The Night Blossom Bathing Center was extravagantly luxurious, to the point where calling it "resplendent" would not be an exaggeration.
In Jiangbei City, which was not particularly developed, Night Blossom had become a landmark. Inside, all manner of beauties flitted about, their allure dazzling to the eye.
It was a haven for countless high-ranking officials and wealthy elites, and the unattainable dream of countless penniless men.
Yet beneath the bathing center, in stark contrast to the opulence above, lay a sinister darkness.
Dim lights cast flickering shadows.
Row upon row of doors partitioned the space into cages, imprisoning people of all kinds.
These prisoners were universally sallow and emaciated, their eyes dull with despair. Having been deprived of sunlight for years, their skin bore a sickly pallor.
"Spare me! Spare me! I’ve been drained dry! Any more and I’ll die!"
A young man knelt on the ground, weeping and begging, as two men in black lifted him up.
The burly man before him paid no heed. He drew a specially crafted blade and plunged it into the youth’s vein.
Blood trickled from his wrist, dripping steadily into a glass container.
As the blood drained, the young man’s already pale face grew even ghastlier.
"Next!"
The burly man barked, and a disheveled woman was dragged forward.
She offered no resistance, long since numb. Her nerves seemed broken—she neither spoke nor moved, merely standing still as her blood was siphoned away, her face as white as a ghost’s.
In a nearby cage,
a rebellious-looking youth with a row of ear piercings gripped the iron bars, his face deathly pale with terror as he screamed,
"They’re treating people like livestock! They’re draining their blood! I’ll report this! I’ll report this!"
"Stop shouting. If you don’t, they’ll keep draining you until you don’t even have the strength to scream," another young man in the cell said flatly.
"Who... who are you? How long have you been here?" the pierced youth stammered.
"This place is hell!"
"Who the hell would’ve thought that beneath such a lavish bathing center lies something so horrifying?"
"People kept like pigs, lives treated like weeds."
The young man’s expression was wooden as he replied, "Not sure. Two years, maybe."
At the very center of the prison complex,
a massive, three-meter-tall obese giant sat cross-legged on a carpet.
The giant had a gleaming bald head and wore ancient-style robes. His long white eyebrows drooped to his chest, and when he smiled, his eyes narrowed into slits. His wrinkled face made his age impossible to discern, giving him the benign appearance of a Buddha—
if not for the fact that his enormous hands were toying with the body of a beautiful woman.
The bald giant, standing at a towering three meters, held the woman—completely naked, her face devoid of color—by the waist. Her body was stiff, unmoving.
Her skin was covered in wounds, though it was unclear what exactly she had endured.
"Gourd Immortal, your daily essence!"
The burly man, having finished collecting the blood, knelt reverently and presented the glass container filled with blood.
"Good."
The giant known as Gourd Immortal reached out with a massive hand, seized the container, and drank deeply, his gulps vigorous and unrestrained.
"Ahh, refreshing!"
He tossed the container aside, blood smeared at the corners of his lips. His smile remained, but it grew increasingly grotesque.
"Gourd Immortal, recently in Yun City, a few martial artists have been causing trouble for us repeatedly. What do you think—"
The burly man remained kneeling, his tone utterly submissive.
Gourd Immortal frowned, his eyes snapping open—revealing a terrifying, blood-red hue.
Whoosh!
The beautiful woman in his grip was hurled away, smashing violently into the wall.
Her body splattered into a mangled mess, blood streaking down the wall.
She didn’t even have time to scream before death took her.
The pierced youth, witnessing this, was so terrified his scalp went numb. His throat clenched, his breath freezing in his chest.
"Hell..."
"This is hell!"
The burly man, unfazed by the woman’s death, remained kneeling, his expression unchanged—as if this were routine.
"You serve me with such low-quality women day after day, yet expect me to do your bidding? Dream on!"
Gourd Immortal sneered, his enormous body reclining against the wall. "Come back when you’ve found a truly beautiful woman. These mediocre harlots aren’t even worth my glance."
"Worry not, Immortal! We’ve already prepared a beauty just for you!"
The burly man slowly rose to his feet and clapped his hands.
The elevator hummed, its doors sliding open.
Two men wheeled in an iron cage.
Inside, a stunningly beautiful short-haired girl—Nie Qinglan—was imprisoned.
"Let me go! Where is this? What are you going to do to me?"
Nie Qinglan screamed, pounding against the cage, her fear uncontrollable.
This was the fifth underground level, a place practically cut off from the world.
And the scene here was nothing short of a nightmare.
The underground prison held people of all ages and genders, kept like livestock in cages.
Their eyes were hollow, weak, devoid of any hope.
Nie Qinglan’s gaze involuntarily drifted to the center of the room.
Instantly, her face turned ashen.
A three-meter-tall bald giant lounged lazily against the wall, blood still staining his lips and beard—a horrifying sight.
And on the wall nearby,
a woman’s corpse was splattered like a crushed insect, her flesh and blood smeared across the surface.
Nie Qinglan’s pupils shrank, her heart seizing in terror.
"A dead woman...?"
"What is this place?!"
Her composure shattered. She broke into sobs.
She was terrified.
This was hell.
Why had she been brought here?
Nie Qinglan’s cries caught Gourd Immortal’s attention.
The moment his eyes landed on her, they lit up with excitement.
"Immortal, what do you think?"
The burly man, noticing Gourd Immortal’s delight, smirked as he spoke.
"Such a pretty little thing! This one’s good! Truly good! In my three hundred years, I’ve seen countless women, but this girl’s beauty is among the finest."
Gourd Immortal’s admiration grew the longer he looked. His eyes, now fully open, were a deep, unsettling red—even the whites were crimson, like a demon’s.
As he studied Nie Qinglan, his smile widened, radiating twisted joy.
Nie Qinglan was no longer the rebellious girl she once was.
Under the meticulous care of Madam Liu, her tattoos had been removed, her hair styled, and she had been dressed in a Western-style gauze dress.
Her slender waist was exposed, her face veiled, and her long, jade-like legs—perfectly proportioned—gleamed like porcelain.
Now, she was breathtakingly beautiful, exuding an exotic charm.
The burly man chuckled. "Gourd Immortal, this girl has been styled entirely in the fashion of your homeland. Not bad, eh?"
"Exquisite!"
Gourd Immortal was utterly enchanted. His rotund, massive body actually rose to its feet.
Step by step, he lumbered toward Nie Qinglan, the ground trembling beneath him.
Nie Qinglan’s delicate face twisted in terror. "What are you?! Stay away!"
"What am I? Why, your man, of course!"
Gourd Immortal cackled, his benevolent expression twisting into something monstrous.
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!
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...
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.
