Just then, a sound transmission talisman drifted silently right in front of him.
Yao Yuchang recognized at a single glance that it belonged to He Yi. He immediately recalled the other sound transmission talismans he had been about to send to other people, then opened the one from He Yi.
But before he could hear any sound coming from the talisman, everything went dark before his eyes!
He had been put under a restriction.
Yao Yuchang strained every ounce of his strength to struggle the very first moment, yet the restriction was so unyielding that no matter how hard he tried, he could not make it budge even a little.
He was on the verge of panic when a full, resonant male voice spoke up behind him. "Tch, this old fellow's got quite the strength. If I hadn't used 80% of my full power right from the start, I'd have had a hard time subduing him. Are we sure we got the right person?"
Right after that, another young man's voice rang out. "This man is an elder of the Frostjade Sect in the Extreme Mystic Domain, with a cultivation base at the late Nascent Soul stage. Elder Liao, please handle him with the utmost care." There was no mistaking that voice — it was He Yi.
Yao Yuchang burned with fury. He had never imagined that He Yi would team up with the Myriad All-Sides Society to capture him!
He could not believe that the Talisman Sect, the leading power across the two great spirit domains, would collude with the Myriad All-Sides Society, that shady, underhanded gang of rats! As soon as he made it back to the cultivation world, he would expose the Talisman Sect's dark, hidden side beneath its glowing, righteous facade to his own sect.
It was no wonder Yao Yuchang assumed his captors were from the Myriad All-Sides Society. The mortal realm was known across the entire cultivation world as a barren, impoverished land — that was exactly why no one had any interest in it. It was remote, resource-poor, and had almost no value at all, so it barely registered on anyone's radar.
It was common knowledge that no high-level cultivators resided in the mortal realm. That meant the person who could subdue a late Nascent Soul cultivator like him in an instant had to be no ordinary figure. Coupled with the fact that Xiushui City was very likely the Myriad All-Sides Society's secret base, everything clicked into place.
The Myriad All-Sides Society must have panicked when these ten cultivators from the cultivation world showed up out of nowhere, afraid their secret mortal realm base would be exposed, so they struck first to silence them.
And He Yi was probably the first one they caught. Most likely, the Myriad All-Sides Society had gone easy on him out of consideration for his status, or maybe He Yi had traded the other nine of them to the society to save his own skin.
In the blink of an eye, Yao Yuchang had pieced together what he thought was a perfectly logical theory.
Even as he thought this, he did not stop struggling. When he realized he could not break the restriction from the outside, he immediately switched to using a spatial formation, reaching out to tear a rift in the space before him so he could escape.
But the very moment the rift opened, a brute force slammed into it and forced it shut.
"This old boy's got some tricks up his sleeve. Way more capable than that half-baked Nascent Soul cultivator we caught earlier," Liao Pantu said after sealing Yao Yuchang's spatial rift. He then pulled out a spirit-binding cage and locked Yao Yuchang inside it, only removing the restriction on him afterward.
When Yao Yuchang's vision cleared again, he found himself locked in a cage.
Two people stood before him: one was He Yi, the other was a middle-aged man with a strange, uncanny face — only half of his features looked normal.
The Myriad All-Sides Society had even tangled with devil cultivators?
There was definitely something shady going on here!
The realization dawned on him, and he did not stop casting spells in a bid to break out of the large iron cage holding him.
But just like what had happened to Venerable Gui Jia before him, the moment his spells made contact with the cage bars, they fizzled out into nothing.
Liao Pantu had already set up an isolation barrier around the spirit-binding cage, to make sure no stray mana fluctuations from their capture of Yao Yuchang would hurt anyone nearby.
Seeing that Yao Yuchang was securely caught, He Yi turned to the crowd of commoners and tourists in the Xiushui Hu's Teahouse who had all turned to watch the commotion. He cupped his hands in greeting and said, "The Immortal Trace Sect has uncovered spies from a foreign realm. We are apprehending them now. We apologize for the disturbance, and we ask for your understanding."
The storyteller on the stage, who already recognized He Yi, was the first to reply cheerfully, "Why, if it isn't Immortal He! You go right ahead and handle your business, Immortal He. We don't mind at all!"
All the guests in the teahouse chimed in in agreement. "Yes, yes, no trouble at all!"
"Go right ahead, Immortal He. Catching the spies is what matters!"
Over the past while, He Yi had been patrolling the city nonstop, often slowing down to stroll through the streets. At first, only people who worked for the city lord's manor knew him, but once word spread, almost everyone in the city came to recognize his face.
Hardly anyone had ever stopped to talk to this Immortal He, but everyone had heard tales of how incredibly powerful he was.
Seeing such a mighty immortal patrolling the city diligently, day after day, the commoners' admiration for him had skyrocketed.
The group of cultivators in the crowd, having witnessed their swift, overwhelming capture, all fell silent, not daring to say a word.
After exchanging a few polite words with He Yi, Liao Pantu took the spirit-binding cage with their captive and walked out of Xiushui Hu's Teahouse.
"I'll take him back first," Liao Pantu said, as he raised a hand and forced shut another spatial rift Yao Yuchang was trying to tear open.
He Yi smiled and nodded. "Go on ahead, Elder Liao. I'll head over once I'm done with my work for the day."
Liao Pantu carried Yao Yuchang to a quiet, deserted corner near the teahouse, by a tree. He pulled out a jade tablet and pressed it against the tree, and the two of them vanished on the spot.
In the next instant, Yao Yuchang felt like he had been transported to a space with not a single wisp of spiritual energy. It felt just like the desolate, spirit-dead lands he had been trekking through months earlier.
The Cage Courtyard was quiet in the daytime.
Almost all the buildings here stood empty at this hour, for the simple reason that nearly everyone who lived inside had gone out to work the fields.
Liao Pantu carried Yao Yuchang, still locked in the spirit-binding cage, into the very last building at the end.
The few people who had stayed behind in their rooms did not notice a single thing happening outside.
The last building in the Cage Courtyard looked no different from the ones in front of it on the outside, but its purpose was entirely distinct.
This final building was, in effect, the real prison of the Cage Courtyard.
Its entire walls were wrapped in a dedicated formation barrier that stripped everyone locked inside of the ability to cast any spells, including spatial formation magic.
There was no place better suited to imprison cultivators at the Nascent Soul stage or above.
That mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator from the Myriad All-Sides Society had refused to work the fields, and later tried to sneakily tear open a spatial rift to escape, only to be caught and restrained by the Cage Courtyard's automatic monitoring system in time.
After that incident, Venerable Gui Jia became the very first person to be locked up in this last building.
And now, Yao Yuchang was the tenth guest this final building had welcomed.
Locked in the cage and being dragged along, Yao Yuchang looked rather dejected.
He had tried every trick he knew to escape, but none of them worked. This man who had captured him was far too capable.
He sat down in the cage, steadied his mind, and began thinking through what he should do next.
Suddenly, he heard someone nearby calling his name. "Elder Yao! Elder Yao!"
Yao Yuchang followed the voice, and saw the person who had called him, leaning out from behind the dense window bars of a room he was about to pass, waving frantically at him.
"Fellow Daoist Su? What are you doing here!" Yao Yuchang gasped in shock.
ap a wealthy young lady? Or else I'll be eliminated by the system? Ye Feng, who awakened the Kidnapper System, originally wanted to live a peaceful life but never imagined he would become a kidnapper of young women. However, after some time, he discovered that all the girls the system ordered him to kidnap were far from ordinary. "Big brother Ye Feng~ You've kidnapped my heart, and now you're not allowed to leave me ever again~" "Ye Feng~ You kidnapped me back then, now it's my turn to capture you♡" "Little Feng, you're mine! You can only be mine!" "Ye Feng, none of them deserve you. Only I love you the most♡" ... This is madness, they've all gone mad! Wait, what? Why are all the girls I kidnapped yanderes?!
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?”
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."
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
