Lord Huan was briefly taken aback. He had known Li Jinwang for a considerable time, yet he had never seen such a mad, reckless side to him.

Li Jinwang went on, "If I win, your Huan family need not withdraw from the Mystic Tiger Divine Gathering, but you must seal your gates for a hundred years. What say you, my lord?"

Every gaze in the hall turned as one to Lord Huan.

Voices rose on every side in heated discussion.

Li Jinwang's stature was of course far below that of the Huan family, but to stake his entire future in the Mystic Tiger Divine Gathering against the Huan family's hundred-year seclusion—it was truly hard to say who stood to lose and who to gain....

"The Nine Thousand Years Lord has such a foul temper. Serving at his side, you must have suffered no small amount of grievance, haven't you?" Shen Yueying said, fancying she understood Xiao Jinyu well.

Qin Xuanlin had been about to refuse outright, but hearing Chu Qianhan say this, he nearly flew into a rage on the spot, his face turning ugly with anger.

In days past, guiding souls was her proper work: each day she traveled to the underworld to deliver the spirits she had guided into the cycle of reincarnation, and seeing those spirits return to the mortal world to be reborn, seeing the joyous smiles on their faces, she would share in their joy and laugh along with them.

Lin Jiu: "..." In truth, what he had meant to say was that even if she wanted him to interpret the fortune slip for her, he would not be able to. But it seemed she clearly had no such intention.

Li Shimin shook his head, not daring to dwell on it, and continued pondering this plan that could well be called world-shaking. Everything Ling An had said had already thoroughly weighed the pros and cons.

In the past, when Lin Jiu heard people speak of a "bosom beauty," he found it laughable and dismissed it with utter contempt—a bosom beauty? Where in this world could there be any true bosom friend? The human heart is unfathomable; who can truly know another?

He spoke with force, with incomparable earnestness—as though he had discovered a pearl that had lain forgotten in the marketplace, dimmed by dust.

Yet Ye Feng vaguely felt that the Long family child's accidental ingestion was not as simple as he made it out to be.

Having vented his anger, Ling Tong finally spoke with a woebegone face: "Young Lord, I just heard from the Xu family servants that they had some conflict with Yang Sheng over at the threshing ground, and Yang Sheng dragged in soldiers from the general's estate to back him up.

No sooner had the words left his mouth than Lin Nian seemed to suddenly think of something; heedless of all else, he hurried off toward the room next door.

When the others returned, Shi Hanbing and He Yuncheng had already come back first—predictably, they had caught nothing at all.

Lin Nian found it somewhat incredible. Though he had vaguely guessed as much before, he had never imagined that the Demon-Slaying Bureau's executive headquarters was indeed built underground.

"This gemstone was obtained by chance by a merchant in a remote borderland. As such a stone had never been seen before, it has no name. If Your Majesty favors it, why not bestow a name upon it yourself?" Shi Hanxue said.

The formation had only been opened at a single entrance, just wide enough for passage; it had not vanished entirely. Passing through the entrance, which was like a boundary ward, He Yunmu and the others emerged into a world of an entirely different scene.

These bandits' warhorses were all rare Aboduo steeds, worth far more than ordinary old yellow horses.

Shi Hanxue thought it over, then decided to speak: "Elder Sister, when I went out today, I happened to encounter His Highness the Seventh Prince. His words carried much ambiguity—he must have taken me for you. Hanxue wants to ask, Elder Sister, have you and the Seventh Prince..." The words she left unsaid, her elder sister surely understood.

The entire protest demonstration lasted about half a month. Apart from the initial loss of control when the crowds grew too large, which caused widespread damage to businesses, the government later intervened and preserved most of the factories.

It seemed everyone was thinking at that moment: with a fine wife like Bai Hongling at home, why would you not keep her company, and instead go keep company with his sister?

Deidara swallowed hard. Before his body could so much as move, he was bound fast by his own clay centipede.

The master's old ailment had flared up again, and her husband was urgently tending to him. As a daughter-in-law, how could she stuff herself full and then sleep soundly?

"Yuichi, why are you bullying Sawa again?" Kazama Toru said, speaking up for Byakuya Sawa even though he knew full well that Kaneyuichi would never bully him.

The next morning, when Qiao Weiya went to the company with Chu Luowei, Chu Luowei could plainly tell that her mood seemed much improved—for instance, she was even humming a tune just then.