The second button came undone.
Luo Zhao felt as though her heart were about to leap out of her throat.
She lowered her head and glanced at her clothes.
The collar had already come loose, revealing the edge of the white inner garment beneath.
“L-Little Aunt, please calm down!”
Luo Zhao’s voice was already trembling with tears, and her body instinctively shrank backward.
But Shangguan Yunying’s hands were clamped firmly around her arms from behind, leaving her nowhere to retreat.
“I’m Zhao’er!”
Despite Luo Zhao’s attempt to bring her back to her senses, Lin Qingyan’s hand did not stop.
By the time the third button came undone, Luo Zhao’s outer robe had been left almost completely open.
The tower was not cold, yet Luo Zhao still shuddered.
Then she heard Lin Qingyan’s voice. It was no longer filled with that lazy amusement from before.
Instead, her tone became soft and gentle, as warm and soothing as a spring breeze brushing across one’s face.
“So now you remember that you’re Zhao’er, and I’m your Little Aunt?”
Luo Zhao’s body went rigid.
“But when you were calling Chengcheng ‘Master’ in his arms just now, how did you forget?”
“The dignified Crown Prince, secretly trying to seduce her own Little Uncle.”
“And hiding it from your Little Aunt, afraid to let me find out.”
Lin Qingyan’s voice remained as gentle as ever, as though she were coaxing a child who had just awoken from a nightmare.
Yet every word was like a small knife, carving into Luo Zhao’s heart one stroke at a time.
“Zhao’er, you’ve been very naughty.”
After saying this, Lin Qingyan leaned back slightly.
Her beautiful eyes quietly studied the tear tracks on Luo Zhao’s face. There was no pity or softness in them.
She merely watched, as if determining the quality of those tears.
Were they genuine remorse, or merely anger and humiliation at having been exposed?
Luo Zhao wanted to cry, but she desperately held back her sobs.
She knew that crying would be useless at a time like this. Lin Qingyan had never fallen for such tricks—she never did.
If tears had been useful, Lin Qingyan would never have become invincible beneath the Golden Core realm.
But the body could not lie. Her eyes were still red, as was the tip of her nose.
A faint flush covered her entire face, making her look like a begonia drenched by rain—flustered, helpless, and utterly wretched.
Luo Zhao shifted her gaze away from Lin Qingyan’s face and turned toward the person behind her.
Shangguan Yunying still had both hands locked around her arms, and the force had not slackened in the slightest.
“Yunying, I know I was wrong. Please let me go, all right?”
Even as she said it, Luo Zhao felt ashamed of herself.
But this was no time to put on a brave front. No one knew what Lin Qingyan intended to do next.
Luo Zhao needed an ally, and in this Heart-Calming Tower, the only person who might possibly take her side was Shangguan Yunying.
Shangguan Yunying’s hands shifted.
At that movement, Luo Zhao’s heart leaped.
She felt the pressure around her arms loosen slightly, as if Shangguan Yunying meant to release her.
Just as she was about to breathe a sigh of relief, Lin Qingyan’s voice sounded again.
“Yunying, you don’t want Zhao’er doing anything to Chengcheng either, do you?”
The meaning behind those words was clear: if you let her go now, you’ll be indulging her.
If you show mercy today, she’ll do something even worse tomorrow.
Are you willing to bear the consequences?
Shangguan Yunying’s heart clenched, and her hands tightened again.
Luo Zhao felt the renewed pressure and despair rose from the soles of her feet like a flood.
She knew Shangguan Yunying would not help her—not because she did not want to.
It was because, in Shangguan Yunying’s heart, Gu Chengyin mattered more than she did.
Luo Zhao closed her eyes.
Tears squeezed through her tightly shut lashes and ran down her cheeks, cool against her skin.
She felt Lin Qingyan’s hand move once more. Her fingertips had reached the fourth button and were undoing it at an unhurried pace.
Luo Zhao felt her clothes being removed piece by piece, like a cicada shedding its shell.
Layer by layer, they were stripped away, exposing the vulnerable self hidden at the very core.
……
Meanwhile, downstairs, Gu Chengyin had finally finished reading the last dossier.
He organized all the information concerning the Taihe War in his mind, and immediately gained a clear understanding of the situation.
The backgrounds of the Heavenly Master’s Residence’s consecrated cultivators, the levels of their cultivation, the quality of their Dao hearts, and so on—
Gu Chengyin committed all of it to memory.
Of these people, only a few could truly pose a threat, but that did not mean there were none.
He had already devised three or four strategies for dealing with them when the time came.
Gu Chengyin set down the dossier and rolled his stiff neck, his eyes habitually sweeping across the room.
Then he realized that the area around him was empty.
Not a single person remained.
He blinked, thinking he must have seen incorrectly, and looked again.
Indeed, there was no one there. All three women were gone.
Gu Chengyin frowned slightly, then relaxed.
He heard voices coming from the third floor. They were indistinct, but he could tell that someone was up there.
They had probably gone upstairs of their own accord so as not to disturb him while he read the dossiers.
Gu Chengyin rose and walked toward the staircase.
He reached the third floor.
Just as Gu Chengyin rounded the bend in the stairs and was about to speak, he froze.
More precisely, his entire body locked in place at the stairway, as though someone had cast a binding spell on him.
Even his eyes widened involuntarily.
It was not an especially dramatic reaction, but considering Gu Chengyin’s composure, it was already remarkably intense.
What had he seen?
Three women on the bed.
They were not sitting.
They were not lying down.
They were arranged across the rosewood canopy bed in a posture he never could have anticipated.
At some point, the bed curtains had been lowered halfway. The gauzy fabric swayed faintly in the candlelight.
Through the thin veil, Gu Chengyin saw Luo Zhao leaning against one of the bedposts, her clothes…
How was he supposed to describe them?
She was dressed, but not entirely dressed.
Her outer robe had long since vanished. The collar of her inner garment hung wide open, revealing the undergarments beneath and a broad expanse of dazzlingly pale skin.
Luo Zhao’s face was unbearably flushed, and her eyes were red as well, as though she had just been crying.
She was curled up there like a drenched kitten, pitiful and helpless.
Shangguan Yunying sat at the foot of the bed. She looked properly dressed, but the redness at the tips of her ears betrayed her.
Her fingers traced idle circles across the quilt, while her eyes drifted uncertainly, as if she were counting the flowers painted on the canopy above.
And Lin Qingyan…
Lin Qingyan was lying on her side at the other end of the bed.
One hand supported her head, while the other rested casually atop the bedding. Her posture was as languid as that of a satisfied cat.
Her gaze swept lazily over the other two women, a faintly mischievous smile playing at the corners of her lips.
Gu Chengyin’s gaze shifted from the bed to the floor.
Clothes lay scattered everywhere.
Like the remnants left behind after a wild celebration, they were strewn messily across the brocade carpet.
Every piece silently testified to how improper the events in this room had been.
Gu Chengyin felt that he might need to confirm what he was seeing.
To make certain that he was truly in the Heart-Calming Tower—and had not somehow wandered into some other kind of establishment.
“What… are you doing?”
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.
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.
lan, the Luo family, tracked him down - along with the babies in their arms. Mo Xuan stared pensively at the paternity test results from over a dozen top institutions, both domestic and international, showing a 99.99% match between himself and the two baby girls. At 23, Mo Xuan, a doctoral student, had become the father of two three-year-old children. The kicker? The mothers weren't even the same person! He gradually realized he was being lured step by step into an elaborate trap designed by these two yandere sisters. "Be good, little Xuan. Sister's life belongs to you entirely." "Brother, if you try to run away, I'll have no choice but to tie you up." Mo Xuan: "Do whatever you want, ladies. I give up."
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!
