2026-01-24 00:27:07The air in the Grand Hanhai ballroom was thick with the scent of ozone and the metallic tang of fear. Chu Haoran was trembling, but it wasn’t just from the cold. His face was a mask of twisted fury. He stood up slowly, his muscles bulging beneath his expensive suit. The Rank-1 Cultivation energy he had stolen from my veins began to swirl around him in a visible, sickly green mist.
"You think buying a building makes you a god, Qin Ming?" Haoran spat, his voice vibrating with the power of his stolen aura. "I am a Rank-1 Cultivator! I am a tier above humanity! You’re still just a man in a fancy suit. I’ll kill you, and then I’ll take this hotel from your corpse."
"Is that so?" I leaned back against a marble pillar, crossing my arms. "You’re talking about the power I gave you. That’s my blood moving in your arms, Haoran. Don’t you feel like a thief bragging to the man he robbed?"
"It’s not yours anymore! It’s mine!" Haoran roared. "Xinyi, get back! I’m going to turn this 'Chairman' into a stain on his own floor!"
Xinyi scrambled backward, her eyes wide with a mix of terror and anticipation. "Kill him, Haoran! Break his neck! He’s a ghost—he shouldn’t be here!"
Haoran lunged. He was fast—faster than any normal human eye could track. His fist was aimed directly at my throat, crackling with the force of a Rank-1 strike that could shatter concrete.
"In my eyes, Haoran, you're not a CEO," I whispered as the world slowed down. "You're just a liability."
[System: Incoming Rank-1 Strike Detected. Spend 10 Billion Spirit Coins for Skill: Absolute Suppression?]
Purchase it. Now.
[Transaction Confirmed. Balance: 39,999,000,000,000. Activating Absolute Suppression.]
The moment Haoran’s fist was inches from my skin, the air itself turned to solid lead. An invisible weight, ten times the force of gravity, slammed into the ballroom. The crystal chandeliers overhead groaned and shattered. The guests screamed, falling to their knees as the pressure crushed the breath from their lungs.
Haoran didn't just stop; he was hammered down.
The sound of his knees hitting the marble floor echoed like a gunshot. The stone beneath him splintered into a spiderweb of cracks. He was locked in a kneeling position, his fist frozen in the air, his face turning a deep, agonizing purple.
"What... what is this?" Haoran gasped, his voice a strangled wheeze. "I can't... move... My energy... it's being devoured!"
"That’s the difference between us," I said, stepping forward. The pressure didn't touch me; I walked through the zone of crushed gravity as if I were strolling through a garden. "You stole a cup of water and thought you owned the ocean. I am the ocean."
I stood over him, looking down at the man who had laughed while my wife shot me.
"You wanted to strike me, right?" I asked. "You thought your Rank-1 status made you untouchable?"
"Qin Ming... stop..." he managed to choke out.
"The price of a slap in this room is very high, Haoran," I said. I pulled back my hand. I didn't use the System’s power for this. I used the raw, unadulterated strength of the 'God-Body' reconstruction.
The slap echoed through the entire hotel.
Haoran’s head snapped to the side. Three of his teeth flew across the room, skipping over the carpet like dice. His cheek didn't just bruise; it split open, blood spraying onto the white linens of a nearby table. The force of the blow sent a shockwave that blew out the remaining windows of the ballroom.
"That was for the first bullet," I said.
I slapped him with the back of my hand, snapping his head back the other way. His nose collapsed with a sickening crunch.
"That was for the second."
I grabbed him by the hair, forcing his blood-masked face to look up at me. "And the third one? The one that sent me over the cliff? I’m going to let you live a long time just so you can wonder when I’m going to collect on that one."
"Ming! Please!"
A hand clutched at my sleeve. It was Xinyi. She was on her knees too, but not from the gravity. She was crawling, her face wet with tears, her silk robe torn. "Ming, I was forced! Haoran threatened me! He said he’d kill my family if I didn't go along with it! I still love you, I swear!"
I looked down at her. In the past, those tears would have broken my heart. I would have reached out, pulled her up, and apologized for the blood on her face.
But now, my eyes saw more than just a beautiful woman. The System’s interface flickered over her, a cold, digital evaluation appearing in my retinas.
[Scanning Target: Lin Xinyi...]
[Assets: Seized.]
[Loyalty: -100%.]
[Genetic Value: Minimal.]
A golden price tag manifested above her head, glowing with a harsh, neon light.
[Lin Xinyi: Worth $0.00. Status: Trash.]
I looked at the tag, then back at her desperate, lying eyes. I felt nothing. No anger, no love—just the clinical observation of a man looking at a broken piece of equipment.
"You’re worth zero dollars, Xinyi," I said, my voice devoid of emotion. "Even the System thinks you’re trash."
"What? What are you talking about?" she sobbed, clutching my leg. "I’m your wife! I’m the CEO of Lin Cosmetics!"
"You were," I corrected. I looked at Manager Wei, who was standing at the edge of the suppression zone, watching with terrified awe. "Wei. Inform the banks. Every asset tied to the Lin family name is to be shorted into oblivion by morning. If they own a car, repossess it. If they own a house, board it up."
"Yes, Chairman!" Wei shouted.
I kicked my leg free from Xinyi’s grasp. She sprawled onto the floor, her face landing in the pool of Haoran’s blood.
"You said the ocean was deep, Xinyi," I reminded her, leaning down. "But you forgot the most important rule of the deep."
"What?" she whispered, trembling.
"The monsters at the bottom don't accept apologies."
I turned my back on them, the Absolute Suppression lifting as I walked away. Haoran collapsed face-first into the ruins of the floor, unconscious and broken. Xinyi began to wail, a high-pitched, pathetic sound that was drowned out by the sudden, heavy thud of military boots at the ballroom entrance.
[: The doors didn't just open; they were blown off their hinges. A man in a black trench coat, carrying a long-case sword and radiating a Rank-5 'Lord Realm' pressure, stepped through the smoke. He didn't look at the carnage. He looked at me.]
[System: Warning! High-Level Assassin detected. Contract: 'The 100 Trillion Bounty'. Would you like to spend 50 Billion to activate the 'Aegis of the Fallen'?]
I stood my ground, my golden eyes reflecting the stranger's blade. "So," I said, a dark smile playing on my lips. "The big players are finally showing up.”
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Chapter 262: The Spark
"This stagnant paradise is completely finished if we don't shake up the core parameters right now," I growled, slamming both palms flat onto the cold marble steps of the central plaza. My leather boots left a sharp, echoing crack against the pristine stone. I looked up, glaring directly at the frozen, unmoving green lines of the universal basic income database. "Look at them, Qinghe! Trillions of baseline souls sitting on the pavement like unrendered ghost packets! They aren't living! They’re just executing an endless idle animation!""But Ming, the energy distribution is mathematically perfect!" Su Qinghe shouted back, her voice carrying a heavy, agonizing pitch of desperate adrenaline. She forced her golden parchment ledger open, her silver eyes flaring with a frantic, breathless intensity as she pointed at the perfectly flat data columns. "There are no resource deficits! Every single baseline human has five million units of pure celestial energy mass pulsing through their systems r
Chapter 261: The Post Depression
"Long Wu, drop that monkey wrench right now and look outside the garage bay!" I shouted, my voice slamming against the damp concrete walls of our Hanhai City maintenance depot. I gripped the edge of my old wooden desk, my knuckles turning bone-white as I stared through the dust-streaked window blinds. "The distribution tickers are perfectly flat. Look at the data lines on the street! They aren't flashing green, and they aren't flashing red. They’re just... gray."Long Wu didn't drop the wrench. In fact, he didn't even turn his head. He sat on an empty wooden crate next to the delivery truck's open engine bay, his massive shoulders slouched down as his fingers loosely held the iron handle. His vanguard profile was completely visible, pulsing with a dense, unfluctuating silver-gold light that signaled absolute, infinite energy saturation. But his eyes—the fierce, stubborn eyes of my top driver—looked like hollowed-out slag."Why should I lift the hood, Boss?" Long Wu asked, his voice dr
Chapter 260: The Final Balance
The ground beneath my boots was gone. There was no floor, no ceiling, and no walls inside the heart of the zero-point directory. There was only the towering, shifting mass of the Void Spreadsheet. It didn't have a human throat, but every time its rows of mathematical variables rolled forward, a bone-chilling hum vibrated straight through my skull. Trillions of parameters, formulas, and data coordinates were scrolling down the black horizon at high speed, flashing in a cold, sterile crimson font."Qin Ming, look at the margin indicators!" Su Qinghe shouted, her voice echoing frantically through the empty, lightless space. She was running toward me across a floating, half-rendered piece of gray stone, her fingers gripping the edge of her golden parchment ledger so hard her knuckles turned white. "The deletion sequence isn't just targeting Sector 77 anymore! The spreadsheet is executing an absolute clearance script! Sector 1 to Sector 90,000 are all dropping below the core capacity limit
Chapter 259: The Storming of the Zero-Point
"Long Wu, keep that throttle pinned down to the baseline floor!" I shouted, my voice cutting through the screeching roar of a trillion processing systems running at max capacity. I slammed my hand against the silver dash of the interdimensional caravan, my gold marrow fire flaring out to coat the entire steering column in solid, high-voltage lines. "The ceiling is dropping! Don't let his vacuum lock our kinetic wheels!""The acceleration metrics are already hitting max capacity, Boss!" Long Wu roared back, his face bright red as his massive hands gripped the iron steering wheel. He slammed his heavy boot lower, making the caravan’s modified engine scream with a raw, metallic hunger. "The vanguard ballast is holding the chassis together, but the external gravity is tearing the tires straight off the axle lines! Look at the front windshield, Boss! The gray office is dropping right onto our hoods!""Ming, the data density behind us is breaking the regional tickers!" Su Qinghe shrieked, h
Chapter 258: The Archive of the Lost Dimensions
The light didn't just go out; it was ripped from our eyes like a torn page. The absolute zero vacuum dragged us downward through a frozen, featureless chute of dead code. My boots struck something solid with a metallic, hollow echo that vibrated straight through my frozen shins."Ming! Are you alive? Speak to me!" Su Qinghe’s voice shattered the pitch-black silence. She was gasping for air, her fingers clawing frantically in the dark until her palm slammed flat against my denim jacket. "My ledger... it’s completely unresponsive! The pages feel like cold slate!""I'm here, Qinghe! Don't let go of my arm!" I roared, my voice bouncing off vast, invisible iron walls. I tried to trigger the gold marrow fire in my ribs, but it only let out a faint, painful click. "Long Wu! Status report right now!""I've got both kids pinned under my chest, Boss!" Long Wu's heavy voice boomed from twenty feet away in the dark, followed by the heavy, ringing clatter of his iron wrench hitting a frozen floor.
Chapter 257: The Merger of Timelines
"Li! Get your hands off that mallet!" I roared, lunging through the cracking spatial grid. My boots skidded against the disintegrating stone of the amphitheater floor, my gold marrow fire flaring frantically as I threw my weight forward."I can't let go, Dad!" the six-year-old Li screamed. His small fingers were glued to the dark iron head of the Temporal Gavel. "The silver lines are wrapping around my wrists! They're pulling me in!""Ming! The paradox loop is hitting a hundred percent compliance!" Su Qinghe shrieked, her silver eyes wide with absolute, raw maternal panic. She slammed her golden parchment ledger flat against the white space, her voice cracking under the sheer weight of the temporal feedback. "The adult version and the child version... their soul frequencies are matching! The system isn't rejecting the overlap anymore! It’s compiling them into a single directory row!""Hold the cabin door, Su!" Long Wu bellowed from the steps of the caravan, his massive arms bulging as
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