Celestial Master Manor, the Heart-Calming Tower.
Lin Qingyan opened her eyes.
Her pupils constricted the moment they met the light, then slowly dilated again.
Her gaze went from unfocused to focused, from focused to clear, from clear to alert.
She lay on the bed, hair sprawled across the pillow, wearing only a thin inner robe.
The blanket had been kicked down to her waist, revealing a small patch of fair skin below her collarbones.
Her posture was still languid, and she didn't really want to move—she wanted to lie there a while longer.
But Lin Qingyan's eyes narrowed at that moment.
For some reason, an ominous foreboding weighed on her heart.
Her skin was tightening, her heartbeat quickening, her breathing shallower than usual.
It felt like something was pressing on her chest, making it a little hard to breathe.
This was her intuition sounding the alarm. Something had happened.
And whatever it was involved her—and was very likely to her disadvantage.
Lin Qingyan frowned and ran through every possibility in her mind.
A heart demon?
She extended her spiritual sense, plunging deep into the depths of her consciousness.
There, a woman who looked exactly like her slept peacefully—long hair loose, robes billowing.
She was quiet and still, breathing evenly and deeply, with no sign of restlessness.
Not a heart demon.
An environment?
This was the Heart-Calming Tower, inside the Celestial Master Manor—arguably the safest place in the Divine Capital.
Here, Lin Qingyan could sleep for an entire day without worry, undisturbed by anyone.
Not an environment.
Then where was this ominous foreboding coming from?
And nothing had happened recently. In fact, last night had been quite wonderful.
Wonderful enough that she was still lounging in bed now. If not for this foreboding, she wouldn't even have opened her eyes.
And as Jingzhe of the Celestial Master Manor, Lin Qingyan hadn't been troubled by much for a long time.
Except for Gu Chengyin.
Lin Qingyan's eyes lit up. Right—how could she have forgotten Gu Chengyin?
It must be that this wicked man was simply too formidable, never letting any pressure get to him.
So much so that she had subconsciously ruled him out.
But if the problem wasn't with her, then it could only be that this man—the one who always managed to unsettle her heart—was the source.
In other words, something had happened to Gu Chengyin.
Or something had happened around him.
And it had happened during the window between his departure this morning and her waking up just now.
But no matter what had happened, Lin Qingyan needed to know immediately.
After all, anything capable of triggering her intuition's warning was certainly no small matter.
Lin Qingyan sat up, moving so quickly that she stirred a breeze, sending her loose hair drifting from the pillow.
The collar of her inner robe slipped from her shoulder, revealing a large swath of fair skin dotted with many "strawberries."
She paid them no mind, glancing around instead.
The room was empty, the walls bare.
No Gu Chengyin.
Her gaze swept across the room, from the bed to the window.
From the window to the door, and finally to the chair forgotten in the corner.
Indeed, no Gu Chengyin.
His presence lingered, but he himself was gone.
Then Lin Qingyan remembered: Gu Chengyin had left this morning.
She had been half-awake at the time, feeling him sit up beside her, feeling his fingers card through her hair.
He had said something, she thought, but she couldn't quite recall it.
She had merely mumbled a reply, vaguely, not even knowing what she'd said herself.
Then she'd turned over, wrapped herself in the blanket, and gone back to sleep.
Too exhausted.
Last night had been too strenuous. Every corner of the Heart-Calming Tower had seen action.
She had been worn out to the point of barely having the strength to open her eyes, let alone listen to him properly.
So, something had happened after Gu Chengyin left?
No—something definitely had happened.
Because if nothing had occurred, she wouldn't have this ominous feeling.
Her intuition had never been wrong. The only question was what had happened.
Since it concerned Gu Chengyin, Lin Qingyan no longer felt like lingering in bed.
She threw off the blanket, stepped barefoot onto the carpet.
The carpet was soft, with long plush fibers that felt like walking on clouds, but she was in no mood to enjoy it.
She walked to the clothes rack, grabbed a moon-white robe at random, shook it open, and draped it over her shoulders.
Her fingers moved rapidly over the lapels—tying the sash, straightening the collar, pulling her hair out from beneath the neckline.
Lin Qingyan walked to the mirror and glanced at her reflection.
Her hair was still a little messy, her complexion still pale, her eyes still a bit red, her lips still slightly swollen.
All of last night was written on her face, impossible to hide.
But she ignored it. She simply picked up a comb and smoothed out her hair.
As for the odd marks on her body, she went to wipe them away...
Lin Qingyan hesitated for a moment, then ultimately decided not to erase them.
Instead, she chose to conceal them, lest anyone else see.
She turned and headed for the door.
The tower door swung open, and sunlight flooded in from outside, making her squint slightly.
The sunlight was lovely—golden, warm, bathing the entire Heart-Calming Tower in a pale golden halo.
In the distance, at the training grounds, cultivators were practicing, their battle cries rising and falling, full of vitality.
Everything was normal. Everything was calm. Just like any ordinary day.
Except for that inexplicable ominous foreboding.
Lin Qingyan was about to step out when a respectful voice suddenly came from beside her:
"Jingzhe."
The voice was soft but fell with perfect timing—just a moment before she could take her step.
It was no coincidence, no accident, but someone who had deliberately been waiting at the door.
Lin Qingyan turned to look.
It was one of her subordinate female cultivators.
This cultivator wore the standard Celestial Master Manor robe, with her hair tied up neatly, a delicate face, and gentle, refined features.
She looked like a quiet orchid growing by a stream, calm and composed.
Lin Qingyan recognized her.
Her aptitude and talent were not top-tier, but she made up for it with diligence and a serious, meticulous work ethic. She had never once made a mistake in anything Lin Qingyan had assigned her.
Lin Qingyan had placed her in the intelligence-gathering division, responsible for organizing the reports that came in from all over the Divine Capital each day.
Filtering, categorizing, summarizing, and then delivering them to Lin Qingyan.
The work was tedious and brain-numbing, demanding immense patience and attention to detail—something most people couldn't handle.
But this female cultivator did it excellently.
She never caused Lin Qingyan any worry, never made any mistakes, and never appeared when not needed.
Now, she was here.
At the entrance to the Heart-Calming Tower, right as Lin Qingyan stepped out.
She held a piece of paper in her hand, and it seemed she had been specifically waiting for her.
Lin Qingyan's brow twitched slightly.
"It's you. What's the matter?"
Hearing Lin Qingyan's voice, the female cultivator's eyes lit up instantly.
So Jingzhe remembers her!
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?!
ive and Ruthless] Before his transmigration, Ye Xuan was playing a game called "Severing Emotions to Attain the Dao." The game's core wasn't about leveling up by fighting monsters, but about conquering various "bad women" with wicked personalities and cold, fickle natures. There was only one method to conquer them: stay unwaveringly by their side, then die at a critical moment, driving them to madness after losing the protagonist. The higher their level of regret, the higher the player's score. To dominate the server, Ye Xuan conquered all the bad women. In the early stages, he showered them with boundless tenderness, only to choose to sacrifice himself for them later, making them weep bitterly and drown in regret. Among them were: Xia Lengyue, the unfaithful immortal wife who chased after powerful men and discarded her husband like trash. Ye Qingcheng, the Demonic Venerable of the Joyous Union Sect, who appeared pure and innocent but was, in reality, promiscuous. Wu Lingxiao, the Empress of the Great Xia Dynasty, who lusted after men and loved maintaining a harem. Bai Qiangu of the Endless Demonic Sect: a bloodthirsty mass murderer. However, when the protagonist transmigrated into the game world, he made a horrifying discovery. Eight hundred years had already passed. The bad women he had conquered had now each become deities and revered ancestors. Faced with the endless stream of toxic women coming for him, Ye Xuan could only rely on his god-tier acting skills to carve a path of survival through this world of treacherous women.
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!
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
