“???”
Three question marks popped up over Li Xu’s head as well.
What the hell!
Someone whose karmic fortune I can’t read? Is her fortune off the charts?
Over these past days of peeking at other people’s fortunes, Li Xu had come to understand that an ordinary person’s karmic fortune generally ranged between 2 and 3. Anything above 5 already counted as excellent.
Li Chunfeng’s monstrous fortune of [55] came from his being the ultimate final boss—but the mature beauty grinding ink beside him, on what grounds did she have three question marks for a fortune?
“Seen enough?”
Sensing Li Xu staring fixedly at her as though he’d seen a ghost, the stunning mature beauty frowned in displeasure and shot him a gaze cold as ice.
Li Xu snapped back to his senses. He took one last deep look at the three question marks above her head, forced an expression of feigned composure, and said with a faint smile, “Li Tian’ai, you didn’t even give a heads-up before coming back. I’d have thrown you a welcome banquet.”
The woman grinding ink beside Li Chunfeng was no stranger to Li Xu—far from it, she was intimately familiar.
Her name was Li Tian’ai, an adopted daughter Li Chunfeng had taken in years ago. She was four years older than Li Xu, and the two were brother and sister—at least in name.
Unlike her sickly, cultivation-crippled waste of a brother, Li Tian’ai was more like Li Chunfeng’s true daughter. She had inherited his monstrously peerless aptitude for cultivation and had stepped into the First Rank Tribulation Transcendence Realm at a young age, her cultivation base crushing every prodigy of her generation. To call her peerlessly magnificent was no exaggeration.
In the previous life’s game Heavenly Mystic Continent, Li Tian’ai had always been Li Chunfeng’s most loyal right-hand general—a pseudo-ultimate boss who had brought nightmares to countless players.
…
“Give you a heads-up, so you could throw me a welcome banquet at a brothel?”
Faced with her hopelessly stupid little brother, Li Tian’ai showed not the slightest pleasant expression, her ethereal, mature voice laced with cold sarcasm.
Li Xu didn’t so much as change expression. He kept smiling. “Li Tian’ai, you really don’t have to look down on me like this.”
“We haven’t seen each other in half a year. You know my condition—I’m not even sure I’ll live through the next half year. Maybe today is the last time you’ll ever see me in this life.”
Li Tian’ai was taken aback. She hadn’t expected her stupid little brother to say something so cutting. She pressed her lips together and fell silent, her gaze—once cold as ice—gradually turning complicated.
On the surface, Li Xu kept smiling. Inwardly, he was baffled beyond belief.
He still couldn’t figure it out. Even if Li Tian’ai was a pseudo-ultimate boss in Heavenly Mystic, there was no reason he couldn’t see her karmic fortune.
He could see the fortune of the real ultimate boss, Li Chunfeng, clearly enough—could his stepsister’s fortune really be higher than their father’s?
Tap.
Li Chunfeng suddenly set down the brush he’d been using to review memorials, producing a crisp sound against the desk that broke the siblings’ silent, strange atmosphere.
“Tian’ai heard you fell gravely ill and lapsed into a coma three days ago, so she rushed back to the capital to see you.”
Li Tian’ai’s slender, delicate fingers tightened around the ink stick, and she looked away from Li Xu.
Li Xu chuckled. “She came back just in time. If I’d died of illness three days ago, she’d get to attend my funeral banquet today.”
Li Chunfeng shook his head. “Even if you hadn’t died of illness three days ago, Tian’ai would still get to attend your banquet.”
“…”
This time it was Li Xu’s turn to be stunned. He said suspiciously, “Li Chunfeng, what do you mean by that? I’m still alive—what banquet would Li Tian’ai be attending for me?”
In this villainous household, Li Xu made a point of being rebellious, a born contrarian. Whether to his old man or his stepsister, he always called them by their full names—a model of filial piety, in the most twisted sense imaginable.
The reason he dared be so bold was mainly that Li Xu’s health was simply too frail. From childhood, no matter how outrageous a thing he did, he’d only ever get a scolding. If Li Chunfeng or Li Tian’ai dared lay a hand on him to teach him a lesson, Li Xu would dare die on them just to prove a point.
“I’ve arranged a marriage for you.”
Li Chunfeng replied calmly, showing no anger at his rebellious son calling him by name—clearly he was long used to it.
“She’s the daughter of the former Censor-in-Chief, Xia Haoran. Her name is Xia Lengbai. You shouldn’t have forgotten her.”
Li Xu: “…”
His old man had rendered him speechless.
Forget her? How could he possibly forget Xia Lengbai?
He was all too familiar with that little wench Xia Lengbai!
Xia Lengbai had once been hailed as the Foremost Talented Lady of Great Yan—incomparably beautiful, famed throughout the Imperial Capital City for her exquisite poetry. Countless sons of nobles and high officials had fallen for her.
One day a year ago, Li Xu was drinking and listening to music at a brothel, as usual, when someone suddenly presented him with a poem satirizing Li Chunfeng as a treacherous chancellor of the ages—along with evidence proving the poem was written by Xia Lengbai’s own hand and had already begun circulating among the capital’s aristocracy.
Li Xu, drunk and hot-headed at the time, flew into a rage. He immediately led a band of guards to a poetry gathering at the Imperial Academy and, before everyone’s eyes, forcibly abducted Xia Lengbai.
Xia Lengbai was a hot-blooded girl who didn’t fear power. Even after being tied to a bed in the Chancellor’s Estate, she stubbornly insisted she’d done nothing wrong—that Li Chunfeng was a treacherous chancellor through and through, and Li Xu was the son of a treacherous chancellor. Li Xu was so furious he nearly got her pregnant with a treacherous chancellor’s grandson, and dripped candle wax on her all night long.
Later, Li Chunfeng intervened, and Xia Lengbai was released from the Chancellor’s Estate, ending the farce.
But in the end, because she’d been abducted for a night by a profligate young lord, her reputation was ruined. The honored title of Foremost Talented Lady of Great Yan was wiped away, and over the past year she had stopped appearing at poetry gatherings, vanishing from public view.
…
“Xia Lengbai?!”
“How could I possibly marry that woman? Li Chunfeng, have you gone senile?!”
After a brief, choked pause, Li Xu blurted out an agitated refusal.
Beyond that ill-fated entanglement, he and Xia Lengbai shared an even greater ill fate that no one knew about!
In the memories of his past life that Li Xu had awakened, Xia Lengbai and the plot protagonist of Heavenly Mystic, Tang San, were childhood sweethearts. From a young age, Tang San had been hopelessly devoted to Xia Lengbai.
The opening of Heavenly Mystic‘s game plot was this: Tang San finished his wanderings through the jianghu and returned to the Imperial Capital City, only to discover that his beloved childhood sweetheart Xia Lengbai had been forcibly taken as a bride by the chancellor’s son. Seething with murderous intent, Tang San secretly infiltrated the Chancellor’s Estate, found his opportunity, and hacked the chancellor’s son to pieces, dumping the corpse in a vegetable market.
Afterward, Li Chunfeng was naturally grief-stricken. He dispatched Li Tian’ai and a great army to hunt down Tang San, serving as stepping stones for Tang San to grind mobs and level up.
“Am I going to end up like in the game plot—hacked to pieces by Tang San in a miserable end?”
Just as Li Xu was secretly shuddering, he heard his old man speak in a calm, leisurely tone: “Your objection is useless. I’ve already decided on this marriage. Tomorrow you’ll bow to heaven and earth and wed Xia Lengbai.”
Li Xu: “…”
Decide what, exactly?!
Other people screw over their fathers—Li Chunfeng, you’re truly something else, you screw over your son! Do you have to watch me get hacked to pieces by Tang San before you’re satisfied?!
