Alfir

152 Seeds of Civilization

“So, what are we waiting for?” I asked, half-expecting someone to snap and tell me to shut up. “Do we just stand here on the sand like decorative idiots or…?”

Nongmin didn’t even blink. “They will send someone to greet us. I’ve already informed our hosts.”

Of course he had. Everything he did was three steps ahead and filed in triplicate. For someone who ruled an empire, the man had the patience of a monk playing chess against time itself.

Zai Ai sighed besi...

151 Little Shit

It hadn’t even been ten minutes into our flight on the Megatron when Zai Ai started looking for her ring, her brows furrowing in what looked suspiciously like rising panic. She patted down her sleeves, then her sash, then made a little whirl halfway down the corridor like she was hoping she’d catch it falling through a portal in reverse.

Huh… So her perception sucked.

I reckoned the Emperor was the exception, fairly recalling the one time I tried to steal from ...

150 Megatron

Just as the old man was gleefully pinching my cheeks and preparing to ruin my dignity forever, I noticed someone standing beside him, mouth slightly open, eyes fixed on me like she’d seen a ghost.

Jia Yun.

Ah, shit.

Out of all the cultivators in the Empire, why did it have to be her?

Back in my first week of stumbling into Yellow Dragon City: new to this world, confused, uninformed, and way too friendly for my own good… I’d made two extremely poor life choices. T...

149 Want a Candy?

“I’m sorry about Ren Xun,” I told her, voice low. “I promise I’ll bring him back.”

The words tasted heavy coming out. He had died because of me… or more accurately, because he’d agreed to watch over me during our trip to the Imperial Capital. A simple ‘tourguide’ mission, basically babysitting. And now he was dead.

Lin Lim stood still beside the cart, her hand resting lightly on the edge of the beast’s torn wing. She didn’t look at me, but that was not...

148 Feast Before the Summit

It had been a week since my talk with Nongmin, and the preparations for the World Summit were still dragging on. Apparently, assembling the most powerful people in the world under one roof took more time than I expected. A lot of politics. A lot of pomp.

But that delay came with its perks. I had time to cultivate, catch up with people, and… well, “stuff.”

The Empire had loaned me a manor in Yellow Dragon City. Not some crumbling ancient compound either. This place was the re...

147 Dreamt Dreams

I stood up from the gilded chair, brushing a bit of imaginary dust off my sleeve, and looked Nongmin dead in the eye.

“If you really want to feel attached to them,” I said, “then there’s only one solution. Spend more time with the people you want to feel attached to. Doesn’t matter if you know how to do small talk or not.”

“I’m too busy,” he replied flatly.

I rolled my eyes. “Too busy is a term people throw around when something isn’t their priority. Le...

146 The Talk

Alice was feeding me grapes.

Not just any grapes. These were qi-soaked, high-grade spirit grapes, the kind that grew in the mist-drenched hills of the Empire’s interior. I could feel the energy dancing in my veins with every chew.

“Open,” she said softly.

I did. A grape rolled past my lips, and I chewed slowly as I leaned against her lap, the slow rise and fall of her breath brushing against the back of my neck. It was therapeutic, sure. Luxurious, even.

But it w...

145 Unexpected Kidnapping

The memory didn’t end.

It couldn’t.

I was still inside Alice’s soul, watching through her eyes. Feeling through her heart. Hearing her breath tremble as she cut down the last of the villagers. She knew them, and it hurt her.

Not in the way an outsider passes through and trades a few words… Alice knew their names, their jokes, and the way old Jiu Ma always pretended to be blind just to dodge chores. The way the twins argued over which of them was faster. The way ...

144 The Long Echo

The memory didn’t end.

It shifted again, seamlessly, as if flipping to the next chapter in a story already written but now being read aloud with fresh eyes. The field of poppies faded. The lavender sky turned to grey. And when the light returned, I saw it.

Me.

Or at least, him.

David_69.

I stood on a ruined bridge beneath a shattered moon, decked in the full Paladin kit from my late-game loadout: Radiant Fang, Iron Mercy cloak, and that dumb over-leveled shield...

143 Alice’s Life

The dreamscape shifted.

I didn’t feel my body anymore, only the drift of consciousness as my soul merged with Alice’s. This wasn’t like when I entered Gu Jie’s soul, where lines blurred and I became her. No. This was different. I could still tell where I ended and she began. I was a passenger, not a replacement. A thread wound into her, not a needle driving the story forward.

Divine Possession wasn’t just possession. It was empathy, distilled into a technique. If she lau...

142 Outsourcing Heaven

There was silence.

Not the kind that came from awe, but the confused, stunned kind… like a crowd who blinked and missed the finale.

My dear audience stood frozen in place, eyes wide, mouths half open. A few rubbed their eyes like they were trying to reboot their retinas.

Yeah, I moved that fast.

The lower realm cultivators hadn’t seen anything. To them, it probably looked like I stood still, blinked twice, and seven monsters just exploded into divine fireworks...

141 Falcons and Roses

The falcon screeched as it broke through the clouds, its shadow passing over us like a silent omen. I watched it descend with practiced grace, folding its wings mid-dive before flaring them open again at the last second. Its rider leapt off, landing in the boat with barely a sound.

Han Lun.

The man stood tall, draped in desert-colored leathers and a polished scale coat that shimmered faintly under the sun. His skin was bronze from the heat, and a curved sabre hung from his waist. ...

140 Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Gender

I sat cross-legged in the private chamber Lu Gao had been assigned. The walls were lacquered with restrained elegance, the air thick with incense… floral, maybe aphrodisiacal. Hard to tell anymore. My sense of smell had been dulled by the constant barrage of stimulation in this continent.

I closed my eyes and cycled the Mana Road again, trying and hoping for even a flicker of insight. No matter how I refined the flow, no matter how cleanly I traced the meridians, the boundar...

139 A Man Awakens Surrounded

I opened my eyes to soft violet curtains swaying with a lazy breeze, sunlight filtering in through honeyed lattice windows, and the scent of sandalwood, jasmine, and too many people wearing perfume in close quarters.

The first thing I did was check my chest.

Still flat.

Still a dude.

Thank the Heavens.

And then I froze.

I was surrounded by women.

To be more accurate, fine women… The kind sculptors tried to capture in jade and never got quite ri...

138 Fireflies in the Soul Sea

It had been two weeks since I started diving into Lu Gao’s soul, and I meant that quite literally.

Dreamwalking wasn’t a plug-and-play technique. Especially not when the base mechanism involved something called Soulful Guiding Fire… a temperamental flame that could lead a practitioner through another’s subconscious while fending off invasive forces. Which, in Lu Gao’s case, was a devil knight squatting deep in his mind like it paid rent.

And to make things harder?

...

137 Blue Flames and Old Bones

I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was darkness. There was neither light nor warmth. Just that silent and oppressive stillness that makes you feel like you’ve been buried alive.

I stayed there for a moment, breathing steadily, until I sent out my Divine Sense in every direction.

Rocks. Dirt. Some kind of mineral veins, dull and dry. The air was still and stale. I was underground, definitely a cave. The aura was calm but laced with that faint, almost metallic b...

136 A Delicate Encounter

I’m like… dude, what happened to you?

Seriously, it took everything in me not to say that out loud the moment I laid eyes on Lu Gao.

I’d come to Healing Garden’s famed Purple Blossom establishment because Nongmin, of all people, had insisted I make it my first stop. “There’s someone important you’ll find there,” he’d said. “You’ll know him when you see her. Now, go, your disciple is waiting for you.”

I thought he was making a bad pun. I didn...

135 Blushes and Bewilderment

The first thing Lu Gao felt was the warm sway of something beneath him, rocking gently like a cradle. His eyes cracked open to a world painted gold… dunes stretching far in all directions, glittering under the merciless sun. Above him fluttered a canopy of silk dyed orange and crimson, shielding him from the harsh light.

He blinked, dazed. The last thing he remembered was screaming at the top of his lungs, purple flames, and… a contract with a skull?

“Oh, you woke up.”

134 The Black Knight in the Dunes

It had been days since Lu Gao was flung across the continent by the violent tear of a Great Teleportation scroll.

He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t even know if he was still on the same continent, let alone the same world. All he had were sun-scorched skies, winds that howled like ghosts, and sand… sand in his boots, his clothes, his ears, and his teeth.

The suit Mistress Aili Si had forced onto him was in shambles. A once dignified thing, black with clean silver s...

133 Reconciliation & Omens

I’ve done my reading.

Not just the usual surface-level stuff either. Before coming here, I made it a point to study everything the Empire had on the Promised Dunes: their history, politics, economy, and culture. If I were going to walk into another nation’s lands with a target on my back and a bunch of Phoenix Guard warriors at my side, I figured I should at least know why people might want to stab me.

So I knew why Queen Liu Yana was angry. Her outburst back at the table wasn...

132 A Kingdom of Sand and Stone

We arrived at our destination short of twenty-one days. Considering the normal pace of sky travel over three continents, that should’ve been impossible. But then again, not many people had the same skillset or stubbornnessas I did.

How did we manage it? Simple. I spammed the Bless Spell like a lunatic.

It just worked… well, at the expense of our Formation Specialists.

Every few hours, I cast it on the fleet, empowering the ships' durability and reducing the cooldown...

131 Sailing the Skies

We finally set off.

I stood near the prow of the lead Soaring Dragon, the wind brushing past my robes and the hum of formations vibrating beneath my feet. Beneath us, the clouds parted like silk, revealing glimpses of the earth far below: rivers like silver threads, mountain peaks like broken teeth.

“Sir Da Wei,” Xue Xin called, walking with a measured gait across the polished deck. Her expression was calm as ever, but I noticed the pride in her voice. “At this pace, we’ll...

130 Sandthorn Village

Morning arrived with a whisper rather than a blaze. The sun had not yet crested the horizon, but Sandthorn Village was already stirring. A faint breeze carried with it the scent of dust, cactus blossom, and baked clay, weaving between clay-brick homes and crooked awnings stretched from one side of the narrow street to the other.

Alice sat on the edge of a window in their rented room atop the old inn. She rubbed her eyes, yawned, and watched the early risers shuffle past with baskets, ju...

129 Just Stay Behind, Damn It

It had been three days since the expedition plans began rolling into motion. The high walls of Yellow Dragon City bustled with activity, cloaked in the haze of talisman smoke and the shimmer of enchanted cloth. A dozen boat artifacts, half of them shaped like elegant dragon-headed skiffs, the others like flattened gourd leaves, were moored along the upper platforms, floating just above the stonework, secured by chains that pulsed faintly with qi.

I stood on the highest tier of the wall,...

128 Under the Pale Moonlight

The moon hung low, round and solemn, casting silver light across the dunes. The desert was quiet tonight, eerily so. Even the wind whispered as if trying not to disturb the lonely figure atop the sandy ridge.

Lu Gao exhaled slowly. The night was calm, but his heart was not.

It had been months, three, maybe four, depending on how one counted days without proper sunrises. He had been separated from his Master and the others during that chaotic battle. He remembered the final clash, ...

127 Scattered Shadows

“Alright, you and your gal friends can go now,” I said, waving Zhu Lian and the handmaidens away.

Zhu Lian blinked. “Gal friends?”

“Ignore me,” I muttered. “Just go.”

She narrowed her eyes in confusion, but gave a low bow and gestured to the others. “Come, sisters. Let us leave the honored guests to their discussion.” As they filed out, I heard faint whispers among them. I didn’t need Divine Sense to guess what they were saying. My choice of words had a...

126 A Most Natural Resurrection

The courtyard was quiet, save for the rustle of wind through dying leaves and the faint creak of old wood. A garden once full of life now held the stink of death. And at its center, sprawled in a pose that could only be described as violently artistic, lay what remained of Hei Yuan.

He wasn’t just dead. He was mangled, torn apart, burned in places, and dried out in others. Unrecognizable to anyone who hadn’t seen him fighting back-to-back with you in the gates of Hell itse...

125 Hollowed World

“In my younger years,” Nongmin began, his voice echoing slightly against the stone walls and shelves of the small study, “I had a simple question. One that troubled me more than most cultivators would bother to ask.”

I raised a brow. “What? Like whether you were the protagonist or the villain?”

He ignored the jab and continued on whatever this was. “I wanted to know whether the world was flat… or a sphere.”

We were sitting across from each other, a modest t...

124 Class One Truth

We were walking down a hallway that refused to end.

Not just long… it was unnatural. The air thrummed with quiet tension, like the corridor itself was alive and watching. I couldn’t help but glance around, eyes tracing the seamless stone, the faintly glowing inlays etched into the walls like veins pulsing with mysterious energy. Wards. Spell formations. Something else too, something ancient, that didn’t belong to either. It all whispered of power layered over power, buried under t...

123 Daddy Issues

The palace halls were a quiet kind of vast. Silent, but not peaceful. Like the place had seen too much to pretend otherwise.

General Zhu Shin walked beside me. He was a quiet storm of righteousness wrapped in steel and discipline. I liked him more than most of the Emperor’s people, at least Zhu Shin didn’t hide his contempt. That made him honest, in his own blunt way.

We reached the final gate, towering gold-inlaid doors carved with dragons and phoenixes locked in eternal comb...