Cultivation

After my Senior Sister died, Master brought back a Seductress Spirit.

The Seductress Spirit looked exactly like Senior Sister, only far more alluring.

Seductress Spirits were wanton and wicked by nature. All she had to do was crook a finger, and my senior brothers would slip in and out of her bedchamber night after night.

She had stolen Senior Sister’s face and used it to do every filthy, degrading thing imaginable. I hated her to the bone.

But when I went to kill her, she took out a plum candy and spoke in a voice gentle enough to bewitch me:

“Since I’ve already used this skin, I have to fulfill its original owner’s dying wish.

“Seductress Spirits have their own rules. But do you want to avenge your Senior Sister with your own hands?”

Five years into my career, people called me pale, skinny, young-looking, and a fake-innocent schemer.

Meanwhile, my stunt double used me as a stepping stone to climb her way up, becoming wildly popular with an occult persona.

On shows, she told fortunes for celebrities, saying she had learned it from her boyfriend.

That boyfriend she kept talking about was the eldest son of a famous Occult Family.

But when she and I ended up on the same paranormal variety show, her talismans suddenly stopped working.

As for me, right in front of an audience of tens of millions, I took down a whole pack of ghosts with my bare hands.

“You want to be my nephew’s wife? Did you get my permission first?”

To serve as the Sword Sect’s Chief Disciple’s cauldron.

Wei Xun warned me coldly, “On the bed, don’t make a sound.”

I was too talkative, too noisy, too irritating. The moment I opened my mouth, I stopped sounding like the woman he loved.

But if I stayed silent, he would pinch my waist and say hoarsely, “You have no spiritual root, but you do have a gift for being a cauldron.”

“One round of dual cultivation can raise my cultivation by thirty percent.”

He did not know it was not because I had any gift.

It was because cauldrons like him…

I had two more.

My senior brother was both pitiful and broke.

His sect had been destroyed, his master captured, and his junior brothers and sisters were missing.

As for him, he carried a battered sword on his back and would go hungry for three days after every meal.

Even so, he still kept me by his side and bought me big steamed buns to eat.

“Once you remember your parents’ names, make sure you pay me back!”

“Mm-hmm!”

I prayed in secret that I must have been born into a wealthy family, so I could properly repay Senior Brother.

But before I could regain my memories, Senior Brother lost me again.

All he left behind was a bag of steamed buns and a letter.

[Dongze will execute my master at the Four Regions Assembly. I have to go save him.

[After I leave, eat the buns sparingly. You don’t have to pay me back anymore.]

I sobbed until my heart felt torn apart, clutching the letter as I chased after him.

But in my carelessness, I missed my footing, rolled down a hillside, and struck my head.

And then I remembered.

I was originally from Dongze.

And the Dongze Sect Leader who was going to execute Senior Brother’s master was none other than my father.

I run a science-debunking channel.

I’m also a Taoist priest.

Every day, I livestream ways to expose feudal superstition for what it is.

One day, a young woman asked me to help sever a toxic romantic entanglement.

The next day, her boyfriend was dead.

My younger sister gave birth to a son in the Eastern Palace.

I brought a fortune in family wealth and cartloads of rare medicinal pills with me to the palace to visit her.

The moment she saw me, she nestled into my arms and began to cry, tears falling one after another.

Her movements were intimate, her voice soft and spoiled. There was not the slightest trace of distance or unfamiliarity between us.

And yet my entire body went rigid, a chill crawling up my spine and sinking into my heart.

Because the face before me, identical to my sister’s in every way,

was not the dead woman’s skin I had sewn onto her with my own hands.

Fu Qiu had always accepted her lot in life.

When she was a child, a blind man read her fortune through bone-weighing and said her bones were light, her fate was lowly, and that in this life she could only sell her body.

As it happened, her family was going through hard times, so her father simply sold her to a brothel.

When she was still young and first put on display, the madam said that although she was beautiful, her face carried a pitiful, sorrowful look, and the customers she attracted would never be decent men.

Sure enough, every few days, she suffered another bout of abuse.

By middle age, her looks had withered, and she married a merchant. The neighbors said her thin lips and fox-like eyes meant she would never be the faithful sort.

Before long, rumors were flying everywhere. The merchant could not bear it, and on a rainy night, he drove her out of the house.

Even so, she never hated anyone. She only hated that her own fate was so poor.

As she lay on the verge of death, the Old Blind Man happened to pass by drunk, bragging to the crowd.

“Twenty years ago, I saw a little girl in another town. She was so young, but she already had the looks to topple a kingdom.

“So I pretended to be blind, did a bone-weighing for her, and told her she had a lowly fate-that in this life, she could only become a whore.

“And guess what? Her whole family believed me!”

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.

Disciples knelt all across the mountain, crying out in unison, “We respectfully send off the Patriarch on his ascension!”

But what I saw was a silvery-white hook piercing Master’s throat, dragging him up into the clouds.

His feet had left the ground. He couldn’t make a sound.

Like a fish.

I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around Master’s legs. “Let him go!”

Eldest Senior Brother struck me with his palm and sent me flying. “You madwoman! Can you bear the consequences of ruining the Patriarch’s ascension ceremony?”

Blood spilled from the corner of my mouth.

I laughed.

“Ascension? Are you all blind? That’s fishing!”

I transmigrated into a tragic romance world trapped in an endless cycle and became the city spirit of the Liang Kingdom.

Again and again, the heroine, Bai Ruohuan, leapt from the city wall.

Again and again, the emperor, Liang Qingci, marched toward the ruin of his nation.

At first, I only wanted to sit back and watch the spectacle unfold, but I was forced onto the stage to change their fate.

Alongside that cold-hearted, impassive emperor, I fought to survive through countless cycles, until at last I glimpsed the truth hidden behind Heaven’s Love Calamity.