At the Qi Family villa in Jidu,
Qi Yuan entered the kitchen with steam rising from his body, roughly toweling his short hair before leaving it unattended.
After taking a refreshing shower, Qi Yuan felt every cell in his body relaxed.
He took a cola from the refrigerator, letting the cold liquid slide down his throat before letting out a burp.
In one word: awesome!
Except for some fresh beer that tasted decent, Qi Yuan was generally indifferent to alcohol. He preferred the happiness water more.
Just as he stepped out of the kitchen, Mother's piercing gaze fell upon him.
"You stepped out of the kitchen with your left foot, I'm going to get angry."
Uh...
Aren't you already angry?
Qi Yuan resigned himself and sat beside her with his cola.
Since earlier, Mother had been using the phrase "you..., I'm going to get angry" in her sentences - this was her habit when angry.
Even when furious, she couldn't bear to hurt family members. Through this method, she constantly reminded those around her that her emotions were unstable and might lead to misplaced anger.
As for the effectiveness...
Seeing Little Brother hunched behind the sofa, covering his mouth with both hands, face red from holding back laughter, it was clear that Mother's anger was less damaging than her usual unconscious ways of causing trouble.
When the Shared Runner incident became such a big deal, Mother took leave from work the next day and brought Little Brother back to see him.
The memories from his remaining avatar clearly showed that Mother hadn't dwelled on whether the Shared Runner was actually her son, and had happily called her sister-in-law to brag about it.
So why, as soon as he returned, did Mother puff up like a blowfish with anger at first sight?
Mother's inner thoughts were just a jumble of code, clearly showing she didn't know what she was angry about either.
Qi Yuan thought for a moment and recounted the fabricated Shared Runner incident, but it had little effect - apparently not the source of Mother's anger.
This left him quite puzzled, as aside from breaking the law or not taking care of one's health, Mother never got angry about being kept in the dark about things, her attitude leaning more towards believing everyone was an independent individual.
He death-stared at Little Brother, who understood and shook his head to indicate he didn't know either.
"Before I decide who to be angry with, if you don't let me calm down, I'm going to get angry," Mother said quite frankly.
Well, alright then.
Faced with Mother's logical approach to anger, Qi Yuan gave up, switched the TV to her favorite fruit channel, and went upstairs with his cola.
He'd first try to find the killer from outside the world, then check on Mother's situation later.
...
He locked the door after entering his room, preventing Little Brother from sneaking in and crying out, "Big brother is dead!"
Qi Yuan could barely contain his excited and nervous emotions, very eager to risk his life... ahem, to explore.
He lay on the bed, gradually letting his consciousness leave his body. With experience in using spatial abilities, he quickly figured out how to reach the space outside the world.
As his conscious form carefully entered the World Crevice, Qi Yuan felt emptiness all around him. Looking... or rather, sensing in all directions, he could detect almost nothing except the world behind him.
The void was pitch black, and he could only rely on his dispersed consciousness to sense the surrounding areas.
To prevent losing his way back, Qi Yuan didn't dare venture too far from the world. He left a thread of consciousness constantly sensing the world's presence before moving forward along this enormous entity.
Before long, Qi Yuan noticed his dispersed consciousness used for exploration showing signs of becoming uncontrollable, and quickly recalled them.
At this moment, Qi Yuan, whose vigilance had been deceived by the seemingly harmless void, suddenly realized that the World Crevice harbored hidden dangers.
It was silently decomposing everything that entered the crevice.
The world fragments he encountered next confirmed all this, as they continuously dispersed energy that then disappeared into this space.
Qi Yuan wrapped his consciousness around the energy, and was amazed to discover that the world's energy slowly merged into his conscious form. Though very subtle, consciousness was more sensitive to measurement than the physical body, and he clearly sensed his conscious form growing stronger.
This was the Shared Runner's ability - to obtain energy from the World Crevice to strengthen oneself, and also to give back to the world.
After several experiments, Qi Yuan confirmed his hypothesis.
Since the world's people had no clear concept of the energy in the crevice, he could acquire any energy within the World Crevice.
After understanding all this, Qi Yuan proceeded to the next experiment, attempting to share energy with the world to see if the holes would repair faster with sufficient energy.
With a strand of consciousness constantly attached to the world, Qi Yuan discovered numerous holes. Though called holes, they were just relatively weaker compared to other areas - breaking through the world's barrier to enter still wouldn't be simple.
As expected, when the world received supplementary energy from the fragments, the repair speed increased significantly.
This way, if he couldn't defeat the invaders, he could at least slow down their invasion by repairing the holes.
That is, assuming breaking through the barrier consumed a lot of energy from the invaders; otherwise, patching things up would be meaningless.
Judging from the fact that they hadn't launched a full-scale invasion, holding them back shouldn't be a problem.
As he pondered, Qi Yuan discovered a blind spot.
Why did he assume there must be invaders?
It was just speculation without evidence. The fact that unknown substances had thrown the world into chaos and produced monsters didn't necessarily mean there were invaders.
His earlier speculation about deities had also been unusually certain.
Qi Yuan stopped exploring his surroundings and tried to think about things he didn't know that were happening in his world.
Sure enough, answers soon arose in his mind.
Qi Yuan was overjoyed - he had previously thought without a world consciousness, the vague connection wouldn't be useful.
So, he silently asked in his mind about the invaders' location.
To his surprise, the answer that arose wasn't outside the world, but rather - the Ancient God Cult!
They had already entered the world?
No wonder the Ancient God Cult had been spreading information about monsters - so they were the invaders.
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.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
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!
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...
