The charm of reverse chronological storytelling is that, as memories are traced backward, many earlier questions are answered one after another.
Zhong Yi had just been wondering why Lin Xi and Gu Yun were riding horses on the grassland.
Then, in the very next memory, the question was resolved.
This memory was located at the Spirit Medicine Sect.
It was in this memory that Gu Yun learned Lin Xi bore the Ice Heart Bloodline.
Riding horses was one of the ways to alleviate Lin Xi’s heart-devouring symptoms.
That explained why the previous memory had them galloping across the prairie.
“So it seems Old Master Gu really does cherish Lin Xi… If riding helps, he just takes her straight to the grasslands,” Zhong Yi remarked with emotion.
The visit to the Spirit Medicine Sect also answered another question that had puzzled Zhong Yi for a long time.
Lin Xi’s reticence and unusual behavior all stemmed from her Ice Heart Bloodline.
In the ancient era, when spiritual energy was abundant, the Ice Heart Bloodline was a top-tier cultivation physique, characterized by emotional detachment and single-minded pursuit of the Dao.
But now, with spiritual energy so scarce, not only had the bloodline's cultivation advantages vanished, but the lack of any compatible inherited techniques had caused all sorts of problems.
The biggest problem was this:
Lin Xi could not express her inner thoughts.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to—it was that she couldn’t.
Even attempting to express herself would cause her to suffer excruciating heart-devouring pain.
…
…
The memory moved further back.
This time, the memory was set in a dim, shadowy theater.
On a huge white screen, a shadow play of Havoc in Heaven was being performed.
The theater seats were scattered, not fully occupied.
Zhong Yi immediately spotted a young Gu Yun, still just a boy.
The boy sat alone in the back row on the right side, looking around as if expecting someone.
After a long wait, he walked out of the theater dejectedly, slumping to the ground in disappointment.
What Zhong Yi didn't expect was that, shortly after Gu Yun rushed out, a long-haired girl slipped out from another back door of the theater.
Her slightly melancholy aura was distinctive—it was clearly a young Lin Xi.
Before the young Gu Yun could speak, Lin Xi beat him to it and demanded to know why, since they had agreed to watch the play together, he had left early.
This left Zhong Yi stunned.
At that moment, the saying "the guilty party files the lawsuit first" became all too real.
"We weren’t watching it together at all… I never even saw you! If you knew I was here, why didn’t you come find me?"
"What difference does it make? We were in the same theater, watching the same play… Isn’t that just like watching a movie together?"
Hearing this answer, Zhong Yi was momentarily taken aback.
But then, thinking of Lin Xi’s constitution, he understood.
It seemed she was destined to be such a strange girl.
"Hahaha…"
Instead of getting angry, Gu Yun burst into laughter.
"What are you laughing at?" the girl asked, confused.
"You’re so strange… You really are, very special!"
Gu Yun laughed until tears welled up in his eyes.
Perplexed, she pressed a hand to her chest: "Then… would you still be willing to watch it with me?"
Gu Yun nodded eagerly: "Yes!"
…
…
The memory skipped forward again.
Still in their youth.
On the campus full of youthful energy.
A shy Gu Yun, spurred on by his good friend Zhang Peng, mustered the courage to invite Lin Xi out.
Lin Xi sat by the stairs, quietly reading a book about lighthouses, with a neatly washed platypus plushie beside her.
"This plushie must mean a lot to her? It’s been with her for so long…" Zhong Yi mused.
Throughout the memory river spanning seventy years, the platypus plushie had appeared as a memory fragment more than once, showing how important it was to the two of them.
"Shhh—"
Qin Li'en shot Zhong Yi a glare and made a hushing gesture.
The youthful romance, tender and innocent, was the most endearing to witness.
Even Qin Li'en took pleasure in seeing these scenes.
"May I… ask you to watch a shadow play with me?"
The boy’s blush spoke louder than words.
Lin Xi put down her book, glanced at him, then quickly covered her face with the book again.
"I don’t know."
"Don’t worry, I can wait for you to think it over."
"I can’t go."
"Why?"
The boy’s face was full of disappointment.
"Because you didn’t say the time, nor the place."
The girl kept her head down, reading, and stated it as if it were the most natural thing.
This meant she agreed.
"Huh??"
Gu Yun was stunned for a moment, then quickly realized and said:
"Three days from now, at ten in the morning, at Wanfeng Theater—does that work?"
Gu Yun looked at her with hopeful anticipation.
She looked back at him with equal depth.
They gazed at each other in silence, as if time itself had frozen.
"Senior Sister, did you secretly freeze the memory space…"
Just as Zhong Yi was about to ask, the girl’s answer came:
"Okay."
One word, but it was enough to make the boy overjoyed.
The entire campus echoed with Gu Yun’s ecstatic shouts.
…
Elsewhere.
In the cafeteria.
Zhang Peng and Gu Yun were talking about Lin Xi.
Zhang Peng couldn't understand why Gu Yun would like a girl who was so reclusive, peculiar, and completely outside the social circle.
Gu Yun said he thought she was special.
"Special? Special in being boring?"
Zhang Peng laughed in exasperation.
"Look, I think you just want to use her to show you’re different, that you’re the only sober one while everyone else is drunk—right?"
"I don’t know."
Gu Yun shook his head.
He wasn’t even sure himself what exactly he liked about Lin Xi.
"Maybe you’re right, but she…"
Gu Yun gazed tenderly at the solitary girl sitting a few tables away, having lunch with her platypus plushie.
"…she’s just special."
The memory stopped abruptly.
The space froze.
"So that’s it! So that’s what ‘that thing’ they mentioned is all about!"
Zhong Yi suddenly understood.
Having gone through so many memories, many of the earlier puzzles were finally unraveling one by one.
Lin Xi’s drastic change in temperament occurred after Gu Yun confessed his reason for approaching her at the lighthouse.
In the beginning, Gu Yun got close to Lin Xi because being with her made him feel different from others.
Clearly, this shallow and naive reason had hurt Lin Xi.
So she increasingly closed herself off, growing more reclusive day by day, and her relationship with Gu Yun was no longer as close.
After listening to Zhong Yi’s explanation, the barrage comments immediately erupted into debate.
[So that’s the reason… No wonder things got so weird afterwards]
[Looking at it this way, Lin Xi finally let someone in, and his original intention hurt her?]
[But what about the paper rabbits, the sandbag, and the platypus plushie? How do you explain those?]
[And the lighthouse! Why is the lighthouse so important? I don’t see anything special about it]
…
Seeing the conflicting comments, Zhong Yi frowned.
Indeed.
Even though the reasoning seemed so logical, there were still too many doubts that couldn’t be explained.
For example…
Why did Lin Xi cut off her own hair?
Why did she keep folding paper rabbits?
Why was that platypus plushie always with her?
Why was the lighthouse so important?
…
"What a mess—is this a love illusion or a mystery illusion…"
Zhong Yi shook his head with a wry smile.
Full of anticipation, he entered the next memory.
I couldn't wait to unravel all the mysteries.
...
...
Time flew backward rapidly.
Zhong Yi and Qin Li'en appeared in front of a house they had never seen before.
"Where is this?"
Zhong Yi was curious, but an answer came quickly.
A young-faced Gu Yun was cheerfully pushing open the door and walking inside.
This time, he looked only about seven or eight years old.
Obviously, this was his childhood home.
"It seems we're close to completing the mission,"
Qin Li'en murmured.
"But we're also getting further from the truth..."
Zhong Yi shook his head regretfully.
He had hoped to see more clues about Lin Xi.
"Let's go,"
Qin Li'en said, following little Gu Yun inside.
Just as Zhong Yi was about to enter, he suddenly noticed an item emitting a faint glow.
It was a massive animal skull placed in the courtyard of Gu's home, with a giant horn on top.
Beneath the horn's base, there were three inconspicuous holes.
"What is this?"
Zhong Yi approached curiously and received a piece of information.
[Earth Dragon Skull: The remains of a dead earth dragon.]
It had no dream power generated, nor was it a memory fragment—just an object with a descriptive note.
"Well, just a decoration..."
Zhong Yi shrugged dismissively and followed Qin Li'en into the house.
This memory was nothing special.
Little Gu Yun came home, greeted his mother, and she cooked him dinner.
That was all.
Before long, Zhong Yi and Qin Li'en gathered enough dream power.
This time, the memory fragment was a cuju ball.
"It looks like our mission is finally complete,"
Zhong Yi muttered to himself.
With the injection of dream power, the two traveled through time and space again.
This time, what appeared before them was a pitch-black, fragmented memory space that couldn't be entered.
Qin Li'en gave Zhong Yi a sidelong glare:
"Junior Brother Zhong, care to tell me which one of us is really the jinx?"
[Three consecutive days of bonus chapters, language has been streamlined as much as possible; only content with key information remains.]
[The flashback section is finally finished; tomorrow begins the twist. After the original plot concludes, a new major twist will be added!]
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 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.
or! A blessing for those who struggle with love, a guidebook for dating novices. Quickly match with your dream goddess! Complete walkthroughs earn rewards, and perfect walkthroughs unlock limited achievements!】 Shen Yi, an ordinary office worker, accidentally downloads a mini-game called Dating Simulator. The mini-game is simple: randomly search for dating targets, simulate dates, and receive rewards upon successful confession. Rewards include but are not limited to money, attributes, and skills. The higher the evaluation, the better the rewards, with perfect ratings unlocking mysterious achievements. Shen Yi plans to use this mysterious mini-game to continuously pursue targets and improve himself, making his life better and better. ...... However, after several successful walkthroughs, Shen Yi suddenly notices something strange - the targets he previously simulated dating seem to be searching for him in real life?
