HALF: Dead nor Alive - Chapter 164 The right choice.

The legendary tale of the Xyrin Empire is not about its struggles... or the tempest of another world or some cultivation myth. This is a super-serious, super-hard sci-fi novel about saving the world.Take what I’m saying seriously...Not.Okay, this is just a funny story about a deceptive human emperor, bringing his bunch of slippery alien leaders to have fun saving the world every day.Chen Jun is an unmotivated otaku who turns into the Emperor of an ancient intergalactic magic sci-fi empire. With the aura of a stay-at-home dad, he is nothing but a middle-aged man who adopts a group of lolis... and an army of freeloading aliens that came out of nowhere. Er, what?Ahem. Really though, this is a super-serious story... a super-mega-ultra-serious sci-fi story.For the Empire!

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

Xie Huaimin who had been jilted, unexpectedly came to the unfamiliar nation of Dong Qi and became Xie Zhaohua, the idiotic Fourth Miss of the Grand Tutor Xie’s family in Dong Qi. Ready to be flexible to her newfound circumstances, she strived to let herself adapt to life in a feudalistic society but her eccentric Second Brother, Xie Zhaoying, implicated her in a complicated web of intricacies. The Zhao family’s party which dominates the court administration, the refined and mysterious teacher Song Zijing from Xi Qi and also Prince Yan, Xiao Xuan, who is remotely far away, form a world full of perils and excitement. Miss Xie who is imbued with courage and insensitive yet pure, followed along with Xiao Xuan without second thoughts, throwing herself into the venture of revolution and love.

T/n: The title of the novel originated from a Chinese poem by Yan Jidao.

- Description from Novelupdates

“Spread your legs...” That haunting command was all she remembered from the grey-eyed stranger—the man she shared a night with.Now, Ariana is branded as cursed. The girl who killed her mother. A silent omen wrapped in whispers and fear. But the truth? It’s locked inside her, buried beneath silence… because Ariana is mute.And when fate cruelly reunites her with the very man who started it all, how can she defend herself—when she cannot even speak?In a world where rumors are louder than truth, will anyone ever hear her side of the story?