2026-06-24 17:12:35To keep his true identity an absolute secret, Dane lived in a very cheap, ordinary apartment building. He used public buses and subways, never bringing his luxury cars to his home.
When they arrived, he gently handed Mara over to his asistant and instructed the assistant to help change her out of her torn, ruined dress and into a set of clean, warm, ordinary clothes.
An hour later, the drugs finally began to wear off.
Mara slowly opened her eyes. The room was small but very clean. She sat up on the soft sofa, clutching a warm blanket to her chest. She looked across the small living room. Dane was sitting quietly in a chair, watching over her.
Before she had lost consciousness at the mansion, she had heard a man's furious voice shout, Let her go! Looking at Dane now, she knew it was him. This poor, ordinary student had risked his life to save her from a monster.
Tears instantly welled up in Mara's eyes. "Thank you," she choked out, her voice trembling with deep emotion. "Thank you for saving me."
"Are you hurt?" Dane asked gently, his voice soft and warm.
Mara shook her head, crying quietly. But her relief quickly turned into absolute terror. She grabbed the edge of the blanket, her knuckles turning white.
"Do you have any idea who Vaughn Croft is?" Mara asked, panicking. "His family runs the underground in this city! They kill people and hide the bodies! You crippled him... he will send killers after you! You shouldn't have saved me! I dragged you into my nightmare!"
Dane smiled softly. "I'm not afraid of him."
Mara thought he was just putting up a brave front to make her feel better. She felt a crushing weight of guilt. She had ruined this good man's life.
Dane moved closer and handed her a warm cup of water. "Tell me everything. From the beginning. Why were you at his house?"
Mara took a shaky breath. The tears spilled over her cheeks. The emotional weight of the past few weeks finally broke her.
"My mother died," Mara whispered, her voice breaking. "She left behind a company called Horizon Corp. It was everything to her. But my father made terrible investment decisions, and the cash flow completely broke. We are heavily in debt. So, my stepmother... she decided to sell me. She took money from Vaughn Croft. If I married him, my family would get a financial bailout."
Dane clenched his fists, hiding his anger. "Is there no other way to save the company?"
Mara wiped her eyes, a tiny spark of desperate determination flashing in her gaze. "There is. I just need a miracle. Mercer Group, the biggest company in the city, is looking for partner companies right now. If I can secure just one small contract from them, I can resolve the debt. With Mercer Group as my backer, Vaughn Croft wouldn't dare touch me openly. And I can save my mother's legacy."
Suddenly, Mara's cell phone rang violently on the coffee table. The caller ID flashed Stepmother.
Mara flinched, but she slowly reached out and answered it, putting it on speaker.
"You ungrateful little bitch!" her stepmother's shrill voice screamed through the phone. "Where are you?! Get back here right now and go apologize to Mr. Croft! Without his money, we are ruined!"
Mara's hands shook, but she forced her voice to stay steady. "I am not going back. I will never apologize to that monster. And I won't marry him."
"Then Horizon Corp will go bankrupt tomorrow!" her stepmother shrieked.
"No, it won't," Mara said firmly. "I am going to get the partner contract from Mercer Group. I will save the company myself."
Her stepmother laughed, a cruel, mocking sound. "You? Get a contract from Mercer Group? Don't make me laugh! I am giving you exactly two days. If you don't bring that contract home, I will personally drug you, tie you up, and drag you back to Mr. Croft's bed myself!"
Click. The line went dead. Mara dropped the phone. She wrapped her arms around her knees, trying desperately to hold herself together.
Dane looked at her, his heart filled with deep respect. She was terrified, abused by her own family, and facing impossible odds. Yet, she was still fighting. She was so incredibly brave.
"You can do this," Dane said firmly, his deep voice carrying absolute certainty. "You will get that contract."
Mara looked up at him, deeply moved by his absolute faith in her. A poor student with nothing was the only person in the world who believed in her.
She took a deep breath and stood up. "I have to go. I need to prepare my business proposal immediately. Tomorrow night, Mercer Group is holding a massive banquet to publicly announce their partners. I am going to find their management. I have to fight for this."
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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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