By this point, the temptation of the source of primal chaos had completely overwhelmed everything else in him.

No matter what little tricks Wei Zhao pulled from the sidelines, they could no longer sway him in the slightest.

The next second, the phantom outline overhead turned into a pillar of light and descended from the sky straight toward the crown of his head.

But just as he braced himself to receive it with all his strength, the pillar of light, at the very last moment, gave a violent lurch and went surging off in another direction entirely.

Xing Jun was jolted. "What in the world is going on?"

He knew full well that behind all of this there had to be Sikong Dao pulling strings and laying the board.

"I have a plan that serves both ends at once. Would the two of you care to hear it?" Sun Ming looked at me, then at Wang Xin.

"Fine, let's go!" Ai Changhuan slapped the table and went bustling off again to Shen Qingyan's sickroom.

Wenren Qianjue stood there lazily, one arm draped over the prince's shoulder, wearing the look of two sworn brothers thick as thieves.

Among ghosts, the hanged ghost is the most intractable of all. If it were to become a vengeful spirit as well, the result would be a horror beyond imagining.

Jia He gave a dry, hollow laugh, racking his brains for pleasantries, trying to nudge the two of them together.

The Xie residence stood in the Liulichang quarter, a stretch of old courtyard houses that had survived from the Qing dynasty. These days they sold for astronomical sums.

Ordinarily, when Cui Hao went out, he brought Di Chong along, but he had a peculiar quirk: he disliked Di Chong trailing him too closely. Every time he came to the Yojian Club to play, he made Di Chong stay in the main hall and never allowed him into the private rooms. Today was no different.

The sensation of a wound healing was a strange and wondrous thing. Though the cut on his palm was wrapped in gauze, Zhong Hao could feel the changes in every cell between his hands—could feel the epidermal cells dividing and growing, could feel the new granulation tissue forming.

Fei Ba merely ordered the men of the Fei Sect to block the way ahead and let no one enter, while he took Fei Yuxin straight to the place where Chu Feng lived. Fei Yuxin was greatly puzzled: why would her father come to a place like this?

In truth, being liked by someone is a remarkably pleasant thing. When a person you don't dislike appreciates you, that feeling is wonderful. So any classmate with someone in their sights, who feels she doesn't dislike you, ought to go ahead and make an effort.

The others sat or lay about, resting where they were in that dim tavern. Hong Jun and Lu Xu split up and lit the lamps on the tavern's second floor; the light crossed and mingled like a grand dream of a floating life.

Thinking back on it now, he was glad he had mustered the courage. Otherwise he might truly have let this chance slip by.

Qiyue glanced at them and paid them no mind, shaking her head and going on staring at the gates of the Fugui Tower without so much as blinking.

"Out with it—what exactly happened? How did your sister end up like this?" The Marquis of Zhongyi sat in the seat of honor with imposing dignity, his voice aged yet deep and resonant.

Through her time with him, Leng Yue had also noticed that, seemingly by design or by accident, he rebuffed all human contact. He had walled himself off in isolation, deeply insecure at heart, showing even tendencies akin to autism.

"Chu Mo, what you're doing is dangerous. To my mind, the speculative value of virtual currency doesn't even match that of a shell company's stock on the market. Whoever ends up as the market maker for Bitcoin, they'll all meet the same miserable defeat in the end," Li Dingbo said.

Wei Gutian truly did not dare to stop her, for she knew that everything Wei Yiyang had done was to vent Leng Yue's anger—and deliberately done for her to see.

The moment he got inside, Wu Hua collapsed onto the bed and drew a deep breath. With the Wang Jiawei affair settled, he felt he had finally laid a knot in his heart to rest; for a while at least, he ought to have nothing too pressing left to do.

Meng Yuchen nodded in agreement with what Leng Yue said. Keeping an enemy right under your own nose was always better than letting him lurk in the dark.

With that, and with everyone's eyes following, he gazed up at the limpid blue sky overhead. At that moment a "moon" the size of a millstone, honeycombed in structure, hung in the sky—still so conspicuous even in broad daylight.