After Chasing the Wind's seventh time "beating the dragon", Li Shiyin and Long Qiqi finally came back. The two little girls had been away for about forty days, leaving when spring was in the air and returning when early summer had just begun.
Qin Ran was applying medicine to Chasing the Wind under the old locust tree when he suddenly heard a clear, crisp shout: "Master! We're back!!"
This familiar voice made him look up. He saw a young girl in a white dress and skirt flying towards him, accompanied by the colorful glow of dusk. She spread her arms and hugged him down before he could react, grabbing him into her embrace.
She had jumped down while standing, and he was crouching when caught. In the soft, fragrant yet fiery embrace of the young girl, Qin Ran's nose and lips were against her neck. He smelled the girl's light fragrance, saw her snow white skin and faint green veins. He felt he was being hugged very tightly, so tight he couldn't breathe... Fortunately he didn't need to breathe.
After a long, long time, when he sensed the girl's excitement had passed, he gently called out: "Shiyin?"
"Mmm?" Li Shiyin responded with a coy nasal sound but did not let go.
Qin Ran had no choice but to let her keep hugging him.
But just then, Chasing the Wind painfully cried out: "Li Shiyin! Pain! Pain, pain!!"
Only then did Li Shiyin come to her senses and look down to find that she had been stepping on Chasing the Wind.
Embarrassed, she stuck out her tongue, then released Qin Ran. She put her hands on Qin Ran's shoulders and jumped down from Chasing the Wind.
"Wow! Stupid tiger, what's wrong with you? How did you get beaten so badly?" She only noticed Chasing the Wind's miserable state now and exclaimed in surprise, "I was only gone for a few days. Did someone bully you so much when I wasn't home?"
"Humph! I wasn't bullied by anyone!" Chasing the Wind denied. He only said, "I was practicing martial arts with my big brother."
"Big brother?" Li Shiyin scorned him even more. "How shameless! You actually acknowledged a big brother?!"
Chasing the Wind felt a little embarrassed, but fortunately as a tiger, he had thick enough skin. He said, "My big brother is a dragon, very powerful."
"Dragon?" Li Shiyin became interested. "The kind that can become big or small, ride the clouds and mist, make clouds and rain, has vast supernatural powers, snake body fish scales, tiger claws eagle talons, ox ears deer antlers, and shines with golden light?"
"What are you talking about?" Chasing the Wind was puzzled. "I don't understand you at all."
"Oh, like the dragon patterns on the emperor's clothes! Shiny with golden light, very majestic!" Li Shiyin added.
"No..." Chasing the Wind shook his head. He thought of his big brother, a pitch-black flood dragon, and suddenly felt he had no face.
"Then what dragon are you talking about?" Li Shiyin pouted.
Chasing the Wind closed his eyes and pretended to be dead, not speaking.
"There is a flood dragon in Dan Peak Sect's guardian mountain formation," seeing this, Qin Ran explained to Li Shiyin. "These days Chasing the Wind has been playing with him."
"Flood dragon?" Li Shiyin pondered. "Although not as handsome as real dragons, still acceptable."
"Have you seen a flood dragon before?" Chasing the Wind suddenly came back to life.
"The eighth prince's clothes have flood dragon patterns on them..."
Li Shiyin had been back for so long, yet Qin Ran still hadn't seen Long Qiqi. He couldn't help but think of something bad happening, and asked, "Where's Qiqi?"
"After entering the sect gate, I just left her behind..." Li Shiyin only just remembered Long Qiqi, very embarrassed. "I was thinking of Master!"
She shook Qin Ran's shoulders gently again.
Qin Ran helplessly looked at her and shook his head, unable to scold her. He only said, "How could you leave her behind?"
"Qiqi learned Wind Riding, she just isn't skilled at it yet. She needs more practice..."
Li Shiyin had come back riding the sunset, while Long Qiqi had come back groping in the dark. A six or seven-year-old little girl shakily flying through the air on clumsy Wind Riding was truly heartbreaking and tear-jerking to behold.
What was especially egregious was that after passing through Dan Peak Sect's guardian mountain formation, the scene she saw was Qin Ran, Li Shiyin, and Chasing the Wind merrily eating hot pot on the lawn...
It was really too outrageous!!!
Her Wind Riding skill instantly improved by several levels. Fuming, she rushed over and voraciously ate three huge bowls!
"After being away for over a month, what medicinal flame did you finally obtain?" After the meal, when everything was cleaned up, the group sat on the lawn looking at the stars. Qin Ran asked Long Qiqi.
Long Qiqi lay sprawled on the soft Chasing the Wind. Looking at the sky, she said, "Netherworld Soul Flame!"
This name was just Long Qiqi's style, but...
Qin Ran asked doubtfully, "That wasn't on the list I gave you, was it?"
"Alas! None of what you said could be snatched!" Sitting on the lawn with Li Shiyin sleeping on it, her little head leaning against Qin Ran's old waist, she said indignantly,
"Master, let me tell you, Qiqi is so stupid! Every time a flame appeared, we went, but she didn't dare make a move! Especially once, it was that Bone Spirit Cold Fire. I had already blocked seven people for her, fought hard for a long time to buy time for her to absorb it, but she still couldn't absorb it. I was so angry!
"If Qiqi had been just a little braver, we could've come back in seven days."
Qin Ran looked at Long Qiqi. Long Qiqi's eyes seemed evasive. She coughed dryly and said, "Who...who knew there would be so many people? Alchemists, martial artists, all so powerful. We couldn't even see the alchemists."
"I don't know what kind of sinister cultivation methods they practice, needing these strange fires of heaven and earth."
"Many cultivation methods require external aid..." Qin Ran shook his head and said, "Even Shiyin's orthodox Nine Revolutions Star Sword Technique needs the power of stars. Cultivation methods needing certain flames, ices, winds, thunders, waters, and so on can only be more numerous."
He paused, then asked Long Qiqi again, "So how did you finally obtain the Netherworld Soul Flame?"
"When we were waiting for the Black Lotus Earth Fire in Xuanqin to reignite, it was snatched by others. But the people who snatched it hadn't beaten Shiyin, so we got a map from them," Long Qiqi said. "The map showed the location of Netherworld Soul Flame, in Pian Bo of Great Yan."
"So you went to Great Yan?" Qin Ran exclaimed in surprise. "Running so far?"
"Humph! If it wasn't for me beating away all those people this time..." Li Shiyin said, "We might've had to go even further to Yan Han!"
Long Qiqi silently conceded. Though she was an experienced veteran, she had to admit this trip relied entirely on Li Shiyin. Plotting and schemes were all well and good, but in the end, only brute force decided things...
This trip let her clearly see just how powerful Li Shiyin was.
She and Li Shiyin had stepped into the cultivation world around the same time, no more than two months apart, but the gap between them could truly be described as the difference between clouds and mud. If they fought directly... Well, she was not qualified to confront Li Shiyin head-on.
"Alright, I know you're powerful!" Qin Ran praised Li Shiyin, then looked to Long Qiqi again and said, "Take out your Netherworld Soul Flame and let me see."
Long Qiqi showed Qin Ran her clump of dark and gloomy fire.
"Looks pretty good, the quality seems quite high." Qin Ran nodded. "It's just that using this flame to refine pills would most likely make it easier to produce poison pills..." He suddenly stopped here, thinking of the super poison pills he had refined.
"Poison pills will just be poison pills! It's fine as long as we can use them ourselves." Long Qiqi sighed.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
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.
. 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!"
