The moment Shen Yun Yuan opened her eyes, she found herself facing a sea of flames.
Towering fire illuminated the entire night. The sect she had once known so well had been swallowed by raging flames, while heart-wrenching cries rang out through the billowing smoke surrounding her.
Feeling something sticky beneath her feet, Shen Yun Yuan lowered her head and saw that she was not standing on soil, but in a sea of blood already soaked through with it.
The overwhelming stench of blood rushed into her head, making her feel sick.
Then, with a loud bang, a figure was violently thrown down directly in front of her.
When she saw the face of the man lying on the ground, her pupils suddenly contracted, and she cried out in shock:
“Elder Brother!”
She rushed over and knelt on the ground. Looking at the man whose entire body was covered in mangled flesh and blood, she reached out with trembling hands and touched the bloody hole in his chest.
The blood gushed out without stopping, instantly soaking both her hands and her clothes.
At that moment, she noticed the black figure standing atop a stone lantern not far away.
The person stood with his back to her, his hands behind him. In his other hand, he held a bloodstained sword. Fresh blood dripped from the cold blade into the sea of blood below, splashing up tiny ripples in circles.
Countless corpses of Qingxuan Sect disciples lay at his feet.
Shen Yun Yuan’s pupils abruptly contracted. Realizing that this person was the culprit who had killed her elder brother and destroyed Qingxuan Sect, she was just about to get up when the person standing atop the stone lantern turned his head, revealing an exceptionally handsome face.
When she saw that familiar face clearly, her movements suddenly froze. An expression of utter shock appeared on her pale, delicate features.
“A… A-Zhao?!”
Looking at the familiar face before her, Shen Yun Yuan asked in disbelief.
When her eyes met the man’s cold gaze, she quickly realized that the man before her was indeed Xie Zhao—but he was not the Xie Zhao she knew.
The Xie Zhao she knew was still a sixteen-year-old boy, whereas the man before her, though his features resembled Xie Zhao’s, looked much more like the grown-up version of him.
His already beautiful features had become even more handsome and mature now that he had fully grown.
That face was still the same face she knew, but the coldness in his eyes was something she had never seen before.
Xie Zhao had always been gentle and pure-hearted. He had never looked at her with such an expression.
This… was not him!
“He deserves to die.” The man looked down at her from above, his cold eyes filled with disdain. His voice was dark and chilling. “As for you—you deserve to die even more!”
As soon as he finished speaking, accompanied by a fierce burst of sword aura, he pointed the still-dripping sword at her.
Shen Yun Yuan was knocked backward onto the ground. The sharp blade pierced through the palm she had raised in an attempt to block it, cutting across her hand as winding streams of blood instantly flowed between her fingers.
Clutching the blade that had come within barely half a finger’s breadth of piercing her throat, Shen Yun Yuan’s eyes reddened. Tears poured down, soaking her pale face as she questioned him:
“Why? A-Zhao, why did you do this?”
The man looked down at her, his gaze cold and unfamiliar.
“Because your father, Shen Xuanqing, knew that I possessed a Pure Spiritual Body of the Dragon Clan, and that my blood was the best medicine for treating your damaged spiritual meridians. So he killed my parents and abducted me into Qingxuan Sect, making me acknowledge the murderer of my parents as my father!”
Hearing the words that came from the man’s mouth, Shen Yun Yuan shook her head in horror.
“No… That’s impossible. Father isn’t that kind of person. He brought you into the sect, nurtured you with all his heart, and treated you as his own. How could he…”
“Nurtured me with all his heart? Treated me as his own?”
The man nearly laughed aloud at her words, and his tone grew even colder.
“Shen Yun Yuan, there should be a limit to your naivety. Don’t tell me you actually thought I truly liked you!
“If your father hadn’t used my blood every day to make medicine for repairing your damaged spiritual meridians, and if our spiritual blood hadn’t been drawn to each other, how could I have developed feelings for you and fallen in love with you?”
“Your father deserves to die! And you… you worthless wretch who relied on my spiritual blood to repair your meridians and barely stay alive in this world—you deserve to die even more!”
The instant he finished speaking, the man gave her no chance to explain herself. He plunged his sword into her heart.
With a wet splurt and searing pain in her chest, the last thing Shen Yun Yuan saw before she died was the man’s cold, frigid gaze…
…
“No… Don’t!”
“Don’t!”
Shen Yun Yuan suddenly opened her eyes and bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath as she tightly clutched the fabric over her chest.
Cold sweat covered her face, and she looked as though she had just walked through hell.
Although her chest was completely unharmed, the pain of the blade tearing through her flesh and plunging into her heart seemed to have lingered, refusing to fade.
Her maid, Chu Yue, came in after hearing the sound. Seeing the girl sitting on the bed with a pale face and cold sweat on her forehead, she asked worriedly, “What’s wrong, Miss? Are you feeling unwell?”
Shen Yun Yuan’s face was pale. It was only when she met Chu Yue’s concerned gaze and saw the familiar sleeping chamber around her that she realized the scene just now had been a dream.
“I had a nightmare.”
“It must have been an extremely frightening nightmare for you to sweat so much, Miss.” As she spoke, Chu Yue hurriedly went to fetch a clean handkerchief.
Shen Yun Yuan let Chu Yue wipe the sweat from her face with the silk handkerchief.
Even though Chu Yue had been serving the girl for several years, every time she saw that face, she still could not help being dazzled by its beauty.
The girl had a pair of eyes that seemed filled with feeling, like autumn waters rippling with waves. Her complexion was somewhat excessively pale, while her loose black hair fell over her shoulders, making her appear even more fragile and eliciting sympathy.
Although she was wearing nothing more than a thin sleeping robe, it still could not conceal the girl’s breathtaking beauty.
Chu Yue said, “I’ll brew some calming tea for you later to help settle your nerves.”
“Mm.”
Shen Yun Yuan nodded. Although she had told Chu Yue that she had merely suffered a nightmare, she knew that it had not been a dream.
Shen Yun Yuan was not from this era. She had come from the modern world of the twenty-first century.
On her sixteenth birthday, she had been on her way to school when she rescued a small child. She had accidentally been dragged beneath a large truck and died on the spot.
When she opened her eyes again, she discovered that she had arrived in the cultivation world. She had gone from being Shen Yun Yuan, a high school student, to Shen Yun Yuan, the daughter of the master of Qingxuan Sect.
Although this body had been born with damaged spiritual meridians and poor health, she had relied on it to grow from one year old to nineteen. She had gained a new identity, family, friends—in short, an entirely new life.
Shen Yun Yuan had originally thought that Heaven had granted her a second life because she had died saving someone in her previous life.
But it was only after that dream just now that she learned she had not been reincarnated into the cultivation world. Instead, she had entered a novel and become the male protagonist’s white moonlight who was destined to die young.
The male protagonist, Xie Zhao, was a descendant of the Dragon Clan and possessed a Pure Spiritual Body by birth, making him extraordinarily precious. When he was six years old, his parents were murdered, and he was rescued and brought into Qingxuan Sect.
The person who rescued him was precisely the culprit who had killed his parents. That person’s purpose was to use the Dragon Clan spiritual blood within his body to treat his young daughter’s damaged spiritual meridians.
That person was none other than Shen Yun Yuan’s now-deceased father, Shen Xuanqing, the former master of Qingxuan Sect.
In the original story, the reason Xie Zhao liked her was entirely because his spiritual blood was present within her body.
Once the true female protagonist appeared—the one who was truly compatible with him—and he learned the entire truth, he would pin Shen Yun Yuan into the mud without hesitation, destroy Qingxuan Sect, and then run her through with a single sword thrust!