This in itself explained everything.
These three people still had feelings for her in their hearts!
They were not going to just stand by and watch her be hypnotized again by Gu Chengyin!
Luo Zhao's heart quickened a few beats, and her fingers clenched slightly inside her sleeves.
Her eyes were full of anticipation.
In the end, it was Lin Qingyan who broke the deadlock.
"You two stay put for now,"
Lin Qingyan said, glancing at Shangguan Yunying and Gu Xiaoli with a serious tone.
"We need to discuss something."
With that, she motioned to Gu Xiaoli and Shangguan Yunying.
The three of them moved to a corner nearby and began whispering among themselves.
Luo Zhao watched their serious, focused expressions, and the fire in her heart burned even brighter.
What were they discussing?
Were they figuring out how to help her?
Or were they planning how to deal with Gu Chengyin?
Luo Zhao didn't know.
But she did know that they hadn't given up on her.
That was enough.
Gu Chengyin glanced at the three of them, their faces stern as they held their small meeting.
Then he walked over to Luo Zhao and sat down on the edge of the bed.
Luo Zhao's body instantly stiffened.
She could feel the warmth radiating from him, the slight dip of the bed under his weight, and his breath so close it was almost touching her.
She wanted to move away, but that would seem like she was avoiding him.
In the end, she just froze in place, staring straight ahead as if pretending he wasn't there.
"Your Highness."
Gu Chengyin's voice came from beside her, so close she could feel the air stir as he spoke.
Luo Zhao was seething with hatred inside, but on the surface, she put on an air of indifference.
"Junior Preceptor Gu, please show some restraint."
Her voice was as cold as midwinter ice, her tone dripping with undisguised contempt.
Gu Chengyin blinked, and his gaze involuntarily fell on Luo Zhao's lips.
Those lips were slightly pursed, still flushed from her earlier anger, glowing faintly in the candlelight.
Luo Zhao noticed where he was looking, and her face turned red.
Not from shyness, but from sheer fury.
This Red Egg!
What was he staring at?
Was he hinting at that night?!
She wanted to curse him, to hit him, to stab him again.
But she couldn't do any of it.
She couldn't beat him, couldn't outtalk him, couldn't even escape him.
So she just turned her head away, hiding her face so he wouldn't see her lips.
Gu Chengyin didn't seem to mind.
The moonlight fell on Luo Zhao's face, outlining the faintly reddened tips of her ears and her trembling lashes, quivering with anger.
She was furious inside, yet still pretending not to care.
That proud, stubborn demeanor was oddly endearing.
"Your Highness, can't we just have a proper talk?"
Hearing this, Luo Zhao only grew angrier.
Proper talk?
Every time Gu Chengyin said he wanted to talk, she ended up under his control.
The first time he hypnotized her, he told her to trust him completely, and then he hung her up.
The second time, he hung her up again.
The third time... well, this time he didn't hang her, but he was still bullying her!
Now he wanted to talk?
About what?
Was he going to control her again after the talk?
Luo Zhao whipped her head back around and glared at Gu Chengyin, her eyes practically spitting fire.
"Is it me who doesn't want to talk properly?!"
Her voice trembled with rage as she gripped the bedding tightly.
"You're the one who won't talk properly! Every time, you just jump straight to controlling me!"
The more she spoke, the angrier she became, her voice growing louder.
All the restraint, the pretense, the caution she had shown earlier—everything burned away in the flames of her fury.
"What do you even see me as?!"
Luo Zhao's eyes reddened, her voice cracking with emotion, but she stubbornly refused to let a single tear fall.
"A dog you can summon and dismiss whenever you want?!"
When her words fell, the chamber fell silent.
The three women in the corner stopped their whispering and turned to look.
Shangguan Yunying's eyes showed a flicker of pity, Gu Xiaoli bit her lip, and Lin Qingyan's brow furrowed even deeper.
Gu Chengyin looked at Luo Zhao quietly.
She stood there, eyes red, lips trembling, her chest heaving violently—like a cornered little beast.
With no way out, yet still baring its claws for a final struggle.
"Your Highness, you've misunderstood."
Luo Zhao stared at his face, her eyes blazing with anger and hatred, burning even herself.
But she remembered: don't look into his eyes.
Gu Chengyin shook his head slightly and explained.
"Your Highness, do you know? At North River City, I could have chosen not to hypnotize you."
Luo Zhao's lashes fluttered. She seemed to sense something.
"I could have also not demanded your absolute trust."
"Instead," he continued, "I could have brought the thirty thousand Golden Feather Guards you abandoned back to the Divine Capital without losing a single soldier or wasting a single resource."
Gu Chengyin paused, fixing his gaze on Luo Zhao's face.
"But in the end, I chose you."
Luo Zhao was stunned.
"Like a reckless madman who had nothing, I bet everything on you."
"It wasn't because I liked controlling you."
"Rather, it was the only way..."
"...for you to remember me."
Luo Zhao's pupils contracted.
"Back then, I was nothing—a nobody from the mountains."
"No title, no family, no cultivation, nothing."
"The only things I had were a bit of cleverness and a life not worth much."
Gu Chengyin's voice was calm, as if he were telling someone else's story.
"I know you didn't trust me. I know you thought I was crazy."
"And I know you cursed me a thousand times in your heart as a bastard."
Luo Zhao's mouth twitched involuntarily.
"But back then, I had no other choice."
His expression turned dead serious.
"Your Highness, I just wanted you to believe in me."
"Just like at North River City."
"If you believed me, we could have reached the Divine Capital in ten days without losing a single soldier."
"If you didn't believe me..."
He didn't finish his sentence.
But Luo Zhao understood.
At North River City, she didn't trust him, so he controlled her.
And then, in ten days, not a single soldier lost, he brought her back to the Divine Capital.
After that, all by himself, through alliances and strategy, he toppled the entire Xiao clan.
And now, Gu Chengyin was asking her again.
Would she trust him?
Luo Zhao looked at him, at those eyes that burned so brightly, and felt her nose sting again.
She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out.
The chamber was very quiet.
Moonlight spilled in through the window, falling on both of them.
The three women in the corner had stopped talking long ago, watching them in silence.
Luo Zhao was silent for a long, long time—so long that the moon outside had shifted lower in the sky.
By the time Lin Qingyan came over, she still hadn't spoken a word.
e, Immortal Body, Transmigration, System, Progression Fantasy, Academy Setting, Third-Person Perspective. Alternate Title: Transmigrating into a High Martial World and Reading Live Comments. Bad news: I transmigrated. This is a terrifying high-martial world, and my original, pathetically weak body fell into a coma and never woke up. Good news: I got a Popularity Points system upon arrival. I can see live comments and even create an unkillable alternate identity. Starting out, the alternate identity has all stats at 1. The system tells me that to grow stronger, I must participate in the plot, gain popularity points to allocate stats and grow stronger, and ultimately awaken my original body. And so, carrying my original body on my back, I officially entered Huaqing Academy, where the story's protagonist resides. From that moment on, Chen Guan kicked the original plot to pieces. Live Comments: [Doesn't anyone find this mysterious coffin guy creepy? He can summon indescribable grey misty hands.] [Is this guy a hero or a villain? What kind of onion became a spirit?] [By the way, does anyone know who's in the coffin? Shouldn't the debt for saving his life be repaid by now?] [According to unofficial histories, the person in the coffin was Chen Guan's first love. Their love was once passionate and earth-shattering, but they were separated by life and death due to worldly circumstances. What a star-crossed pair.] ... Years later, the world knew of a demon god born from a coffin, shrouded in grey mist, impossible to gaze upon directly. His foremost divine emissary often wielded a scythe, reaping lives like the god of death. As war approached, facing former friends and a boundless sea of enemies, Chen Guan merely raised his scythe. "Would you like to dance as well?"
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
't think I'm that capable, I'm just trying my best to stay alive. I've been kind all my life, never did anything bad, yet worldly suffering spared me not one bit. The human world is a nice place, but I won't come back in my next life. A kind young man, who wanted to just get by singing, but through repeated deceits and betrayals, has gone down an irredeemable path.
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?!
