible. Who designed it?” Chen Miemie asked.
Dentist pointed to the person beside him.
Mute straightened her chest and tilted her head forty-five degrees upward toward the sky.
“You?! You had the ability to do this?” Chen Miemie was both pleasantly surprised and a little distressed.
There was no doubt about it—Mute had just shown off spectacularly.
“All right, Mute. I was wondering why you were free the moment I invited you. Turns out you’d been waiting here to show off in front of me.”
Dentist promptly added a flattering remark. “When Lady Mute built the Ring-City Birdway back then, the entire city was shocked. The project was hailed as one of the top five achievements of Lady Mute’s tenure.”
The cowlick on Chen Miemie’s head immediately sprang upright. “That only ranks in the top five?”
Mute took out her writing tablet again.
〖Actually, I based the design and its technology on the underwater cable cars of the sea-dwelling demonfolk. I thought that if it could be done underwater, there was no reason it couldn’t be done on land. I never expected it to actually succeed.〗
Beautiful moments were always fleeting.
Chen Miemie rode the Ring-City Birdway for a full two hours, constantly asking, “What’s that?” and “Where is that?” along the way, until he had talked Dentist’s ears off.
At last, the carriage slowly pulled into the terminal station.
The Ring-City Birdway itself formed a loop around the entire city, but the individual carriages did not. Each one reached a terminal after completing a full circuit, so passengers could not remain aboard forever.
After descending from the city wall, Chen Miemie was still reluctant to leave.
Dentist’s arrangements had clearly been well thought out. That evening’s activity was a visit to the Pearl Night Market, which was located very close to where the three of them were now.
Unexpectedly, Mute announced that she was leaving.
〖Bajiao needs me for something urgent. I have to go.〗
Chen Miemie nearly choked. “You show off and then run away?”
He knew perfectly well that Mute did not handle government affairs. Those were the responsibility of the executive officer of the Tide Hall.
〖Once you leave the city and go out to sea, I’ll take you somewhere fun.〗
Mute promised him that, and only then did Chen Miemie let her go.
After Mute left, Dentist led Chen Miemie into a teahouse.
The Pearl Night Market only opened at night, and it was still early. They could rest at the teahouse for a while, have dinner, and then head to the night market.
The teahouse had been chosen at random, but as it happened, an event was being held there that day.
The event was called the “Chess Tournament.” As the name suggested, a large group of people had gathered to drink tea and play chess, competing to determine who would take first place.
Just as Chen Miemie walked in, he heard an elderly man in a long robe stroking his long beard and calling out in a deep voice:
“I am the Chess Sage. Who dares challenge me?”
Chen Miemie could not stand hearing someone act so arrogantly. Back when he had been on Fairy-Tale Road, he had been known as the “Chess Immortal,” and had even beaten the “Chess Demon,” Old Man Yu, into submission.
“I’ll take you on!” Chen Miemie shouted before he had even reached the man.
The crowd parted to let him through.
The spectators began whispering among themselves.
“Who’s that? He’s so young, and I’ve never seen him before.”
“I don’t know. He certainly looks confident.”
“Anyone who dares accept the Chess Sage’s challenge must be a young master.”
“A master? How good could someone be after only a few years of playing? That’s the Chess Sage, Old Ge!”
Dentist glanced inside and recognized the Chess Sage. She immediately realized that this was bad news.
She was not afraid of Chen Miemie winning. What worried her was that after being crushed and humiliated, he might lose his temper.
“My surname is Ge. I’m a few years older than most of you, so my friends call me Old Ge.”
Chen Miemie cupped his hands. “A pleasure, Old Ge. My name is Chen Miemie. Let’s speak through the game.”
“Excellent. Straight to the point. Please.”
The two quickly set up the board and began their battle.
Chen Miemie’s moves were unpredictable, like an antelope hanging its horns on a tree—leaving no trace of how they had arrived.
Old Ge was as steady as a mountain, advancing cautiously and building his position one step at a time.
One was fast and the other slow, and their battle was intensely close.
The slow one was Chen Miemie. Old Ge was elderly and played in a steady manner, yet somehow he was the one playing speed chess.
Of the large crowd watching, everyone except Dentist understood chess.
Even as spectators, many of them became drenched in cold sweat and felt their scalps prickle the moment they began following the game.
Old Ge’s chess skill was genuinely extraordinary.
Chen Miemie, on the other hand, had a considerable support team. Whenever he made a terrible move, before the consequences could even become apparent, his advisors would scramble to patch things up.
As a result, his playing style seemed endlessly unpredictable. One moment, his previous move looked like that of a beginner; the next, his following move would transform into a brilliant stroke that reversed the entire situation.
As an aside, the strongest chess player among his advisors was not Pure Water or Jinguo, but Qinghua.
More than half an hour later.
Old Ge set down a chess piece and let out a long sigh. “Young friend, you played a fine game. I concede.”
“Just luck,” Chen Miemie replied, making no effort to boast.
He had initially assumed that the so-called Chess Sage was like Old Man Yu’s “Chess Demon”—a self-proclaimed title. If that had been the case, he might have stood a chance.
But after only a few moves, he realized that Old Ge was a professional-level player. Chen Miemie, a mere “old men in the park” player, had no business trying to compete with him.
The moment his advisors had stepped in, he had already lost.
Since even Old Ge had been defeated, no one else came forward to challenge him. Chen Miemie won the prize for the Chess Tournament.
The owner of the teahouse was also an elderly man, and he gave them an introduction to the prize.
“Little friend Chen, this was originally a mysterious item—a chessboard. For now, its only notable feature is its unusual material; it has no special abilities. According to the master who appraised it, it was supposed to have a matching set of chess pieces. Since the pieces were lost, the chessboard lost its function as well.”
Chen Miemie accepted the chessboard. He had not participated for the sake of the prize, so he did not care whether it possessed any special powers.
After savoring the chess game they had just played, Old Ge exchanged contact information with Chen Miemie before leaving, saying they should have another match sometime.
Only after the crowd dispersed did Dentist get a chance to pull Chen Miemie aside.
“Chen Miemie, do you know who Old Ge is—the man you were playing chess with?”
Chen Miemie shook his head.
“He’s the richest businessman in the entire city, wealthy enough to rival the city itself.”
“Isn’t the city’s number-one chamber of commerce the Blacktide Chamber of Commerce?”
“He’s one of the founding elders of the Blacktide Chamber of Commerce. His business acumen is unparalleled. Many of the chamber’s decisions are made by him.”
Dentist paused, then added in a lowered voice:
“Be careful. He was probably pretending not to know you.
“He and Miss Bo don’t get along very well. Six years ago, he came within a hair’s breadth of becoming the next chairman.”
d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!
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.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
