Zhou Qiaoling wore a black top hat she had never seen before, a monocle over one eye, a pair of fake whiskers pasted across her lips, and a whip twirling in her hand.
The Feather-Arrow Archer on the Palu ball assembly line in front of her was rolling Palu spheres so furiously they nearly sparked into flames.
Li Moran stood frozen in place, utterly stunned by the scene before her.
Weren't Palus supposed to be cultivators' companions?
According to the NPCs she'd met earlier, weren't the rules supposed to be all about loving and helping your Palu, working hand in hand?
So this was...
What on earth was going on here?
"What is Junior Sister Qiaoling wearing...?"
Li Moran pointed at Zhou Qiaoling's bizarre getup, speaking in astonishment.
"It's the 【Capitalist Suit】 she traded from a black market merchant. The effect is that it increases the working speed of nearby Palus, but it also speeds up how fast their spirit points drain..."
Zhou Yue explained in a low, helpless voice.
Although he had no idea what a "capitalist" was, the moment Zhou Qiaoling put it on, it somehow looked unnervingly perfect on her, which was why Zhou Yue figured the thing definitely couldn't be anything good...
"Oh! Senior Sister Li is here!"
Hearing Li Moran's voice, a hint of normal humanity finally returned to Zhou Qiaoling's eyes. She skipped over cheerfully and linked her arm through Li Moran's.
"Hehe~ Come on, come on~ Let me show you the fruits of our base!"
"I really think we shouldn't! Let's take Junior Sister Li around to get familiar with the place first!!"
Zhou Yue waved his hands frantically, barely stopping himself from shouting, "Don't air dirty laundry in public!"
"No worries, no worries~"
Zhou Qiaoling proudly pulled Li Moran along, leading her down to the work area on the lower floor.
Row after row of mines and logging camps, with cramped and dim workstation booths crammed full of Palus, all of them sweating buckets, swinging their pickaxes and hatchets so fast they turned into blurs of afterimages.
Behind every single work area hung a banner written in brush calligraphy.
At the very center hung a huge banner, its handwriting bold and imposing, clearly the handiwork of Zhong Yi.
It read: 【Heaven Rewards the Diligent】.
A perfectly serious phrase, yet appearing here, it somehow gave Li Moran an overwhelming sense of...
Unsettling wrongness.
In the other corners, the handwriting was delicate and neat, but the words were far from respectable, clearly the little brainchild of Zhou Qiaoling.
【Want to succeed? Go insane first】
【Sleep on the floor today, be the boss tomorrow】
...
Of course, none of these were the real attention-grabbers.
Li Moran hadn't walked more than a few steps before she was completely dumbstruck by the farm at the deepest end of the work area.
A gigantic King Pamelu was hot on the heels of a pitiful little Qiwanwan, chasing it across the entire field in a frantic sprint.
"Why are all the other Palus working, but those two are just playing around?"
Li Moran asked with genuine curiosity.
"Them? Oh, they're laying eggs. It's Senior Brother Zhong's masterpiece. Lately he's been obsessed with researching how to breed new Palus."
Zhou Qiaoling pouted and explained.
"This thing... with... that thing? Laying eggs??"
Li Moran's eyes widened involuntarily.
That tiny little Qiwanwan, and that absolutely massive King Pamelu??
No wonder Qiwanwan was screaming so miserably...
"Strange, where did Senior Brother Zhong disappear to?"
Zhou Qiaoling looked around and soon spotted Zhong Yi's figure standing by a fire pit on the other side.
"Oh? Junior Sister Li is here? Give me a moment, I'm currently treating the injured Palus."
Zhong Yi heard the commotion, smiled, and greeted her, then led a few Palus that were heavily injured and depressed toward a staircase.
Driven by hunger, the Palus followed the wooden steps down toward an underground pit. They lowered their heads to eat the feed, and in the same instant found themselves engulfed in flames, passing away peacefully.
The firelight flickered across the faces of Zhong Yi and Zhou Qiaoling, creating an air of unreality.
Li Moran blinked.
They called that... treatment?
As unbelievable as it was, when she thought about how this was all part of the illusion world Lu Ze had created, she suddenly felt a strange sense of acceptance.
Ever since Lu Ze had come into the picture, Lingxiao Sect's path seemed to be straying further and further off course...
"How long did it take all of you to build this base?"
Li Moran suddenly asked.
Even though it did have a slightly heretic-cultivator vibe to it, aside from the Palus, the overall layout wasn't bad.
Li Moran suddenly felt the urge to build a base of her own.
"Building the houses wasn't so bad... but we had to build the whole thing THREE times!"
Speaking of building, Zhou Qiaoling clutched her heart in anguish.
"Would you quit your crying, sis?! Every time we were building, you were too busy fighting the Palus for a spot in the hot spring..."
Zhou Yue retorted with a scowl.
"Don't worry, this time our base is impenetrable. There won't be a fourth rebuild!"
Zhong Yi patted his chest proudly, then added one more line:
"As long as Lao Zhou doesn't stay home too often, nothing will go wrong."
Zhou Yue: "Then should I just leave?"
"Senior Brother Zhong, you might want to hold off on the jokes... I'm getting a little scared..."
Zhou Qiaoling couldn't help but shiver.
Just as Zhong Yi was imparting his base-building wisdom to Li Moran, a crisp ding echoed through the base, followed by Mu Yawen's voice ringing out from the top floor.
"Senior Brother Zhong! The Palu expedition team is back, and they got one of those slate fragments again!"
The Palu Expedition Hall was a base facility they had unlocked at level 22.
It allowed them to send out idle combat Palus to raid dungeons and gather rewards.
After several consecutive days of expedition dispatches, the rewards gradually accumulated until they were finally enough to unlock a complete Summoning Slate.
“A Summoning Slate? We can summon a Level 35 otherworldly Great Demon with this?”
After crafting the first Summoning Slate, Zhong Yi immediately perked up with interest.
This was yet another brand-new thing they had never encountered before.
Otherworldly Palus were Palus that didn't exist on Palu Continent—they only appeared alongside falling Otherworldly Magic Stones.
Compared to other Palus of the same level, they had noticeably stronger stats and were currently Zhou Yue's main fighting force.
Now that an even more powerful Great Demon had appeared, everyone couldn't help but want to capture one.
“Old Zhong, are we taking this on or not?”
Zhou Yue was itching for action, eager to get his hands on a more powerful otherworldly Great Demon.
“Of course we're taking it on! A measly Level 35 Great Demon can't possibly be… mmph! Mmmph!! Mmmph!!!”
Zhong Yi was mid-sentence when Zhou Yue, quick as lightning, clamped a hand over his mouth. Zhou Qiaoling and Mu Yawen both let out sighs of relief.
At present, their levels were all uniformly around 37–38. Facing a single Level 35 Great Demon with four of them working together—the pressure really wasn't that bad.
The group decided to give it a shot.
“Junior Sister Li, would you like to join our sect? If we take down this Great Demon, it should be enough to boost you all the way to Level 15.”
Zhong Yi suggested.
“No thanks. I want to try seeing how far I can go with just the sword in my hand.”
Li Moran shook her head calmly.
The answer caught everyone off guard.
In a Spirit-Catching illusion realm, Li Moran was actually going to rely on herself?
But then they remembered she was the peerless sword-path prodigy that Lingxiao Sect hadn't seen in a thousand years, and they quickly let it go.
“In that case, Senior Sister Li, take this sword! I use a spear now, so I've got no use for this thing anymore.”
Zhou Qiaoling pulled a crudely crafted iron sword from her backpack and handed it to Li Moran. She accepted it with a smile and didn't refuse.
Li Moran didn't leave. Instead, she stood quietly off to the side, wanting to observe their battle against the Great Demon.
The process for taking on the Slate Boss was a bit special—they needed to build an altar and use the Slate to summon it.
The Summoning Altar was absolutely massive and had to be set up inside a stronghold.
Zhong Yi headed to the wide-open rooftop at the top, where he had the Feather-Arrow Archer construct the enormous Summoning Altar.
Zhong Yi walked excitedly to the center of the altar and placed the Summoning Slate inside.
Behind him, everyone immediately grew expectant.
“So who do you think the Great Demon is gonna belong to?”
“Whoever catches it, duh! Anyway, it won't be you, bro~ hehe~”
“True Disciple Li got me all fired up! I wanna go one-on-one with this Great Demon with my fists!”
“Then go for it! It's only Level 35, there's no way it'll—”
Zhong Yi's words were cut off mid-sentence.
An enormous, pitch-black, blue-haired humanoid Palu appeared above the base.
Its long HP bar alone made everyone's scalp crawl.
Zhong Yi sucked in a sharp breath: “How much?? 330,000 HP???”
“Old Zhong, it's all your fault for saying a Level 35 Great Demon couldn't possibly be a match for us!”
Zhou Yue shot Zhong Yi a glare.
“Bullshit! I didn't even finish my sentence before you clamped your hand over my mouth!!”
Zhong Yi firmly denied such rumors—he felt everyone had way too much prejudice against him.
The next moment, this otherworldly Great Demon named Bellanova let out a piercing, ear-splitting shriek, and a pitch-black terrifying shockwave exploded outward.
With a deafening “BOOM—”
The entire building was blasted to pieces.
“Damn!! No excuses this time, right?? You just said the base absolutely wouldn't have any more problems!!”
“Motherfcker, you're blaming me for this too??”
“Aaaah, run!! We're absolutely no match for it!!!”
“We're doomed! Our home is gone again!!!”
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
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!
close your eyes and open them again, only to find yourself transmigrated into the role of a villainous male supporting character. Readers familiar with urban wish-fulfillment novels know that it is only through the relentless antics of the villainous male supporting character that the plot between the male and female leads can progress. As the villainous male supporting character, Long Aotian not only has to bully the female lead, harass the second female lead, and flirt with the third female lead, but he also has to go all out to antagonize the male lead. In the end, when his body is discovered, he is still clutching half a moldy fried dough stick in his hand. Fully aware of the plot, Long Aotian is determined to change his fate, starting with the female lead! In the beginning, the female lead lacks confidence: "Big brother, I hope I didn't scare you?" In the middle, the female lead treads carefully: "Brother Long, please don't hit me, okay?" Later on, the female lead becomes coquettishly clingy: "Aotian, it's time to pay the 'public grain' tonight." Long Aotian's legs go weak, and he feels like crying: "I taught you to be thick-skinned, not shameless!"
