Jiang Huihui had always carried herself with a bold, dashing air. Usually, she was either wearing her cleaner’s uniform or a neat, practical outfit.
But today, she was wearing a beige dress with a short skirt, covered in little purple butterfly patterns.
Her hair still hung loosely around her shoulders, while her long, straight, powerful legs were exposed beneath the hem.
For someone like Jiang Huihui, who relied on her body in battle, her legs appeared surprisingly slender. That was because her fast-twitch muscle fibers made up an exceptionally high proportion of her musculature.
[Favorability +10]
“Xu Mu, don’t listen to the nonsense Grandpa is spouting.”
After Jiang Huihui saw Xu Mu enter, she instinctively pressed a hand against her skirt. She really wasn’t used to wearing clothes like this.
Especially after noticing Xu Mu’s gaze, she felt her cheeks beginning to burn.
“When did I ever spout nonsense? Xu Mu won the martial contest to choose a bride last time, and so many friends were there to witness it. If he doesn’t marry you, where am I supposed to put my old face?”
With his arms folded, Jiang Sheng glanced calmly at Xu Mu.
“Dad! Could you say a little less? It hasn’t been that long, has it?”
A gentle-looking woman came out of the kitchen nearby. She was wearing an apron.
She was Jiang Huihui’s mother, Zhou Shui.
“Exactly! Old Geezer, what are you rushing for? Are you planning to be buried tomorrow?”
Jiang Huihui shot Jiang Sheng a glance.
“You little brat! Are you asking for a beating?”
Jiang Sheng raised a hand and barked at her.
Frightened, Jiang Huihui immediately hid behind Zhou Shui.
With a smile, Zhou Shui walked over to Xu Mu. “Your uncle is making stir-fried chicken. We can chat while we eat in a little while. And don’t blame my father for being impatient. Ever since you became Huihui’s fiancé, you haven’t once come over to visit.”
“Auntie is right. I have indeed been discourteous.”
Xu Mu thought about it carefully and realized she had a point.
No matter how one looked at it, he was Jiang Huihui’s fiancé in name.
Moreover, he had defeated her other suitors in front of several respected seniors.
If he abandoned her now, that would be downright despicable.
“I know you’re busy. My father told me that you’ve recently started taking on missions in the Inner Realm.”
Zhou Shui asked with a smile.
“Yeah. I’ve just completed a few minor missions.”
Xu Mu nodded lightly.
“I’m so jealous! I’ve long since grown tired of riding around on my electric scooter and wandering about the Outer Realm. Unfortunately, Old Geezer won’t let me go over there.”
Jiang Huihui sat to one side as she spoke.
“Senior is worried that you’ll be in danger. The foreign races in the Inner Realm generally dislike us, and since you’re so beautiful, you’d definitely be targeted.”
Xu Mu looked at Jiang Huihui as he spoke.
[Favorability +10]
Jiang Huihui touched her spatial ring, took out a piece of chewing gum, and popped it into her mouth.
“See how well Xu Mu knows how to talk to girls?”
Zhou Shui covered her mouth and chuckled.
After they chatted for a few minutes, Jiang Xingjun carried over a pot of stir-fried chicken.
“Come, give my cooking a try.”
Jiang Xingjun placed the dish on the round table.
“Uncle, why don’t you sit down too?”
Xu Mu gestured toward Jiang Xingjun.
“All right.”
Jiang Xingjun nodded and took a seat.
Jiang Sheng took a jar of liquor out of his spatial ring and placed it on the table. “Xu Mu, this wine was brewed with heavenly treasures. I normally can’t bear to take it out.”
He had once been a high-level cleaner, but because of what happened with Jiang Mingzhuo, he had voluntarily withdrawn from the sanitation office.
Even so, he still maintained contact with quite a few cleaners, so he naturally knew about Xu Mu’s affairs.
Ever since the Martial Arts Grand Championship, he had realized that he had still underestimated Xu Mu.
Later, Xu Mu grew stronger and stronger, eventually heading to the Inner Realm to carry out missions, while Jiang Huihui continued working in the Outer Realm. The two of them barely saw each other.
The gap between them would only grow wider in the future, and that would not be a good thing for Jiang Huihui.
As far as Jiang Sheng knew, Xu Mu was already surrounded by no shortage of powerful women.
That was why Jiang Sheng wanted the two of them to get married as soon as possible.
At present, Xu Mu had only one wife, Ye Tong. If he and Jiang Huihui married, she could become his second wife.
Even if her cultivation was weaker than that of his other women in the future, her status as the second wife would be enough to ensure that no one else dared to cause trouble for her.
“Oh, right! If Senior hadn’t mentioned it, I would have forgotten. This is my first proper visit to your home, and I completely forgot to bring out the gifts.”
Xu Mu first took more than a dozen pills out of his storage space and handed them to Jiang Huihui. “Huihui, take these. Starting today, eat one every three days.”
“There are so many?”
Jiang Huihui knew very well that the pills Xu Mu gave her had to be of an extraordinary grade.
“What grade are these pills? I’ve never seen them before.”
Jiang Sheng picked up one of them and noticed that light seemed to flow across its surface. He held it beneath his nose and gave it a sniff.
“These are Great Tonic Pills I created myself. Senior, you can try one.”
“All right.”
Jiang Sheng nodded. Since Xu Mu had given him more than a dozen at once, he assumed they couldn’t be anything particularly precious.
The moment he put the pill into his mouth, it transformed into a surging force that rushed through every part of his body.
“This…”
Jiang Sheng’s eyes widened in disbelief. “The medicinal effect is incredible! Does this contain divine medicine?”
The other three were stunned when they heard this.
Xu Mu had directly given them more than a dozen pills containing divine medicine.
[Favorability +30]
“Xu Mu, no, no! These are far too precious. There are too many of them.”
Jiang Huihui shook her head repeatedly.
“It’s not too much at all. You’ve only just reached the mid-stage of the Grandmaster realm. Once you finish taking these pills, you’ll definitely reach perfection. After that, I’ll prepare some pills for your Transcendent breakthrough.”
As he spoke, Xu Mu took out the cultivation technique Zhang Que had given him. “By the way, you must study this technique carefully. It’s extremely suitable for you.”
“This looks like a human cervical vertebra, doesn’t it? Though it seems to belong to a different race.”
Jiang Sheng took the bone and infused it with qi to examine it.
Since it had been given by Xu Mu, it was most likely an earth-grade cultivation technique. Xu Mu certainly wouldn’t offer something as low-level as a yellow-grade or profound-grade technique.
“What the hell?”
Jiang Sheng jumped to his feet in shock, his eyes practically bulging out of their sockets.
“Dad, what’s wrong? Could this be… an earth-grade cultivation technique?”
Seeing Jiang Sheng’s expression, Zhou Shui couldn’t help asking.
But Jiang Sheng didn’t answer. He was still too stunned to recover from the shock.
Seeing this, Jiang Xingjun’s voice began to tremble. “Could it be… heaven-grade?”
“No, no! Xu Mu, take this heaven-grade technique back immediately. I can’t accept it!”
Jiang Huihui felt too embarrassed to accept such a priceless treasure.
Thinking about it carefully, she owed Xu Mu so many favors by now.
Yet she had never done anything for Xu Mu in return.
“This is a divine-grade cultivation technique,” Jiang Sheng said solemnly.
“What?”
The other three people all opened their mouths in shock, their throats suddenly dry.
A divine-grade cultivation technique?
The cultivation technique passed down through the Jiang family was something everyone longed to obtain, and even that was only a heaven-grade technique.
Of course, theirs was considered top-tier among heaven-grade techniques.
But even so, it was still utterly incomparable to a divine-grade technique.
Divine-grade cultivation techniques almost all defied common sense. They could even alter the laws of heaven itself.
Zhou Shui couldn’t help speaking up. “Xu Mu, are you still looking for a wife? Why don’t you take me too?”
“Heh, Auntie, don’t joke around,” Xu Mu said with a smile. “You can cultivate too while Huihui is cultivating. I just feel that this technique is extremely suitable for Huihui. Once she has more or less mastered it, I’ll take it back and let someone else cultivate with it.”
The members of the Jiang family were all left speechless.
It was a divine-grade cultivation technique, yet Xu Mu had simply given it to Jiang Huihui to cultivate.
If this had happened within a sect, even a sect master would have to think twice before allowing his own child to cultivate such a technique.
But Xu Mu had given it away directly, even though he and Jiang Huihui were not yet married.
“How did you obtain this divine-grade cultivation technique?” Jiang Sheng asked gravely.
“How should I explain it?” Xu Mu rubbed his chin. “I feel that perhaps this was your elder brother’s intention.”
“What? That unfilial son!”
Jiang Sheng immediately began puffing his beard and glaring furiously.
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.
m back to his original world. In the end, he realized he had overthought things. [Hey, why is Shen Manni, the female lead, acting strange? Shouldn't she be fawning over the male lead at this point?] [Zhou Qiaoqiao, are you sick? Weren't you supposed to break off your engagement today?] [Damn it! An Youyi, please do your job as an undercover agent and sell my information to the protagonist, you idiot!] ... At this moment, Xu Mo himself didn't know that these female leads had already heard his inner thoughts. Then they decided not to play by the rules. Xu Mo: Please respect my profession as the big villain!
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.
