2026-06-24 17:10:14He wanted to scream it out loud. He wanted to reveal his real identity right there and watch her face turn pale. But he stopped himself. He clamped his jaw shut. He looked at Lana and felt a deep, twisting pain in his chest.
Had their five solid years of feelings and memories really lost to a fake background and a fake identity? He stared into her eyes and realized he did not recognize this greedy, arrogant woman at all. Was this really the brave, selfless little girl who had risked her own life to save him ten years ago?
Lana rolled her eyes, thoroughly disgusted by his silence.
"Of course I chose Cade. Who else would I choose?" Lana pointed a perfectly manicured finger at Dane's chest. "Look at you. Look at your clothes. Your entire outfit costs less than a hundred dollars. It is embarrassing just to be seen breathing the same air as you. I advise you to break up with me nicely, turn around, and stop pestering me. Otherwise, Cade will not let you off easily."
Cade stepped forward, adjusting the cuffs of his expensive jacket. He looked Dane up and down with intense arrogance.
"Bro," Cade said, smirking. "Lana is my girlfriend now. If you keep pestering her, I could make you disappear without a single trace with just a snap of my fingers. Don't test me."
Dane completely ignored Cade's empty threat. His cold eyes dropped down to Lana's wrist.
Ten years ago, Dane was deliberately pushed into a deep lake in a public park by his family's enemies. He was drowning. A little girl jumped into the freezing water and dragged him to the shore, saving his life. He was groggy, choking on water, and could not see her face clearly. But before he passed out, he had just enough strength to hand her the precious jade bracelet his mother had left him.
That jade bracelet was currently resting right on Lana's wrist.
Dane pointed a sharp finger at the green stone. "Since that is the case, and we are completely done, give me back my bracelet."
Lana stepped back, looking at him like he was a disgusting bug. "Are you absolutely crazy from poverty? Why on earth would I give you my bracelet?"
"Because it belongs to me," Dane said coldly.
"You are delusional!" Lana shouted. "I got this bracelet from Mara! What does it have to do with a broke loser like you!"
Those flippant, careless words struck Dane like a physical punch to the gut.
Mara. So it was never Lana who jumped into the freezing lake. It was never Lana who saved his life. It was Mara all along. Lana had just taken the bracelet from her. He had been blindly loving and repaying the wrong person for five entire years. Why was he finding out just now?
Dane slowly turned his freezing gaze away from Lana and locked eyes with Cade.
"Are you really the heir of the Mercer Family?" Dane asked, his voice dangerously low.
Dane's parents had died in a tragic accident when he was very young. To protect his safety from the family's brutal rivals, his grandfather had forced him to live in an ordinary community, living a completely ordinary life. His true identity was kept an absolute, iron-clad secret. He never imagined that today, of all days, he would witness a complete fraud impersonating his identity to steal his girlfriend.
Cade panicked for a split second. A flash of fear crossed his eyes, but he quickly hid it with a loud laugh.
"Of course I am the heir of the Mercer Family," Cade boasted loudly. "Someone ordinary and pathetic like you isn't even qualified to look at me, let alone speak to me."
Lana immediately grabbed Cade's arm, jumping to his defense. "Don't you dare speak to him like that! You are just jealous!"
A disdainful, mocking smile slowly appeared on Dane's face. He looked directly at Lana, shaking his head.
"The Hayes Family business spans across the entire nation," Dane said clearly. "Yet I never thought its so-called heir would be so incredibly stupid and incapable of judging people. If the Hayes Family actually falls into your hands, it has absolutely no future."
Lana's face turned bright red with pure fury.
"You are just a poor student with no money!" she screamed at him. "What right do you have to critique the Hayes Family? I am the heir of the Hayes Family! I achieved my current status entirely through my own sweat and hard work! You know nothing about business!"
Lana laughed cruelly, wanting to crush his pride completely. "Tomorrow night at the grand banquet, I will secure a massive partner contract from Mercer Group! Thanks to Cade's behind-the-scenes support, because he has deep connections with the top management of Mercer Group, I will easily get the deal. And you? You are not even qualified to work as a lowly security guard at Mercer Group!"
She glared at him with total hatred. "I worked so hard to become the family heir. I built my company from the ground up! If I stayed with a useless beggar like you, my position would be completely lost!"
Dane stared at her, keeping his face perfectly blank.
Lana was a fool. She was merely the illegitimate daughter of the Hayes Family. Before she met him, she was completely invisible within her family. She only thought she succeeded through her own hard work. The truth was, her company only grew, and her status only rose, because Dane had been secretly pouring his own money and resources into her business from behind the scenes for years.
Without him, she was absolutely nothing.
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Chapter 208
Dane Mercer had played the part of the pathetic, struggling mercenary flawlessly for three agonizing weeks. He had slept in the freezing mud. He had endured the arrogant mockery of the outer-sect disciples. He had allowed the smug, condescending Young Miss of the Ye Clan to parade him around the gladiator pits like a purchased attack dog. He had forcefully choked down the world-ending power of his newly forged Heaven Grade meridians, completely subjugating his own pride for one singular, uncompromising purpose.Today was the final day of the tournament. Tonight was the Blood Moon Festival. Tonight was the night the Shen Clan planned to drag his wife onto an ancestral altar and butcher her.The grand colosseum of the Shen estate was a monolithic structure of white marble and reinforced spiritual stone, currently packed to its absolute maximum capacity. Over a hundred thousand immortal cultivators from every major faction on the continent filled the towering grandstands. In the elevated
Chapter 207
The impact sounded like a dry tree branch snapping in a quiet forest. The cultivator’s eyes bulged in absolute, breathless shock as his rib catastrophically fractured, instantly collapsing his lung. Before the immortal could even gasp for air, Dane ruthlessly swept his legs out from under him, slamming the young man onto the blood-stained stone. Dane dropped his knee directly onto the cultivator's sternum and raised a battered, blood-soaked iron gauntlet directly over the man's face, freezing the strike a mere inch from his nose.The referee, a towering enforcer of the Shen Clan, immediately struck the gong, formally calling the match.Dane staggered backward, keeping his head bowed, heavily clutching his bleeding shoulder as he limped toward the iron gates of the exit. The massive crowd booed loudly, throwing garbage and copper coins at the arena floor. They were thoroughly disgusted by the ungraceful, ugly, barbaric victory. They wanted elegant martial arts and explosive spiritual l
Chapter 206
Restraint is a far heavier burden to carry than absolute power.Dane Mercer stood perfectly still in the center of the massive, spiritually reinforced colosseum, the deafening roar of fifty thousand immortal spectators crashing down around him like a physical wave. For ten brutal years in the secular underworld, he had fought to unleash his potential, breaking his own bones and pushing his mortal limits to conquer the earth. Now, standing on the blood-stained white stone of the Ancient Hidden Realm’s most prestigious arena, he was fighting a desperate, agonizing psychological battle to completely contain it.He had buried the blinding, heavy golden light of his newly forged Heaven Grade aura so deeply within the absolute darkest depths of his core that it physically ached. It felt like trying to compress a nuclear explosion into the size of a single heartbeat. If he allowed even a fraction of his true, world-ending power to leak into the atmosphere, the Shen Clan’s highest-ranking eld
Chapter 205
Dane Mercer understood the mechanics of warfare better than any immortal god. He had not spent a decade conquering the secular underworld, bringing international syndicates to their knees, and ruling a global corporate empire by carelessly kicking down the front doors of heavily fortified enemy strongholds.He stepped out of the violently swirling dimensional rift and planted his heavy boots onto the solid, ash-covered earth of the Ancient Hidden Realm. The blinding, chaotic vortex of the boundary crossing snapped shut behind him with a deafening crack, completely severing his connection to the secular world, to his loyal vanguard, and to the billions of dollars he had voluntarily left behind. He was entirely alone in a hostile universe.But this time, the world did not crush him.The impossibly dense, heavy spiritual gravity that would have liquefied his mortal organs a mere twenty-four hours ago now flowed entirely harmlessly over his skin. Deep within his chest, his newly forged me
Chapter 204
Navigating purely by the architectural blueprints she had cleverly coaxed out of Elder Vane under the guise of "logistical planning," Berry made her way deep into the western wing of the estate. She slipped past terrified servants and bypassed the violently shaking courtyards, finally arriving at the towering, bronze doors of the Shen Clan’s restricted ancient library.The massive chamber was pitch black, silent, and smelling heavily of ancient dust and dried parchment.Berry moved quickly through the towering rows of mahogany bookshelves. She knew exactly what she was looking for. Her mother had not been a helpless victim; she had been the unparalleled Saintess of this clan, a woman brilliant enough to steal a sacred artifact and escape an immortal prison. A woman like that would never leave her legacy entirely unprotected.Following the subtle, almost imperceptible structural anomalies in the stone masonry—a trick she had learned from inspecting hidden corporate safes in the secular
Chapter 203
Berry Sterling spent exactly seven days dismantling a four-hundred-year-old immortal dynasty from the inside of a locked bedroom. She did not throw a single punch. She did not summon a drop of spiritual energy. She simply weaponized the ancient, festering greed of men who had spent centuries pretending to be infallible gods while operating like primitive, uneducated thugs.The elders of the Shen Clan were terrifying combatants capable of leveling entire cities with a wave of their hands, but in the ruthless, modern arena of political and economic warfare, they were absolute children. They had operated for generations on a stagnant system of blind feudal loyalty and brute force. They had never faced a Chief Executive Officer who had survived the bloodthirsty corporate battlegrounds of the secular world.Through a series of highly orchestrated, heavily guarded secret meetings within her suite, Berry flawlessly executed her strategy. She did not act like a terrified prisoner begging for
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