Fifteen years later.
In the rear courtyard of the Heavenly Court.
Gu Changyuan lay on a rocking chair, his body swaying gently back and forth with its motion, his gaze fixed on the patch of blue sky above, fragmented by the leaves of the trees overhead.
Over the past fifteen years, the Heavenly Court had expanded greatly in scale.
Listening to the faint sounds of voices drifting from afar, Gu Changyuan felt a sense of contentment—like watching a tree he had planted with his own hands grow into a lush, thriving form.
Just then, a surging power burst forth from deep within him without warning.
The rocking chair stopped moving. His body tensed for a brief moment, then quickly relaxed.
His expression showed no change, but inside him, a cataclysmic transformation was taking place.
The torrential force surging from all directions—like a flood—was violently scouring his meridians, dantian, sea of consciousness, and soul.
Every inch of his flesh was being reshaped; every bone was being tempered; every cell was being infused with a power surpassing all his previous accumulations.
This was not the slow, gradual accumulation day by day and month by month. It was a violent, relentless, leaping ascent like a dam breaking open.
The changes weren’t just internal.
The space around Gu Changyuan began to warp slightly—not because he was deliberately releasing power, but because the immense force of his immortal emperor energy resonated with the laws of the outside world.
A vortex formed with Gu Changyuan at its center, spinning slowly at first, then faster and faster until it became a tornado of spiritual energy hundreds of zhang in diameter.
The spiritual energy within the vortex was so dense it nearly condensed into liquid, emitting a dazzling milky-white light that enveloped the entire Heavenly Court.
The vortex immediately caught the attention of all the disciples in the Heavenly Court.
Their faces bore a mixture of expressions—shock, curiosity, awe, excitement, and an instinctive reaction to something beyond comprehension.
Gu Changyuan still lay on the rocking chair, now fixed firmly to the ground, utterly still.
His eyes were closed, his breathing steady and deep, but the aura around him showed no sign of diminishing.
The vortex of spiritual energy spun above him for about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, then gradually contracted layer by layer from the edges toward the center.
When it had shrunk to several zhang in diameter, Gu Changyuan raised his right hand and waved it lightly toward the sky.
With that gesture, the vortex abruptly dispersed.
Once its structure was broken, the energy naturally spread outward.
The dense spiritual energy, freed from its containment, turned into countless tiny, milky-white specks of light, drifting down from the sky and falling upon every corner of the Heavenly Court.
Spiritual rain.
At that moment, the entire Heavenly Court was drenched in spiritual rain.
The concentration of spiritual energy in the air instantly surged severalfold.
No one wasted a single moment.
They immediately sat cross-legged, closed their eyes, focused their minds, and began cultivating at full force, transforming this heavenly bounty into their own power.
Gu Changyuan still lay on the rocking chair, his body slightly reclined, his gaze calm as he watched the falling spiritual rain in the sky.
The aura around him had stabilized—from that violent, uncontrollable state back to an unfathomable calm.
He raised his hand and summoned the system interface.
The words “Immortal King” that had once appeared on the system panel were gone, replaced by two new characters: Immortal Emperor.
Gu Changyuan’s eyes swept over the golden, gleaming characters, then moved downward. Under the source column, he saw a familiar name: Xing Huang.
It was her cultivation feedback that had pushed him from Immortal King to the Immortal Emperor realm.
His gaze lingered on Xing Huang’s name for a moment, then he withdrew it and closed the system interface.
The rocking chair began to sway gently again, and his entire body moved back and forth with it, resuming its previously relaxed posture.
At the entrance to the rear courtyard, a few soft footsteps sounded.
They were not deliberately hushed—only casual steps that close companions didn’t bother to hide.
Gu Changyuan turned his head slightly, scanning the faces of the three women, a lazy smile curling at the corners of his mouth.
He raised his hand and gestured toward them.
“Xiaoxue, Ling’er, Xiao Shi.”
The three women stood around Gu Changyuan’s rocking chair in a loose semicircle, their gazes all fixed on him.
Then they simultaneously sensed the change.
Their Master’s presence felt different from before.
In the past, though unfathomably deep, it could still be perceived as “existing.”
But now—there was nothing.
It wasn’t that it had disappeared—it had “transcended the scope of perception.”
He sat there, lying on the rocking chair, at ease, with a gentle expression, but the moment their spiritual senses touched his aura, they felt as though they had been swallowed by a bottomless ocean.
This gap wasn’t merely about being a single major realm above them—it was more essential, more fundamental, like looking at the same world from a completely different dimension.
Xiao Shi spoke first.
“Master, your aura…”
Gu Changyuan leaned back against the rocking chair, his gaze sweeping over the three women’s faces, warm and calm.
“Mm, I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough.”
The three women fell silent for a moment, their expressions shifting in various ways.
In their eyes, their Master was already on par with those Immortal Emperors—called “Ancestor” and “Court Lord” by them. This meant his cultivation had already matched theirs, perhaps even surpassed some.
And now he had made another breakthrough. Could he be touching the legendary supreme realm?
That realm—beyond the Immortal Emperor—of which only vague records existed in the ancient texts of the Ten Thousand Realms?
……
Another three years passed.
In those three years, everything in the Heavenly Court operated smoothly and steadily.
During this time, the Star Clan, the Five Houses of the Central Continent, the Purple Dawn Immortal Court, the Cloud Desolate Immortal Court, and other forces each channeled their Immortal Emperor cultivation feedback to Gu Changyuan.
Each surge of feedback steadily lifted his cultivation, solidifying his foundation within the Immortal Emperor realm and deepening his accumulated power at this level.
He remained at the Immortal Emperor level, but there were significant distinctions between even Immortal Emperors.
A novice Immortal Emperor and an ancient Immortal Emperor who had honed this realm for tens of thousands of years might both be called Immortal Emperors, but their combat power could differ by several times—or even dozens of times.
And Gu Changyuan was rapidly closing that gap. One by one, the causal threads of Immortal Emperors crossed the void and connected to his destiny, channeling the power of their hundreds of thousands of years into him like trickling streams merging into one great river.
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!"
his freshman year, Su Bai accidentally bound the "Indulgence Tycoon System." 【Sleeping in? Reward: +$1,000】 【Spent $288 at a street barbecue stall? Cashback: +$2,880】 【Dropped $14,396 on in-game skins? Special reward unlocked: A brand-new Porsche Panamera!】 Luxury cars, penthouses, corporate shares, financial empires… College life was all about living freely and doing whatever he pleased! … When the adorably naive academic genius faced family medical bills and financial struggles, Su Bai waved his hand dismissively: "Your future is on me." "Wuwu~ Big Brother is so good to me! I’ll become a scientist to repay you!" When the genius girl got bullied by a shady professor? Su Bai casually dropped a billion-dollar investment, forcing the university to grovel and beg for her return. A company’s funding chain collapsing? Su Bai smirked—cash was the one thing he’d never run out of. Years later, when people traced the rise of the AI prodigy beauty, who was the man behind her success? Not just that—Su Bai also became the tsundere campus belle’s unattainable dream, the contrast senior’s daily necessity, and the beautiful counselor’s emotional anchor…
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.
to panic—he has a system. As long as an investment target dies, he can claim a reward. And since he is immortal, the one thing he has plenty of is time. ... Countless years later. “Immortal Emperor of Longevity? I invested in him.” “Supreme Celestial Venerable? I invested in him.” “Undying Empress? I invested in her.” “...” “Heh. Once they’ve all died, even the Heavenly Dao will have to kneel and call me Dad.”
