Everything he did had a purpose, and every word he spoke carried meaning.
Behind every seemingly casual action lay meticulous calculation.
So he must be worried about something, guarding against something, or dealing with something.
Gu Chengyin... suspected her?
Suspected that her obedience was an act?
No.
That wasn't right.
It should be...
He couldn't bring himself to suspect her!
Gu Chengyin could no longer suspect her!
Luo Zhao's eyes lit up. She seemed to understand.
In the eyes of others, she was the lofty Crown Princess.
But in Gu Chengyin's eyes, she was merely a tool called the Crown Princess.
Once, she had been a tool. Now, she was the most obedient Good Doggy.
But since she had already become a Good Doggy, why was Master Gu Chengyin acting so strangely?
After all, he had never cared about her before, nor had he ever been afraid that she was putting on an act.
Because even if the Good Doggy's obedience was fake, Gu Chengyin would never care.
He didn't care about her, so naturally, he didn't care whether she was pretending.
Whether it was an act or genuine, it made no difference to him.
Something he didn't care about wasn't worth the effort of distinguishing truth from falsehood.
Yet now, he had suddenly come running to show her concern.
He secretly watched her, gave her candied fruit, and spoke gentle words to her.
What did that mean?
It meant that something had intervened.
Something had forced Gu Chengyin to care about her, to take her seriously.
He could no longer treat her as an insignificant tool, as he had before.
Then what could possibly make even Gu Chengyin take something seriously?
Something that could affect his judgment and sway his decisions.
Something that could make a man who never trusted anyone open the door to his heart a crack, allowing her to slip inside.
The answer was practically staring her in the face.
His Dao Heart.
After reaching that conclusion, Luo Zhao narrowed her eyes.
As the Crown Princess, she was no fool.
Not only was she not a fool—she was clever. Extremely clever.
It was only in front of Gu Chengyin that she appeared clumsy, because he was simply too powerful.
But now, as she knelt alone before Empress Lin's memorial tablet, with only the dim glow of the eternal lamp accompanying her in the hall, Luo Zhao's thoughts became exceptionally clear.
The moment she identified Gu Chengyin's Dao Heart, she instantly connected all the causes and consequences.
What was a Dao Heart?
It was a cultivator's true heart—their principles, the core essence condensed from countless experiences and realizations.
Once a Dao Heart had affirmed something, even the cultivator himself could no longer go against it.
Clearly, her changes had caused Gu Chengyin's Dao Heart to affirm something.
So no matter how demonic Gu Chengyin's intelligence was, no matter how flawless his logic might be, before his Dao Heart, he had no choice but to crush every suspicion he held toward her.
Gu Chengyin could suspect her. He could imagine the worst-case scenario in his mind.
He could take her obedience for forbearance, her docility for disguise, and her trust for a carefully designed trap.
He could think that way. He could analyze everything with perfect logic and arrange every possibility into countless combinations.
But his Dao Heart would not agree.
His Dao Heart would tell him: You cannot think that way about Luo Zhao.
Luo Zhao isn't pretending. Luo Zhao truly trusts you.
Because Luo Zhao is the most obedient Good Doggy.
And a Good Doggy would never hurt her Master.
This understanding had been carved into Gu Chengyin's Dao Heart, becoming a boundary he could never cross.
So when his reason tried to imagine the worst possible outcome, his Dao Heart responded not with suspicion, but with self-reproach.
Gu Chengyin blamed himself for having such thoughts. He blamed himself for suspecting her. He blamed himself for wondering whether he had gone too far.
That self-reproach was so powerful that it forced him to personally shatter every suspicious thought he had conceived.
After reaching this conclusion, the corners of Luo Zhao's lips curved upward.
For the first time.
For the first time, she had left Gu Chengyin with no move to make.
Not through endurance, disguise, or schemes.
But through the most genuine and complete obedience.
She had turned herself into the most obedient Good Doggy, into an existence that Gu Chengyin had no right to question.
From now on, he could no longer treat her as a chess piece or a tool. He could no longer remain as indifferent to her as he had been before.
Because he cared now.
His Dao Heart cared for her in his place.
Had everything before this been an act?
No.
Luo Zhao silently answered her own question.
She knew how powerful Gu Chengyin was, and she knew even better how keen his Dao Heart was.
What was false could deceive neither Gu Chengyin nor his Dao Heart.
If her obedience had been an act, if her docility had been a disguise, if her trust had been fake, then Gu Chengyin's Dao Heart would never have affirmed them.
And the reason it had affirmed them was because they were all genuine.
Luo Zhao was truly obedient, truly docile, and truly well behaved.
The Luo Zhao of today was Gu Chengyin's most obedient Good Doggy.
When truth becomes false and false becomes truth.
Luo Zhao had laid her most genuine self bare before Gu Chengyin.
She was using the most genuine obedience and trust to exchange for his concern.
That strategy had been impossible before.
Because back then, she had still been struggling, enduring, and refusing to accept her fate.
But now, she could do it.
Of course, even the most obedient Good Doggy had a few little thoughts of her own.
This wasn't pretense, scheming, or saying one thing while doing another.
It was merely the tiniest little thought.
Luo Zhao rose to her feet and walked over to Empress Lin's memorial tablet.
Under the eternal lamp's glow, the ebony tablet shone with a deep, tranquil luster. The words carved in gold lacquer appeared especially solemn in the dim light.
She reached out and lifted the tablet, then turned it over.
The back of the ebony tablet was polished just as smoothly as the front. Unlike the front, however, there was a seam along the upper portion of the back.
As the wooden panel was pushed aside, a rectangular box appeared before Luo Zhao.
The box was roughly the size of a palm, its entire surface smooth as a mirror. Its material was neither metal nor jade.
Under the faint glow of the eternal lamp, it shimmered with a metallic sheen.
Luo Zhao stared at the rectangular box, a ghostly light flickering in her eyes.
Her fingers hovered above its surface without touching it, slowly brushing through the air over its mirror-smooth exterior.
If it weren't for those fox spirits, she and Gu Chengyin would have been a match made in heaven.
Lin Qingyan, Shangguan Yunying...
Those women had taken away the attention that should have belonged to her alone.
But it didn't matter.
In the end, she would be the winner.
Luo Zhao could wait. She could endure. She could be Gu Chengyin's most obedient Good Doggy.
Because she had this final trump card.
The secret trump card Empress Lin had left for her—one that no one else knew about.
Every bit of endurance, every step of preparation...
It was all for the moment this rectangular box began to shine once more.
Luo Zhao wasn't in a hurry.
She could afford to wait.
When the rectangular box began to glow again, Gu Chengyin would belong to her forever.
Lin Qingyan, Shangguan Yunying...
All of them would be erased completely from Gu Chengyin's memory.
As for whether Lin Qingyan would go mad because of it—
What did that have to do with Luo Zhao?
She was merely a Good Doggy who wanted her Master's affection.
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.
nto another world, I bought a slave for the first time, never expecting the silver wolf girl to be so cute... Lin Feng: I know it's cold, but you don't have to sneak into my bed! Yuna: Just sharing body warmth, if you dare do anything naughty, I'll definitely...
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
