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.
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!
ver to a world of cultivation and returned invincible. Modern medicine is child's play compared to elixirs; technological might crumbles before true cultivation. My name is Qin Ning, Earth's sole cultivator!
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.
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.”
