Extra Pages: The Author's Odyssey - Chapter 384: Shadows of the Past

“Sect Master! Marry me!”If only things were that simple.Fang Yuan lets out a long sigh, eyes fixed on the mountain of paperwork threatening to swallow his desk and his soul.As the youngest family head in history, you’d think he’d be enjoying fame, fortune, and fawning admirers.Instead, he’s buried in bureaucracy, stuck mediating elder disputes, and wondering if the sect treasury mysteriously eats spirit stones.Sure, the old geezers have their experience, their beards, and their lofty reputations.But Fang Yuan? He has one thing they don’t: raw, unshakable power.Born into a world where innate talent reigns supreme, Fang Yuan—a transmigrator armed with modern grit—actually managed the impossible: he clawed his way to the top with nothing but relentless hard work.While everyone else coasted on heavenly bloodlines and golden physiques, he trained, he studied, and he schemed.Now, he’s strong enough to bend heaven’s will.But cultivation isn’t all sword beams and glory.Life as a family head comes with its own set of woes—namely, watching his annoyingly handsome junior brother collect all the female attention like some kind of walking romance novel.“This isn’t fair,” Fang Yuan mutters under his breath, stamping another scroll. “I’m the protagonist here... right?”

Learning crude martial arts had always made Fourth Miss Zhu the laughingstock of Beijing’s elite families. In their eyes, such skills were fit only for common bodyguards.Yet Zhu Changle, who considered herself invincible, felt no shame. On the contrary, she took pride in her abilities.Not everyone could protect their own household, but she could! And exceptionally well at that! She’d even dare to turn the whole of Beijing upside down for the sake of her family’s estate!Don’t believe it? Just try her!

A Consort seeks prosperity.A Shepherd cloaked in yellow wages war.A Prosthesis-wielder cries out for retribution.Shadows tremble in the depths, encompassed worlds obscuring the many dangerous secrets of history. Might they be unraveled, all ways of life would be threatened. But to climb higher requires risks, to seek the light requires a Gambit of Lifetimes.Only when one determines themselves capable of risking it all, can all prosper.

In a world where power is marked by glowing runes and monsters bleed through the fabric of reality, **Ryu** is nothing—an orphan with no name, no status, and no hope. Beaten down by nobles who wield their divine-given strength like a whip, he survives on scraps and stubborn defiance.But when a black rift—an anomaly unlike any ever recorded—appears in the dead of night, Ryu faces a choice: die a beggar, or risk everything by stepping into the unknown.Inside, he finds a nightmare. Kolasis, a legendary predator, hunts him through a twisted forest. The rules here are simple: kill or be killed. To survive, Ryu must forge himself into something sharper than the claws of monsters and crueler than the nobles who cast him aside.Yet the rift has its own secrets. The same power that could make him a legend might also break him—if the monsters don’t tear him apart first.