Chapter 2

The immortal-cultivation plane opens.

My vision goes dark, then brightens again as damp air heavy with the stench of blood rushes over me.

I feel spiritual power coursing through my meridians and begin absorbing my host’s memories.

The original Xie Yan is the only daughter of the sect master of the Heavenly Way Sect, the foremost sect in the cultivation world. She is a stunning beauty with a supreme ice spiritual root, a cultivation prodigy seen only once in ten million years. At fourteen, she has already reached peak Foundation Establishment.

Holy crap!

A supreme ice spiritual root!

Peak Foundation Establishment at fourteen!

Even in all the cultivation missions I’ve done before, talent like this would be considered heaven-defying!

Tears of joy spring to my eyes. An illustrious family and unrivaled natural talent—could the news get any better?

I circulate my spiritual power and raise one hand. An ice shard materializes above my palm, radiating a piercing chill.

I have no doubt that an ordinary person would turn into an ice sculpture the instant they touched it.

I am currently in a dense forest called the Misty Frostwood. My host felt her bottleneck loosening and came here to find Frostjade Grass, which would help her break through. She also planned to kill a few demonic beasts for experience and consolidate her cultivation.

She has already found the Frostjade Grass. It is sitting in her storage ring.

What did you say?

She isn’t merely at peak Foundation Establishment at fourteen?

She’s actually half a step from Golden Core at fourteen?!

Holy crap. It’s true!

In high spirits, I find a secluded cave, set up a defensive formation, take the Frostjade Grass out of the storage ring, and circulate my spiritual power to attempt a breakthrough into the Golden Core realm.

My host’s memories tell me that humans, demons, beasts, and ghosts inhabit this cultivation world. The king of the demon race—the Demon Lord—is currently in the Soul Transformation realm. A tiny Golden Core cultivator like me can’t kill him on a whim, but every bit of extra cultivation gives me a slightly better… uh, chance of escaping.

Vast banks of storm clouds gather above the cave. A bolt of heavenly lightning crashes down, shattering the cave in an instant!

Even the defensive formation I laid down pops like a soap bubble before it.

Spiritual energy scours and widens my meridians again and again, bringing excruciating pain.

I cough out a plume of black smoke, my whole body numb from the strike.

No wonder she’s a genius. Even her Golden Core tribulation is fiercer than an ordinary cultivator’s!

When I finally survive the tribulation and change into fresh clothes, the lightning has devastated everything around me.

I gaze at the round Golden Core gleaming brilliantly inside my dantian, almost trembling with excitement.

Perhaps because my soul has entered this body, I somehow skip the early Golden Core stage and advance straight to the middle stage.

A Golden Core! My Golden Core!

Wait. Didn’t Xiao Muyao give me a communicator? Let’s see how my sister is doing.

With a god-tier opening like ours, surely even someone determined to redeem the villain would raise her own cultivation first. My sister should have reached the Golden Core realm too, right?

One look, and I fall silent.

My sister’s face is identical to mine, but her hair is disheveled and she looks utterly wretched. She lies dazed on the ground with a bloody hole torn through her abdomen, ghastly to behold.

Behind her yawns a bottomless cliff.

Before her stands a man in red with black hair. The eerie combination makes him look like a black-and-crimson lotus—seductive, wicked, and possessed of an extreme beauty that could destroy heaven and earth.

A chilling smile curves that bewitching, ruinous face. A cylindrical object gleaming with cold light floats above his palm. His gentle voice is almost a lover’s murmur. “Thank you for your hospitality—and your redemption.”

Then he throws back his head in wild laughter. “Heaven never bars every road! To think I would find a supreme ice spiritual root!”

As he speaks, he pulls open his robes. His firm abdomen is a mangled mess, the terrible wounds unable to conceal that his own spiritual root has shattered.

He presses the cylindrical object to his lower abdomen and slowly… fuses it into his body.

Thunder booms through the sky. Lightning flashes in the clouds and a gale rises, as though the heavens themselves are furiously condemning the Demon Lord’s vile act of ripping out another cultivator’s spiritual root!

The Demon Lord pays it no mind. Rain streaks across his magnificent red robes and devastatingly beautiful face.

“And now… farewell, you naive little fool.”

Fear and panic twist my sister’s face as tears pour down her cheeks. “You can’t do this! I saved you! You already took my spiritual root! You can’t…”

The Demon Lord chuckles. Black demonic energy gathers in his palm, and with one strike, he sends her hurtling over the bottomless cliff!

Me: “…”

A cultivator without a spiritual root has almost no chance of surviving a fall like that.

Sure enough, the communicator announces a moment later, “Your opponent, Shen Yingxue, has been eliminated!”

Then I see my sister reappear at the space station, terror still frozen across her face. The other heroines offer her polite yet unmistakably awkward smiles.

I cry excitedly, “Muyao, Muyao! Hurry and lift the restriction on the communicator. I need to say a few words to my sister.”

Xiao Muyao says, “It’s lifted…”

I laugh at the top of my lungs. “Hahahaha! Congratulations, little sister! You’ve unlocked the achievement for dying the moment you landed!”

My sister: “…”

I stroke my chin, my tone loaded with meaning. “I suppose you did redeem him successfully. You saved his life and then ‘kindly’ donated your ice spiritual root! How could a selfish, heartless person like me ever compare?”

My sister: “…”

I square my shoulders, brimming with confidence. “You were his savior! How could he knock you off a cliff?! How utterly wicked! Don’t worry, little sister. Just watch your big sister avenge you!”

My sister: “Wow…”

Xiao Muyao: “Shen Yingyue, no one does sarcasm quite like you.”