Volume 1, Chapter 66: The Lotus Painted by the Monk on the Painting

"Xuan—" Su Yueyue's face turned a shade paler as a thousand conflicting emotions surged within her heart.

Looking at the trees not far away, casting large, dark silhouettes—some whole, others fragmented—she experienced a peculiar sensation.

Standing nearby, Mo Tian felt a sudden urge to laugh upon hearing this. Is there anything Miss Xiao wouldn't dare to do? This really amounted to nothing at all.

His ink-black hair was scattered loosely across his shoulders, and his jade-like countenance bore a hard-to-mask paleness.

The morning court remained as lifeless as ever. Anyway, Liu Xie no longer expected the traditional chorus of "Long live" seen in costume dramas. He simply sat cross-legged on his own cushion every day, listening to a few ministers murmur about trivial and inconsequential matters.

Watching Xu Nanqin guard Hongyao day by day as he grew increasingly emaciated, I knew it was all a dream, yet my heart ached profoundly. I wanted to tell Xu Nanqin not to be sad, that he still had me; but he could neither see nor feel me, and in the end, I could only murmur to myself endlessly.

Lucifer had no choice but to stop. Xia He exhaled a breath of cyan Qi, which merged with the clear light of the Yin-Tai Mirror, and with a sweep before him, a separate divine domain was carved out.

He was still probing how the nobles within the empire would react. He hadn't merely dispatched mages to kill; he had also sent a squadron of soldiers.

"How is this possible! How could I possibly end up in your bed!" Su Qingge wore a look of utter disbelief. She inspected her surroundings once more, but the scenery stubbornly refused to transform back into her own bedroom.

Seeing his older sister drooping her head and wondering what she was probing into, Ye Li wore a faint, light smile at the corners of his lips.

The other people in the meeting room dispersed as Fatty Sun left, each returning to their respective posts to attend to their duties, yet an unshakable gloom still lingered in their hearts.

His gaze looked steadily at her, letting her clearly understand the immense resolve he had formed at this very moment. Opening his mouth, he spoke.

Ruan Hanping raised a hand to sniff his own arm, let out a loud cry, and dashed straight into the bathroom. Aunt Gao smiled, stood up, and went to the storage room to fetch some a change of clothes to send over.

The people in the mountains possessed a truly sincere nature. When guests arrived unexpectedly, even if the family wasn't particularly wealthy, they would still serve the finest food they had, and upon departure, they never forgot to send along some local mountain specialties with the guests.

However, today was different. There were plenty of people—a hundred or so—yet they had not come to bathe, but rather to smash the place up.

Meanwhile, at a night market barbecue stall in Chongqing, Li Chao sat face-to-face with an elder of the Li family, clinking beer mugs with each other.

Long Hao vaulted back up onto the rooftops, while the bustling crowd below remained entirely unaware that a masked figure had ever appeared or taken away a mask.

In the end, it burned away entirely amidst a ball of fire, leaving behind only fearful, ashen dust that continually purified this blood-stained earth.

Though the soldiers of the Imperial Feathered Forest Right Guard did not understand why their captain's voice had suddenly turned mournful and indignant, they faithfully executed his commands. With their physical strength greatly enhanced, their attacks became all the more ferocious. Moreover, due to the preliminary integration of Luo Zhen's guard unit, their ferocious assaults also gained a touch of flowing, effortless grace.

"The Zhao family?!" Upon hearing the name of the Zhao family, Su Zhi's entire aura shifted abruptly, a surging murderous intent flashing through his eyes! Hearing these two words stirred him far more than hearing about the demise of his sect's chief disciple.

"However, things are not entirely—" A few who could still maintain their composure tried to explain something, but their voices were instantly drowned out by the clamor of the others.

The Second Prince had never laid eyes on Hua Yun; Hua Yun's appearance was far from striking, and he wore standard soldier's attire, making him no more than a drop of water or a grain of sand if tossed into the main camp.

The village chief nodded, wondering how this father and son managed to get along—one constantly worrying for others, while the other was perpetually on guard against them.

During the era of British colonial rule in Hong Kong, in order to win over the populace, the British royal family bestowed various honorary titles upon Hong Kong Chinese, yet those who attained the rank of knight could be counted on one's fingers.

Tang Siyang felt similarly incredulous, yet he firmly believed that Yin was by no means any sort of zombie; there had to be some other reason why his eyes had turned red.

An Jiahe knocked Zheng Tong unconscious. Knowing he could not escape the death penalty, he held Meixiang Nan at gunpoint, waiting for An Jiamu to appear.

This time, Meng Xuran did not simply endure the blow; the moment Zhao Dong struck, she grabbed hold of his fist.

Now they finally had a direct and visceral realization: after all, someone who could casually shatter the restrictions set down by the Buddha himself had to be vastly more powerful than the Buddha by countless folds.

Normally, the inner core of a demon beast contained a wild and tyrannical demonic Qi, which had to be refined before consumption.

The brightly lit Phil Building saw fewer people than during the daytime, but its security had become far stricter.

At this moment, he was riding a handsome, tall horse, riding with his eyes closed in feigned sleep. Ever since leaving the imperial capital, he had locked his sights on the direction of the empire's northern frontier and rode all the way. At the border where the Gery Empire, the Unconquered City-States, and the Empire met, there was a lawless zone—and that happened to be the lair of the inner courtyard's senior grand-apprentice brother.

Traffic on the return trip was exceptionally smooth. Mid-afternoon around 3:00 PM was naturally a quiet hour, not to mention the award ceremony still underway at the Rose Bowl, leaving very few vehicles traveling south on the freeway.

Yet Ding Qiang had no inkling of how to achieve the shielding of heavenly secrets. To accomplish such a feat, it seemed he lacked the requisite ability.

Li Zhifan could guarantee that any random shot lasting merely a few seconds represented the absolute highest standard of current cinematic technology.

Stone is a lifeless object, whereas a flower possesses life. The Inception Flower is fundamentally integrated with the stone itself; one could say the stone body is the very root of the flower. If someone ignorant of its profound mysteries were to pluck the flower casually, its form would disintegrate into dust within seconds, and the stone body would likewise lose all its spiritual essence, reverting to an ordinary, unremarkable rock.

Li Zhifan nodded slowly, thinking to himself: Money truly talks; he's actually going to shoot an entire movie just for a class reunion?

Because someone like Li Zhifan, whose patriotic sentiment superseded all else, could never possibly adopt a Japanese name.

Ever since attending the empire's grand national celebration, Ding Qiang had been eager to return to his dorm and enjoy a sound sleep to recover his physical strength. However, just as he entered the school gates and headed toward his accommodation, *bang*, he collided full-force with a remarkably resilient body.