Cultivation

Five hundred years after my death.

The people who had once benefited from my kindness had long since forgotten me.

Only my sworn enemy crouched at my grave, huffing and puffing as he dug for three whole days.

And dug me out.

As twelve bolts of tribulation lightning crashed down,

I saw Ye Yu’s face-unchanged from five hundred years ago.

The moment he saw me, his face lit up with excitement. “Shen Xi, come fight me!”

My gaze drifted past his shoulder

to the nervous members of the Righteous Path hurrying over behind him.

Those people had once been my master and fellow disciples.

They were also the ones who had killed me back then.

At the sight of them, I suddenly clutched my chest and collapsed into Ye Yu’s arms while he was watching the show.

In a soft, delicate voice, I said, “Big brother, this freshly reconstructed body is still so weak. Be a dear and take care of those small fry for me, will you?”

In an instant, I felt the body I was leaning against go completely rigid.

When I lifted my head again, the arrogant, untouchable Demon Lord was blushing so hard he looked ready to burst into flames.

After I died, my bones became the sword in his hand.

Little did he know that I rarely exercised while I was alive, and I’d developed osteoporosis at a young age.

The sword forged from my bones was sharp enough, but it lacked resilience.

The very first time he used me, someone lopped off his head.

In the unluckiest year of my life, a wandering Daoist priest came to town.

He gave my father an idea: have me worship a Household Guardian Immortal to suppress my bad luck, and maybe I would live past the age of ten.

My father was a rough man who had made his fortune in troubled times by the barrel of a gun.

He called his adjutant over and did the math for him. “One Household Guardian Immortal keeps her alive to ten, two keep her alive to twenty, and twenty keep her alive to two hundred. Right?”

The adjutant counted on his fingers. “Marshal, your math is absolutely correct.”

My father hardened his heart and rounded up all the pigs, cattle, and sheep from miles around as offerings.

“My damn girl is going to live ten thousand years!”

That year, my father rode into the old mountain forest on a pig with me and took eleven Household Guardian Immortal into our household.

He flew into a rage. “Damn it, that’s still one short of the twelve zodiac animals!”

Later, who knew where he bought a Daoist boy from, but that made the twelfth.

The whole Immortal Sect was waiting for my archrival and me to perish together, but we secretly got married first.

On the Evil-Slaying Platform, I was ordered to kill Dong Linyuan. The moment the tip of my sword pierced through his heart, a spray of blood simultaneously erupted from my own chest.

The entire Immortal Sect was waiting to see us die together, but they didn’t know that at the stroke of midnight last night, he and I had just formed a Life-Binding Pact in the Ancestor Hall. If even one of us dies today, Yin Zhixiao will be able to ascend to immortality by stepping over the corpses of the entire Immortal Sect.

When the hundredth prodigy of Sword One Sect abandons the Way of Heartlessness for love, its exasperated master orders the entire sect to embrace the Carefree Way instead.

Fourth disciple Ying Ruge expects a delightfully chaotic new life filled with matchmaking schemes, sect rivalries, and the silent devotion of her second senior brother, Meng Yu.

But when Demon-Suppressing Mountain breaks open, their carefree creed is tested by a battle that forces every disciple to decide what freedom, duty, and love are worth.

I was ordered by my master to assassinate Han Zhaoye, the Young Master of the Demonic Sect. Instead, standing beside the broken blade buried in his chest, I lit a Life Lamp to sustain his ebbing life. From that moment on, if he was injured, I spat blood; if he sought death, I was the one driven mad. Now, the entire Immortal Sect says he and I should become Dao Companions. But what they don’t know is that fourteen years ago, in the great fire of Floating White City, our lives had already been bound together by another’s hand.

I imprisoned the peerless genius I had secretly loved for years.

After an accident left her blind, I covered her eyes with a silk ribbon.

Now she glares in my direction and angrily condemns my despicable methods.

She asks what I want from her.

I tell her I want her to cooperate with her treatment and recover in peace.

I will heal her eyes.

And later, I really do.

I promise to return her to her old life, only for her to fly into a rage.

“What? You’ve only kept me prisoner for a few days! Are you stringing me along? How dare you leave me hanging like this!”

“You’d better pray I never find you. If I do, I’ll show you exactly what it feels like to be left hanging!”

Too guilty to acknowledge the threat, I send her away that very night.

I think everything will finally return to normal—until she actually finds me.

The silk ribbon that once covered her eyes is now cinched around my wrists, hoisting me high above the floor.

Forced onto the tips of my toes, I have nowhere to hide beneath her unwavering gaze…

A friend of mine worked at the Egyptian Mummy Museum.

She said something had happened there and asked me to come take a look.

Out of curiosity, I unwrapped the mummy’s bandages.

Beneath layer after layer of linen was my friend’s face. “Lu Lingzhu-“

I was climbing Mount Tai at night when I saw people holding a traditional Chinese wedding on the mountain.

The passersby started clamoring for wedding candy, but I spoke up to stop them.

A procession of ghosts carried the bridal sedan, with suona horns clearing the way.

The Ghost King was taking a bride; the living were to keep their distance.

They all cursed me for spouting nonsense.

But what they didn’t know was that I was the only Earth Master successor.

While we were out at sea on a cruise ship, a tourist from Sakura Country put on a Night Parade of One Hundred Demons for us.

Everyone praised his superb magic tricks, never realizing that every last one of those “demons” was a real ghost.

He used those ghosts to blackmail the other tourists, so I gave him one hell of a slap.

“Within the borders of Huaxia, foreign entities are forbidden to pass!”

What he didn’t know was that I was the one and only Earth Master successor.