Beneath the Red Dragon - Chapter 10: The Dragon Group’s First Hunt

Kael was a “rat”—a lowly stable boy in a frozen, brutal medieval world where Knights ruled with iron and Barbarians crushed skulls with bone clubs. His life was worth less than the manure he shoveled. That changed the night he butchered a Knight with a rusty dagger to pay a debt of blood.Chosen by the God of Slaughter, Kael awakens the Aether System. His cheat? The ability to project his soul into other worlds, live countless lives, and bring their powers back to reality—if he survives.But power is not free. It is bought with pain, time, and sanity.World 1: The Wild West. He spends a lifetime as “El Lobo,” a legendary gunslinger. He returns with the muscle memory of a master marksman and a 12-gauge shotgun. World 2: The Martial Arts Realm. He trains for decades as a Wuxia disciple. He returns with internal energy that can shatter steel.Now, as the Kingdom faces war and monsters surge from the dark, the nobles sneer at the servant boy holding a strange metal tube. They chant spells. They draw enchanted swords. Kael takes a slow breath. He racks the slide. Click-clack. “Parry this.”

How long I’d been here, I couldn’t quite recall. From this sorry situation, I as always raised my eyes to the sky; a sky in which the great, massive sun was clad in levity. Sunlight poured gently upon all. What a blessing it would have been for the world if only the skies could remain clear. For tomorrow too, and for all days to come, I was to continue to pray for calm. To endure for those who cried, with desperation I remained in prayer.

And then, one freezing, forlorn, soulless, stagnant, drizzly day we died. Or so I thought…

To care for her ailing sweetheart, college student Lu Chenchen gave up her white-collar office job and chose the higher-paying caretaker profession instead. Going around in circles, she ended up at the Mao family’s home.

The Mao family background was complicated. Old Madam Mao was not her son Yanning’s birth mom, but his young aunt. His wife was Old Madam Mao’s first love’s daughter, spoiled and pampered. Despite over ten years of marriage, husband and wife were distant.

To repay Old Madam Mao’s kindness in raising him, and for the sake of his three children, Mao Yanning endured again and again – not just a loveless but outright destructive marriage.

Lu Chenchen walked on eggshells among these people – carefully serving young and old, currying favor with the lady of the house without offending the man of the house, while also worrying about his sweetheart’s illness and missing “his” elders and children back home. Her heart was like a cookie flattened between the pages of life, living a difficult and cautious existence.

However, as the saying goes, “You reap what you sow.” A life that has been polished will eventually shine with a brilliance that ordinary years cannot compare.

Tan Shuchang had always considered himself born into a scholarly family and had also been a young star atop the honor roll, a true parasite of the upper class. He should have been holding significant local authority, receiving endless gifts, spending boundless money, enjoying innumerable years, and marrying countless concubines. How had he ended up becoming a demonic cultivator? After pondering for a long time and still not understanding, he slowly emerged from the pool of blood, deciding to think it over gradually…