

For three hundred years, the cultivator Sean Yale single-handedly guarded the pass, keeping the demon invasion at bay and ensuring peace for Aureate. But his long vigil bred only complacency and distrust. Accused of fabricating the demon threat, he was cast out by the very nation he protected. Without him, the demons descended, throwing the realm into chaos. As Aureate faced its doom, Sean moved on, aiding other lands against the onslaught, his legendary might now sought by all who once doubted him. In the end, it was he who pushed the demons back to the wastelands and restored peace, leaving those who betrayed him to face the consequences of their folly.

Five years ago, Jason Stone was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and his girlfriend ran off with all his money. When he was about to commit suicide, his master, who was passing by Earth, took him to cultivate immortality. A thousand years later, he became a Great Sage, living on an alien world. One day, he finally connected to a spacetime vortex back to Earth, so he risked his life and made it back.

Aurelius spent a thousand solitary years on an immortal assembly line, rolling pills in paradise. A cosmic traffic incident cuts that career short and drops him into the body of James Cross, a mistreated eldest son, pressured into a humble marriage, and apparently everyone's punching bag. What Aurelius finds instead is a wife and mother-in-law who offer nothing but patience and gentle care. For someone who has never once been loved, it undoes him completely. He can't repay them with money or status. So he does the only thing he knows how—he decides to take the whole family to immortality with him.

To defuse the bomb strapped to the hostage, I had no choice—I cut off all her clothes. My clueless new wife, Dana Poole, blasted it online. She cried as she faced me. "Why not at least leave her underwear on? You were saving her, I get it—but did you have to take everything? Doesn't a girl's dignity matter? With cameras everywhere, how is she supposed to live after this? You couldn't even cover her up?" The backlash exploded. The unit benched me to calm things down. So I stopped caring. I followed procedure, no improvising, no extra effort. Then one day, at the busiest mall in the city, Dana's mom got strapped into a brand-new linked bomb. This time, the whole unit panicked.

Annie never knew her mother's love. Carole despised her, reserving all her doting affection for Fiona, the daughter of a past romance. Carole believed her marriage to Ben was a drunken mistake, and Annie was simply the regrettable result. Unable to bear the abuse Annie suffered, Ben resolved to take Annie and leave Carole for good. Despite this, on her own birthday, Annie chose to give her mother one final chance.

Yulia is sent by her father to the bed of her family's creditor, Yvan. What appears to be an orchestrated honey trap is, in fact, a calculated move by Yvan, a young CEO. Playing along with the scheme, Yvan pressures Yulia's father behind the scenes while playing the innocent victim in front of the clueless girl. His endgame? To trick her straight into marriage.