Morning light slanted over the courtyard wall, dividing the Cui residence into two sharply contrasting halves.
One half bathed in golden light, warm and bright.
The other concealed beneath the shadows of the upturned eaves, deep and still.
Gu Chengyin stood at the boundary between light and darkness, gazing at Cui Zilu, whose face had turned scarlet as she stood before him, utterly at a loss.
A gentle smile appeared on his face—not the usual smile that was perfectly measured yet impossible to read.
This smile was softer and more genuine, born from the heart.
His eyes curved, the corners of his lips lifted, and his entire face looked exceptionally gentle in the morning light.
Like a piece of jade polished smooth and warm by the passage of time.
That was how Gu Chengyin existed in Cui Zilu’s memories.
In her memories, Gu Chengyin was neither the Junior Tutor to the Crown Prince who could turn the imperial court upside down,
nor the iron-blooded powerbroker who struck fear into the hearts of all his rivals.
He was even less the strategist who moved through political struggles with effortless ease.
He was Brother Chengyin, who would smile and ruffle her hair, warmly call her little sister Zilu, and patiently listen to her rambling nonsense.
He was the Brother Chengyin who would earnestly answer all her innocent questions.
Cui Zilu stood rooted to the spot, completely flustered.
She wanted to say something more, but every word was lodged in her throat, leaving her unable to utter a sound.
Her fingers were still twisting together, as though she might wring them clean off.
But Gu Chengyin moved. He walked over to Cui Zilu and raised a hand to ruffle her hair.
His fingers slipped through her strands, the pads brushing against her scalp and stirring a faint, delicate sensation.
Cui Zilu unconsciously narrowed her eyes, and her entire body relaxed considerably.
Her head leaned ever so slightly into his palm. The movement was completely unconscious.
It was an instinctive response of the body, seeking a more comfortable position on its own.
It was the kind of unconscious gesture one made only before someone with whom one was closest, someone one trusted completely and never needed to guard against.
“So it’s little sister Zilu. I thought a fairy had descended from heaven.”
His manner was affectionate, his tone warm and familiar, without the slightest hint of distance.
Even his voice and intonation were exactly the same as the Gu Chengyin in Cui Zilu’s memories.
Cui Zilu’s face grew even redder. A young girl in the first flush of love could hardly withstand such teasing.
She lowered her head and stared at the tips of her shoes, her voice so soft it was little more than a breath:
“Brother Chengyin, you’re teasing me.”
This entire scene was witnessed by two people standing beneath the corridor roof a short distance away.
Xiao Ruxu narrowed her eyes as she stared at Gu Chengyin.
Her gaze was faint, yet sharper than any intense emotion—like a soft blade as thin as a cicada’s wing.
Her eyes lingered on Gu Chengyin’s face for several breaths, sweeping over it inch by inch.
Then her lips parted, and three words rolled from the tip of her tongue:
“What a move.”
Beside her, however, Cui Shifan paid no heed to Xiao Ruxu’s assessment.
He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the two people in the courtyard with a broad, genial smile.
His entire bearing radiated the carefree ease of someone thinking, What wonderful weather we’re having today.
Unlike Shangguan Yuan, who guarded his daughter like an overprotective father, Cui Shifan felt no need to remain wary.
After all, no matter how one looked at it, Gu Chengyin was the perfect son-in-law.
Even if Gu Chengyin had no family background, his abilities and methods outshone any pedigree.
He was practically the son-in-law Heaven itself had tailor-made for the Cui family.
Back when Gu Chengyin first came to stay at the Cui residence, Cui Shifan had even said aloud that it would be wonderful if Gu Chengyin were a member of the Cui clan.
He had meant it sincerely. In fact, it might well have been the most heartfelt thing he had ever said.
Cui Shifan genuinely regretted that Gu Chengyin did not bear the surname Cui.
“Madam, there’s no need to worry. Zilu isn’t a child anymore. Surely she can tell whether something is real or fake.”
Xiao Ruxu did not respond. She knew Cui Shifan was right.
Cui Zilu was no child, much less some brainless young lady from an aristocratic family.
She had grown up in an environment like the Cui clan’s, witnessing the fickleness of human nature, hearing all the meanings hidden between the lines, and seeing the blades glinting behind smiling faces.
She needed no one to teach her how to judge people, nor would she so easily lose her head over some wild man who had suddenly appeared by the roadside.
It was not as though Cui Zilu had never encountered men like that.
There were always impoverished scholars with grand delusions who believed that, with a handsome face and a few honeyed words,
they could make the Cui family’s heiress fall in love at first sight and then climb effortlessly to the pinnacle of life, rising through the ranks and achieving wealth and glory.
So they composed poems for Cui Zilu, poured out their feelings to her, and painted beautiful blueprints of the future.
And the result?
The result was that Cui Zilu did not even bother to answer them. She did not so much as glance at them before turning and walking away.
Once the young lady had left, the Cui residence’s people would bury those men in the ground and pass them off as ginseng.
They never appeared on any street in the Divine Capital again.
When aristocratic families arranged marriages, they placed great importance on matching social status.
This was the wisdom of survival distilled from thousands of years of lessons written in blood and tears.
A marriage between families of unequal standing was doomed to contain the seeds of conflict from the very beginning.
Their values would differ, their habits would differ, their social circles would differ—even their tastes in food would be at odds.
At first, they could endure it. They could compromise. For the sake of love, they could set aside all their pride and convictions.
But as time passed, their conflicts would swell like an avalanche, growing larger and accumulating without end.
Until one day, everything would come crashing down, burying them both beneath it.
Therefore, even if the Cui family was choosing a husband to marry into the clan, he had to be a dragon among men.
Not just any stray cat or mangy dog had the qualifications to enter the Cui family’s gates.
The Cui clan lacked neither wealth nor power, neither prestige nor any other commodity that money and status could buy.
What the Cui clan lacked was someone capable of leading it higher and farther.
Someone who could turn the tide when it mattered most.
Someone who could ensure that, in the years to come, the Cui name would still be spoken of, feared, and looked up to.
Was Gu Chengyin a dragon among men?
No.
Gu Chengyin was the Heaven-appointed True Dragon.
Although saying so was somewhat irreverent, it was simply the truth.
Whether it was the favor shown to him by Lin Qingyan, the Jingzhe of the Celestial Masters’ Palace,
or the inside information known only to the Grand Secretary of the Cabinet,
both had prompted Cui Shifan to place an ever larger bet on Gu Chengyin.
The Chenglu Academy was one such bet.
He had personally arranged for Cui Zilu to establish the academy, linking her name with Gu Chengyin’s and making sure everyone could see the Cui clan’s attitude toward him.
Personally going to the Crown Prince’s Palace to propose marriage was another bet.
The Cui family’s heiress was a woman countless sons of aristocratic families yearned for, a woman so far beyond the reach of many princes and nobles that they did not even dare dream of her.
Yet Cui Shifan had taken the initiative to come to them, taken the initiative to speak, and taken the initiative to place Cui Zilu in Gu Chengyin’s hands.
It wasn’t that Cui Zilu couldn’t find a husband; Cui Shifan simply couldn’t wait any longer.
He was afraid that if he waited too long, others would recognize Gu Chengyin’s worth and place their bets on him just as aggressively.
Thus, whether by establishing Chenglu Academy or by personally going to the Crown Prince’s Palace to propose the match, the Cui clan was making its position clear.
This was not merely Cui Zilu’s affair. It concerned the entire Cui clan.
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.
and couldn't return to the real world. Finally, I gave up and decided to go with the flow, only to discover that writing a diary could make me stronger. Since no one could read it, Su Luo wrote freely, daring to pen anything and everything. Female Lead #1: "Not bad. This diary helped me steal all the protagonist's opportunities. I just want to get stronger." Female Lead #2: "I don’t care about reaching the peak of the cultivation world. Right now, I just want to enjoy the chaos." Female Lead #3: "What? Everyone around me is a spy? I’m the Joker Demon Lord?" ... It’s so strange. Why is the plot completely off track, yet the ending remains the same? Are you all just messing with me?!
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...
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!
