Faced with Zhou Yue’s sudden visit, the Sculptor’s body only paused for the slightest moment before he continued carving the piece of wood in his hands.
“There don’t seem to be any new Shinobi Prosthetic tools on you…”
As usual, the Sculptor delivered one of his NPC lines.
Zhou Yue stood there awkwardly, hesitating for a moment.
To him, the Sculptor was an NPC benefactor.
Even if he had to cross blades with him without warning, he still felt somewhat reluctant.
“I suppose I have to give it a try…”
Zhou Yue took a deep breath, drew Kusabimaru, and slashed toward him.
“Pardon me!”
Clang!
Sparks flew in all directions.
The Sculptor caught the small blade between two fingers, stopping Zhou Yue’s attack with effortless ease.
In the next instant, the Sculptor’s name suddenly turned red, and a long health bar appeared above his head.
“Ah…”
A cluster of dark-red flames suddenly ignited in the Sculptor’s left eye, while a murderous aura enveloped his entire body.
“There are always times when it becomes impossible to keep it suppressed…”
“H-Hellfire!?”
Zhou Yue was horrified and immediately retreated several steps.
He was all too familiar with this power… After all, the technique he cultivated was called the Hellfire Azure Lotus Method.
In a low-martial-arts world, a power such as hellfire actually existed… and it had all been sealed within the Sculptor’s body!
Only now did he understand why the Sculptor had to keep carving wooden Buddhas without pause, and why every Buddha he carved wore a wrathful expression…
It was all to suppress the hellfire within him!
“Haha… old man! We really are fated to meet!”
Zhou Yue licked his lips excitedly, the battle intent in his eyes growing even stronger.
“When Junior Brother Mu fought the Chained Ogre, he had the benefit of his body-tempering cultivation… Now that I’m fighting the old man, I should get a technique bonus too, right? Hahaha…”
…
Thirty seconds later.
“Old man, your fighting style is way too cheap!!!”
Zhou Yue let out a helpless scream.
The Hellfire Azure Lotus Method had provided him with no help whatsoever. The older generation simply fought too brutally. The hellfire was only used to enhance their attributes; their actual fighting style was still based on the shinobi arts…
The small blade, infused with karmic power, stopped steadily in midair just as it was about to pierce the center of Zhou Yue’s brow.
The hellfire surrounding the Sculptor suddenly dispersed.
He took a deep breath, sat cross-legged once more, and continued carving the Buddha statue, murmuring:
“My cultivation is still lacking… Amitabha, Amitabha.”
Having narrowly escaped with his life, Zhou Yue patted his chest in lingering fear and hurried back to the Sculptor’s Idol to meditate and restore himself to full condition.
After all, the Sculptor was an ally on the protagonist’s side.
Their battle was not a fight to the death. Rather, like the battle against the Tiger of the Black Myth, it was actually a sparring match.
If the player lost, the Sculptor would regain his sanity, suppress the hellfire in his heart, and continue carving Buddhas and pursuing his cultivation.
If the player won, the Sculptor would view them with new respect and entrust them with the future responsibility of severing the hellfire.
Isshin Ashina, on the other hand, was somewhat different.
He could not be considered a true ally. At most, he was neutral.
If someone like Li Moran triggered a battle with him, losing would mean death.
Of course, even winning would not truly kill him, since that would interfere with the normal progression of the story.
If the player managed to defeat Isshin Ashina in his Tengu mask before accepting the rat-catching mission, Isshin Ashina would directly grant the player the Ashina Style techniques as a token of his recognition.
Naturally, the battles against these hidden NPCs could be described as extremely difficult.
After all, any one of them could be pulled out and treated as a late-game boss.
Li Moran, in particular, was facing Isshin Ashina, who had gained a measure of the power of the Heavenly Dao.
In any case, Lu Ze felt that keeping Li Moran stuck there for five days would be no problem…
…
Zhong Yi’s illusionary world.
“What? Allies can be challenged too??”
“Junior Sister Li is fighting Isshin Ashina, and Lao Zhou is fighting the Sculptor?!”
After receiving the news from the bullet comments, Zhong Yi was stunned.
As their fellow disciple, he naturally refused to fall behind.
“But they’ve already triggered all the dialogue from the Sculptor and Isshin Ashina… I need to find something different…”
After teleporting back to the Dilapidated Temple, Zhong Yi’s eyes were instinctively drawn to Miss Emma, who was elegantly admiring the scenery in the courtyard.
“Heh heh. Although bullying a woman is rather discourteous, still… pardon me!”
Zhong Yi drew Kusabimaru and swaggered toward her.
“Hahahaha!”
“I’m a shinobi, after all. There’s no way I can lose to a doctor, right???”
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."
【Prologue: The Beginning of It All – Use holy water to heal the saintess tainted by demonic energy, then converse with her.】 Shen Nian stared at his older sister sipping yogurt, lost in thought. So you’re telling me my sister is the saintess, and yogurt is the holy water? 【Main Quest 1: Brave Youth, Become an Adventurer! Reward: Rookie Adventurer Title.】 【Side Quest 1: Find the Adorable Kitty! Reward: 1000 Gold Coins.】 Shen Nian: "Wait, I’m a high school senior here—did some guy who got isekai’d accidentally bind his system to me?" Hold on, completing quests gives gold rewards? Titles even boost stats? Is this for real? (A lighthearted, absurd campus comedy—not a revenge power fantasy.)
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
