This wasn’t an exaggeration. She really did roll her eyes back.
Those beautiful almond-shaped eyes first widened, then her pupils suddenly dilated. Her eyeballs rolled upward, exposing the whites.
Her whole body went limp, as though all her strength had been drained away, and she collapsed bonelessly.
A muffled whimper escaped her, as if it had been forced out from the very depths of her throat.
Then there was no sound at all.
She hadn’t passed out. She was in a state somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, her mind completely scattered.
Shangguan Yunying’s lips were slightly parted, her eyes half-open and half-closed, her lashes trembling incessantly.
She looked like a fish slapped onto the shore—unable even to struggle, left with nothing but instinctive spasms.
Luo Zhao couldn’t help swallowing.
The sound of it was especially clear in the quiet room—so clear that even she felt embarrassed.
She hurriedly pressed her lips together, but her throat betrayed her and bobbed again.
It was as if something were lodged there, impossible either to swallow down or spit out.
A sentence Gu Chengyin had once spoken suddenly echoed through Luo Zhao’s mind.
Back then, she hadn’t understood what he meant and had assumed he was merely making excuses.
But now Luo Zhao understood.
Gu Chengyin had been serious.
Every word he had said was serious—more serious than any oath, more genuine than any promise.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. He was afraid she wouldn’t be able to take it.
The situation before her had already made that perfectly clear.
Lin Qingyan couldn’t take it. Fairy Jingzhe, invincible at the Golden Core realm, couldn’t take it either.
Shangguan Yunying couldn’t take it, even with the two of them together.
What about her?
What about Luo Zhao?
The thought slipped silently into Luo Zhao’s mind like a snake.
It coiled there, flicking its tongue, whispering into her ear in a voice that sent chills down her spine:
How long do you think you can hold out?
Will you be a one-shot girl like Shangguan Yunying?
Or will you end up like Lin Qingyan, crying and begging for mercy?
Or perhaps you’ll fare even worse than either of them?
Luo Zhao didn’t dare imagine it.
But her eyes refused to obey.
She knew she shouldn’t look, yet her gaze remained glued to Gu Chengyin.
Glued to his well-defined fingers, to the slightly open collar of his robe, and to that unreadable face of his.
Luo Zhao’s heart was pounding like a war drum, each thud shaking her whole body with a faint tremor.
A thin layer of sweat had gathered in her palms, damp, sticky, and clammy.
She couldn’t help rubbing them against the fabric over her knees. Yet the sweat came back almost immediately, as if deliberately working against her.
Luo Zhao had no idea what she was supposed to do now.
Leave?
But she couldn’t move.
Her legs felt as though they had been filled with lead, heavy and nailed to the floor, refusing to lift no matter how hard she tried.
Stay?
But what would she stay for?
To watch Lin Qingyan and Shangguan Yunying get dealt with?
She had already watched. She had seen everything clearly—more clearly than ever before.
She didn’t need any more instructional material. What she needed was a reason that would allow her to escape this state.
But Luo Zhao couldn’t find one.
Then she heard movement.
Gu Chengyin had finished with Shangguan Yunying.
In an extremely short time, he had taken the eldest daughter of the Shangguan family through the entire process from consciousness to unconsciousness.
It had happened so quickly that Shangguan Yunying hadn’t even had time to utter a complete plea for mercy before she was already insensible.
Gu Chengyin glanced at the two women who had fallen asleep.
Lin Qingyan lay on her side on the left side of the bed, tear tracks still clinging to the corners of her eyes. Her lashes were damp and stuck together, like two little fans soaked by rain.
Her lips were slightly parted, her breathing even and steady. The expression on her face was no longer the one she had worn moments earlier.
It was relief.
The relief of finally being able to catch her breath after a storm had passed.
Her fingers were still curled as though gripping the bedsheet, but all their strength had vanished.
They merely rested there loosely, as if she no longer had the energy even to hold on to anything.
Shangguan Yunying lay on the right side of the bed, and she looked even worse than Lin Qingyan.
Her hair had spread across the pillow, a great black mass like the darkest stroke in an ink painting.
That dazed expression from when her consciousness had begun to scatter still lingered on her face.
Her eyes were half-open, but her pupils had no focus. Her lips were slightly parted, and a suspicious glimmer of moisture clung to the corner of her mouth.
She looked like a piece of silk that had been crumpled up and thrown into a corner.
Wrinkled, limp, and utterly incapable of pulling itself straight.
Looking at the two of them, Gu Chengyin finally felt some of the heat in his chest subside.
From the moment he had stepped into the Heart-Calming Pagoda, he had been trying to restrain himself.
Not because he was incapable, but because he didn’t want to.
Gu Chengyin didn’t want to turn himself into a stallion who could think only with his lower half.
He didn’t want these women to think he was a starving wolf that would pounce at the sight of meat.
Even less did he want their relationship to turn into a contest over who could please him best.
Gu Chengyin wanted to maintain a balance—a measure of dignity, a state everyone could accept.
But these women were simply too restless.
One after another, they stirred up trouble; wave after wave, they caused chaos.
Lin Qingyan wanted to mess with Luo Zhao, Luo Zhao wanted revenge on Lin Qingyan, and Shangguan Yunying fanned the flames from the side.
One moment she was telling Her Highness to push from behind, and the next she was pushing from behind herself.
Every single sentence would have been enough to give Gu Chengyin a headache on its own.
Taken together, they fired at him like a machine gun, rattling off one outrageous remark after another.
They had been dancing repeatedly on the edge of Gu Chengyin’s desire, each leap testing the limits of his patience.
He knew they weren’t deliberately trying to provoke him. They were merely expressing their desires and needs.
So in the end, Gu Chengyin, pushed past the point of endurance, took action.
As things stood, whether it was Lin Qingyan or Shangguan Yunying, both of them needed to be thoroughly disciplined before they would become obedient and well-behaved.
It wasn’t that Gu Chengyin enjoyed solving problems this way.
It was that this was the only method that worked.
When he tried to reason with them, they acted coquettishly.
When he tried to talk about rules, they caused a fuss.
The only way to quiet them was to exhaust them until they no longer had the strength to speak.
Only then would they truly, completely, and without reservation become obedient, listen properly, and stop causing trouble.
Gu Chengyin slowly turned his head. His gaze moved away from the bed and fell on the chair beside it.
Luo Zhao was still sitting there.
She had both hands pressed tightly to her cheeks, her fingers spread apart as she secretly watched everything through the gaps.
She looked like a frightened little animal, curled up in a corner and afraid to move.
Her body was drawn taut, her shoulder blades slightly raised, as though she were constantly preparing to flee.
Yet she had never quite made up her mind. She simply remained frozen there, motionless.
Her face was flushed as well, unusually vivid in the candlelight.
Like a peony dampened by dew, she possessed a beauty that was almost breathtaking.
Gu Chengyin realized that he had to confront a question.
Namely: Should he take Luo Zhao as well?
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!
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.
young master of the Shen family—a figure of immense power and wealth beyond measure—and awakened the "Destined Ultimate Villain System"! His starting scenario? Running into his icy fiancée who shows up with a mountain-descending divine doctor to break off their engagement. The divine doctor arrogantly taunts: "What does your Shen family have besides a bit of stinking money? You're not even worthy of tying Qingxue's shoelaces!" Shen Fei just smiled. He completely defied the usual script: "Fine, I agree to break off the engagement. Also, notify the finance department to withdraw all investments from the Su family." Minutes later, with its capital chain severed, the Su Group teetered on the brink of bankruptcy! The once aloof and proud ice queen CEO was thrown into utter panic. That very night, she went to Shen Fei's villa, casting aside all dignity to beg and plead desperately... From then on, in this world teeming with Sons of Destiny, Shen Fei embarked on a path of extreme dimensional suppression! A mountain-descending divine doctor? Peerless medical skills? Shen Fei: "Reporting you for practicing medicine without a license! I'll gladly take your ancient medicinal cauldron and twin sister assassins." The Crooked-Smiling Dragon King? Commanding a hundred thousand soldiers with a single order? Shen Fei: "Illegal assembly and suspected treason! Let a fleet of attack helicopters sanitize the area and teach you what the state apparatus really means!" A reborn tycoon? Knows all the golden opportunities of the next decade? Shen Fei: "A trillion in capital to reverse and pump the stock market, making you blow your margin and jump on the very first day of your rebirth!" What Chosen Ones? What bearers of Heavenly Fortune? In Shen Fei's eyes, they're all just chives (i.e., suckers/marks) waiting to be harvested! Shen Fei: "Sorry, but as the Destined Ultimate Villain, I don't play by the rules of honor. I only play the game of dimensional suppression."
