“My lord, you… cough, cough, cough… you’re willing to sponsor me? Cough, cough…”
The bald man accepted Zhong Yi’s fifty sen with gratitude, coughing all the while. He then began telling Zhong Yi what he knew about “that night.”
That night, a band of thieves broke into the Hirata estate.
The Hirata family was a branch of Ashina, a prestigious clan in the Ashina nation, and their estate was heavily guarded.
Normally, even if you gave thieves ten thousand times the courage, they still wouldn’t dare break in.
But war had just erupted, and the young warriors had all been sent to the front lines. The Hirata family’s defenses were considerably weaker than usual.
So, led by a group of particularly daring thieves, countless petty criminals followed suit, raiding the Hirata estate at night, setting it ablaze, and looting it.
The bald man had been one of those thieves, taking advantage of the chaos to fish for whatever he could find.
“That was when I saw you, my lord… cough, cough, cough!”
The bald man patted his chest as he recalled the events.
“Back then, you looked as though you were searching for something… just like the expression on your face now. Did you find it?”
“…”
For a moment, Zhong Yi didn’t know how to answer.
After all, he had no memories of Wolf’s past whatsoever.
The information the bald man had provided was incomplete, and many of the questions Zhong Yi cared about remained unanswered.
But the crucial clue was the Hirata family.
In other words, Kuro’s clan.
“They suffered a catastrophe three years ago, and now, three years later, all sorts of factions are fighting over them… Looks like the key to everything lies with Lord Kuro!”
Zhong Yi stroked his chin and muttered to himself.
“My lord, I have some other information here. For just one hundred sen, I can… cough, cough… sell it to you!”
“No need.”
Zhong Yi shook his head and rejected the offer.
He felt that the bald man was only a minor character and had no more useful information to give.
Besides, one hundred sen was no small sum. It was all the money in his pocket.
“All… right… cough, cough…”
The bald man’s coughing grew even worse.
“Damn it, I wonder which consumptive wretch cursed me behind my back. That’s the only explanation for this strange illness suddenly appearing… cough, cough, cough…”
“…How about you sell that information to me after all?”
“Huh? My lord, why are you looking at me with such a guilty expression?”
“It’s… it’s nothing…”
Zhong Yi gave an awkward smile and handed over all one hundred sen in his pouch.
Since he dropped his money whenever he died, he might as well spend it ahead of time.
After receiving the one hundred sen, the bald man’s Dragonrot symptoms seemed to improve considerably. With a beaming smile, he began telling Zhong Yi his new piece of information.
This time, it concerned a “shinobi prosthetic tool.”
“What!? A shinobi tool that can spew flames!?”
Zhong Yi’s eyes widened in delight.
Wasn’t this exactly the weapon he had been looking for to deal with the Chained Ogre?
“As expected! Junior Brother Lu’s illusion has more than one solution!”
Zhong Yi unfolded the slip of paper the bald man had handed him. In crooked handwriting, it said that the Hirata estate contained such a shinobi tool, apparently near the bonfire where the banquet had been held.
“The Hirata estate? Where exactly is that…?”
Zhong Yi frowned.
Ashina Castle was heavily guarded everywhere, and he wasn’t familiar with the terrain at all. He had no idea where to begin looking.
“That’s all there is. The Hirata estate has already been burned to the ground. The Hirata family is finished!”
The bald man blinked and explained in a perfectly calm tone.
“Then why sell me this information?”
Zhong Yi glared at him.
“Well, the ruins are still there, aren’t they? Maybe you’ll be able to dig something out of them. Don’t you think?”
The bald man smiled and pointed in a direction.
“You’re a generous man, my lord, so I won’t charge you for this bit of information. Follow this road, and you should come across the remains of the Hirata estate!”
…
…
Following the bald man’s directions, Zhong Yi turned around and retraced the path he had taken earlier.
In Super Serious Mode, Zhong Yi struggled to hack two foot soldiers to death before finally spotting a burned-out ruin.
“Is this the ruin of the Hirata estate?”
His eyes lit up. He fired his grappling hook and swiftly flew into a damaged house with half its structure missing.
The roof had been almost completely torn away. Inside the ramshackle building stood only a blind old woman leaning on a cane.
“Granny, is this the Hirata estate?”
Zhong Yi asked curiously.
“Oh, oh! Inosuke has come home? My boy, did you see the young lord?”
The old woman turned around, and the wrinkles on her face immediately smoothed out. Her aged features filled with relief and joy.
“Uh, I’m not your son…”
Zhong Yi suddenly found himself at a loss.
“Hehe, there you go again, talking nonsense… My mind may not be what it once was, but I can still recognize my own son, can’t I?”
The old woman laughed happily. She extended a wrinkled hand and tremblingly stroked Zhong Yi’s cheek.
Seeing how genuine her reaction was, Zhong Yi’s heart softened, and he decided not to correct her again.
“My boy, take this bell… I made it to protect the young lord. Go and offer it before the Buddha statue for me, will you?”
The old woman happily handed him a finely crafted golden bell.
Looking at the [Young Lord’s Bell of Protection] in his hand, Zhong Yi’s mouth fell slightly open.
“Fine, fine. I’ll fulfill the old woman’s wish first.”
He shook his head. In the end, his kindness had gotten the better of him.
An inscription on the bell stated that it needed to be offered before a Buddha statue.
It even specifically noted that the Sculptor would know how to perform the offering.
Zhong Yi stopped searching the Hirata estate and instead carried the Young Lord’s Bell of Protection back to the abandoned temple where the Sculptor resided.
“Cough, cough… cough!”
The moment he returned to the abandoned temple, he heard violent coughing coming from inside.
With a guilty conscience, Zhong Yi entered the inner room. Beside the Sculptor stood an elegant woman in a kimono, examining something.
“Emma, have you found a way to treat Dragonrot?”
Zhong Yi immediately asked with concern.
The elegant woman was named Emma. She possessed a face as beautiful as a heavenly maiden, along with a refined and graceful air. Her eyes were as gentle as water, making her nearly impossible for any player to dislike.
Most impressive of all, Emma was not merely blessed with beauty—she was also a superb physician.
She had studied under the greatest doctor of the age, Dōjun, who had created the Medical Gourd Zhong Yi carried. That alone spoke volumes about her skill.
It was from Emma that Zhong Yi had learned about Dragonrot, and he had asked her to search for a way to cure it.
“The color of the blood clot is somewhat cloudy… but I’m not certain whether this method is correct.”
Emma carefully examined the blood coughed up by the Sculptor, her expression grave.
“If I had more blood clots coughed up by people afflicted with Dragonrot, I might be able to confirm it.”
At those words, Zhong Yi immediately remembered the bald fellow who had contracted Dragonrot shortly after they met.
“Uh… I can get some right now…”
“…”
Emma’s beautiful eyes widened in astonishment, as though she couldn’t believe how many times Wolf had managed to die in such a short period.
“Wolf…”
Emma’s brows drew together slightly, a trace of worry surfacing in her lovely eyes.
“Don’t push yourself so hard.”
“Uh… yes.”
Zhong Yi’s aged face flushed red.
For some reason, he felt as though she was telling him to stop throwing his life away.
“By the way, old man, take a look at this… How am I supposed to use it?”
Seeing that the Sculptor’s dragonrot symptoms had eased somewhat, Zhong Yi took the Lord’s Protective Bell from his backpack and handed it to him.
The Sculptor wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, examined the bell in his hand for a moment, then silently walked over to a larger Buddha statue on the western side.
“Come here.”
At once, Zhong Yi stepped forward and knelt before the Buddha.
“Close your eyes and listen to the sound of the bell.”
With that, the Sculptor began chanting some obscure incantations before shaking the bell in his hand.
“Jingle, jingle, jingle~”
The chime was clear and crisp, yet inexplicably carried a sense of weight.
“The sound of the bell will awaken the memories that have lain dormant within you for so long…”
At Zhong Yi’s ear, the Sculptor’s voice seemed to grow farther and farther away…
…
When he opened his eyes again, the Sculptor, Emma, the Buddha statue, and the temple…
They had all vanished.
A line of system text slowly faded into view before him:
[Three Years Ago].
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?!
uld barely embark on the path to immortality. Just as he was on the verge of death, his golden finger awakened. No matter whether it was poison, drained blood and vital energy, diminished lifespan, or any other physical debuff caused by paying a price—once midnight passed, everything would be refreshed. From then on, whenever someone asked what kind of person Chu Ran was, the answer was simple: Forbidden arts that other cultivators dared not learn? Chu Ran would learn them. Prices that even demonic cultivators dared not pay? Chu Ran would pay them. Lifespan that even righteous cultivators dared not burn? Chu Ran would burn it. All the blood essence in his body? Take it. Want both his hands and feet? He would cut them off and send them to you. You say he’s finished? He wasn’t built to sit idle. You think he’s gone mad? No—he was simply waiting for midnight. From that day onward, Chu Ran would respect neither Heaven nor Earth, bow to neither gods nor ghosts. He had only one wish: For midnight to arrive a little sooner.
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."
