First Marriage, then love: wife, never divorce - Chapter 1979

At twenty‑nine, she was the youngest CEO in the tech industry—NetVault Security had gone from small startup to Fortune 500 in just six years. The media called her a prodigy. Her board called her unstoppable.Her therapist called her alexithymic.Unable to understand or describe her own emotions.The elevator chimed. Elara didn’t look up. Only one person had after‑hours access.“You’re late,” she said. “The investor meeting is in twelve hours. Did you review the—”“I’m not here about the meeting.”…“Ugh.”Elara lost her life that day at the hands of her mentor and adoptive father. By the next morning, the same people who once called her a genius and praised her to the sky were calling her a coward who killed herself to escape scandal.Then Elara woke up.Not in her office. Not in a hospital.In a different world. In a different body.She was now Elara, the Fourth Princess of this so‑called great kingdom—only to find that this princess was an utter pushover, completely useless in everyone’s eyes. No one feared her. No one respected her. Even her own palace was full of other people’s spies.How is Elara supposed to survive this palace battle, when seven princesses fight in the shadows and she’s known as the weakest one? And can she ever escape this place… or will she decide to win instead?……“Your Highness, please… ugh…”The leash of light around Mahir’s neck—the head of the knights—tightened with a soft pull. His face flushed red, and not from pain.“Princess, here.” Ken, the strongest beast knight, knelt closer and held out a small pill between his fingers, guiding it gently to Elara’s lips.“Swallow it,” he said quietly. “You used too much power today.”On the floor below the bed, three beastmen knelt in a row, broad shoulders tense, ears twitching, their eyes fixed on her with dazed focus. Thin, glowing leashes of magic ran from their collars to the bands at Elara’s wrists.“Please…” Ken’s voice dropped, rough and a little hoarse. “Put your foot here.” He touched his gloved hand to his chest. “On me.”Elara sighed, half annoyed, half amused, and rested her foot lightly on his armored chest. All three of them drew in a sharp breath at the same time, faces turning even redder as the magic between them flared.Their eyes—gold, amber, and deep brown—looked up at her with the same lost, devoted gaze.

He stomped his feet and the land collapsed, looked above and the sky shattered, reached out and captured the stars in his hands.

He possessed the body of the bullied and ostracized Esdras Varthos, who had the lowest talent among his peers and was sold to the mages tower by his sly relatives to steal his title and lands.

Esdras used his powers to divine the fate of the world, and saw a terrifying scene, the apocalypse was about to start.

This world was going to be destroyed in an epic battle between gods, demons and titans.

As an ant he was fated to be a squashed under their feet.

There were a total of eight shards scattered and hidden in the universe, his only hope was to collect them all and ascend to divinity himself before the apocalypse. He was not willing to be an ant for long.

He already had one shard of a divine spark!

[You have gained 10 EXP]!

He will travel to many different kinds of worlds in the universe seeking the divine shards.

I wrote a book once.It was an unhinged fantasy born from my high-school brain, driven by loneliness and too many hormones.It was a world of beastmen, wild freedom, and the kind of romantic attention I could never get in real life. I poured every impossible desire into it: adventure, danger, and yes… a 'lot' of handsome partners.Before I knew it, I had a thousand chapters of pure escapism and pure thrill.Then on a college camping trip, I fell off a cliff.I expected to wake up in a hospital room but nope. I woke up on a soft field of grass, with air too fresh to belong anywhere on Earth.And then something moved behind me.Sticking out of my tailbone was... A tail.My tail?Yellow and black stripes and very, very real.I touched it. Completely real.My ears? Also gone—well, moved. They were now perched on top of my head like a confused jungle cat. And the outfit? Quite revealing, made of animal hide which matched my tail.What was going on?At first, I thought it was a prank. Or a dream. Or maybe karma is finally cashing in. But the more foreign memories evaded my mind, the clearer my situation became.This wasn't cosplay and it wasn't Earth, either.And—surprise—it wasn't even the world from my own book. Welp.I had been transported into a completely different Beastman world as a beast girl called Arinya.Sounds fun, right?Well… it would be, if I weren't apparently the ugliest duckling in the entire freaking savannah! Rejected by every potential mate I stumbled across and sneered at like a freaking eyesore.This was not how I planned my fantasy to come to reality.Trust me—if this is my fantasy come true, then someone needs to fire the author.But then again, after entering this world, I'm suddenly... Attractive.I mean, there's no change to my face and the freckles are still there, but for some reason, handsome beastmen begin to flock around me, because I smell... Pleasant.What's that all about?

What is martial arts?Martial Arts has nothing to do with musical instruments, chess, calligraphy, painting, treasures or secret manuals, nor is there so much talk about being the best in the world. Martial Arts is a technique, a method that gives the weak a chance to draw their blades against the strong.What is chivalry (xiá)?Chivalry is not about romantic affairs, traditional culture, or being gentle, respectful, frugal, and compliant. Chivalry is violence, it's the bayonet forged by those driven to Mount Liang to use against tyrants.Cao Mo pledged with a dagger, (Returning to) Lu to invade. Zhuan Zhu entered with grilled meat, (Pacifying) Wu to usurp the throne. Brother Zhang cried in the market, avenging his lord by defiling a lavatory. Suicide by cutting one's own throat to seek justice, acting while concealing his sleeve. The tyrant of Qin seized souls, the coward gained courage.This is a martial artist's story.In the 1930s, a group of like-minded young people came together, striving to change the world.Then, two hundred years later, in a garbage landfill, Xiang Shan, the Progenitor of Cyber Martial Arts who had once rebooted heaven and earth, woke up reciting the name of his enemy, having lost all his memories.“Perhaps it's because I lost back then that the world has become what it is...”“So this time, I won't be defeated again!”This is the story of a person changing the world once more!