Chapter 1: Fool, What Is This?

“It’s really you! So you’re alive! You’re alive! It’s been five years, you’ve changed so much. My mom’s in the emergency room—her heart stopped, it stopped! The attending physician issued the fifth critical notice. My mom is really dying! Please, I’m begging you, hurry, hurry and save my mom!”

Tears welled up in Dongfang Yinyin’s eyes as she looked tremblingly at Ding Laosan. Her desperate gaze swept over him, and then she was suddenly stunned. Her expression changed drastically:
“You—your body… so many wounds! You’re still bleeding! You’re still bleeding!”

Ding Laosan had rushed over the moment he got her call for help. He had no time—no time at all. Her mother-in-law was on the brink of death. He had just returned from the battlefield and hadn’t even changed out of his blood-soaked clothes. His ragged uniform could barely cover him—it was beyond repair!

His body was covered in over a dozen wounds, both large and small!

“Yinyin, don’t cry. Leave it to me.”

Ding Laosan had just crawled out of a pile of corpses and long since seen through life and death. His face was grave, and his tone was so calm it made Dongfang Yinyin want to punch him in frustration:
“You’ve changed! You’ve become emotionless. Mom’s dying, and you’re not even sad. Not a single tear! You… you’ve become so scary!”

“Heh… scary is good.”

Ding Laosan’s voice was low but powerful. He took the medical kit from Iron Marshal who had come with him. As he passed the emergency room door, he saw his fiancée Dongfang Wenying. She was crying uncontrollably, her eyes red and swollen—clearly she’d been weeping for a long time. Her anxious eyes lit up tenfold when they suddenly caught sight of Ding Laosan.

Ten years ago, when he was only a ten-year-old boy, he had unintentionally overheard the disgraceful dealings of his clan’s patriarch Yun Tianxiao. He was convicted of seven major crimes and cast out of the Yun family. His birth mother, Lu Xi, disappeared without a trace—still missing to this day.

Back then, he had wandered to the southern capital of Haicheng, on the border of the Dongtang Empire. He collapsed at the doorstep of the Dongfang family, starving and exhausted. That was when a little girl, about his age, found him. She carried him home on her back, secretly hid him in her room, and fed him…

“Time waits for no one. Your family raised me for ten whole years. Ten years! Now it’s my turn to take care of you. Wenying, don’t cry. I’m back. Mom will be fine. Trust me!”

Just two hours ago, in the Black Cliffs Triangle—a region in the southern lands ten thousand miles from the Dongtang Empire—Ding Laosan had led a 300,000-strong army in a battle for territory. The battle raged for three days and nights. He captured the enemy warlord Lü Li Bula, gaining three million square kilometers for the Dongtang Empire. As the supreme commander, Ding Laosan had reached the pinnacle of achievement!

He was the Immortal God Commander of the Southern Wilds!
He had founded the million-strong Death God Army with his own hands!

Wherever the Death God Army marched, nothing survived. Enemies trembled at their name. In the southern world’s three continents, over 20 billion people across fifty nations bowed to the Dongtang Empire!

During the five years he was away from the Southern Capital, Ding Laosan used his Mountain-Penetrating Eye to discover over a thousand mines—gold, iridium, copper, and other rare metals—across more than ten million square kilometers. He also found fifty oil fields with reserves in the billions of tons, providing an endless supply of resources to the empire.

To reward his unprecedented contributions, the Six Sages King granted him exclusive ownership of an oil field producing ten million tons annually—the profits entirely his!

“Ding Laosan, weren’t you dead? I’ve been burning paper money at your grave every year. Are you human or ghost? Wait, no—ghosts don’t cast shadows, and you have one!”

“Then why are you just standing there, you cursed chatterbox? Are you waiting for my mom to die?!”

Dongfang Wenying jumped up in anger. Five years ago, Ding Laosan had disappeared overnight without a trace or a word—vanished from the world. The local police even brought back a pile of bones, claiming it was his remains. She had thought… thought he was dead. They had just gotten engaged, two months away from officially becoming husband and wife. But now, five years later, Ding Laosan had suddenly returned—his body covered in terrifying wounds, his clothes in tatters, looking like a vagrant, except… he radiated a massive, overwhelming aura.

“Heh… Wenying, your sharp tongue hasn’t changed one bit! I’ll talk to you later—let me handle this first!”

The woman in critical condition on the operating table was indeed Dongfang Wenying’s mother, Lan Shuxian!

Lan Shuxian’s face was deathly pale—no different from a corpse.

Two doctors were using a defibrillator on her chest!

“Step aside. This patient is mine!”

Ding Laosan activated his Mountain-Penetrating Eye, diagnosing that Lan Shuxian had a sliver of life left. All she needed was a single Yun’s Revival Pill, and she wouldn’t die!

The Yun’s Revival Pill was a miraculous elixir exclusively developed by Ding Laosan, refined from thirty kinds of rare celestial materials and precious medicinal herbs!