Chapter 1

Chapter 1

For the five hundred years since my death, I have been trying to figure out why I lost so completely back then.

As far as the Sword Inquiry Sect was concerned, I respected my master above me and protected the disciples below me. I gave them my heart and soul. Even in the later years, after my cultivation had reached the Soul Transformation realm and the world wanted to honor me as the Foremost of the Sword Dao, I never forgot my original devotion to the Dao. I never once overstepped my master in status or position.

As for my junior brothers and sisters, my conscience was even clearer.

Back then, I had dragged my feet and refused to ascend precisely because they would not improve themselves. I was afraid that once they lost my protection, they would be bullied by the demons.

So when Ye Yu led the Demon Race army in an assault, I naturally shielded everyone behind me and fought Ye Yu for seventy full days.

Not until the two of us had nearly exhausted our cultivation did I, holding on by a single breath, throw Ye Yu back into the Demon Domain and seal him away.

That seal would last a thousand years.

The cultivation world would be able to enjoy a long stretch of peace.

But when I turned around again, what greeted me was a sword through the heart.

Little Junior Sister’s hand trembled around the hilt. She stood there in a daze for a few breaths before finally letting go with a scream and hiding behind my master and my junior brothers.

Through tears, she pointed at me and accused, “Senior Sister, the person we have always admired most is you. Why did you have to collude with the Demon Race and ruin our sect’s reputation?”

The very people who had wailed and begged for my protection when Ye Yu attacked now looked on coldly. Some even began commenting at their leisure.

“I heard long ago that there was something improper about her relationship with that Demon Lord. A fellow disciple who sweeps the front gate saw her meeting that Demon Lord at night more than once.”

“And even after all that, she still put on such a righteous act earlier, saying she was going to repel the Demon Lord. Who knows what scheme she had with that Ye Yu?”

Just like that, amid everyone’s back-and-forth remarks, I, whose spiritual power was depleted and who no longer had the strength to fight back, was branded a traitor who had colluded with the Demon Lord and rebelled against the Righteous Path.

My master wanted to kill me. He stood high above, and when he lowered his gaze to look at me, there was something in his eyes I could not put into words.

In the end, he gave a wave of his hand, and countless people surged forward to subdue me.

They could not even wait to escort me back to the sect for imprisonment. They wanted me executed on the very battlefield I had just fought to defend.

That day, I was trapped on the spot by the Thousand-Person Sword Formation formed by the fellow disciples I had once protected. Then my master’s life-bound sword shattered my soul and destroyed my body, leaving me dead without a single intact piece.

Afterward, they erected a cenotaph for me and hypocritically forgave me.

As for me, I madly absorbed the demonic energy drifting from the Demon Domain and madly rebuilt my shattered remnant soul.

No wonder Ye Yu could die at my hands so many times back then, only to revive after a while and come knocking for another fight.

This land in the Demon Domain was so rich in spiritual energy that it was practically a treasure of heaven and earth. Outsiders, their vision obscured by the miasma, could not see it clearly. They only assumed demonic energy ran rampant here, and that any Righteous Path cultivator who was even slightly careless would be devoured.

But in truth, with the slightest conversion, it could be used by anyone.

Others might not know that, but Ye Yu had lived in the Demon Domain for so many years.

Could he not see it either? With such a wonderful place at his disposal, why was he still thinking about invading the Righteous Path every day?

I did not understand, but I reflected.

I reflected on how I had lived half my life with an open and honorable heart, and why I had ended up with a fate like that.

Before I could finish reflecting,

I sensed the soil over my grave loosening.

I never imagined that even after I had been dead for five hundred years, there would still be someone with such an unresolved hatred for me that they would come to dig up my grave.