Lin Qingyan pouted again, this time feeling genuinely wronged.
A layer of moisture covered her eyes. Against the backdrop of her blood-red pupils, the tears shimmered with an eerie crimson hue, resembling tears of blood.
Her fingers stopped drawing circles, and her whole body drooped.
Then she nodded, reluctant yet helpless.
Gu Chengyin breathed a sigh of relief.
He saw the red light in Lin Qingyan's eyes begin to fade gradually.
The glow dimmed bit by bit, and the blood color receded, revealing her clear pupil color.
Once the inner demon retreated, the real Lin Qingyan would return.
And then...
Gu Chengyin's train of thought came to an abrupt halt right there.
Because in the very last instant before the red pupils completely vanished...
Lin Qingyan moved.
Her speed surpassed the limits of Gu Chengyin's reaction time, so fast that his eyes couldn't even catch her trajectory.
Gu Chengyin only felt a gust of wind.
A wind carrying a cold fragrance.
Then, a softness on his cheek.
A warm, soft touch with a slight hint of moisture.
The sensation lingered for an extremely short time, so short that Gu Chengyin even suspected it was his imagination.
But the lingering faint tickle on the skin of his cheek, along with that fleeting soft touch...
...both told him it was no illusion.
Lin Qingyan kissed him.
In the final moment before the inner demon fully retreated, she kissed his cheek.
Then she pulled back, so fast it was as if she had never approached him at all.
Gu Chengyin froze in place, his mind going completely blank.
Because the red light in Lin Qingyan's eyes had completely disappeared.
Those eyes became clear and calm again, like a deep autumn pool without a single ripple.
Then, that pool of water froze over.
Lin Qingyan's gaze shifted from calm to icy cold.
She stared at Gu Chengyin, fixing her eyes on the spot on his face that had just been kissed.
Gu Chengyin finally snapped back to reality and raised his hand to touch the kissed spot.
Then he looked at Lin Qingyan.
A Lin Qingyan whose eyes were icy and carried a hint of disgust.
Gu Chengyin immediately put on the face of a victim and said with extreme grievance:
Auntie, I didn't do anything!
I was forced!
Lin Qingyan continued to look at him coldly and with disgust.
No response, no rebuttal, not even a change in expression.
Lin Qingyan, of course, knew Gu Chengyin was forced.
From the inner demon suddenly taking dominance, to pouncing on him and rubbing against him, to that unexpected kiss.
Every frame of those scenes was clearly reflected in her memory.
But she couldn't say it was her own initiative; she couldn't tell Gu Chengyin that the inner demon was actually herself.
That would break her character.
She was Lin Qingyan.
She was Jingzhe of the Celestial Master Mansion, a Golden Core cultivator, aloof and detached, untainted by the mundane world.
These labels had been attached to her for so long that even she herself believed them.
So long that she had to present this face to the world, even if the raging waves in her heart were about to burst through the dam.
So now, Lin Qingyan had to show coldness and disgust.
She even had to intensify this look, intensifying it so much that Gu Chengyin wouldn't get suspicious.
Lin Qingyan had to make Gu Chengyin believe that all of this was the inner demon's fault!
That it was that lewd, twisted negative consciousness acting on its own.
Thus, Lin Qingyan's gaze grew even colder.
The right corner of her lips lifted slightly, curving into a mean-spirited arc.
Her nostrils flared slightly, as if smelling something nauseating.
Her brows furrowed, squeezing out two fine, deep vertical lines between them.
Lin Qingyan looked at Gu Chengyin with eyes that seemed to be looking at trash.
This extreme sense of contrast would have sent an ordinary person flying off the handle on the spot.
One second she was a seductive figure with blood-red eyes clinging to him, and the next she was a frost-covered figure of disgust.
One second she was sweetly calling him Master, and the next she was looking at him like he was garbage.
This drastic emotional shift, this fractured personality presentation.
It was enough to cause cognitive confusion and subsequent self-doubt in any person of sound mind.
But Gu Chengyin was not an ordinary person, plus he already knew that Lin Qingyan had two faces.
Auntie.
You are a Golden Core cultivator, so she is a Golden Core inner demon.
Although I can control her, it's obvious that her actions are faster than my commands.
Lin Qingyan's eyes showed no fluctuation whatsoever.
Still cold, still disgusted.
Gu Chengyin felt assured in his heart and continued speaking:
So I think it's better to let her out less.
Gu Chengyin paused, observing Lin Qingyan's reaction.
No reaction.
So he decided to add some fuel to the fire, saying with a hint of malice:
After all, if the inner demon really comes to warm...
His words came to an abrupt halt right there.
It wasn't Gu Chengyin who stopped himself; he was interrupted.
The moment he spat out the word warm, Lin Qingyan moved.
She flipped her palm.
Her hand movements were faster than the limit of visual perception.
Gu Chengyin only saw a blur of afterimages. The hand that had been resting flat on her knee completed the entire process of flipping, raising, and forming a hand seal in the blink of an eye.
Then, a streak of golden lightning flashed.
Its target was clear, pointing straight at Gu Chengyin's lips.
Gu Chengyin was instantly alarmed.
His first thought was, she's going to shock me again?
But this time, the speed of the golden lightning was faster than any previous time.
So fast that Gu Chengyin had no time to react at all.
He could only watch helplessly as that thread of golden light rapidly expanded in his vision, finally disappearing at the spot of his lips.
Just as Gu Chengyin prepared to welcome the numbness spreading from his lips to his entire body.
Prepared to welcome the sharp sensation brought by the electric current running wild in his body.
Nothing happened.
The expected sharp sensation did not come.
The expected numbness did not appear.
Gu Chengyin blinked.
He saw Lin Qingyan still sitting upright there, her hand that had formed the seal placed back on her knee.
Gu Chengyin opened his mouth, wanting to ask what had happened.
But his lips moved, and there was no sound.
It wasn't that his voice was too low; there was simply no sound at all.
Air rose from his throat, his vocal cords vibrated, and his mouth shaped the syllables.
The entire process of vocalization was proceeding normally.
But no sound left his lips.
It was as if an invisible membrane had sealed his mouth.
Gu Chengyin tried again.
But it remained soundless.
The carriage was terrifyingly quiet.
Now Gu Chengyin was truly shocked.
This was the first time he truly understood what it meant to be a Golden Core Perfected One.
Before this, Gu Chengyin's understanding of the Golden Core realm was mostly theoretical.
For example, the Qi Condensation stage only opened the door to immortal cultivation.
Cultivators at this stage could shatter rocks with a single punch, travel three hundred miles a day, and hear low whispers from ten spaces away.
But strictly speaking, they still belonged to the realm of mortals.
Foundation Establishment was a qualitative change.
The true qi in the body would compress from a gaseous state into a liquid state, and the quality and density of true essence would leap exponentially.
Cultivators at this stage could already be called earthly immortals.
Although they couldn't fly yet, sprinting at full strength, traveling a thousand miles a day was not an issue.
Releasing true qi outwardly, splitting mountains and cracking stones was mere child's play.
Gu Chengyin himself was in the late stage of Foundation Establishment; he knew the power of this realm very well.
But these were still within the realm of physics.
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
lities. One day, Qi Yuan was buying groceries when he unfortunately came face-to-face with a monster. Just when he thought he was going to die on the spot, he suddenly heard the monster's thoughts... "This aura, he's definitely not an ordinary master!" "So terrifying, so terrifying." "A fight with my back against the wall, I can't take it anymore." Qi Yuan: Ah, no one told me that my awakened ability isn't telepathy, but rather the stronger my enemies imagine me to be, the stronger I truly become. PS: Zhou Hai in the first chapter is not the protagonist.
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.
