Leng Yao had been fighting for his body for six days.
There was no sky inside his soul realm.
No earth.
No wind.
Only endless grey mist and the thing trying to consume him.
It stood several metres away, wearing the unstable outline of a young man.
Its face formed and collapsed with every breath, as though the soul itself could not remember what it was supposed to look like.
Leng Yao’s condition was no better.
Cracks covered his spiritual body.
Pale light bled from them, each fracture mirroring the damage to his shattered cultivation core.
The intruder had chosen its moment well.
Had it attacked Leng Yao at his peak, it would have been erased before it understood what had happened.
Instead, it had entered his body while he lay unconscious, poisoned and half-dead.
Even now, the foreign soul was weaker than him.
It was simply less damaged.
You cannot keep this up.
Its voice emerged from every direction.
Leng Yao raised one hand.
The surrounding mist condensed into a black blade.
He stepped forward and drove it through the intruder’s chest.
The foreign soul screamed.
Its body scattered into vapour, only to reform a short distance away.
Six days, it gasped.
Your soul is breaking.
Your core is destroyed.
What exactly are you protecting?
“My property.”
Your property?
Leng Yao looked down at his cracked hands.
“This body belongs to me.”
The intruder laughed.
Not for much longer.
It rushed forward.
The grey realm twisted.
Smoke replaced the mist.
Flames rose around Leng Yao, spreading across the ruined courtyard of the Leng estate.
Broken pillars lay beneath a blood-red moon.
Bodies covered the snow.
His family’s bodies.
His father knelt near the gate, one hand still wrapped around the hilt of a shattered sword.
His mother lay beneath the winter plum tree.
The intruder had searched through Leng Yao’s memories and found the deepest wound it could use against him.
You failed them.
The voice came from behind his father’s corpse.
You watched your clan die.
Leng Yao remained still.
You were weak then.
A hand tore through his chest from behind.
And you are weak now.
Leng Yao looked down at the fingers protruding from his spiritual body.
Then he seized the intruder’s wrist.
“You have spent six days inside my memories,” he said.
“Yet you learned nothing.”
He turned.
The intruder tried to retreat, but Leng Yao tightened his grip.
“You saw my family die and assumed grief had softened me.”
Darkness gathered around his free hand.
“It did not.”
He struck.
The false courtyard shattered.
The bodies, the flames and the red moon collapsed into fragments of grey mist.
The intruder was thrown backwards.
Half its face had disappeared.
For several moments, neither soul moved.
Leng Yao could feel another fracture spreading through his chest.
His time was running out.
The intruder must have sensed it as well.
Its damaged mouth curved into a smile.
You know I will win.
“No.”
Your soul is collapsing.
“Yes.”
The smile faltered.
Leng Yao lifted his black blade.
Then why aren’t you afraid?
“Fear would not repair it.”
The intruder stared at him.
For the first time since the battle began, uncertainty disturbed its soul.
Leng Yao noticed.
He had built his power by observing weaknesses others preferred to hide.
Greed.
Pride.
Resentment.
Love.
The deadliest weakness was rarely fear.
It was the need to be important.
This creature had invaded his body believing it deserved a greater life than the one it had lived.
It did not merely want to defeat him.
It wanted Leng Yao to understand its superiority.
“You said my defeat was inevitable,” Leng Yao said.
It is.
“Why?”
The intruder hesitated.
Leng Yao lowered his blade slightly.
“You entered my soul knowing my name, my enemies and the condition of my cultivation.
That knowledge came from somewhere.”
You’re trying to delay me.
“I am.”
The honest answer unsettled it more than a lie would have.
Leng Yao watched its expression.
“Explain why I cannot win.”
The intruder’s form swelled.
Pride overcame caution.
Because this world is a novel.
Silence filled the soul realm.
Leng Yao did not react.
The intruder continued.
Your world is a story called Heaven’s Sovereign: Rise of the Chosen.
I read it before I died.
“A story.”
Yes.
“And what role was I given?”
The creature smiled.
The main villain.
The mist around Leng Yao slowly darkened.
You are the Shadow Sovereign, Leng Yao.
Shen Mingzhi’s greatest enemy.
You spend years trying to kill him, but every scheme fails.
“Every scheme?”
Every important one.
The intruder grew more confident with each word.
Three years from now, your cultivation is destroyed at the Jade Peak Summit.
You survive, rebuild your organisation and return stronger, but Shen Mingzhi keeps surpassing you.
It stepped closer.
Then he kills you during the Heaven’s Gate Tournament.
“When?”
Chapter eight hundred and forty-seven.
Leng Yao considered the answer.
The creature mistook his silence for disbelief.
I saw it.
Everyone did.
Your death was one of the most popular chapters in the novel.
“How did I die?”
Shen Mingzhi pierced your heart after defeating you in front of the cultivation world.
“And what did my death achieve?”
It completed his character development.
The pressure within the soul realm changed.
The intruder finally noticed.
Its smile faded.
Leng Yao looked through it, towards a future he had never seen.
His struggles, his victories and the destruction of his clan had been reduced to pieces of someone else’s entertainment.
Even his death had not belonged to him.
It existed to improve another man.
Not tragedy.
Not justice.
Character development.
Leng Yao laughed once.
There was no amusement in the sound.
The intruder took a step back.
Now you understand.
You cannot fight the story.
Give me your body and I can change everything.
Leng Yao looked at it again.
I know the future.
I know where the hidden treasures are.
I know every inheritance Shen Mingzhi will obtain and every woman who will join him.
“You believe that makes you valuable.”
It makes me necessary.
The creature spread its arms.
You are a doomed villain.
I am the only person who can save this body.
Leng Yao vanished.
The intruder barely had time to turn before Leng Yao’s hand entered its chest.
Its eyes widened.
Wait.
Leng Yao closed his fingers around a pulsing knot of soul energy.
“You read my entire life,” he said.
Cracks spread across the intruder’s body.
“And still misunderstood me.”
You need me!
“No.”
Leng Yao crushed its soul core.
“I need your memories.”
The intruder screamed.
Its body broke apart, scattering into thousands of fragments that illuminated the grey realm like pale stars.
Leng Yao reached for them.
The fragments surged towards him first.
They entered every crack in his soul.
Images exploded through his mind.
A small apartment.
A crowded train.
A glowing screen.
Years spent reading stories about cultivators, systems, reincarnators and chosen heroes.
Then came the novel.
Shen Mingzhi.
The Divine Mandate System.
The Jade Peak Summit.
Hidden ruins.
Ancient inheritances.
Heroines.
Enemies.
And Leng Yao’s death.
The memories did not enter gently.
They tore through him.
His damaged cultivation core trembled.
For six years, it had leaked spiritual energy through fractures no physician could mend.
Now those fractures widened.
But instead of releasing energy, they began pulling it in.
The flow through Leng Yao’s meridians reversed.
Agony consumed him.
The soul realm collapsed.
Leng Yao opened his eyes on the floor of his study.
The grandfather clock read 3:14 in the morning.
Outside the windows, Shanghai glowed beneath violet smog.
Spirit-powered towers rose above the city, their formation lights pulsing between glass and steel.
Leng Yao remained on the floor.
Another man’s life continued unfolding inside his head.
Twenty-three years of memories pressed against his own.
Most were insignificant.
Routine work.
Empty conversations.
Arguments with strangers.
Nights spent staring at screens instead of sleeping.
Yet hidden among them was knowledge that could overturn the cultivation world.
Leng Yao pushed himself upright.
Pain moved through his meridians.
Not the familiar pain of a ruined core.
Something else.
He placed two fingers against his wrist and examined the spiritual flow inside his body.
The energy was moving backwards.
Every cultivation technique in existence drew spiritual energy into the core before circulating it through the meridians.
Leng Yao’s core was doing the opposite.
It dragged energy through his damaged pathways and compressed it inside the fractures.
An inverted core.
Impossible.
Yet stable.
Leng Yao crossed to the cabinet beside his desk and poured himself a glass of Moutai.
Then he sat down and began examining the dead man’s memories.
The novel contained more than a thousand chapters.
Much of it was useless.
Descriptions of battles that would never involve him.
Arguments among readers.
Predictions that had later proven wrong.
But the important information was precise.
Names.
Dates.
Locations.
Treasures still buried beneath the earth.
Families that had not yet risen.
Alliances that had not yet collapsed.
He saw Shen Mingzhi’s beginning.
An unremarkable young cultivator humiliated by his clan and abandoned by his fiancée.
Then the Divine Mandate System awakened.
From that moment, coincidence ceased to behave like coincidence.
Whenever Shen Mingzhi lacked strength, he discovered an inheritance.
Whenever an enemy cornered him, someone intervened.
Whenever he needed a breakthrough, a rare treasure appeared.
The world did not merely favour him.
It arranged itself around him.
Leng Yao found the Jade Peak Summit.
Three years from now, Shen Mingzhi would uncover an ancient chamber beneath the mountain.
Seven sects would fight for its contents.
Leng Yao would intervene.
The resulting battle would destroy his core completely and begin his decline.
The memories showed every mistake his future self would make afterwards.
He would underestimate Shen Mingzhi.
Spare him.
Challenge him openly.
Attack his allies while leaving the source of his power untouched.
Again and again, Leng Yao would act exactly as the story expected a villain to act.
Proud.
Cruel.
Predictable.
Powerful enough to threaten the protagonist, but never careful enough to end him.
Leng Yao took a slow drink.
His future self had not lost because he lacked strength.
He had lost because he had obeyed the role written for him.
That was a mistake Leng Yao had no intention of repeating.
He activated the spiritual display above his desk.
A blank document appeared.
He typed a heading.
PRELIMINARY REVISIONS
The first item concerned a warehouse in Jiangnan that would soon be purchased by one of Shen Mingzhi’s future allies.
The second concerned a corrupt elder within the Azure Cloud Sect.
The third concerned a jade pendant currently gathering dust in a pawnshop.
By the time he reached the seventh item, Leng Yao stopped.
He considered killing Shen Mingzhi immediately.
The young man had not yet awakened his system.
He had no powerful allies and no reputation worth mentioning.
It should have been simple.
Yet the memories contained too many impossible survivals.
Heavenly lightning striking at the correct moment.
Hidden experts intervening without reason.
Enemies turning against one another while Shen Mingzhi escaped.
If the world truly possessed a force that protected its chosen protagonist, then a careless attack would reveal Leng Yao’s awareness too early.
Before killing Shen Mingzhi, he needed to understand the protection surrounding him.
Leng Yao typed:
7.
Do not kill Shen Mingzhi until the source of his protection is understood.
He continued.
At dawn, the document contained seventeen revisions.
The door opened at precisely six.
Feng Baoshu entered carrying breakfast.
The old butler stepped into the study and stopped.
His gaze moved from the empty glass to Leng Yao, then to the dark spiritual energy moving faintly beneath his skin.
“Young Master.”
“Baoshu.”
“The guards found you unconscious last night.”
“I remember.”
“The physicians are waiting downstairs.”
“Send them away.”
Feng Baoshu placed the tray on the desk.
He did not leave.
His eyes remained on Leng Yao’s hands.
“Your spiritual energy has changed.”
“It has.”
“Is your core deteriorating?”
“No.”
Leng Yao raised his palm.
Dark energy gathered above it, flowing in the opposite direction from a normal spiritual technique.
Feng Baoshu’s expression tightened.
“Then what is happening?”
“My core has inverted.”
The old man stared at the energy.
“That is not possible.”
“So I was taught.”
“You should still allow the physicians to examine you.”
“They will either misunderstand it or attempt to fix it.”
“And you do not want it fixed.”
“Correct.”
Feng Baoshu’s gaze moved to the document floating above the desk.
He read the heading.
“Preliminary revisions.”
Leng Yao gestured towards it.
“Begin with the first six.”
Feng Baoshu studied the list.
“The Dragon’s Vein property?”
“Acquire it.”
“The Shen family rejected our previous offer.”
“They will accept within two weeks.”
“Why?”
“Their western mine will collapse in four days.”
The old butler looked up.
“Our intelligence network has reported no structural problems.”
“It will.”
Feng Baoshu returned to the list.
“The Zhao Syndicate’s eastern warehouses.”
“They will be attacked on the seventeenth of next month.”
“By whom?”
“The Northern Sect.”
“We cancelled our meeting with Zhao Jian three days ago.”
“He will restore it.”
“For what reason?”
Leng Yao opened another document.
Three names appeared.
“Because these men are selling his patrol routes to the Northern Sect.”
Feng Baoshu’s eyes sharpened.
All three names belonged to senior members of the Zhao Syndicate.
“Where did you obtain this information?”
“From the man who entered my soul.”
Feng Baoshu became very still.
“Someone attempted possession?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“A dead man from another world.”
The old butler stared at him.
Leng Yao took another drink.
“He believed our world was a novel.”
There was a long silence.
“And you believed him?”
“He knew the location of the scar beneath your left shoulder.”
Feng Baoshu’s expression changed.
Only three people had known about that wound.
Two were dead.
Leng Yao continued.
“He knew what my mother said to you on the night the estate fell.
He knew where my father hid the Black Heaven Seal.”
The old man lowered his voice.
“What else did he know?”
“How I die.”
Feng Baoshu’s gaze hardened.
Leng Yao turned the list towards him.
“Call Zhao Jian.
Tell him the Shadow Sovereign knows the date of the attack and the names of the traitors inside his organisation.”
“And after that?”
“We purchase the Dragon’s Vein property.”
Feng Baoshu looked at item seven.
“You intend to spare Shen Mingzhi.”
“For now.”
“Who is he?”
“The man Heaven chose to kill me.”
Feng Baoshu’s face revealed nothing, but the room grew colder.
“Then why is he still alive?”
“Because an unseen enemy is more dangerous than a visible one.”
Leng Yao rose from his chair and adjusted his cuffs.
“If Heaven protects him, I will learn how.”
“And once you have?”
Leng Yao walked towards the windows.
The city was waking beneath him.
Millions of people moved through streets and towers, unaware that their futures had already been written in the memories of a dead man.
Somewhere among them was Shen Mingzhi.
Weak.
Unknown.
Protected by destiny.
Leng Yao placed one hand against the glass.
The story expected him to become obsessed with killing its chosen hero.
It expected rage, arrogance and failure.
He would give it none of those things.
“Once I understand the rules,” Leng Yao said, “I will decide how much of the story survives.”
Feng Baoshu studied him.
“What are you planning, Young Master?”
Leng Yao looked at his reflection.
A doomed villain stared back.
He smiled.
Not because he had escaped death.
Because he had finally learned its scheduled date.
“Someone has already written my ending.”
His fingers closed slowly against the glass.
“I am going to make the author regret giving me advance notice.”
Hey everyone, first chapter is out!I’ve been sitting on this idea for a while and honestly I’m nervous and excited at the same time to finally put it out there.
I know villain MC stories aren’t new — but I promise you, Leng Yao is not your typical “villain who secretly becomes a good guy after meeting the right girl.” He is genuinely, unapologetically himself, and that is not changing.
If anything it gets worse.
For everyone around him.
I find this delightful.