Sheng Yuntan stood atop the ruins, drenched in blood. The concrete beneath her feet had shattered into a spiderweb of cracks, and the air still radiated the smoldering heat of a battle just ended.
Not far off, the brothers who had once fought shoulder to shoulder with her now stood with weapons in hand, surrounding her on all sides.
They were like wolves and tigers, every one of them, desperate to devour her.
“Yuntan, hand over your wood spirit root.”
The man at their head smiled gently, wearing that same warm, boy-next-door look he always had.
Sheng Yuntan glanced down at the bleeding wounds piercing her chest and sensed her strength rapidly receding. Her cold stare settled on him.
She asked the one question she wanted answered. “Why?”
“Yuntan, you’re a pure wood-type ability user. I need that protective charm.”
He answered her, even wearing a helpless expression. “The fighting in these end times grows fiercer by the day. I need one more layer of security to survive.”
Another friend standing beside him was wreathed in killing intent, all trace of former affection gone from his eyes, replaced by cold resolve. “We’ve spent all these years putting on an act for the sake of that pure wood spirit root inside you, and we’re tired of it. Now that it’s mutated and advanced, it’s time you shared it with us.”
Hearing this, Sheng Yuntan laughed.
She laughed at her own foolishness. She should have known long ago that in a world where the strong prey on the weak, true friendship didn’t exist. All friendship was built on self-interest.
Things had come to this. More questions and accusations would be useless. She gave a cold laugh. “If you want my wood spirit root, you don’t deserve it.”
“Oh no—”
When the group across from her sensed something wrong and tried to retreat, Sheng Yuntan had already channeled every ounce of her power. The wood spirit root in her dantian suddenly burst apart, and a vast surge of wood-type energy swept out like a tsunami.
“Sheng Yuntan, you’re insane!”
They hadn’t expected her to be so resolute, to choose self-detonation and take them all down with her rather than hand it over. Every one of them spun and fled, but it was far too late.
Her max-level psychic technique unfurled in an instant like an invisible, densely woven net, blanketing everyone within a kilometer.
“Did you really think I had no tricks left?”
Beneath their despairing, terrified stares, Sheng Yuntan smiled softly.
In an instant, emerald light swallowed everything.
In the last second before her consciousness faded, Sheng Yuntan dimly saw a pair of calloused hands gently brush her forehead, and a frail, aged voice calling her name.
“Yuntan, Yuntan… remember what I told you… live well…”
Sheng Yuntan woke to a splitting headache, as though her brain had been mercilessly crushed and ground to pulp. She didn’t know how long she lay there before she finally managed to open her eyes.
A low thatched roof and damp earthen walls greeted her eyes, and the air was thick with the bitter smell of medicinal herbs. The unfamiliar surroundings startled her upright, but every bone in her head screamed in protest, as though they had been shattered and clumsily pieced back together.
Something was wrong.
She had already died in the apocalypse.
She knew better than anyone how powerful the surging energy within a wood spirit root could be. A self-detonation that decisive would have torn her body apart. There was no way she could have survived.
And yet she was alive…
Before she could make sense of it, the pain in her head vanished. Something deep in her mind began to melt, like a hidden current stirring beneath a frozen river, and countless unfamiliar images flooded in like the tide.
The images that poured into her mind were simple, all of one kind. A pair of rough yet gentle hands, raising her day after day, year after year, finally falling limp…
“Grandmother, Grandmother!”
The final image was of Grandmother Liu, the woman who had raised her, collapsed on the ground with her head covered in blood. The Liu family bastards who had killed her fled in a panic. She had clutched Grandmother’s body and screamed, but Grandmother’s blood wouldn’t stop no matter what. In the end, Grandmother pressed something into her arms, gasped out a few last words, and was gone.
The village headman and the neighbors helped arrange Grandmother’s funeral. As her granddaughter, she was grief-stricken beyond measure, drifting in and out of a daze the whole time. After the coffin was sealed and buried, her breath caught, and she collapsed unconscious.
When she opened her eyes again, the soul within was no longer the Shen Yuntan of before. It was Sheng Yuntan, who had come from the apocalypse through her own self-detonation.
“Grandmother…”
Memories that felt like her own exploded through her mind, and the grief, absolute and overwhelming, rolled through her like molten lava, scalding her heart until she could barely breathe.
This was the overwhelming emotion the original soul had left behind.
She pressed a hand to her aching heart, forced herself to breathe deeply, and steadied her racing pulse. Then, as if making a vow, she said, “Little girl, thank you for giving me this body and a second life. Rest assured. I will avenge Grandmother for you, I will live well as she told you to, and I will finish everything you left undone.”
The moment the promise was made, the stabbing pain in her heart receded like the tide, and an invisible weight lifted.
“Eastern Ling Dynasty, Changshan County, Qingshan Village.”
Sheng Yuntan touched her own cold cheek, her clear eyes fixing on the dark red stain of blood by the door. Her slender, bamboo-like fingers cracked as she clenched them.
She swung herself up, pulled on a pair of worn cloth shoes, and was about to rush out the door when something tucked inside her pocket rolled out and fell onto the muddy ground.
“This is…”
Sheng Yuntan quickly picked it up. It was the jade bracelet Grandmother had pressed into her arms before she died.
The gold-inlaid jade bracelet was warm and translucent to the touch, faint light shifting within it, and carved with an ancient totem that struck at the soul. One look was enough to tell it was no ordinary object.
“Grandmother said this was Mother’s keepsake, and a token of her family. She told me to protect it and pass it on.”
Things had happened too suddenly back then. Grandmother hadn’t had time to explain more, and with outsiders present, she couldn’t say much anyway. She had pressed the bracelet into her arms, said a few words, and passed away.
“This bracelet is no ordinary thing. It seems Mother came from no ordinary background.”
From the original owner’s memories, she knew that Grandmother Liu was not her real grandmother. Grandmother Liu had married and borne a son in her early years, but her fate was bitter. Not long after the marriage, her husband was conscripted to war. She was already heavy with child, and when news of his death arrived, grief drove her into premature labor. The premature boy was frail and sickly, and with no money for a doctor, he died before he was even a month old.
At the time, she was consumed by despair, with no will left to live. On her way to end her life, a married couple rescued her and took her in.
Before long, the couple had a daughter, Shen Yuntan’s mother. Having suffered the loss of her own child, Grandmother Liu poured all her motherly love into the infant, caring for her and raising her with devotion.
Later, when Shen Yuntan’s mother grew up, many upheavals struck the household, and Grandmother Liu had no choice but to return to her maiden home in Qingshan Village.
Not two years passed before Grandmother Liu suddenly received an urgent message from Shen Yuntan’s mother. She hurried off and brought the infant Shen Yuntan back to Qingshan Village, telling everyone she had found the abandoned baby on the road. Grandmother and granddaughter depended on each other, living quietly there for fifteen years.
All these years, Grandmother Liu had raised the original owner on the earnings from her embroidery. Their life was poor but happy. Yet that simple happiness was destroyed by the Liu family’s vicious relatives, bloodsuckers every one of them.