Early morning.
Fenjing Feng, the highest immortal residence of Qingyun Zong, was perpetually filled with the chirping of immortal cranes and surrounded by auspicious clouds. It possessed a few more degrees of cold, ethereal grace than the other three peaks.
Ming Yueyi returned and handed her jade token to the disciples at the mountain gate. While waiting for her mission record to be cleared, she couldn’t help but look down and sniff the scent on her body.
The smell of snake demon blood.
The snakes in Baihua Gu would begin their rut as soon as spring arrived. Once stained with snake blood, no matter how much one washed, they would always feel as though they were radiating a cold, fishy scent of heat.
Ming Yueyi couldn’t stand the smell. Dragging her exhausted body, she intended to go back and clean off the snake venom first.
Upon returning to her cave dwelling, she added a few drops of odor-removing Linxing Flower juice to the bath. She shed her blood-stained clothes and stepped naked into the pool.
The fatigue of several consecutive days finally eased slightly in the hot water. Ming Yueyi leaned her head back against the edge of the pool, opening her eyes amidst the swirling mist to look at the two words carved onto the ceiling.
Home.
Unlike the complex script commonly used in the cultivation world, these words were as simple as a hand-drawn formation pattern.
Though the two words were simple, she was the only person in this world who recognized them.
Ming Yueyi had always kept secrets that no one knew.
First, on the day she began practicing Wuqing Dao, she had decisively severed her threads of emotion to ensure her path remained unobstructed.
Second, she was not of this world, and the world before her was not real. It was merely a novel she had happened to finish reading just before transmigrating into it.
The book was titled The Senior Brother’s Immortal Path, a male-oriented cultivation novel told from the perspective of the protagonist, He Wujiu.
As for her, Ming Yueyi, she was the cannon fodder junior sister who was sacrificed for the sword—Jijian—during He Wujiu’s early years of practicing Wuqing Dao at the sect.
When she first learned that she was merely a stepping stone on the protagonist’s path to success, she tried to struggle several times. But each time ended in failure, returning her once again to the very day she first transmigrated: the day her master took her in as a disciple and she became the male lead’s junior sister.
The first time she transmigrated, she knew nothing and followed the plot. She was taken in by the master, met the male lead, and was sacrificed for the sword.
The second time, having been reborn after death, she took it as a lesson. she avoided being taken in as a disciple by that master. Yet, within a few days of wandering a world overrun by demons, she was nearly devoured—bones and all—by a great demon. On the way to being rescued by the male lead, she successfully achieved her Jijian sacrifice.
The third time, she decisively severed her emotions and devoted herself entirely to the Dao. She avoided the master she was originally supposed to follow and instead became the disciple of another master who was not a sword cultivator.
To her surprise, her senior brother was still the male lead.
She was sacrificed for the sword.
The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh time… To this day, it was now her tenth rebirth.
The constant cycle of being sacrificed and reborn over the previous nine lives felt like an demonic curse—inescapable and unbreakable.
Fortunately, each death and rebirth wasn’t in vain. She had roughly figured out the cause and how to avoid the cycle repeating.
Ming Yueyi leaned against the edge of the pool, carefully calculating the events that had occurred several times recently. On the surface, things seemed no different from previous cycles, but in reality, subtle changes had already taken place.
In her previous lives, there was a junior sister who had always been jealous of her. During a recent trial in an illusion realm, Ming Yueyi had not only secretly saved her but also spent half a year trying to win her over despite the girl’s coldness. Though the junior sister remained lukewarm and occasionally mocked her, things had changed.
Ever since the junior sister accidentally saw Ming Yueyi saving her in the illusion realm through a Liuying Ball that Ming Yueyi had “carelessly” dropped, she no longer treated her as she had before.
This time, hearing that her mission was to clear snake demons from Baihua Gu, the junior sister had even sent a Wenhou Xianhe out of concern.
There were many other countless small matters. Though the changes weren’t grand, they were indeed changes.
Since many things could be influenced through subtle shifts, she thought that the ending of the Jijian sacrifice could also be changed.
So now, as long as the male lead died, she could become a god and leap beyond the rules of Tiandao.
Ming Yueyi kept her eyes lowered, mentally counting the recent changes, failing to notice that the tightly closed window had been pushed open a crack by something.
Several small white snakes slithered in from outside, spreading out like shadows lengthened by the spring morning.
The snakes’ slender bodies glided from the window into the blue and white silk dress that had been tossed haphazardly by the pool, still stained with snake blood.
Blood…
The blood of a snake in heat.
The little white snakes squirmed within the silk dress, their red eyes gradually narrowing. However, they were not obsessed with the scent of snake blood; instead, they passed directly through the clothing like invisible drops of water and flowed into the pool.
Ming Yueyi had finally finished calculating the recent events. Just as she intended to wait for the fishy smell of snake blood to dissipate before going to find He Wujiu, she suddenly sensed a gaze falling upon her.
That gaze was gloomy and cloying, as if it had transformed into physical hands, feverishly stroking every inch of her body.
It was so strange that even while soaking in the water, she broke out in chills.
That gaze again.
After emerging from Baihua Gu, she constantly had this peculiar delusion, as if she were being watched by something invisible.
Ming Yueyi’s gaze sharpened. Without a second thought, she summoned her sword from the rack and swung it indiscriminately at her surroundings.
The sword moved like a long shadow. Soon, many snakes that had been sliced into several segments fell from the curtains, the ceiling, the chairs, and the corners.
Looking at the snakes on the ground, Ming Yueyi frowned.
Where did these snakes come from?
She remembered that although her cave dwelling was near the purple bamboo forest, she had set up a boundary; snakes, insects, and beasts shouldn’t be able to enter at all.
Could it be… Hiss!
Ming Yueyi suddenly gasped. She abruptly looked down through the white mist on the water’s surface and saw a snowy-white snake, thin as a thread, coiling around the top of her thigh.
The snake, which had slipped into the water from who-knows-where, was flicking its tongue, licking her skin along with the water.
Seeing the snake made her skin crawl. She hurriedly reached out to grab it, her hand clamping down on its seven-inch mark to pull it out of the water, but the snake’s tail constricted tightly around the soft flesh of her thigh.
She loathed these boneless, slimy, cold creatures. Seeing that she couldn’t pull it off, she directly sliced the snake coiled around her thigh into two pieces.
But even though the snake’s body was severed, the section of the tail remained tightly wound around her leg, clinging so lingeringly it was as if it intended to slowly squeeze the life out of her.
Ming Yueyi tossed the snake’s head onto the side of the pool and, with an unmoved brow, severed the remaining tail.
After dealing with the snakes, she rose from the water, put on the dress draped over the screen, walked to the window, and pushed it open to look outside.
No boundary.
Because she had returned in a hurry and was only focused on washing off the snake blood, she hadn’t noticed that the previously established boundary had loosened.
No wonder snakes had crawled in; they likely smelled the snake blood.
Ming Yueyi formed a hand seal to set up a new boundary, then turned to look at the mess in the room, rubbing her forehead in a headache.
Although these unintelligent snakes didn’t have as strong a scent as the rutting snake demons in Baihua Gu, the presence of snake carcasses everywhere was still disgusting.
Fortunately, she had just returned from Baihua Gu and still had some unused realgar powder.
Ming Yueyi found the realgar powder in her Jiezi Bag and scattered it around the cave dwelling, then summoned a Lingshi to clear away the snakes in the room.
After bathing again until the heavy scent of snake blood was gone, she left her residence and walked toward He Wujiu’s cave dwelling.
In front of Liusen Dongfu.
Ming Yueyi stood at the entrance, looking up at the plaque above.
Liusen Dongfu wasn’t originally called Liusen; it used to be nameless, just like hers. She had begged He Wujiu to change it to the name she came up with, and he had used it ever since.
Ming Yueyi withdrew her gaze and stepped over the threshold.
He Wujiu’s sword attendant was squatting in the courtyard playing with a sword. Suddenly sensing an intruder, he flicked his finger to launch the sword.
The cold blade cut through the air with a sharp chill, heading straight for the entering Ming Yueyi.
Before she could even raise her hand to block, a blur tore through the air. A slender hand reached out and caught the long sword aimed at her.
The sword hummed, then vanished from its spot.
Only the residual sound of the sword’s cry remained in the yard, along with the sword attendant kneeling on the ground with a dejected face.
Everything had happened too quickly. Ming Yueyi stood there blinking before she realized what had occurred.
He Wujiu had grown stronger again. She had only been away for a short two months, yet he was already able to tear through space and turn the ethereal into the physical from a distance.
In a few more years, he would likely be even more formidable.
Ming Yueyi looked down at the sword attendant.
The little attendant was a Zhuling, a bamboo spirit her senior brother had taken from the purple bamboo forest outside her cave dwelling, though he had taken him before she even joined Qingyun Zong.
Ming Yueyi told him to get up and asked, “Xiao Zhu, is Senior Brother not here?”
Xiao Zhu shook his head. “No, he was summoned by the Jianzun just a moment ago.”
“Why did Master call for Senior Brother?” Ming Yueyi asked, puzzled, taking out some green glutinous rice balls she had bought in the mortal town at the foot of the mountain and giving them to him.
Xiao Zhu happily took a bite, squinting his eyes. “The Jianzun’s new little disciple somehow started spitting up blood for no reason, so the Jianzun summoned the Master over to take a look.”
Ming Yueyi looked at him in confusion. “Which junior brother?”
She didn’t remember her master having any disciple more important than He Wujiu—important enough that Master would personally summon him just because the disciple coughed up some blood.
Xiao Zhu let out a small “Ah,” and explained while chewing, “Mingdao Jun has just returned and doesn’t know. Not long ago, the Jianzun brought back a youth from outside and took him as a disciple. By the looks of it, he is now the youngest disciple on Fenjing Feng, your little junior brother.”
The youngest junior brother…
Ming Yueyi remembered.
She did seem to have a junior brother. But in the cycle of constant death and rebirth, the Master had only taken a fragile little junior brother in the first life. That boy had almost become one of the greatest obstacles to the male lead breaking through to immortality via Wuqing Dao in the early stages.
It wasn’t because the junior brother was a villain, but because his talent was terrifying to a freakish degree—even more so than the male lead’s. He was a genius who would break through cultivation stages just by drinking water or eating a meal.
However, such a genius had disappeared very early on. Without the junior brother’s talent overshadowing him, the male lead’s cultivation soared. He found the legendary Great Demon that threatened to destroy heaven and earth, saved the cultivation world, and became the only true god to achieve the Great Dao through the Wuqing sword path.
The book didn’t detail why the junior brother disappeared, but Ming Yueyi knew.
In that first life, for the sake of her senior brother’s smooth path to the Dao, she had lured the junior brother into the basement of her cave dwelling behind everyone’s backs. She imprisoned him with Suoling Chains. Not only did she imprison him, but she had also slept with him, from spiritual union to physical intimacy.
She hadn’t released him even up until the moment she was sacrificed for the sword by her senior brother.
A junior brother without spiritual power would turn into a mortal subject to aging and illness. Since no one released him after her death, he had likely died inside. In the subsequent lives, she was too busy trying to break her own ending to pay him any more attention.
Learning that He Wujiu had been summoned by their master, Ming Yueyi originally planned to return to her cave and wait for him there.
But before she could leave Liusen Dongfu, Juezhen Jianzun’s crane landed on her shoulder, summoning her as well.
Ming Yueyi sighed softly and patted the crane’s head. “Tell Master I’m on my way.”
The crane let out a long cry toward the sky, spread its wings, and flew off.
Ming Yueyi followed on her sword and soon landed before a newly opened cave dwelling.
This was a freshly carved residence; it didn’t even have a boundary set yet, and it was similarly nameless.
Ming Yueyi hesitated for a few steps. Just as she was about to push the door open, her raised hand suddenly paused.
She had only imprisoned the junior brother in the first life. In the following lives, she was focused on changing her ending and avoiding her senior brother; she hadn’t taken the initiative to provoke the junior brother again, so he had gradually faded from her mind.
What was the junior brother’s name?
Ming Yueyi searched her mind for a long time before she finally found the name from the depths of her forgotten memories.