Luo Zhao stood before the mirror, a jade hairpin in her hand as she held it up to her reflection.
Her brows were slightly furrowed. Apparently dissatisfied, she put it aside and picked up another, only to find that one unsatisfactory as well.
She tried a third, but still wasn’t pleased. Her lips pursed into a pout, and she cast Shangguan Yunying a pleading look.
Lin Qingyan sat to the right. Her hair was almost finished, with only one stray lock left to tuck behind her ear.
Her movements were slow and graceful, each gesture carrying an innate beauty.
Shangguan Yunying, meanwhile, was busy helping both of them, standing between Luo Zhao and Lin Qingyan. One moment she was handing Luo Zhao a hairpin; the next, she was smoothing Lin Qingyan’s hair.
Then she would help Luo Zhao choose her earrings, only to turn around and select accessories for Lin Qingyan.
Shangguan Yunying’s movements were so practiced that she seemed completely at ease. She could even free one hand to tuck Lin Qingyan’s final stray lock behind her ear while using the other to fix a hairpin in Luo Zhao’s hair.
Gu Chengyin stood to the side and watched them for a while before saying, “I’m leaving first.”
He didn’t say where he was going, and the three women didn’t ask.
They merely acknowledged him with a sound to show that they had heard.
After Gu Chengyin left, Luo Zhao glanced at Lin Qingyan in the mirror.
Then she looked at the jade hairpin in her hand, and at her own reflection. Her brows drew together slightly.
She didn’t like today.
Not because anything unpleasant was going to happen.
It was because the role she had to play today was not one she liked.
Compared to being the Crown Princess, she much preferred being a well-behaved, obedient little dog.
Unfortunately, she was today’s main character, not Gu Chengyin.
Gu Chengyin would be tomorrow’s main character—the protagonist of the Taihe Battle.
So today was not his day. It was Luo Zhao’s.
As the Crown Princess, she would personally oversee the Taihe Battle.
Every word in that sentence weighed as heavily as a mountain, pressing down on Luo Zhao’s shoulders until she could barely breathe.
Overseeing the event did not mean standing by to watch the excitement, nodding at crucial moments, and applauding when it was over.
It meant controlling the overall situation, coordinating all sides, and making immediate decisions whenever problems arose.
Luo Zhao had to ensure that every stage of the Taihe Battle proceeded smoothly, with no oversights or accidents.
She could not allow anything to happen that would cause Da Luo, the Celestial Master Palace, or herself as the Crown Princess to lose face.
At the same time, she had to display the dignity of the Crown Princess, the bearing of the future Empress, and the calm confidence of someone who had everything under control.
That was why Luo Zhao had to receive representatives from every faction in her capacity as the Crown Princess.
But the cultivators who had traveled from the great sects were not here to admire her beauty or listen to her exchange polite words.
They were here to scrutinize her, assess her, and decide whether she was worthy of their respect.
Luo Zhao knew this. That was why she was nervous.
Standing behind her, Shangguan Yunying held another hairpin and tried to find a better angle for it.
She noticed Luo Zhao’s tension but said nothing. She merely placed a hand on Luo Zhao’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
Lin Qingyan’s expression was calm, but her attention had never truly left Luo Zhao.
Luo Zhao was the main character today, and so was Lin Qingyan.
When Luo Zhao received the representatives of the various factions, Lin Qingyan would be there.
But she would say nothing and interfere with nothing. She would simply sit quietly beside Luo Zhao.
Lin Qingyan would not speak for her, help her out of a difficult situation, or intervene when Luo Zhao didn’t know how to answer.
She believed that Luo Zhao could handle these situations, withstand provocations, and win everyone’s wholehearted respect.
The reason was simple: Luo Zhao’s Royal Tutor was Gu Chengyin.
As for Lin Qingyan, all she had to do was sit there quietly.
She needed only to let the entire cultivation world know that she was still alive.
She did not need to speak, take action, or do anything at all.
All she had to do was sit there and sweep her gaze across the room as though she were looking at a collection of ants.
That alone would be enough to frighten every schemer and petty troublemaker into remaining still.
No one would dare play tricks under her watch. No one would dare show Luo Zhao disrespect within the range of her gaze.
Even less would anyone dare challenge the authority of the Celestial Master Palace while she was present.
Her very existence was the greatest deterrent.
After confirming that nothing about her appearance was amiss, Lin Qingyan rose and walked behind Luo Zhao.
She placed her hands on Luo Zhao’s shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze, the pressure slightly firmer than Shangguan Yunying’s.
It was a silent promise:
I’m here.
Luo Zhao saw Lin Qingyan’s face in the mirror—a face bearing some resemblance to her own, yet more mature and possessing a breathtaking beauty that inspired far greater reassurance.
Complex emotions welled up inside her. They were the same emotions she had felt as a child, after being scolded by her father and hiding in a corner to cry, only to see Lin Qingyan appear before her.
As long as Little Auntie came, she would stand up for her.
As long as Little Auntie was there, she had nothing to fear.
That feeling, which had existed for as long as Luo Zhao could remember, rose once more in her heart.
And yet she had stolen Little Auntie’s man.
Luo Zhao took a deep breath and forced those emotions down.
Then she handed the jade hairpin to Shangguan Yunying and said softly, “This one.”
Shangguan Yunying took the hairpin and gently placed it into Luo Zhao’s coiffure, adjusting its angle.
Then she stepped back and examined it for a moment before nodding in satisfaction.
Lin Qingyan also looked her over for a moment. Without saying anything, she turned and walked outside.
Luo Zhao faced the mirror and gave herself one final inspection.
Her hair was neatly arranged, the jade hairpin perfectly in place. Her brows and eyes were exquisitely defined, and her lips were red against her pearly teeth.
There was no nervousness or unease on her face—only the calm that befitted the Crown Princess.
She rose, straightened her collar, and brushed the dust from her cuffs.
Through the window lattice, her gaze fell upon the distant sky.
The sun was rising there, its golden light spilling across the entire Divine Capital.
It bathed the upturned eaves of the Celestial Master Palace, as well as the guests who were about to arrive.
After emerging from the Tranquility Pagoda, Gu Chengyin stretched his arms in a deep, full-bodied yawn.
Under normal circumstances, he would never make such a gesture. But this time, the circumstances were anything but normal.
He had spent most of the night fooling around and had risen early that morning. His body was somewhat stiff and needed to be loosened up.
He needed to get his blood flowing, relax his muscles, and switch himself from last night’s orgy mode into battle mode for the day ahead.
After loosening his muscles, Gu Chengyin strode forward.
There was nothing left to prepare for the Taihe Battle.
Everything that needed to be prepared had been prepared long ago. He had already read all the relevant files.
The necessary deductions and simulations had already been completed, and every arrangement that needed to be made had been made.
Now, all that remained was to wait—to wait for the stage to be set and the audience to take their seats.
Before that, however, there were still a few things to do, as well as one person he needed to see.
The reason Gu Chengyin had come out was because he had somewhere to go.
The Cui Residence.
Just moments ago, he had received a message through the Luoshan Token.
It was a message from Cui Shifan:
Cui Zilu had returned.
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.
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.”
. 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!"
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!
