Killing the Junior Sister of the Immortal Sect

The junior sister of an immortal sect had stormed out of her home in a fit of anger, all by herself.

She had barely made it down the mountain when an elder of the Hehuan Sect drugged her unconscious, locked her in his dungeon, and kept her there for harvesting yin to nourish yang.

I was sent to bring her meals, and she knelt on the ground and kowtowed to me frantically, begging me to carry her protective jade pendant past the sect gates and smash it.

She promised that once her senior brothers rescued her, she would take me out of that foul nest with her.

The heavens’ cherished daughter, trampled into the mud before my eyes? I could not stomach it. So I agreed.

Never did I expect the first thing she would do after her rescue: demand her senior brothers wash the Hehuan Sect in blood and leave no one alive.

At death’s door, I clutched at her skirt. I refused to accept it.

She smiled, innocent and cruel. “A lowly mortal like her. All those kowtows, every one, and she took them from me. Tell me… shouldn’t you die?”

The instant the words left her lips, she snapped my neck.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day I brought her meal.

Looking at the warm-glowing protective jade pendant in my hand, I turned around and passed it straight to that lecherous elder.

This time, I would let that junior sister of the immortal sect, doted on by thousands, rot and stink in the mud of lust.

“This sister, please save me.”

“I’ll kowtow to you. Please take this protective jade pendant outside the Hehuan Sect’s gates and smash it. That way my senior brothers will come to save me.”

“I know you were dragged here too. You must want to leave this filthy nest just as badly as I do, right?”

“Help me with this one small thing, and I swear I will repay you a hundredfold.”

“Good sister, please… save me…”

“…”

Plea after helpless, mournful plea sounded in my ears. I dropped my gaze, then stared in disbelief.

In the dim, suffocating dungeon, a young miss in red knelt on the ground, tears streaming down her features, kowtowing to me again and again.

That familiar scene. I would never forget it, not even in death.

Back in my previous life, I had been the daughter of an ordinary family in a small mountain village, where my parents were devoted to each other; he plowed, she wove, and our days were plain and happy.

Then, the year I turned ten, my parents were weeding in the fields when a silk ribbon caught their necks without warning and snapped them; their bodies were then burned away to ash by fire.

I had climbed a tree to pick fruit that day, and by sheer luck I escaped.

After the killer flew away, I gathered my parents’ ashes between sobs, using the family’s pickle jar, and buried them in the bamboo grove behind the hill. Then I left the village without looking back.

I knew that if I wanted to find out who had killed my parents and take revenge, I had to learn the immortal arts.

Who would have thought that, on the road to a great sect, Elder Han of the Hehuan Sect would snatch me away?

I was too young, and the test showed no Spirit Root in me whatsoever. Nothing more than an utterly ordinary mortal.

Elder Han tossed me a servant’s robe and put me to sweeping floors and chopping firewood.

I wanted badly to escape, yet the Hehuan Sect was crawling with formations.

After watching fleeing female cultivators be tortured to death one too many times, I had to put my escape plan on hold.

Day to day, I secretly studied the routes and grounds, waiting patiently for the next chance to slip out safely.

Then one day, Elder Han carried another red-robed cultivator back over his shoulder.

She had a pure, delicate face and a Peak Grade Ice Spirit Root, and though her Cultivation Base was still low, her constitution was prime material for Dual Cultivation.

The first thing she did when she woke was threaten Elder Han into releasing her. Otherwise, once her senior brothers came, they would slaughter the entire Hehuan Sect.

Elder Han could tell her origins were no small matter, but he could not resign himself to giving up a high-grade Cauldron already within reach.

So, in for a penny, in for a pound, he activated an isolation formation, giving her no chance to send word outside.

The trouble was that her temper was far too fierce. She pulled Magic Treasure after Magic Treasure from her Storage Pouch and hurled them at Elder Han.

Caught off guard, Elder Han took a heavy loss himself.

Furious, he sealed away the red-robed cultivator’s Spiritual Energy on the spot, then forced a Soft Bone Pill of exceptional potency down her throat, planning to Dual Cultivate with her on the night of the full moon.

Perhaps because I had seemed too meek and obedient these past few years to pose any threat, Elder Han ordered me to bring her food every day.

No sooner had I stepped into the dungeon than she was kneeling on the ground, weeping as she begged me for help, saying she was Guirui, the Sect Master of Xuanyang’s little disciple, and pressing a warm-glowing, phoenix-shaped jade pendant into my hand with instructions to smash it outside the sect gates.

Part of me resisted, truth be told. My blood feud had yet to turn up the smallest clue.

And formations riddled every corner of the Hehuan Sect. Escaping successfully would be one thing; getting caught meant certain death.

Yet the sight of Guirui—her face drained of white, her forehead bleeding from kowtowing—stirred some pity in me after all.

That woman, blessed by the heavens herself, locked in this filthy dungeon and defiled by anyone, so I could not stand by and watch it.

Besides, the Xuanyang Sect was one of the two or three greatest sects in the cultivation world, so if I saved the Sect Master’s little disciple, perhaps I could ask him to help hunt down my parents’ killer.

So I picked my moment and took the risk, following the route I had mapped out bit by bit over the years and slipping out of the Hehuan Sect with nothing worse than a fright. Nine deaths, one life.

Once I was out, I smashed the pendant. In the time it took to blink a few times, several powerful immortal-sect disciples came flying from the horizon.

They forced a Breakthrough through the Hehuan Sect’s Restriction formations and pulled Guirui back from the jaws of death.

Guirui’s eyes turned a bestial red. Shrieking, she demanded that her senior brothers kill every last person in the Hehuan Sect.

Of course, she did not spare me either. I was curled in the corner, my features blank with terror.

Her features no longer played the pitiful supplicant and all the begging was gone; not a shred of gratitude remained in its place, nothing but humiliation and hatred, brimming over.

Then a ribbon wrought with iridescent light tumbled from her sleeve and wrapped tight around my neck.

Her mouth curled into a smile at once cruel and innocent. “What, you thought I would weep with gratitude and repay you a hundredfold?”

“Hah. A mortal as lowly as an ant. She took every one of those kowtows from me. Say it… shouldn’t you die?”

The air was rushing out of my chest. Reaching out, I seized her hem in a death grip. I would not accept this.

I was such a fool! I trusted her words so easily!

I had not only ruined myself. I had helped my parents’ killer wriggle out of her sea of suffering!

That iridescent ribbon in her hand became the nightmare that haunted me every night.

When she saw the refusal and burning hatred in my gaze, Guirui laughed, her eyes curving into a smile. “Honestly, if I hadn’t killed everyone in the Hehuan Sect, you would have spent your whole life under the crotches of those lechers. If anything, you should be thanking me.”

With that, her hand pulled tight, and the ribbon snapped my neck in an instant.

Reflected in my hollow pupils was her back as she ran, pitiful and pleading, toward her senior brothers for comfort.

I cannot accept this, I cannot accept it, and if I could live it over, I would make her beg to live and be refused, beg to die and be denied…

My consciousness frayed away. I never saw it coming: when my eyes opened once more, I was back on this very day, the day I brought Guirui her meal.

At my continued silence, venom glinted deep in Guirui’s eyes. She hid it away at once.

Clutching my skirt where she knelt, she looked up at me, the picture of pleading misery.

“Good sister, my Honored Master and my senior brothers all cherish me dearly. Save me, and you will have countless immortal herbs, spirit medicines, heavenly treasures; you will be remade, body and bone, and live a thousand years…”

Remade, body and bone?

A thousand years?

In the life before this one, the first thing she had done after her rescue was kill everyone, and the one who had saved her, me, she had killed with her own hands.

The very ribbon weapon that killed me had killed my parents six years before.

Now I hated her down to the bone; I wanted to skin her alive and tear out her sinews, to give my dead father and mother some peace in the beyond. Help her pass word? Never again.

She would not get off so easily, though.

Kill the body, break the spirit.

I would have her wait in full hope, and when the hope ripened, let her meet not the senior brothers who swept in to save her, but that monstrous, lecherous Elder Han, and let her fall into the bottomless hell covered in filth.

Hadn’t she said that a lowly mortal like me could not bear her kowtows?

And hadn’t she said that because she had killed everyone in the Hehuan Sect, I should weep with gratitude?

This time, without her massacring the Hehuan Sect, let us see where she would end up, and where I would.

Under her hopeful gaze, I clenched my fists and forced down the urge to draw my dagger and cut her throat.

Then I put on a show of frightened hesitation. “I want to help you, but… there are so many people outside, and I’m scared…”

“Don’t be afraid.” Guirui pressed the protective jade pendant into my palm the moment I softened.

“Don’t worry. My senior brothers all have deep Spiritual Energy and hearts full of mercy. They would never let anything happen to you.”

Liar. The flash of malice and impatience in her eyes had not escaped me.

The last time around, I had risked my life to smash her pendant for her. She had not even thanked me—she had killed me for the crime of making her kneel.

And when she killed me, her dear senior brothers had stood behind her, leering, enjoying the show, and had even complained that I had dirtied their precious silk ribbon.

Like attracts like. If Guirui was an ungrateful, venomous jackal, what did that say about the senior brothers who doted on her?

They called themselves the righteous path of the immortal sects, yet their deeds differed in no way from those of demonic cultivators and evil fiends.

A laugh rose inside me, all scorn.

I lowered my eyes. “Fine, I’ll help you, but there are a lot of formations out there, and I have no Spiritual Power, so I can’t guarantee I’ll get the pendant out, and if you wait and wait and no rescue ever comes, then I’m probably already dead…”

“But don’t worry, I’ll do everything I can.” With that I turned to go.

“Wait!” Just as expected, Guirui called me back.

If I died, there really would be no heaven to answer her and no earth to hear.

I turned back to find her face torn with hesitation, and after a long moment she reached into her left sleeve and, with the greatest reluctance, pulled out an iridescent silk ribbon. “This has strong defense against spell attacks. Take it, to keep yourself safe.”

When Elder Han sealed her Spiritual Energy, he had taken her Storage Pouch, and this, I thought, had to be her last safeguard.

But now it belonged to me.

I gave her a sidelong, not-quite-smiling glance and took the ribbon, my features lit with delight. “Wonderful, with this I’ll definitely get out safely. Miss, wait for me, I’m going.”

Seeing me so full of confidence, Guirui relaxed all over, visibly.

Disdain and contempt showed on her features despite her careful tone. “Good sister, you truly are kind, so be careful on the road, and remember, the pendant must be smashed outside the Hehuan Sect’s gates.”

Guirui understood it clearly. She had already beaten the grass and startled the snake.

Now the whole Hehuan Sect was laced with sense-sealing formations. If the pendant shattered inside one, her call for help would never get out.

She could wait no longer, for in three more shichen it would be the night of the full moon, and if her senior brothers had not come by then, that withered old man really would use her as a Cauldron.

“Take care of yourself. I’m going.”

I gripped the pendant tight and left quickly under Guirui’s tense, hopeful gaze.

Then I turned and went straight to Elder Han’s courtyard, and knocked on his door.

At this hour Elder Han was always cultivating, his withered face a map of wrinkles, his frame wrapped in a single grey robe.

He was a strange one, I had always thought: he could easily use arts to make himself young and handsome, yet he preferred to defile female cultivators in this decrepit form.

“Something you need?” The door opened by itself. Elder Han lifted his eyelids and leveled a cold look my way.

On ordinary days I stayed as far from him as I could. Today was the first time I had come to his door on purpose.

I swallowed and raised the pendant in both palms, trembling.

“That red-robed cultivator just now said she was a disciple of the Xuanyang Sect’s Sect Master, and she gave me this pendant, and told me to go outside the sect gates and smash it. I… I didn’t dare…”

“What?!”

Elder Han shot to his feet and drew the pendant to him with a flick of his hand, and when he saw its shape, the muscles in his face twitched against his will. “This… the one I captured was… her!?”

I put on a frightened look. “She must be someone very important. She said she had never suffered such humiliation in her life, and once her senior brothers came to rescue her, they would wash the Hehuan Sect in blood. And you especially, Elder Han… she would flay you and tear out your sinews, grind your Soul to dust, and never let you rest in death…”

I fanned the flames while I watched Elder Han’s face from the corner of my eye.

In a few breaths, his face went from shock to fear, and finally to the killing intent of a man with nothing left to lose.

I knew it. Before he learned Guirui’s identity, Elder Han might have kept her as a long-term Cauldron, but now, for the sake of his own life, he would never let her leave that dungeon alive.

Yet he might just as easily kill me, the one person who knew. I had to gamble once, because a mortal killing a cultivator outright was all but impossible.

And there was more to it than that; I touched the silk ribbon in my sleeve, and Guirui had been so reluctant to part with it that it had to be a Peak Grade Magic Treasure, and keeping me alive should be no trouble.

Elder Han slipped the protective jade pendant into a hidden compartment. He handled it with the greatest care, as if it might break.

Then his gaze settled on me again.

A black glow gathered in his palm, but he did not kill me on the spot, and instead he asked in a low, grim voice, “What do you think? How should I deal with that woman?”

I dropped to my knees with a thud, careful to look properly terrified: “She swore she would kill everyone in the Hehuan Sect, so I think… we have to cut her down at the roots. Fast.”

The Hehuan Sect’s Restriction formations were strong, yes, but one had to guard against the one-in-ten-thousand chance.

Guirui was the Sect Master of Xuanyang’s disciple, with several senior brothers who doted on her to the bone, so a short absence they might tolerate, but if she stayed missing too long, the Xuanyang Sect would move heaven and earth to find her.

The cultivation world had no shortage of secret arts, and tracking down a single person was as easy as turning over one’s hand.

Though I wished for nothing more than to make her suffer every day of her life, begging to die and denied, the safest course was still to kill her quickly.

Elder Han squinted at me for a while. A chuckle rose in his throat, meaning nothing I could read. “Ruthless, and no fuss. All these years you seemed so meek and obedient, and I never took you for one of my own kind.”

As he spoke, the black glow faded from his hand.

I let out a breath. That time, I knew I was safe.

In Elder Han’s eyes, a meek, obedient mortal could be killed at any time, but a peer, deep-minded and ruthless, was worth keeping close for a while, if only for amusement.

Whatever he thought, I had to finish the play. “Dong’er grew up in the Hehuan Sect from the time I was small, and I have long treated it as my home, so I could never be so black-hearted as to help her destroy the Hehuan Sect.”

“Quite the sensible girl.”

With countless vile deeds behind him, Elder Han had still lived safely for hundreds of years, so he naturally had a few tricks of his own to rely on. He waved a hand. “You may go. I have my own plans for that woman.”

The surest course now was to kill Guirui outright and destroy both body and Soul.

But she happened to be a Peak Grade Cauldron, and a few rounds of Dual Cultivation with her would raise his Cultivation Base by a great span, so killing her just like that would have been a waste.

I could see his hesitation, but I was only a mortal with no say in the matter, so there was nothing I could do but obey and leave.

At any rate, under Elder Han’s hand Guirui would not meet a good end, and even if she lived, she would lose a layer of skin.

If it came to it, I would strangle her myself with the ribbon.

A mortal killing a cultivator was no easy thing, but that ribbon was still a Magic Treasure. It should be able to kill her.

“Wait.”

I had just pulled the wooden door shut when Elder Han’s cold voice drifted out of the room. “Come. Go with me to see that woman.”

What had made him change his mind, I could not tell, so all I could do was answer obediently, “Yes.”

In that earlier life, because of my meddling, Elder Han, who had known nothing of the danger coming for him, had been ground bone and soul to dust by Guirui’s senior brothers.

This time, with my warning, he had naturally started taking the matter seriously.

Down in the dungeon he found Guirui curled into a ball, and with one hand he lifted her clean off the ground by the throat to face him.

With his other hand he stroked her smooth cheek. “So it is you, that renowned junior sister of the Xuanyang Sect.”

The instant she saw me standing expressionless behind Elder Han, Guirui understood at once what I had done.

Her bloodshot eyes fixed on me with pure venom, as if she wanted to cut me into a thousand pieces and drink the pieces down.

“You bitch! You lowly mortal, how dare you betray me?!”

That’s right.

And what are you going to do about it?

I looked at her furious features and tilted my head, all innocence.

“Betray you? Miss, that’s a funny thing to say. I belong to the Hehuan Sect. Why would I help an outsider scheme against my own family?”

“Besides…”

I looked her up and down, taking in her wretched state, and snorted. “You’re also a barefaced liar, and to get out of here you even had the nerve to claim you were the Sect Master of Xuanyang’s disciple.”

“I’m not a liar! My master really is the Sect Master of Xuanyang!” Guirui howled.

I shrugged and spread my hands. “Oh? Is that so?”

She had been spoiled past all reason by her master and senior brothers, and even now she neither softened nor yielded, her face twisting with cruelty as she started shrieking threats.

“I’m warning you, you’d better let me go right now, or once I get out I’ll have my senior brothers wash the Hehuan Sect in blood; they’ll cut you into pieces, burn your souls in yang fire, and leave you unable to live and unable to die!!”

She said all this with Elder Han’s hand still around her throat. I laughed before I could stop myself.

He had already meant to kill her, and after that burst of threats I was completely certain that not even a shred of her soul would survive.

My warning, and the words I had used to provoke her on purpose, had worked. She had lost her composure.

Which was exactly what I wanted.

Perhaps it was my laughter that jolted her; Guirui snapped back to herself and realized, too late, what a stupid thing she had just said, and her face went white.

But quickly she reached up and tugged carefully at Elder Han’s sleeve, tears trembling in her eyes. “Elder, those were just ravings; let me go, and I swear that once I’m back I will thank you and reward you generously.”

But how could such clumsy acting deceive a man as sinister and cunning as Elder Han?

Elder Han gave a cold smile and threw her to the ground. “If you were any other sect master’s disciple, I might have thought twice and let you go. But you are the Sect Master of Xuanyang’s disciple, and for that, I’m sorry to say—you’re dead.”

Guirui’s eyes went wide with terror. “On… on what grounds?”

Elder Han snorted. “Everyone knows you are the Xuanyang Sect’s treasured darling, a weakness no one there dares touch. Your eldest senior sister merely wounded you by accident in a sect tournament, and she was sentenced to a full hundred lashes of the demonic whip. Later still, her Ice Spirit Root was dug out and given to you, and she was left a complete waste.”

“If they would treat their own like that, and I let you go back like a fool, do you think I’d keep my life?”

Guirui was struck dumb. She could not find a word of protest.

She had only meant to boast to the world how much her master and senior brothers loved her, and she had never expected to cut off her own last road out.

All she could do was shake her head wildly. “No, that’s not it, that lowly woman… my eldest senior sister gave it to me willingly…”

Seeing her so shattered, I knew Elder Han had not been lying.

In a flash, it all made sense.

No wonder that, with a Peak Grade Ice Spirit Root of her own, her Cultivation Base had stayed pathetically low.

In a fight her moves were all show, nothing but Magic Treasures pulled from her Storage Pouch and thrown at random.

Then she had cut out her own eldest senior sister’s Peak Grade Ice Spirit Root and had it transplanted into herself.

Hah. Then she deserved to die all the more.

Elder Han saw no point in wasting more words on her; he seized her chin and forced a crimson-red pill toward her mouth.

Guirui was no fool, and she knew a medicinal pill like that could be nothing good, so she struggled against her bonds and crawled toward the corner on hands and knees.

A second later, Elder Han had her stopped.

“What are you doing? Get away! I won’t take it!”

Elder Han’s voice was hoarse. “You don’t get a say.”

Guirui had never been a match for Elder Han, and now her Spiritual Energy was sealed on top of it, so she could only watch, powerless, as he pushed the red pill into her mouth and forced her to swallow.

The pill had barely touched her stomach when her whole body went limp, and she collapsed on the floor right there with her eyes finding mine, hating and unrelenting.

I frowned.

I didn’t understand.

I was genuinely shocked.

Wait. Why was it me she hated most?

I had informed on her and toyed with her, yes.

But it was Elder Han who had kidnapped her, Elder Han who had sealed her Spiritual Energy and fed her the pill, and Elder Han who would be the one to defile her in a moment.

So why didn’t she hate Elder Han?

I thought about it, and this had to be the classic case of bullying the soft and fearing the hard.

Next to a ruthless evil cultivator, an ordinary mortal like me was obviously the easier target.

After all, if she dumped her hate on me, the most it would earn her was a moment of my anger.

But provoke Elder Han, and she would only be tortured worse, hurt worse.

Before long Guirui’s face flushed deep red, her body curled in tight, and she wept in low, muffled sounds.

Elder Han did not turn his head. “You. Get out.”

Guirui’s head jerked up. She looked at me in terrified supplication. “No, don’t go. Save me…”

She knew exactly how terrible the coming thing was.

I looked straight through her and murmured, “Yes. Dong’er takes her leave.”

The corner of my mouth curled into a smile of pure satisfaction, and I turned and left without a backward look.

In the dungeon below, Guirui screamed on and on, and to my ears it sounded like the most beautiful music in the world.

In my previous life my saintly heart had overflowed; I had risked my life to pass on her call for help and barely saved both her purity and her life.

Only at the moment of my death had I learned that she was the true killer of my parents.

More tragic still, all three of us in the family had died by her hand.

So a villain like her did not deserve to be saved by me; she deserved to rot in hell forever, never to climb out no matter how she begged.

For several days running, Elder Han stayed down in the dungeon and never came out.

I had the sense not to disturb him again.

Instead I bustled about the Sect, sifting the Hehuan Sect disciples’ idle gossip for word of the outside.

Guirui’s senior brothers were not people to be trifled with, since a twitch of one finger could grind a mortal to paste, so I had to be ready to run at any moment.

Elder Han, that lecherous bastard, could die for all I cared. I had no wish to be buried alongside the Hehuan Sect for no reason.

As for who else lived or died, that had nothing to do with me; I was a mortal, and keeping my own life intact was already no small feat.

In the dining hall I was scrubbing tables for all I was worth, while my attention was long since hooked by two people gossiping in the corner.

A disciple in pink waved his folding fan and sighed. “Take the Xuanyang Sect. Senile, the lot of them. A bright pearl sits right there and they ignore it, while they cradle a fish’s eye and call it a treasure…”

The man across from him was shoveling in rice. “What do you mean?”

The pink-robed man snorted. “You know Shen Qingshuang? The Sect Master’s first disciple, the one with the extraordinary talent? What a dazzling, proud beauty she was. Now she’s been tortured until every meridian is broken and both eyes are blind, a useless wreck that anyone can kick.”

“Those junior brothers she raised with such care, all to appease the little junior sister who stormed out, have hung Shen Qingshuang over the Endless Abyss for two days and two nights. They say they’ll let her down when the junior sister cools off and comes back. Tsk. Poor little thing…”

“No way. The Endless Abyss is nothing but baleful qi. Last time I stayed near it for a little while and I felt awful, never mind hanging someone over it for two days and nights. Are they trying to kill her?” His companion gaped.

“That’s brutal…”

Their talk went on, but my heart was pounding fit to burst.

If I was not mistaken, the Shen Qingshuang they spoke of had to be the eldest senior sister whose Ice Spirit Root Guirui had cut out.

For some reason, a fierce want rose up in me: I would save her.

I was only a mortal, though, and whether I could withstand the baleful qi they spoke of, I did not know.

And so I started bringing food to the dungeon.

The first time, I saw Guirui lying on her back on the stone bed with nothing over her but a thin veil, and there was barely an unhurt patch of skin left on her, her arms twisted at unnatural angles and her swollen cheeks wet with tears.

It might have been my imagination, but she seemed to have aged more than ten years, her eyes dull and scattered.

Elder Han sat cross-legged beside her in meditation, his face all satiation and excitement.

When he saw me come in uninvited, his brows knit tight. “Who said you could come in? Scram!”

I stumbled back a step in fright and lifted the lunch box in my hands. “I came to bring her food; I was afraid she’d starve.”

“Not needed. Get out!”

“Yes.” I withdrew, embarrassed.

The second time, I carried in a bucket of water and said I had come to wash Guirui.

Elder Han, in the middle of his sport, blasted me across the room with a stroke of black light, then set a defensive Formation over the dungeon entrance.

A good while passed before I picked myself up off the floor and ran back to my little bamboo hut.

I loosened my outer robe, revealing the silk ribbon wound around my torso. Elder Han’s strike had left me without a scratch, without the least discomfort.

It really was a fine Magic Treasure.

With a plan forming in my mind, that night I slipped out during a lapse in the patrols, by the same route I had used in my previous life.

I had seen Guirui’s wretched fate with my own eyes, and she was already in a state where she begged to live and was refused, begged to die and was denied.

The old lecher had gone this far, and he knew she was the Xuanyang Sect’s most cherished junior sister. He would never let her live.

At a time like this, I naturally had to make plans for myself.

That Guirui’s senior brothers had hung Shen Qingshuang over the Endless Abyss meant they had already realized they could no longer reach Guirui.

For now they might still think their little junior sister was sulking and hiding on purpose.

But in a few more days, they were bound to notice something wrong.

For me, the Hehuan Sect had become a place of extreme danger.

Three days later, I had disguised myself as an unremarkable little beggar.

By asking for gossip all along the road, I made my way to the Endless Abyss.

And there I saw her, the Xuanyang Sect’s Sect Master’s first disciple, Shen Qingshuang.

The grim clifftop was empty of people. Only one thin, lonely figure hung from a branch by a hemp rope.

Her blue robes were soaked through with blood and savage wounds ringed her wrists and ankles, so that if her chest had not still risen and fallen a little, I would have taken her for dead.

Looking at her, cut and bruised all over, my heart gave an involuntary twist. It had to hurt so much.

Luckily these years of rough labor in the Hehuan Sect had put strength in my arms, and I got her down with nothing worse than a fright.

Before I could catch my breath, a roar erupted behind me. “Insolent! Who gave you permission to cut her down?!”

My heart lurched. I whipped around to see a handsome young man glowering at me, his long sword already flying at me without a word.

The killing intent came at me from every side. My face drained of color.

In the instant I was sure I would die, Shen Qingshuang in my arms came awake, locked her arms around my waist, and threw the two of us off the cliff.

My body plummeted, the world around me pitch black, and regret crashed over me: this damn saintly heart of mine, how many deaths will it take to cure it?!

Before I blacked out, I heard a voice at my ear, faint to the point of nothing. “Don’t be afraid…”

And from above, a howl that tore the heart out of my chest. “Senior Sister!!”

When my eyes opened again, I was lying in a cave.

A campfire burned beside me. Shen Qingshuang was nowhere in sight.

I picked my way carefully to the mouth of the cave, and the land outside was desolate and ruined, everything my eyes reached dark and blood-red, and the wind carried endless shrieks and wails.

Not far off, at the eye of the storm, Shen Qingshuang sat cross-legged while crimson dark light poured into her from every direction, so fast it was visible to the naked eye.

I watched for a long while before it dawned on me that she was probably cultivating.

And so she was.

A long time passed before Shen Qingshuang returned to the cave, her wounds healed without a trace but her face bloodless, and she still wore that shredded, blood-soaked robe, her hair held by a plain white hairpin.

What had changed was the presence clinging to her now: something sinister and violent.

A black cloth covered her eyes, yet she found me unerringly, and she ruffled my hair and said, her voice bitter, “I’m sorry; I’m the one who brought ruin on your family.”

What did that mean?

I stared at her, at a loss.

“Back then, Guirui, my junior sister, slipped me a Spirit-Dispersing Powder. With my Spiritual Energy gone, she dumped me in a den of beggars. If your father and mother hadn’t happened to pass by and take me in, I…”

She paused there, then went on. “I came through it unharmed, and Guirui started to hate your parents for it. When I was badly wounded and locked away in the forbidden grounds, she came to boast to me about how she had killed my saviors, and how she had burned them to ash…”

The words hit me like a weight on the chest. I could barely breathe.

So Guirui had killed my parents only because they had ruined her plot against Shen Qingshuang?

But…

“How did you know they were my parents?”

In all my memories, I had never seen her before.

“This.”

Shen Qingshuang pointed at the red jade hanging at my neck. “I gave it to your parents; it can take a Nascent Soul cultivator’s full-force strike. I thought I could keep them safe… I was too useless…”

My heart jumped, and in a haze I remembered that one night as a child, deep asleep, my mother had hung a warm-glowing jade pendant around my neck.

Her lips had moved the whole time, a string of blessings: long life and a hundred years, no evil to touch you…

So that was when my family’s fate had already been written.

“Thank goodness. Thank goodness this time I kept you safe. Otherwise, in the nine springs below, I wouldn’t know how to face your parents.”

While I was still digesting this flood of truth, Shen Qingshuang pulled me into a fierce hug.

“Wait for me. When I’m strong enough, we’ll go out and take our revenge.”

Her body trembled, as if in unbearable pain. My eyes stung. “All right.”

I knew my parents’ deaths were not Shen Qingshuang’s fault; my father and mother were kind by nature, and whoever it had been, they would have stepped in to save them.

The blame fell on that madwoman Guirui. Her own plot had failed, and she had turned her hand on mortals with no power to resist!

What kind of Righteous Path was this?!

Deep down, my hatred for Guirui deepened another degree.

Over the next full year, Shen Qingshuang brought me fruit and game from time to time, and spent every other moment without sleep or rest, drawing in baleful qi.

I did not know how she cultivated with her Spirit Root gone, but I could feel the power growing in her, full of violence and cruelty.

More than once I mistook her for a vengeful ghost come back from hell.

But I was never afraid. I simply knew, with a certainty I could not explain, that she would never hurt me.

Time flashed by.

When I came out into the world again, everything felt unreal.

The Hehuan Sect had become a field of ruins, and the Xuanyang Sect had, after all, tracked down where Guirui was.

Elder Han had probably died too, not even ash left of him. Served him right.

I only wondered what had become of Guirui now.

“Are we going to the Xuanyang Sect?” I tugged at the sleeve of the person beside me.

Over that year, I had come to understand, bit by bit, what kind of life Shen Qingshuang had lived inside the Xuanyang Sect.

Ever since Guirui became the junior sister, Shen Qingshuang had been framed and despised, and the junior brothers she had raised with such love had shattered her Golden Core and dug out her Spirit Root.

Beatings with the demonic whip for any cause. Imprisonment in frozen caves. Words used as knives.

That place had been her nightmare.

“Of course we’re going,” Shen Qingshuang said, ruffling my hair. “Didn’t Little Dong’er say it? A debt of vengeance gets repaid, a wrong gets righted, and a person can’t live all curled up small.”

“But that will be a hard fight. Your mortal body can’t withstand it, so wait here for me to come back, all right?”

I nodded obediently and agreed.

I knew my limits. A mortal with zero fighting power like me would only get in Shen Qingshuang’s way over there.

In a spell battle between cultivators, one careless move and there would be no coming back for either of us, and I did not want to distract her.

I was content enough already.

How many ordinary families had a loved one “accidentally” killed in a spell battle between cultivators, with nowhere to lodge a complaint, and had to swallow their broken teeth?

At least I had already ruined Guirui once, on my own, and now I had the backing of my amazing, amazing Sister Qingshuang, the strongest of them all.

I went back to the little bamboo hut where I used to live.

It sat in a remote corner and the damage was light, so staying there a few days was no problem at all.

After spending half a day cleaning the place up, I sat by the window and looked in the direction of the Xuanyang Sect.

In my heart I prayed for Sister Qingshuang. She had to win. She was sure to win.

I waited a full three days.

I was on the verge of giving up and going to the Xuanyang Sect to find out what had happened, when a shape stirred in the white mist ahead of me, coming my way.

Only when she came closer did I see it was Sister Qingshuang. She held a sharp sword, and blood was dripping from it, drop by drop.

She saw me and stopped, gave me a gentle smile, then sat down under the eaves, took out a white cloth, and carefully wiped the blade.

I hurried over. “Sister Qingshuang, did you win?”

Her face was calm, as if she were mentioning something trivial. “Mm. I shattered the second junior brother’s Golden Core.”

My eyes went wide.

“I dug out the third junior brother’s Peak Grade Spirit Root.”

I sucked in a sharp breath.

“I cut every meridian in the fourth junior brother’s body.”

I swallowed hard.

“And…” Sister Qingshuang said with a light laugh, “I gave the Sect Master a thousand lashes of the demonic whip and stabbed out his eyes.”

“Ah!” I cried out.

Sister Qingshuang’s hands went still, and she asked, hesitant, “Dong’er, do you think I’m being cruel? But I didn’t kill them… I only paid them back in their own coin.”

“No, no.”

I waved my hands frantically, beside myself with excitement. “Sister Qingshuang, you’re so cool, so amazing!! I worship you!!”

The move was perfect.

Killing them would only have set them free, and ruining them was the better revenge; the fall from power and status would torment them day and night, and there would be nothing they could do.

For men who had once been the pride of heaven, it was the deadliest blow of all.

Shen Qingshuang stared, stunned, then burst out laughing.

“Thank you, Dong’er.”

“Oh, and I brought someone back for you. I thought it better to let you decide what to do with her.”

As she spoke, she flicked a hand, and a woman no longer in human shape tumbled to the ground with a thud.

I looked closely. It was Guirui.

She was in rags now, her hair wild, struggling on the ground; she looked decades older, and the lofty, lively air she had had when I first saw her was long gone.

So she had not died after all, then, but from the state of her now, her days after being rescued could not have been pleasant.

The moment she recognized me, a violent hate blazed up in her eyes. “Bitch!! Bitch!! This is all your fault!!”

Annoyed, I squinted at her, then kicked her hard in the chest, and her face went white at once, so that she could not even make a sound of pain.

“Let me think. Should I dump you in the beggars’ nest, or send you off to the western paradise?” I pulled the iridescent silk ribbon from my sleeve and shook it in front of her eyes.

This was the thing that had killed my parents, and killed me in my last life.

“No… spare me. I know I was wrong… I never had any quarrel with you… spare my life…” Fear filled Guirui’s eyes, and she switched at once to begging.

Never mind the pain in her body. She dropped to the ground and kowtowed with loud thuds.

In a way I had to admire her, for her will to live was formidable: she herself was crippled, and the senior brothers who “loved” her were crippled or broken in turn.

She knew perfectly well I would never let her go, yet she still begged, humbly, for that slimmest chance to survive.

But I wanted her dead.

Under her terrified gaze, I wound the ribbon she had cherished most around her neck, turn after turn.

Then I pulled tight with both hands.

I felt her struggles grow weaker and weaker, until she no longer moved, and the stifling grief that had sat on my chest for so many years lifted all at once.

Father, Mother, your daughter has avenged you. Rest in peace in the beyond.

Once everything was settled, Sister Qingshuang took my hand and led me out of the little bamboo hut.

On the road, she suddenly stopped and turned to me, her face grave. “Little Dong’er, do you want to become a cultivator?”

My eyes lit up, then dimmed again. I said bitterly, “I don’t have a Spirit Root. Not the least bit of one.”

Everyone longs for a mighty Cultivation Base, for the power to soar through the skies and slip through the earth, but I was only an ordinary woman of the Mortal World, the most ordinary kind there was.

“Look. What’s this?”

Shen Qingshuang suddenly took out a box and opened it, and wisps of cold air came drifting out from inside.

I stared in astonishment. “Yours… your Peak Grade Ice Spirit Root?”

“Mm.” Shen Qingshuang nodded. “I dug it out of Guirui’s body. It was mine to begin with.”

“It’s only that my constitution has long since been changed by baleful qi, and I can no longer cultivate ice-based techniques, so I thought… I would transplant it into you.”

What?! I hadn’t misheard! Did that mean I would be able to cultivate from now on, too?

Soar through the skies, travel by sword flight, roam the whole world as I pleased!

My poor little heart began pounding again.

“Little Dong’er, I don’t want to sit here decades from now and watch you grow old and die before my eyes. Stay by my side forever, won’t you?” There was pain in Shen Qingshuang’s eyes.

Too much lost in this life, too much hurt, and this time she meant to keep the person who mattered most to her.

“But once you become a cultivator, you will face day after day of tedious cultivation, one perilous struggle after another, and you will leave that peaceful, quiet life of yours behind for good…”

I threw myself into Sister Qingshuang’s arms and planted a loud kiss on her fair, gorgeous face.

“I’m not afraid! From now on, we two sisters will stay together forever; we’ll travel the whole cultivation continent, taste every delicacy in the world, and see all there is to see…”

This time, both of us are going to live well.