Three months after Lu Ze entered seclusion.
A figure suddenly walked out from the barrier surrounding the Spirit Jade Pavilion.
"It's finally over..."
Lu Ze stretched lazily.
At this moment, he had already broken through to the early stage of the Nascent Soul realm and completely refined the Taixu Soul Crystal.
Breaking through in cultivation was simple—a single "system upgrade" had taken care of it.
The time had mainly been spent refining the Taixu Soul Crystal.
The Taixu Soul Crystal truly lived up to its reputation as the pinnacle of spiritual perception treasures; even with his talent, it had taken this long to refine it.
During the refining process, he finally understood why the Illusion Alliance had been so confident in handing him the Taixu Soul Crystal.
Refining the Taixu Soul Crystal was extremely dangerous.
If it weren't for his All-Embracing Dark Devil Immortal Body, which could absorb all methods and possessed top-tier stats in every aspect, he really might not have been able to completely refine it.
Every trace of energy it released could overwhelm a cultivator's spiritual perception.
Everyone thought he only excelled in the art of illusions;
Little did they know, when it came to innate talent, Lu Ze was a mountain peak others could never hope to reach.
"The Illusion Alliance thought this Taixu Soul Crystal would overload me, but they never imagined..."
A smile curled at the corner of Lu Ze's mouth.
"One Taixu Soul Crystal isn't even enough to fully strengthen my spiritual perception."
Not that he had come out at a loss, because Lu Ze had also left a few traps for the Illusion Alliance inside that Illusion Tower.
After absorbing this Taixu Soul Crystal, his spiritual sea was still not fully saturated.
Lu Ze roughly estimated that one Taixu Soul Crystal had only filled about a third of the space.
In other words, he could still refine two more.
"Good thing I didn't get the short end of the stick... Surely the Illusion Alliance has already received the 'gift' I left in that Illusion Tower, right?"
Lu Ze smiled faintly, then furrowed his brow a bit in concern.
"But the Taixu Soul Crystal is exceedingly rare... where would I find more? Would I have to rely on luck in some ancient secret realm?"
Going to an ancient secret realm and hoping for luck was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
"Forget it... I'll find another chance to fleece the Illusion Alliance later."
Lu Ze muttered to himself as he extended his spiritual perception outward.
With his breakthrough and having refined the Taixu Soul Crystal, his spiritual perception was now terrifyingly powerful.
He stepped out of the barrier set by Zhao Wendao and Nangong Yuan without alerting them at all—something he could never have done before.
With a slight movement, Lu Ze appeared in front of the Artifact Refining Hall in an instant.
Inside sat all of Lu Ze's old acquaintances.
It was the first time Lu Ze had ever seen a group of people gaming together in the Artifact Refining Hall, piquing his curiosity. Using his administrator privileges, he checked what they were up to.
Zhou Yue and Mu Yawen were playing a Hextech Mayhem match, while Zhong Yi, Zhou Qiaoling, and Nangong Yuan were playing auto-chess together.
Zhou Yue: "Haha! [Mutation: Prismatic]! ...Damn!! [Back to Basics] what the hell?! I'm playing Tryndamere!!!"
Mu Yawen: "Stack! Haha... Stack!!! Stack again!!! Senior Brother Zhou, I stacked five times... Huh? Why is everyone dead?"
Nangong Yuan: "Hey Zhou, wanna sell one of those Sejuani cards? You've got six of them..."
Zhou Qiaoling: "Not listening! Playing for the Fortune Warlord!"
Everyone was laughing and chatting merrily, except for Zhong Yi, who had a bitter expression and hadn't said a word for a long time.
"What's wrong with Senior Brother Zhong? Why is he so silent?"
Lu Ze couldn't help but ask curiously.
"Him? Before going all in, he said he'd find a five-cost three-star unit in the last ten-hand roll, but he didn't draw a single Sett. Now he's completely sulking, haha... Huh!?!!"
Zhou Qiaoling laughed mid-sentence, then suddenly froze. She withdrew from the game as if she had seen a ghost.
"Junior Brother Lu!?"
Lu Ze's appearance instantly made everyone exit the fantasy realm.
"Junior Brother Lu, did you... break through?"
Zhong Yi stared at Lu Ze in utter shock, recalling that not long ago, in the fantasy realm of "Going to the Moon Realm," he had seen Lu Ze appear as the Master of the Dreamweaving Sect and had been ready to teach him a lesson.
Now it seems...
He might not be able to beat him anymore.
Zhong Yi couldn't help but regret—why had he let that candy incident slip his mind?
"My good disciple... have you... already refined the Taixu Soul Crystal?"
Nangong Yuan paced excitedly around Lu Ze.
Even though Lu Ze was just a Nascent Soul cultivator, in Nangong Yuan's spiritual perception, he felt like thin air—completely undetectable.
"Yes."
Lu Ze nodded, paused for a few seconds, then added:
"The Taixu Soul Crystal is no ordinary object. Your disciple could only refine a small portion before reaching my limit... but I've benefited immensely from it."
Considering the Illusion Alliance was always watching him, Lu Ze decided to hide the truth a little.
With the element of surprise, he could set better traps for the opposition.
"Is it that hard to refine?"
Nangong Yuan was visibly stunned.
The Taixu Soul Crystal was a relic from the ancient age of the great war between good and evil.
Unless someone at the level of a Heart Demon personally refined it, no one would know about its rebound effects, and Nangong Yuan knew nothing of this.
"Then the Beast Taming Sect's wish is likely futile. You no longer need the Taixu Soul Crystal..."
Nangong Yuan shook his head and sighed.
Hearing this, Lu Ze's eyes lit up. He quickly pressed:
"Master, what do you mean? What does the Beast Taming Sect have to do with the Taixu Soul Crystal?"
"A month after you entered seclusion, Sect Leader He of the Beast Taming Sect came to visit. He wanted to offer a Taixu Soul Crystal in exchange for your help creating an illusion realm to lift the Beast Taming Sect's calamity..."
Before Nangong Yuan could finish, Lu Ze's eyes burned with urgency. He immediately asked:
"Master, where is Sect Leader He now?"
Nangong Yuan was caught off guard: "Didn't you say the Taixu Soul Crystal had reached your limit after refining just a small part..."
Lu Ze immediately put on a stern face, and a wave of righteous energy radiated from him as he declared with utmost seriousness:
"What Soul Crystal? I have the makings of a future saint! The calamity of a righteous sect is my calamity! How could I refuse to help!?"
Nangong Yuan was dumbfounded for a long time. He had to slap himself to be sure he had actually heard that from Lu Ze.
"Too late."
"A month ago, Sect Leader He received a secret letter and left in a hurry..."
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.
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."
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
