Ch. 354 - Zhou Qingfeng Isn’t Dead

Yang Ming’s words lingered, met with a heavy hush.

Lu Ziming and his crew gawked at him, their expressions shouting this has to be a joke. It sounded like something out of a storybook—too crazy to believe.

Then Xiao Chuxia broke the quiet, her voice slicing through their doubts. “You don’t have to buy it, but think about this: How’d Xiu figure out the Land Between’s rules the moment he arrived? How’s a third-tier psychic calling all the shots at headquarters? And how’s he got a Taotie army under his thumb?”

Her three quick jabs landed solid. Faces went pale, skepticism cracking. “Could it really be true?”

They started piecing together Fang Xiu’s run in the Land Between—every step, every weirdly perfect move. It didn’t make sense unless you tagged him as a future-seer. Then, suddenly, it all lined up.

Lu Ziming’s eyes flicked to Fang Xiu, now tinged with something like fear. Of course. Without that kind of gift, how could he have owned this place from the jump? How could he run headquarters? Control Taotie?

The proof was right there, staring back at them, as wild as it felt. They had to swallow it.

“Sir,” Lu Ziming said, picking his words slow and careful, “if you can really see the future, we’d be okay passing our earnings to you. But, uh, we’d sure like a glimpse of that future-seeing trick ourselves—just a quick look.”

BANG!

Lu Ziming yelped as a kick knocked him flat. The room went dead quiet, the air thick with strain.

“Seems we’ve got a mix-up,” Fang Xiu said, his steady stare sweeping over them, cutting through their sneaky little plans. “I’m not asking. I’m telling.”

His words, soft but firm as steel, landed like a thunderbolt. Eyes dropped—no one dared hold his gaze.

He kept going, slow and clear. “What’s keeping you breathing? Your skills? One word from me, and the Taotie army’d flatten you all like bugs. Get this in your heads: your only job is to make me cash.”

A third-tier chewing out a bunch of fourth- and fifth-tiers like they were nothing—it’d turn heads anywhere, not just here.

“Now get moving,” he said, and under his sharp, unyielding watch, the grudging crew trudged off to earn their share, shrunk by his sheer force.

Yang Ming swaggered alongside, tossing orders like a cocky right-hand man. “Step it up, step it up! Hustle! Anyone rolls in with less than a hundred grand in Spirit Money tonight, don’t even show up!”

Then Fang Xiu turned. “You too. Out and working.”

Yang Ming’s strut faltered. “Hold on, Xiu, you’re hitting us up too?”

“If you’re cool with ditching smokes in the Land Between, stay here.”

Yang Ming cracked a lopsided grin. “Joking, joking. I’m on it.”

Before long, even the headquarters team was out grinding.

Fang Xiu, meanwhile, hauled his twenty-plus million Spirit Money stash back to the pawnshop.

A spark had hit him: if the shop dealt a way out of the Land Between, could it deal info too? Like about Zhou Qingfeng?

Inside, he dumped the whole pile of Spirit Money on the counter and faced the rotting corpse. “Is Zhou Qingfeng dead or alive?”

In a flash, about ten million Spirit Money evaporated. The corpse dug into its drawer and slid a note over.

Fang Xiu checked it. One word: “Alive.”

His eyes sparked with curiosity. Just as he’d figured—Zhou Qingfeng was still out there. 

The man had dodged the Specter God’s wrath, something Fang Xiu could hardly picture. 

Zhou’s old letters made it sound like he’d died at the Specter God’s hands, only to pull himself back somehow.

“Where’s Zhou Qingfeng now?” Fang Xiu pushed.

This time, the rest of the Spirit Money vanished—poof, gone. Half his own Spiritual Energy got sucked out too, a quick, stinging pull. The corpse passed another note.

Two words this time. Fang Xiu’s brow furrowed as he read: “The Land Between.”

Zhou Qingfeng was here.

His thoughts kicked into gear. 'Is Zhou Qingfeng bunkered in the Zhous' Mansion?' Ideas spun, but he was tapped out of cash—and questions—for now.

Without hesitation, he activated the death reset.

…

“Why do I have death reset ability?” asked Fang Xiu.

The rotting corpse didn’t stir. No Spirit Money disappeared from the counter.

Fang Xiu’s brow creased slightly. 'Is he clueless, or is the offer too cheap?'

The first felt more likely. The death reset was a power so strong it had kept him breathing against the Specter God—a secret tucked deep in the bones of this world. 

The pawnshop, handy as it was in its creepy way, didn’t seem high enough up the chain to unravel that one. Scoring info on Zhou Qingfeng had been a fluke already.

“Who wrote the red words on my bedroom ceiling?”

Again, the corpse sat motionless, giving nothing away.

But in that stillness, Fang Xiu crossed off a name. “Never let them know you can see.” It wasn’t Zhou Qingfeng’s doing.

The pawnshop could spill on Zhou Qingfeng but went blank on the blood-red writing. That pegged the words’ source higher up whatever warped pecking order ran this place. So, not him.

Fang Xiu had long suspected his death reset and those ceiling words linked back to Zhou Qingfeng. Now, though, that thread looked frayed—or at least a long shot.

Zhou Qingfeng’s rank didn’t seem that sky-high.

Still, Fang Xiu wasn’t ready to ditch him entirely. Even if Zhou didn’t write the words or build the reset, he might have a clue.

The guy was too knotted up in this tangle to know nothing.

After all, Fang Xiu still couldn’t nail down whether the Green Mountain Hospital trial and the Genesis Mask were aimed at him or Yang Ming.

On paper, it all screamed Yang Ming—the Chosen One, the star. But the result? Fang Xiu had walked out on what felt like Zhou Qingfeng’s ideal track: the perfect slide into Specterization.

Was it fate scrapping with Zhou Qingfeng’s plans? Too early to say. He was still too small, too in the dark on the big picture.

After a beat, Fang Xiu whispered, “Come out, 'wife.'”

WHOOSH!

A striking, elegant figure appeared beside him from nowhere.

“I want to know who she really is,” he asked.

The corpse didn’t flinch—might as well have been rotting for centuries.

Fang Xiu gave a small nod, sorting it out in his head. So, “Wife” outranked Zhou Qingfeng too. That fit.

He’d never shaken off that first summon of "wife": a cold stare had cut through the void, like she came from something sitting above countless layers of reality.

That one look had almost locked time in place. He’d stared down Specter Gods under open skies, but none had rattled the fabric of space with just a glance.

“Wife” was a mystery with no bottom.

He’d even toyed with the idea that the “wife” at home wasn’t the full deal—just a piece, a faint echo of something massive.

That stare screamed insane power, yet her real strength felt tame, leaning on odd tricks to hit hard. It didn’t match up.

And now, the real twist: Zhou Qingfeng, the so-called mastermind, might be the tiniest player in this game after all.

Translator's note: So every time Fang Xiu triggered death reset, his teammates was just coming back to life? I thought it was multiverse or something—this timeline was ruined and he'd move to another one. That was scary, man, if it was what I thought, Fang Xiu must've killed his teammates quite a lot of times.

Now seeing the death teammates come back to life made me feel better.

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