Gu Chengyin emerged from the side hall and strode briskly toward the main hall.
The hall doors were wide open, and the morning light poured through the frame, flooding the entire chamber with brightness.
He could see the figure seated behind the long table—Luo Zhao had already changed into the crown prince’s everyday robes, her hair neatly combed, head lowered as she examined some document.
Several stacks of memorials were placed on the table, and the one spread open before her bore the cover format of the Ministry of Personnel.
Cui Zhenji’s resignation memorial was indeed in her hands.
Gu Chengyin quickened his pace.
He stepped onto the platform, crossed the threshold, and was about to speak when...
A hand suddenly reached out from the side.
It grabbed him by the collar.
Gu Chengyin felt a force yanking him sideways, his steps involuntarily diverted.
He was dragged away from the entrance of the main hall, pulled toward a small side room.
He didn’t resist.
Because before he even stepped into the main hall’s vicinity, Gu Chengyin had already sensed the owner of that hand.
It was Shangguan Yunying.
As he was dragged into the small room, Gu Chengyin caught a glimpse of Luo Zhao lifting her head in the main hall.
She seemed to sense something and glanced toward the doorway, but saw nothing, so she lowered her head again to continue reading the memorial.
The door of the small room slammed shut behind Shangguan Yunying.
The light abruptly dimmed.
The room was small—a storage side chamber next to the main hall, cluttered with seldom-used ceremonial regalia and implements. The space was so cramped it could barely accommodate two or three people turning around.
Shangguan Yunying’s face moved close.
Her nose nearly brushed against his neck, twitching slightly, as if she were sniffing something.
Gu Chengyin could feel her breath against his throat—warm and urgent, trembling with barely restrained intensity.
Then Shangguan Yunying’s expression changed.
It turned ugly.
She stepped back half a pace and grabbed his collar again.
This time, her grip was fiercer than before—her knuckles white, veins bulging, pulling his collar out of shape.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, her lips pressed into a thin line, and her voice squeezed out between her teeth.
It was both biting and dripping with a nearly tearful grievance.
“Lord Jingzhe slept with you?”
Gu Chengyin blinked. Was that really how you phrased it?
What did she mean by Lin Qingyan sleeping with him?
Shouldn’t it be him sleeping with Lin Qingyan?
After all, he was the one...
Gu Chengyin coughed and was about to explain when he saw Shangguan Yunying’s eyes redden.
It was as if something had burst inside her, splattering all the blood around her eyes.
Her fingers loosened from his collar, one by one, as if all her strength had drained away, falling limply to her sides.
Even her lips pouted, completely at odds with her usual gentle and capable demeanor.
She looked like a child whose candy had been stolen, utterly wronged yet stubbornly refusing to cry.
“I was here first!”
Her voice trembled, carrying a sourness that had been suppressed too long and finally breached its dam.
“I was the first to meet you! Why did you let her sleep with you!”
“Just because she’s the Lord Jingzhe of the Heavenly Master Mansion? Just because she’s at the Golden Core realm?”
Gu Chengyin looked at Shangguan Yunying—her eyes red, her lips pouted, utterly pitiful—and for a moment, he didn’t know what to say.
If you counted it out, Shangguan Yunying indeed was the first woman to have met him, even if she had been hypnotized right after.
Gu Chengyin knew the truth couldn’t be hidden any longer.
Not that he had wanted to hide it, but he had thought it would at least hold up until noon.
Yet he didn’t even make it through the main hall door before Shangguan Yunying intercepted him.
Gu Chengyin stepped forward and pulled Shangguan Yunying into an embrace.
His movement wasn’t particularly gentle, even a bit hasty.
Because he saw that something was already welling up in her eyes.
If he didn’t act in time, it would probably fall within three breaths.
Her body stiffened in his arms for a moment, and then she began to struggle.
Her hands pressed against his chest, her shoves weak—more like a symbolic resistance to state her position.
“Let go of me...”
“Yunying.”
Gu Chengyin spoke softly, a sigh of utter helplessness in his voice.
“To be honest, I didn’t want this either, but...”
“I was forced to.”
Things had reached this point, and Gu Chengyin wasn’t foolish—he hadn’t yet broken through to the Golden Core realm. He wasn’t at a place where absolute strength could control everything.
If he mishandled this, it would become a battlefield of hearts.
Shangguan Yunying’s struggling stopped.
It was as if someone had pressed a pause button. Her hands were still pressed against his chest, her fingertips digging into his robes, but she was completely still.
Slowly, she lifted her head, her gaze fixed on Gu Chengyin’s face, scrutinizing his expression inch by inch.
“Are you saying...”
Her voice came out hesitantly, slowly, as if processing something too absurd to fully digest.
“Lord Jingzhe... she knocked you out with lightning?”
Gu Chengyin didn’t answer. He neither admitted nor nodded.
But his expression was one of perfect resignation and restraint.
Her brows furrowed slightly, the corners of her mouth pressed tight, her eyes seeming to say: I don’t want this either.
At the same time, she let out a soft sigh, a breath escaping from her chest like the melancholy of being toyed with by fate.
“After all, you saw it with your own eyes, so...”
Gu Chengyin’s voice dropped a notch, like the lingering ache of an old wound being reopened.
Shangguan Yunying’s expression changed.
She had indeed seen it with her own eyes—that scene was etched clearly in her memory.
So last night...
Gu Chengyin had been forced!
Shangguan Yunying’s heart felt as if an invisible hand had gripped it, squeezing until it ached.
She recalled how she had berated him just now without distinguishing right from wrong, remembered grabbing him by the collar.
Her eyes reddened even more, but this time it wasn’t from grievance—it was from guilt.
“How could Lord Jingzhe do this!”
Shangguan Yunying threw her arms around Gu Chengyin, wrapping them around his waist, burying her face in his chest.
Her voice was muffled against his clothes, trembling with a mix of anger and heartache:
“She knew you didn’t want this... She knew it all along!”
Gu Chengyin’s hand landed on Shangguan Yunying’s back, patting it gently twice.
His voice was low and tender as he said:
“I’m sorry, Yunying. It’s all my fault. If only I were stronger.”
Shangguan Yunying shook her head vigorously, her hair brushing against his clothes in a faint rustle.
“No, it’s my fault!”
Her voice was choked with sobs: “I shouldn’t have said those things to you. You’ve already been through so much...”
Gu Chengyin’s hand paused on her back, tightening slightly.
“I should be the one saying that.”
“After all, you’re the one I love most, but...”
Gu Chengyin didn’t finish the sentence.
But precisely because it was left unfinished, it felt all the more real.
Shangguan Yunying lifted her head from his chest, her eyes red, her nose red, and her lips trembling slightly.
She looked at Gu Chengyin’s face and made a decision in her heart.
“It’s alright.”
Shangguan Yunying gritted her teeth, her resolve as firm as if she were burning her boats:
“Don’t worry. Once I break through to the Golden Core stage,”
“I will definitely rescue you from Lord Jingzhe’s ‘clutches’!”
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.”
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!
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?!
ap a wealthy young lady? Or else I'll be eliminated by the system? Ye Feng, who awakened the Kidnapper System, originally wanted to live a peaceful life but never imagined he would become a kidnapper of young women. However, after some time, he discovered that all the girls the system ordered him to kidnap were far from ordinary. "Big brother Ye Feng~ You've kidnapped my heart, and now you're not allowed to leave me ever again~" "Ye Feng~ You kidnapped me back then, now it's my turn to capture you♡" "Little Feng, you're mine! You can only be mine!" "Ye Feng, none of them deserve you. Only I love you the most♡" ... This is madness, they've all gone mad! Wait, what? Why are all the girls I kidnapped yanderes?!
