Pay-to-Win Cultivation: I Get 10,000x Returns

Chapter 294: The Yellow Millet Dream Turns Cold, A Lone Lamp Illuminates the Empty Courtyard

Time flowed like water; thousands of years vanished in the blink of an eye.

The close friends of my youth were long gone, and I finally understood the agonizing despair Wang Ye suffered when his cultivation bottlenecked, unable to advance a single inch.

Yet, I lacked his reckless courage. I dared not initiate the Prism Project, terrified that the tragedy of the war puppets would repeat itself.

I knew the Su clan had founded the Yunmiao Sect in the Southern Region, just as I knew a guardian family watched over Penglai. I chose the path of shadows, silently guarding A Yue’s descendants within the Lin family, cultivating their talents from the dark.

Generations later, a prodigy named Song Taichu emerged among my bloodline, elevating the Guiyuan Sect to the absolute pinnacle of the Central Continent.

As for me, I casually founded the Heavenly Abyss Alliance. Ironically, the very ideals this Alliance championed were Wang Ye’s original visions.

I hated him, yet I was the truest believer in his grand design.

He simply failed to protect A Yue, blinded by his own obsession.

I believed my life would quietly burn out in this manner, waiting for my lifespan to exhaust itself.

Until the calamity of the Seven Emotions descended.

The very day the Seven Emotions Evil Thoughts manifested, I sensed them.

I understood then: this cage of heaven and earth was crumbling, even without anyone striking it.

Thus, I began weaving my web, plotting to harvest the Seven Emotions Evil Thoughts.

I controlled the Song descendants from childhood using the Mind Planting Technique, molding them into my unwitting puppets.

The Southern Region was Su Yunmiao’s domain, so I treaded with utmost caution. I deliberately exiled a branch of my family there, planting seeds in the shadows and guiding the currents of Desire and Hatred toward that land.

The remaining regions were already dancing in the palm of my hand.

My grand design was to let the Seven Emotions gorge and grow, only to harvest them at their peak. They were to be my ultimate trump card against the unknown terrors waiting beyond the shattered cage.

When Hatred unexpectedly slithered back into the Central Continent, I adapted, allowing it to ravage the Western Region. It served as a fitting vengeance against the Half-Demon King for massacring my clan.

Then, Yang Poxiao caught my eye. His journey echoed Wang Ye’s. Convinced he was the key to unlocking the Stone Gate of Fate, I placed him at Taichu’s side. Alas, Taichu’s impatience ruined it all.

But simultaneously, a far more fascinating pawn entered the board: Zhang Xian. The moment he eradicated Desire, he stepped into my sights.

He was infinitely more cautious than Yang Poxiao, burying his origins perfectly. Yet, after he laid low in a minor world for a century, I unraveled his history.

Upon our first encounter, I knew instantly: he was cut from the same cloth as Wang Ye. Mysterious. Lethal.

I probed him time and again, yet he never bled a single flaw. His perfection only fueled my paranoia.

This anomaly could not be allowed to live!

So, I accelerated my master plan, funneling him toward the Western Region. With a few subtle nudges, I guided him straight to the Stone Gate of Fate.

The day he opened that gate would be the day he died.

Naturally, I left the dirty work to Taichu and the Guiyuan Sect.

Yet, Taichu failed again, thoroughly exhausting my patience.

I decided to descend onto the stage myself, orchestrating a grand coup within the Heavenly Abyss Alliance.

If successful, I could fade back into the shadows and continue my grand game. If it failed, it would finally force Zhang Xian to reveal his true depths.

As expected, Zhang Xian’s hidden cards were endless. To think a mere junior could clash with Taichu—it completely defied my calculations.

Therefore, I meticulously tailored his doom.

He would die exactly like Wang Ye: pulverized within the Heavenly Gourd’s Prism Grand Array. The catch was luring him to open the Stone Gate of Fate. It was a flawless execution.

I spun him a tale of half-truths, dangling the secrets of the stone gate before him, but his paranoia held firm. He refused the bait.

Left with no choice, I resorted to base tactics: threatening the women he kept close and dangling Taichu as bait to drag him into the kill zone.

To ensure absolute victory, I personally scoured the Northern Ridge and the Eastern Sea, calling in two Half-Step Soul Formation trump cards I had nurtured for centuries. With Taichu, I had three apex cultivators at my beck and call. I wielded four strands of the Seven Emotions Evil Thoughts, and I myself stood at the invincible pinnacle—the exact realm Wang Ye once dominated.

Against a measly Nascent Soul junior? The odds were absolute.

Alas, reality is a cruel, absurd joke.

When I looked up and saw the sun blotted out by an ocean of thousands of golden war puppets, a forgotten terror gripped my throat, laced with a deeply ironic sense of deja vu.

It’s here.

The realization hit me like a bucket of glacial water. The nightmare from ten thousand years ago had resurrected itself, infinitely more terrifying than before.

This was no battle. It was a slaughter. A mechanical harvest. My ten-thousand-year magnum opus, the empire I had painstakingly forged in the dark, evaporated in a split second before the crushing weight of absolute, insurmountable numbers.

My bloodline, my hidden cards, even Song Zheng with her unique Fate Pattern—all popped like fragile bubbles.

I tried to struggle. I attempted a desperate decapitation strike. But engulfed by a swarm of immortal, self-regenerating war puppets, every ounce of resistance was painfully futile.

And when Zhang Xian casually dropped the fact that his entire sky-blotting mechanical armada could be maxed out to the Soul Formation realm at a moment’s notice… my Dao Heart, tempered by ten millennia of ruthless calculation, shattered into dust.

I realized then… the supreme power I had spent my entire existence chasing, the flawless conspiracies I had woven… were nothing but a clown’s act before a true, unreasonable “Absolute.”

In the final fraction of a second, before my consciousness was entirely wiped from existence, ten thousand years of memories fragmented across my mind.

The boisterous laughter of my sworn brothers… A Yue’s heroic elegance as she practiced her sword forms… the fiery passion in Wang Ye’s eyes when we debated our ideals…

And finally, the memory locked onto A Yue’s deathbed. Her gentle, trusting eyes as she begged me to protect her child.

Heh. A Yue… I’m sorry.

My life began in carefree freedom, only to be chained by obsession. I deluded myself into thinking I could play god with the world, yet in the end, I couldn’t even honor the one promise you valued most.

Now, I am reduced to scattered ashes. Ten thousand years, entirely in vain.

A complete, utter farce.

If there is a next life… ah, forget it. For someone like me, there is no next life.

(A/N: Alright, the boss is officially dealt with. After a brief illusion realm sequence, we are finally changing maps!

Honestly, it’s a bit ridiculous, haha. Over 600,000 words in, and our boy is finally leaving the beginner village.

We’re diving straight into the fully unlocked Great Cultivation World map. The top-tier big shots in this new world are at the Mahayana and Tribulation Crossing stages, which means plenty of grander stages for our MC to flex his wealth and pick up girls.

Taking down this arc’s boss was honestly easier than dealing with Wangchuan. Can’t be helped, the MC’s cheat is just too broken. But of course, this boss was just a stepping stone. If we didn’t give the MC a massive power-leveling boost now, how is he supposed to face the super elite mobs waiting for him?

In the upcoming plot, we’ll be cashing in on a lot of early foreshadowing—like the true origins of the Ningyu Scripture. I’m sure my handsome Yanzus reading this have already figured it out: it’s definitely a human furnace cultivation technique. The core history of the Su clan is a tragedy, through and through.

We’ll also dive into the puppet consciousness of Zhiyin and Su Ling, Long Zhi’s dragon bloodline, Wang Ye’s lingering obsession, and the dark truth behind the cage of this world.

And naturally, the waifu-collecting process is essential. After all, the Grandmaster and Long Zhi’s Favorability meters are practically sitting at 50 already, hehehe.

The wives who have already joined the harem will get their highlight moments too, especially Little Green Tea.

I can’t help it; the more I write her, the more I love her character. Who doesn’t love a sweet, fiercely loyal, and understanding little sister?

There should probably be new girls too. The Empress mentioned in the synopsis hasn’t even shown up yet. I originally planned to drop her in the Great Xia Dynasty of the Southern Region, but my outlines changed as I wrote, so I pushed her debut back.

After all, the later a character appears, the higher their prestige and power level.

The core tone of this new volume will remain pure, unadulterated wish-fulfillment with a healthy dose of comedy. We’ll leave the tragic, angsty knives for the Villains.

Scattering flowers in early celebration!

This is my second time writing one of these arc-ending notes, so hopefully, I rambled a bit less than last time.

Once again, my deepest thanks to all you amazing readers!)