“Sir...”
Li Xing had been waiting in the snow for quite some time. When Lu Gaosheng finally arrived, he immediately sensed something unusual.
As Lu Gaosheng approached, his head was lowered in an oddly somber manner.
"Send everyone away. No disturbances." Lu Gaosheng's voice was strangely low.
Li Xing hesitated for a moment. He bowed and tentatively asked, "Sir, about the grain and fodder..."
"Proceed as originally planned."
"Uh... Yes."
"You may leave."
Li Xing straightened up, but Lu Gaosheng had already shut his door. He had no chance to say anything more.
...
Everyone, including Li Xing, left the garden.
Inside the room.
Lu Gaosheng lay in bed, his handsome features as imposing as ever.
Moreover, this time he had no headaches or heard Bai Fang's voice.
Yet...
Lying on his back, his eyes were oddly... empty!
As if nothing existed.
The man seemed dead.
Perhaps only his thoughts still lived.
I should have realized.
I should have realized!!
How could she be interested in that useless fool? Of course there was a reason.
Why didn't I think more about it?
If I had pondered more, surely I could have figured it out!
No.
No!
Even if I had realized, what then?
Even the ghost doctor couldn't cure it. It was a hopeless disease, a hopeless situation!
Why?
Why did you want to get away from me? I was the one!
I was Xiao Yu's...
Why!!
Why!!
Something must have gone wrong!
Something must have gone terribly wrong!!
Suddenly.
Lu Gaosheng leapt up from the bed, disheveled and seemingly deranged!
Yes, something must have gone wrong.
"Was it you? Song Yanshi! It must have been you!"
"You wretched official! Ruining so many lives isn't enough? You want to ruin me and Bai Fang too!"
"It must be you! It must be you!!! Don't try to fool me, hahaha..."
"But you won't be happy for long. You'll be dead soon, hahaha..."
Jumping up from the bed, Lu Gaosheng danced around the room like a child, waving his arms and legs with no rhythm, all while laughing maniacally.
Yet mid-dance, he suddenly stopped.
And began sobbing...
He curled up like a helpless child in the corner.
Crying, he said:
"But what can I do? Bai Fang is going to die..."
"Why is this happening? Bai Fang, how can you die?"
"Do you know how miserable I was in that brothel back then?"
"Those prostitutes mocked me. Those clients trampled me. But I endured! I endured it all!!"
"Yet you're telling me now you're going to die?"
How can you die?
What more can I do for you...?
Lu Gaosheng suddenly stood up again and charged out of his room, destroying the garden's vegetation like a madman.
Then he started laughing once more.
Maniacally.
“What more can I do for you?"
"Aren't I already doing it? Hahaha... Aren't I already doing it?"
"I'm not Lu Qingming anymore. I'm Lu Gaosheng now! I have power, money."
"I will avenge you no matter what!"
"Tell me your wishes. Come, tell me your wishes!"
He paced around the garden.
In the dim, sparsely snowing garden, with fragrant scent adrift, he seemed to see a woman in white clothes slowly approaching.
He watched longingly.
The woman smiled at him.
The woman said, "You still remember I like flowers."
Lu Gaosheng nodded eagerly again and again, laughing loudly, "How could I forget! Look, every flower in my garden is grown for you. Here are chrysanthemums, gardenias..."
The woman smiled. "You really are good to me."
"It's only natural. You're my wife."
"But have you forgotten who I hate the most?"
"I haven't forgotten!" Lu Gaosheng yelled.
"How could I forget! It's Song Yanshi, isn't it? Just wait a little longer! I'll bring you his severed head!!"
In the hazy garden...
The woman slowly drew near, like a ghost, like a fairy.
She gently kissed Lu Gaosheng’s handsome face.
And whispered, "No... Have you forgotten? There is another person I hate..."
Lu Gaosheng muttered in confusion, "Who?"
She pronounced each word clearly, "Lu Gao-sheng."
Yet Lu Gaosheng laughed, seemingly lost in her kiss.
He said, "That's easy. I'll kill him for you right now."
"Where are you Lu Gaosheng!?" he bellowed.
Then he frantically searched the garden but couldn’t find the man he had volunteered to kill.
That’s right.
He seemed to remember something and rushed back to his room.
In front of Lu Gaosheng’s bedroom was a full-length mirror.
Staring into it, Lu Gaosheng pointed at the man in the mirror and cackled, "Lu Gaosheng, I've found you! Trying to escape? Die!"
Without hesitation, Lu Gaosheng charged at and smashed the mirror, reaching in with both hands, as if truly trying to strangle the man inside to death.
Yet when the mirror shattered, the man also vanished.
Exhausted, Lu Gaosheng collapsed to the floor, still wearing an excited expression. He exclaimed euphorically, "See that? As long as you want, I can kill anyone! I can do anything."
"So..."
"Can you please not die?"
"I'll do anything for you. I only ask that you don't die."
"Even if it means killing myself."
Lu Gaosheng was spent.
Lying motionless on the floor.
Yet one voice refused to leave him be.
"No, Lu Gaosheng isn't dead yet. Turn around and look, Lu Gaosheng isn't dead yet!"
Lu Gaosheng turned his head. In the shards of the broken mirror lay the haggard, handsome reflection of his face.
He stared blankly at the fragments.
Then he reached out both hands and clutched his own throat.
Gripping it tightly!
Tighter!!
Until he suffocated!
Until he lost consciousness!
...
At the same time.
In the capital of Dawu Country, within Song Manor.
In the dead of a beautifully ornate night, candlelight illuminated the manor.
An elderly man in black robes paced the corridors, sword-like eyebrows betraying his sharpness. His blood-red lips appeared almost frightening.
The wrinkles on the old man's forehead indicated his currently foul mood.
And rightly so. After Wang Jue had snatched the grain and fodder for Hanwu Commandery, one incident after another, almost everything had gone against his wishes.
Even Heitian Gate and Dark Building, originally cooperative partners, had resolutely refused further collaboration because of that "Baijun Marquis."
The old man even somewhat doubted himself.
Could I, Song Yanshi, really be getting old?
"Report," said a black-clothed man who had appeared unknowingly behind Song Yanshi.
Song Yanshi was unsurprised. "Speak," he said evenly.
"Liu Hu has sent word... Failure."
"Hmph... But that was to be expected."
Song Yanshi was angry but not especially shocked.
Tang Li, Baijun Marquis and Xu Guo - if they were easy to deal with, that would be strange.
But he couldn't be called flustered either.
Even if the grain entered the Northlands, as long as it hadn't reached Hanwu Commandery, he, Song Yanshi, still had other methods.
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!
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?"
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?!
ose... to cooperate with the protagonist! Shen Yuan: I have a system! Protagonist: What? System: Holy crap, you're just spilling it out like that? Shen Yuan: Let's team up, we'll split the system rewards! Protagonist: Fifty-fifty split? Shen Yuan: No way! Protagonist: What!? I'm the one getting beaten up, and I don't get half? Shen Yuan: Forty-sixty split, I get forty, you get sixty! Protagonist: Deal! Big brother, come on, hit me! As long as it doesn't kill me, beat me like you mean it! Shen Yuan: Don't worry... I will definitely protect all of you! No one but me can lay a finger on you! Guard our Heaven's Chosen Ones! I'm the only one allowed to bully them!
