Her Highness.
Shangguan Yunying finally spoke, her voice still quite steady:
“Although we don’t know where Gu Chengyin is right now, that doesn’t mean something happened between him and Lord Jingzhe.”
“Maybe he’s just contemplating the immortal path? After all, you know Gu Chengyin’s temperament.”
“Last night, you provoked him so harshly, yet in the end, he only scared you a little.”
Luo Zhao looked at Shangguan Yunying, her expression seeming to ask: Whose side are you on?
“Your Highness, what I mean is,” Shangguan Yunying continued unhurriedly, “Lord Jingzhe is, after all, your Little Aunt. A celestial maiden like her—”
“There’s no way she would just find some random spot in the Crown Prince’s palace and give herself to Gu Chengyin.”
“Besides, Gu Chengyin might not even want her.”
Luo Zhao was silent for a moment, then said in a muffled voice:
“The logic you’re saying, I understand it all. But…”
She paused, as if weighing her words carefully.
“But don’t you think that sentence of Little Aunt’s was really strange?”
“She likes Gu Chengyin so much, yet suddenly she told Gu Chengyin to take me.”
“That completely doesn’t match the person I know.”
Shangguan Yunying didn’t answer right away. She was thinking about what lay behind Luo Zhao’s words.
A celestial maiden like Lin Qingyan couldn’t control herself even after being slightly provoked in the past. Under Gu Xiaoli’s provocation, she had completely erupted on the spot.
Someone with such strong possessiveness—would she truly allow Gu Chengyin to take Luo Zhao?
This really didn’t fit Lin Qingyan’s nature or style.
Or was there a deeper scheme hidden behind those words?
Just as Luo Zhao suspected, was Lin Qingyan using her?
Adding to that, Gu Chengyin and Lin Qingyan had left together last night.
What if…
What if they weren’t contemplating the immortal path at all.
But instead…
Shangguan Yunying’s brow furrowed involuntarily.
Right at that moment, a sudden flurry of hurried footsteps came from outside the door.
The footsteps were light and quick, like a cat padding across a wooden floor.
No, not like a cat—it was a cat.
The door was shoved open, and a small figure practically leaped inside.
“Sister Princess! Sister Yunying! Something terrible has happened!”
The one who entered was Gu Xiaoli, her eyes wide as saucers:
“Xiaoli just came over from the side hall and saw…”
“Saw what?” Luo Zhao’s heartbeat abruptly quickened, but she forced her voice to stay calm.
Gu Xiaoli took a deep breath, as if gathering immense courage:
“I saw Big Brother and Sister Qingyan fighting on the bed!”
The entire bedchamber fell silent.
So silent that they could hear the birds hopping among the branches outside the window.
Luo Zhao and Shangguan Yunying exchanged a glance, both seeing the disbelief in each other’s eyes.
“Fighting?” Luo Zhao repeated, her voice a little unsteady.
“On the bed?”
“That’s right! That side hall had a spiritual energy barrier, and Xiaoli got curious and peeked inside.”
“Then I saw Big Brother and Sister Qingyan tangled up on the bed, fighting fiercely!”
“Sister Qingyan was getting beaten badly too! She kept begging for mercy!”
Gu Xiaoli’s voice rose higher, then she realized something.
She quickly covered her mouth, her eyes darting around.
“Enough, enough, enough!” Luo Zhao clamped her hand over Gu Xiaoli’s mouth, her expression a brilliant mess.
Flushed red and pale by turns, like a shrimp being boiled:
“You don’t need to be so detailed!”
Gu Xiaoli, mouth covered, made muffled noises but couldn’t speak, though her eyes were still talking.
Those round cat-like eyes darted between Luo Zhao and Shangguan Yunying.
Shangguan Yunying took a deep breath, suppressing the fury and resentment rising in her heart. Gu Xiaoli had made it plain enough.
Gu Chengyin and Lin Qingyan hadn’t gone to contemplate the immortal path—they’d gone to explore the mysteries of life.
Even just now, they’d been exploring inside that side hall shrouded by the spiritual energy barrier.
No wonder they couldn’t find Gu Chengyin—with that barrier in place, ordinary cultivators couldn’t see either of them.
Only someone at Gu Xiaoli’s half-Nascent Soul level could detect anything amiss.
And all of this was clearly Lin Qingyan’s design.
Because she understood Luo Zhao’s personality, and knew what the real Luo Zhao was truly like.
That was why she had said those words—seemingly to provoke Gu Chengyin, but in reality to provoke Luo Zhao.
To make Luo Zhao challenge Gu Chengyin, to provoke him, to ignite the fire in his heart.
In the end, she, Lord Jingzhe of the Heavenly Master Mansion, would be the one to extinguish the flames.
And judging by the current situation, Lin Qingyan had succeeded.
No—
She had succeeded spectacularly.
That was why Luo Zhao had urgently summoned her to confirm their whereabouts.
Because just as Lin Qingyan understood Luo Zhao, Luo Zhao also knew her Little Aunt very well.
“Your Highness.” Shangguan Yunying’s voice turned cold. Something flickered deep in her eyes, like water moving beneath the ice.
“What should we do now?”
Luo Zhao released her hand from covering Gu Xiaoli’s mouth and sat back down on the edge of the bed.
Her expression gradually settled from the shock, grievance, and fury of moments before.
After thinking it over seriously, she said with a grave expression:
“Knowing Gu Chengyin’s character, he is absolutely not that kind of person.”
“It must be Little Aunt who did something. So we have to stop Little Aunt.”
The thought of Gu Chengyin becoming her Little Uncle filled Luo Zhao with an indescribable irritation.
She hadn’t yet pulled down that bright moon, and now it was going to shine only on Lin Qingyan?
Even worse—it was trampling over her to do so.
Gu Xiaoli nodded vigorously, in full agreement. She had originally wanted to confront Lin Qingyan on the spot, but then realized she probably couldn’t win a fight.
So she had run back to find Luo Zhao and Shangguan Yunying. No matter what,
she absolutely would not accept Gu Chengyin being snatched away by Lin Qingyan like this.
Shangguan Yunying had no objections either.
After all, she was the first to know Gu Chengyin. Lin Qingyan had appeared the latest.
Why should a latecomer surpass them? She had been fighting and striving for him all along too.
So in Shangguan Yunying’s view, the facts were already clear:
Lin Qingyan must have used absolute force to compel Gu Chengyin.
“How do we stop her?”
Luo Zhao fell silent. That was a good question.
How could they stop Lin Qingyan?
Lord Jingzhe of the Heavenly Master Mansion—invincible among Golden Cores.
By status, no one could rein her in.
By strength, no one could defeat her.
Even Gu Xiaoli couldn’t claim a hundred percent certainty of victory.
And now, with Gu Chengyin’s help, Lin Qingyan had become even stronger.
That was why she wanted Gu Chengyin so desperately.
No matter how you looked at it, Gu Chengyin fulfilled all of Lin Qingyan’s needs.
Their relationship was already ambiguous enough, and after last night—even just now—
Luo Zhao shook her head forcefully, flinging the imagined scenes out of her mind.
“First.” Luo Zhao raised one finger and said:
“We cannot let Little Aunt find out that we’re planning to stop her.”
“Otherwise, she will definitely hide Gu Chengyin away, someplace where none of us can find him.”
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?!
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!
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.
] [Lone Wolf, No Male Gaze] [Protagonist is pursued early on; extreme protagonist-stans, stay away!] The "Carnival Paradise" descends and slowly devours the real world in the form of a game. By chance, Zhu Yan awakens the talent [Roleplay], becoming one of the first beta players. He thought he could develop safely, but after clearing the first instance, he is branded by humanity as the chief culprit behind the game's spread—a traitorous villain. A villain? Who would ever... become one! He'll be the villain! From then on, Zhu Yan is not only a player but also a lackey for the Carnival Paradise. Between the straight path and the crooked path, he chooses the con. With his left hand, he dons the villain's mantle, staging scenes within instances, infuriating players who decry him as a despicable traitor, all while the game happily promotes him. With his right hand, he joins the non-human organization "Fangcun Mountain," which opposes the Carnival Paradise, transforming into a mysterious player who slaughters game bosses, earning cheers of "Long live the expert!" from fellow players. Gradually, Zhu Yan rises to become an S-rank human player in Fangcun Mountain's archives, while also being the Carnival Paradise's certified top game Boss. But when the final war erupts and both major factions place their hopes in him— Players tag his various aliases: "Experts, this offensive depends on you." The Carnival Paradise's supreme Boss throws an arm around his neck: "Bro, you're the iron, I'm the steel; you can't let me down again!"
