The first thing Chao Lun Hui noticed was that the ceiling above him was far too beautiful.
That was a problem.
The ceiling in his modern bedroom had been plain white, except for a faint water stain near the corner that his landlord had promised to repair for eight months.
It had no floating jade ornaments, no delicate carvings glowing with spiritual energy and certainly no ancient wooden beams polished until they reflected the soft light of the room.
Chao Lun Hui stared upwards without moving.
For several quiet breaths, his mind attempted to provide reasonable explanations.
Perhaps he had fallen asleep while reading.
Perhaps this was an unusually detailed dream.
Perhaps someone had carried him into the world’s most expensive historical film set while he was unconscious.
Then he instinctively reached towards the space beside him, searching for his phone.
His fingers found embroidered silk.
Chao Lun Hui slowly lifted his hand.
It was not his.
The fingers were longer, the palm broader and the skin unmarked by the small burn he had received while cooking instant noodles at sixteen.
Beneath the unfamiliar flesh lay a controlled strength that did not belong to someone whose greatest physical achievement had been carrying too many grocery bags upstairs because making two journeys felt inefficient.
His breath caught.
The movement pulled at something deep below his ribs, and a thin current of warmth travelled through channels he had never known existed.
The current moved once around his body.
It did so naturally.
Chao Lun Hui had no idea how he had caused it.
Luo Yanhe : “No.”
The voice that left his mouth was low, smooth and entirely unfamiliar.
Hearing another man’s voice answer his thoughts disturbed him more than the ceiling had.
He pressed two fingers against his throat.
The skin beneath them vibrated when he swallowed, but the sensation belonged to a body with a different height, different weight and a voice Chao Lun Hui had only ever imagined while reading dialogue on a screen.
Luo Yanhe : “No, no, no.”
The room remained stubbornly beautiful.
His final modern memory returned in fragments.
The quiet whir of his computer.
The dim light from the monitor.
A half-finished cup of tea gone cold beside the keyboard.
He had been reading The Master Who Killed the Genius Villain, a cultivation novel written by an author whose greatest talent appeared to be creating suffering and then calling it character development.
Chao Lun Hui had reached another chapter about the novel’s most tragic character and paused to complain aloud, despite living alone and having no audience except the wall.
Luo Yanhe.
A gifted cultivator with enough potential to challenge Heaven and enough misfortune to make that achievement feel like a personal insult.
He had been admired, betrayed, hunted and slowly driven towards the very cruelty everyone had expected from him.
Depending on which characters were speaking, Luo Yanhe was either a fallen genius, an ungrateful disciple or a disaster that should have been destroyed sooner.
Chao Lun Hui had considered him the victim of an author with questionable emotional health.
Then the screen had flickered.
He remembered leaning forwards.
After that, nothing.
No collision.
No hospital.
No dramatic message from a mysterious system welcoming him to another world.
His life simply ended in the middle of an ordinary night, between one breath and the next, as though someone had turned the page before he finished reading it.
Chao Lun Hui pushed himself upright.
His balance adjusted before he could think about the movement.
Long black hair slid over his shoulders and pooled across the pale bedding.
The weight should have dragged at his neck, yet his body shifted with effortless familiarity, arranging the unfamiliar limbs as though they had belonged to him for years.
That did not comfort him.
A servant seated near the outer screen noticed the movement and rose so quickly that the tray in his hands tilted.
Servant : “Young Master Luo!”
Chao Lun Hui looked towards him.
The servant’s relief collapsed into panic when their eyes met.
He hurried forwards, caught his sleeve against the corner of a table and nearly dropped the medicine bowl he was carrying.
Servant : “Young Master Luo, you are finally awake!”
The name took a moment to reach him.
Luo.
The servant was looking directly at Chao Lun Hui, but the person he saw was Luo Yanhe.
A cold sensation spread through Chao Lun Hui’s chest.
He had not awakened in the body of an irrelevant outer disciple who could quietly leave the sect and open a noodle shop.
Heaven had apparently placed him inside the most complicated person in the entire novel and expected gratitude for the improved cheekbones.
Luo Yanhe : “Wonderful.”
The laugh that escaped him sounded pleasant enough to deceive anyone who did not know him.
Chao Lun Hui knew himself.
He was close to panicking.
Luo Yanhe : “Heaven has an unpleasant sense of humour.”
The servant stared at him with open confusion.
Chao Lun Hui realised too late that Luo Yanhe might not have been known for criticising Heaven immediately after regaining consciousness.
That was another problem to add to the growing collection.
He knew the published version of Luo Yanhe.
He knew the major betrayals, the cultivation breakthroughs and the disasters that would later follow him.
He did not know how Luo Yanhe greeted servants, what food he disliked or whether he complained about cosmic administration before breakfast.
Knowledge of a story was not knowledge of a life.
Luo Yanhe : “Is there a mirror?”
The servant hesitated before retrieving a polished bronze mirror from a nearby table.
He offered it with both hands, still watching Chao Lun Hui as though one wrong movement might cause him to collapse again.
Chao Lun Hui took it carefully.
A stranger looked back at him.
The man in the mirror possessed long straight wavy black hair, sharp yet elegant features and dark silver-grey eyes that caught the jade light like metal beneath clear water.
His shoulders were broader than Chao Lun Hui remembered from his modern body, his frame powerful even beneath layers of loose sleeping robes.
He was handsome and muscular also can be considered as beautiful in a way that did not appear delicate.
There was too much contained strength in the line of his neck and shoulders, too much natural severity beneath the exhaustion.
It was Luo Yanhe’s face.
Chao Lun Hui moved one hand.
The reflection followed.
He touched his cheek.
The stranger did the same.
For a moment, the room faded behind the bronze frame.
Chao Lun Hui remembered the face he had carried for twenty-three years.
Less remarkable.
Short dark hair that never remained arranged.
Eyes made tired by late-night reading.
A faint mark near his jaw that only became visible under bright light.
That face had belonged to him.
Nobody here would ever know it.
Nobody in this world knew the name Chao Lun Hui.
If someone in the modern world entered his silent room tomorrow, they might find the cold tea, the unfinished novel and an empty chair.
Would they think he had left?
Would anyone realise that he had disappeared without taking his phone, wallet or shoes?
The thought opened a hollow place beneath his ribs.
He lowered the mirror before the servant could see too much in his expression.
Chao Lun Hui was still real.
Twenty-three years did not vanish simply because the world had changed his face.
Luo Yanhe was the character whose body he had entered.
That was the only explanation that made sense.
For now.
Luo Yanhe : “How long was I unconscious?”
The servant’s shoulders relaxed at the ordinary question.
Servant : “Three days, Young Master.
The forbidden technique damaged your spiritual foundation.
Immortal Master Shen has visited twice.”
Forbidden technique.
Chao Lun Hui’s memory of the novel shifted rapidly through scenes and scattered references.
Luo Yanhe had damaged his cultivation early in the story, but the author had never described the incident clearly.
It had been treated as background, another mark against a disciple already considered reckless and arrogant.
That background was now his immediate medical problem.
Reading that someone’s spiritual foundation had nearly collapsed had required less emotional effort than reading a weather report.
Feeling the unstable pressure beneath his own skin transformed the sentence into something uglier.
This body could suffer.
It could bleed.
If the original plot continued, it would eventually die.
Chao Lun Hui placed the mirror aside and tried to think.
He could not run before understanding where he was.
He could not explain transmigration without sounding possessed, cursed or worthy of immediate spiritual examination.
He also could not behave exactly like the original Luo Yanhe because the novel had never recorded the small details required to imitate a real person.
His safest option was unpleasant but simple.
Observe.
Speak carefully.
Admit nothing.
Learn enough to perform Luo Yanhe before anyone realised that the actor had arrived without the script.
A sharp pain moved through his chest.
Chao Lun Hui inhaled and felt the warm current beneath his ribs gather instinctively.
Before he could stop it, spiritual energy travelled along several damaged meridians, carefully avoiding the worst fracture before settling near his core.
The pain eased.
He froze.
He had not read instructions.
He had not formed a hand seal.
He had not consciously directed anything.
His body had protected itself.
The servant noticed the change in his breathing and reached for the medicine.
Servant : “Young Master?”
Chao Lun Hui lifted one hand, stopping him.
His attention remained fixed on the fading warmth inside his body.
Relief arrived first.
Whatever instincts Luo Yanhe had left behind might keep him alive.
Unease followed closely behind it.
He was benefiting from skills that belonged to a person whose life he had taken over.
It felt like opening a stranger’s locked room and discovering that the keys already fit his hand.
Before he could examine the thought further, footsteps approached outside.
The room changed.
The floating jade ornaments dimmed, and a clean chill passed through the air.
Every servant lowered their head at once.
Their reaction was too immediate to be rehearsed.
Whoever approached did not need an announcement.
Chao Lun Hui knew before the door opened.
A man In white robes entered with the silence of falling snow.
His outer robe carried intricate golden embroidery, while flashes of red lining appeared whenever the fabric moved.
Long black hair flowed behind him beneath a golden-red crown, and a delicate ornament rested at the centre of his forehead.
His face possessed a beauty that refused every ordinary boundary.
No man Chao Lun Hui had ever seen could be called more handsome, yet comparing him only to men felt strangely insufficient.
Even the most celebrated beauty among women would have appeared unfinished beside him.
At a careless glance, someone might mistake him for a peerless woman carved from pale jade, but the clean strength of his jaw, the composed line of his shoulders and the quiet authority in his bearing made his masculinity unmistakable.
Nothing about him appeared fragile.
His features were refined without losing their sharpness, perfect without seeming artificial, as though Heaven had spent an unreasonable amount of effort shaping one face and then lost interest in maintaining fairness for everyone born afterwards.
His eyes were the most dangerous part.
They held a clear, luminous gold beneath dark lashes that were neither excessively thick nor unusually fine.
They framed his gaze with such precise balance that looking away felt less like a decision and more like escaping a current.
Chao Lun Hui understood at once why the novel had wasted several paragraphs describing those eyes.
The words had still failed.
According to the book, their colour would deepen into golden brown only when Shen Yan Ting faced an opponent powerful enough to force him into a serious battle.
At present, they remained pure gold, calm and unreadable as they settled upon the bed.
For one humiliating heartbeat, Chao Lun Hui forgot every survival plan he had prepared.
Then Shen Yan Ting looked directly at him, and beauty became the least dangerous thing in the room.
In the novel, he had been the legendary Immortal Master of Azure Cloud Sect.
Refined, distant and nearly impossible to understand.
He was Luo Yanhe’s master, one of the strongest cultivators alive and the person whose choices would become tangled with Luo Yanhe’s downfall.
The text had described him beautifully but failed to explain what it felt like to be watched by him.
Shen Yan Ting’s presence was controlled rather than oppressive.
Nothing about him appeared openly hostile, yet Chao Lun Hui understood with immediate certainty that every movement in the room had entered the man’s awareness.
He had spent the previous few minutes constructing a survival plan.
The sight of Shen Yan Ting scattered half of it.
Something beneath Chao Lun Hui’s conscious thoughts reacted before he could understand why.
His shoulders loosened by a fraction.
The damaged spiritual energy near his core settled, and his body recognised Shen Yan Ting’s approach with an ease that bordered on trust.
Chao Lun Hui’s mind supplied the opposite response.
Dangerous.
He tightened his fingers beneath the blanket.
The novel had given him facts about Shen Yan Ting.
It had not given him the quiet weight of the living man standing beside the bed.
Nor had it explained why Luo Yanhe’s body seemed less guarded in his presence.
Shen Yan Ting : “Disciple Luo.”
The name struck differently from the servant’s frightened address.
For half a heartbeat, Chao Lun Hui did not respond.
Then he remembered.
Disciple Luo meant him now.
Luo Yanhe : “Master.”
The title left his mouth too naturally.
Chao Lun Hui disliked that almost as much as the delay.
Shen Yan Ting’s gaze paused on his face.
The pause was small enough that the servants probably missed it, but Chao Lun Hui had spent years working out fictional motives from incomplete dialogue.
He recognised scrutiny when it stood beside his bed wearing expensive robes.
Shen Yan Ting : “Do you remember what happened?”
This was the point where a competent transmigrator would use perfect knowledge of the plot.
Unfortunately, Chao Lun Hui knew only that Luo Yanhe had attempted a forbidden technique and nearly destroyed his cultivation.
The novel had never explained why.
Apparently the author had considered emotional misery more valuable than useful context.
Luo Yanhe : “Disciple remembers enough.”
Shen Yan Ting’s expression did not change, but his attention sharpened.
Shen Yan Ting : “Enough?”
Chao Lun Hui lowered his gaze respectfully.
It allowed him to hide his expression while buying one additional breath to think.
Luo Yanhe : “Enough to understand that the outcome was serious.”
It was true.
Selective truth seemed safer than constructing a lie that could collapse under one question.
Shen Yan Ting stepped closer.
Chao Lun Hui’s body did not retreat.
The absence of fear in his muscles felt almost like betrayal.
Shen Yan Ting : “Then tell me why you attempted a forbidden technique that nearly destroyed your cultivation.”
There it was.
The question had no answer inside Chao Lun Hui’s memory because the event belonged to Luo Yanhe’s life.
He possessed the consequences without the cause, the wounds without the moment they were earned.
Thousands of possible explanations passed through his mind.
Cultivation deviation.
Enemy manipulation.
Secret mission.
Temporary insanity caused by a badly written plot.
Every answer required details he did not have.
He could pretend to have lost his memory, but Shen Yan Ting was already examining him too carefully.
A complete lie would only provide the man with something firmer to expose.
Chao Lun Hui chose the smallest truth available.
Luo Yanhe : “Because…”
The room waited.
His modern name remained silent inside him.
His borrowed face looked calm.
Somewhere beneath both, unfamiliar spiritual energy moved through damaged pathways as though it had always known where to go.
Luo Yanhe : “I made a mistake.”
The medicine spoon slipped from the servant’s hand and struck the tray.
Everyone looked more shocked by the confession than they had been by his awakening.
Chao Lun Hui almost laughed.
Apparently the original Luo Yanhe admitting fault was less believable than transmigration.
Shen Yan Ting studied him for a long moment.
His golden eyes moved over Chao Lun Hui’s posture, his hands and the face that belonged to a disciple he should have known.
Shen Yan Ting : “Interesting.”
The word carried no warmth, but neither did it contain immediate accusation.
It sounded like the beginning of an investigation.
Chao Lun Hui lowered his eyes again.
The original novel had prepared him for future enemies, political traps and a tragic ending.
It had not prepared him to answer for a life he could not remember while standing inside the body that had lived it.
He had inherited Luo Yanhe’s face, his injuries, his enemies and the death waiting at the end of his story.
That did not mean he had inherited Luo Yanhe’s life.
Not yet.
Inside the silence of his own mind, he held tightly to the only name that remained entirely his, Chao Lun Hui.
He would answer when this world called him Luo Yanhe.
He would study the role, avoid the downfall and change whatever parts of the story tried to kill him.
He would wear the name because survival required it.
Acceptance could wait.
For now, Chao Lun Hui intended to remain alive long enough to discover why Luo Yanhe’s body already seemed to know the way.
The chapter has now been updated to the latest revised version.
I truly appreciate everyone who waited and continued supporting this story while I worked on improving it.
I hope this updated version gives you a smoother and more enjoyable reading experience.
Thank you for staying with me.
Happy reading!