Five miles north of Dormitory #404, the architecture of the 1,000-Sun Astral Protagonist Academy changed from gaudy golden auction halls into a sprawling. Neon-pink palace complex that smelled like a cheap brothel dipped in synthetic rosewater.
Towering above the North Campus was a three-thousand-foot spire of blood-red coral and pink quartz shaped like a thorny rose—the Rose Dungeon Tower, headquarters of the Academy’s second core faculty:
The “Harem & Cold-Beauty Taming Department.”
Even from five miles away, a faint, cloying pink mist drifted off the spire’s roof vents, carrying an artificial pheromone incense designed to dull a cultivator’s moral conscience and inflate their ego.
Inside the warm cedar study of Dormitory #404, however, not a single wisp of that sleazy pink mist dared cross the courtyard wall.
Every time a stray pink cloud floated within a hundred yards of Dormitory #404’s roof tiles, a silent. Invisible needle of Rank 8 Peak Absolute-Zero Sword Intent froze the mist into solid pink hailstones and dropped it straight into Grandpa Fu’s compost bin.
At the center of the study, Gu Changsheng sat behind his wide sandalwood desk with [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook] open under the warm glow of a solar-stone lamp.
Surrounding the desk was the entire Gu Household tactical council: Empress Luo Qingxue sat gracefully at Gu Changsheng’s right hand holding a porcelain teacup. Auntie Qin stood behind ten-year-old Su Nuannuan’s chair, braiding the little girl’s hair with protective medicinal ribbons. And fourteen-year-old Ye Xiao, twelve-year-old Gu Nian, eleven-year-old Jiang Tuntun, and toddler…
