Chapter 32: I Am Not Kind, It All Depends on My Whims

【You have explored Shangxi City.】

【You now possess brand-new exploration buildings.】

【A series of original facilities such as the black market, restaurants, auction houses, and ferry crossings.】

【The areas you cannot touch include the yamen and the prison department.】

【You can conduct transactions for certain items through the black market, but please proceed with caution.】

【You can inquire about news through restaurants, though you must discern the truth of the information yourself.】

【Your Knowledge of the Demon Race has improved.】

【You have learned that the Demon Race enforces a strict hierarchical system based on their own bloodlines; the purer and more noble the bloodline, the more superior the talent and even status a demon is born with compared to ordinary members of the Demon Race.】

【At the same time, the more inferior the demon, the harder it is for them to restrain their own nature, and their intelligence appears slightly dull.】

【The current Yao Lord of Shangxi City, Ye Huang, possesses an extremely noble bloodline, and you cannot fathom his divine abilities or his cultivation; you only know that the demons here hold Ye Huang in extreme respect.】

【Furthermore, he conquered this place by commanding the Demon Race of the avian and beast variety.】

【After determining the general territory of his fief, he declared himself the Yao Lord of this land.】

【You do not wish to linger in a place so unfavorable to your own situation; having come here to scout for sufficient information and obtain the necessary food, you plan to leave.】

【You have triggered a brand-new Opportunity event.】

【Just as you intended to leave the city, you saw a recruitment order posted on the city gate notice board.】

【Two passing cultivators originally intended to leave the city, but upon seeing the message on the notice, they hesitated for a moment and walked toward the interior of Shangxi City.】

【You glanced at the notice; it turns out Ye Huang is widely recruiting Human Race cultivators into his manor, offering generous benefits and promising to provide the heavenly treasures needed for cultivation to those who serve him.】

【Ye Huang's soft-handed policy toward Human Race cultivators these days has achieved good results, and many believe there is nothing wrong with working for the Demon Race.】

【The Human Race cultivators in this region hold an increasingly favorable attitude toward Ye Huang's stance.】

【But you hold this in contempt.】

【You snorted and prepared to leave.】

【"What kind of attitude is that?" Suddenly a voice rang out; you turned your head and saw a person standing before you.】

【Her face was like jade, her smile radiant; at first glance, she looked like a girl next door, but upon closer inspection, there was an indescribable charm about her, and within her black-and-white brocade robe, there was a confidence and boldness not typical of Human Race cultivators.】

【Even you had to admire the beauty of the woman before you, but you had no deep interest in it; if one were to compare beauty, the Dragon Lady from before—who disliked speaking and claimed to be a god—was not a whit inferior.】

In this Reincarnation, even Gu Jiangming had to admit that he had encountered quite a few top-tier character designs.

Just in the first few rounds, he had already bumped into two templates that could be called perfect heroines.

In the last Reincarnation, throughout his entire life, there were only Jiu Jiu and Wang Qinghe; these two people had almost run through that entire lifetime.

It was just that Jiu Jiu was the overt plot line, and Wang Qinghe was the covert one.

In terms of preference, Gu Jiangming naturally liked Jiu Jiu, whom he had set his sights on at first glance, more; he clearly had no great interest in Wang Qinghe.

And the difficulty this time was clearly much higher.

Excellent dao companions were hard to find after all, and Gu Jiangming did not want to wrong himself by casually marrying a passerby as a wife to grind out the initial stats of his second-generation descendants, clearing the game through some other evil path of the descendant-lineage style.

If he was going to marry, he had to choose the best.

A good wife could also determine the strength of his descendants' talents; who knew, perhaps his son or daughter could directly carry him to victory.

Therefore, Gu Jiangming gave priority to not considering those whose character designs were not up to par.

Secondly, it was not just the character design that had to pass; the other party's talent and family background could not be poor either, as this directly affected the initial talent of his next generation.

These ideas might be a bit shallow, but the problem was that this 【Mie Changsheng】 looked like a game!

The highest priority in a game was to ensure one's own enjoyment.

It had to be satisfying!

If you couldn't even find a beautiful wife while playing a game, that would be too spineless.

As for the two current dao companion lines, the situation with Long Xi was clearly unclear on how to unfold, and in Gu Jiangming's heart, this Her Highness the Dragon Lady was clearly the "white moonlight" of this life.

Therefore, Gu Jiangming would not force the development of necessary or unnecessary feelings with her; his attitude was relatively "let it be."

As for the rest, there was no need to worry about them.

Whoever he took a fancy to, he would boldly initiate a challenge!

So what? Could the fake turn into the real?

Surely they couldn't come into reality to hunt him down, right?

Besides, the difference between reality and the world in the Reincarnation was too great; Gu Jiangming could not see any connection between the two at all.

Even if she really was a person from ten thousand years ago, could she cross the ten-thousand-year timeline to mess with him?

Gu Jiangming just liked those women who were incredibly arrogant at first; the more arrogant they were now, the more obedient they would be in the future.

If things became unpleasant, he would give them a heavy blow, stabbing them until they regretted it for the rest of their lives, hiding in a corner to wipe away little pearls of tears.

Of course, this was also just Gu Jiangming's momentary angry talk; what era was this, how could anyone still like that kind of "tsundere"?

However, he did want to see what the other party was going to do.

【"What is my attitude?" you said coldly: "I am merely mocking those spineless cowards."】

【"Oh? So you mean your bones are very hard, Excellency?"】

【"Then this King shall see just how hard your bones really are."】

【You felt the world go black before your eyes, and when you woke up again, you were already bound in a prison cell.】

【You spent one day. No one paid you any mind.】

【You spent another day.】

【It remained an empty environment, with no movement whatsoever.】

【On the third day, another person appeared opposite you; his hands were also bound.】

【You realized that the rope binding you might be a special magical artifact.】

【The twelfth day, you finally saw the woman who knocked you unconscious last time again. She said coldly, "I will give you two paths: submit to me or continue staying here."】

【"Do you see this Zhu Fruit in my hand?"】

【"As long as you submit to me, I will bestow this Zhu Fruit upon you."】

【"Get lost." You closed your eyes, stopped responding, and tried your best to minimize the consumption within your body.】

【The seventeenth day, the cultivator opposite you trembled with his bound hands, tapping against the front to make all sorts of sounds.】

【That woman appeared before your eyes once again, only this time she appeared on your other side.】

【You could only see her back.】

【"Submit to me or continue staying here."】

【"Princess, I... I am willing, I am willing to submit..."】

【She tossed the Zhu Fruit onto the ground casually, then turned her head and said to the Demon Race guard with a bull's head and monstrous appearance, "Let him out."】

【The sound died down once again, returning to stillness.】

【The twenty-second day, she appeared before you once again, and this time she brought more things.】

【"A six-hundred-year-old Zhu Fruit, a twelve-hundred-year-old Ginseng, three hundred and thirty-nine-year-old Longtan Water, and one-hundred-year-old Fengling Wine."】

【"Submit to me or continue."】

【"These things are enough for you to reach the Spirit Transformation stage."】

【At this moment, you finally realized how difficult a thing it is to resist temptation; on one side is obtaining things that were once impossible to encounter and continue on the path of longevity, and on the other is remaining in this dark, sunless prison waiting for death.】

【But you thought of that sentence from twenty-two days ago.】

【With your naturally proud character, you never break your word.】

【"Get lost." Your voice was already extremely faint, but the sound hitting the ground was still resonant and forceful.】

【"If this continues, you will die." She tried to persuade you, "A dispute of pride is something no one will take to heart."】

【"If I take them, it means my twenty-plus years of cultivation can be lightly dismissed by a single word from you."】

【"A gentleman would rather die than be humiliated."】

【"Please do as you wish."】

【She left.】

【The twenty-third day, this was the first time she had come to find you for two consecutive days, but your aura was weaker with each passing day.】

【"What do you want to do today?" You raised your head and took a look.】

【"This is the food you humans like to eat." She sat cross-legged and looked at you eye-to-eye, saying, "Come, take a bite."】

【You were just about to open your mouth to refuse when she added, "Do you really not want to live at all?"】

【You fell silent, thinking of that promise.】

【"I do," you said.】

【She did not declare her victory because of this sentence, but instead asked, "Why are you unwilling to submit to me?"】

【You glanced at her with contempt and were unwilling to answer.】

【"I will let you out," she said after a moment of silence.】

【"Conditions?" You did not believe the other party would let you out for no reason.】

【"No conditions." She took a look, "You are just a small cultivator at the Crystallization stage; think about how to survive in this world first."】

【"I captured you because I was in a bad mood; letting you go is because you are uninteresting, and keeping you tied up any longer has no meaning."】

【"I am not kind; I act entirely on whim."】

【You left.】

【When leaving this place, you only then learned that she was Ye Liaocang, the daughter of the Yao Lord of Shangxi City, Ye Huang.】

【Having experienced this matter, you gradually realized a truth.】

【Only strength can determine one's own destiny.】

【Your willpower became even firmer because of this.】

Looking at the Will +3 figure, Gu Jiangming felt that this trip had indeed yielded tangible gains; a small event, taking only a short month's time, had increased his willpower value by such a high amount.

The trait 【Naturally Proud Character】 only adds 10 points of willpower in total.

After fiddling with it for a few hours and seeing that it was getting late, Gu Jiangming got up to relieve himself. He heard a strange noise in his ear, but he did not pay it any mind and returned to his room to prepare for a good rest.

Meanwhile, in the real Leping County, things were not so calm.

Magistrate Lu and Assistant Magistrate Li, who lived in the yamen, were both woken up in the middle of the night, told that a murder case had occurred within Leping County.

At this hour, ordinary people had already fallen asleep. They had wanted to put it off until dawn, but a single sentence from the constable made both gentlemen break out in a cold sweat instantly.

"It does not look like the work of an ordinary person."

(End of this chapter)