Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Monster’s Temptation

Fog smothered the dream—soft, endless, until she couldn’t tell sky from earth.

Yao Xiao Man felt light as thistledown, as if she were stepping on cotton: so yielding she had nowhere to brace, nowhere to push. Then something tugged at the hem of her robe. Not strong, not urgent—just stubborn, the kind of pull that would rather tear than let go.

She lowered her gaze.

No one stood there. Only a tight little knot of white mist, wrapped around her robe and clinging like a child with dirty hands.

A voice slid into her ear—thin and mournful, neither male nor female.

“I’m not asking for much.”

It sounded distant, yet it rang inside her ribs, as if it had always lived there.

“Just lend me a bit of the Buddhist Scion’s pure yuan yang. Let me take form—that’s all.”

“I never hurt anyone, truly. One Innate Buddha Child is worth more than me absorbing a hundred years of sun-and-moon essence.”

The mist rubbed against her hem, coaxing, flattering.

“Sister, help me, and I’ll help Sister.”

“The Heir Apparent’s family needs heirs. They won’t care about your background. If Sister succeeds, you won’t have to stay a filthy servant forever.”

“If you do the Heir Apparent’s family a service, you can trade a child for status, trade a child for money—it’s all possible.”

“Once I’ve taken shape, I won’t forget your kindness. When the time comes, whatever you want, I can give it to you.”

Xiao Man listened without a tremor.

She wasn’t like the other maids—girls who dreamed of catching a master’s eye and climbing rung by rung until they no longer had to scrub floors and bow their heads. Xiao Man had no such hunger.

She was a soul from another world. When Yao Xiao Man was ten, she had transmigrated into this body—on the very day her gambler father sold her into bondage.

After she woke in someone else’s skin, she asked and listened. She learned the rules of this dynasty from the maids and matrons, piece by piece, word by word, the way you learn a new city by getting lost in it.

With her first month’s wages, she bought food for the second steward’s wife and quietly asked what mattered most: how many years the original girl had been sold for, and whether the contract was living or dead.

Living.

At eighteen, she could leave.

Eight years. That was all. After eight years, her contract with the Heir Apparent’s Residence could be dissolved.

Freedom waited at the far end of a long corridor.

Once she understood the customs, she also understood something stranger: the Great Qian Dynasty didn’t exist in any history book she’d ever read. Yet the people here were plainspoken and open-minded. A capable woman could register her own household and stand on her own.

Meaning: if she endured eight years, she could walk away without being crushed for it.

In her previous life, she was called Jiang Yi Yi. The year she was about to be promoted, she died at her overtime desk. People called her a relentless grinder—Excel for returns, PPT for grand promises, DingTalk for schedules. Always running, never arriving.

That death taught her the only lesson worth carrying into a new life: refuse the fight.

No palace intrigue. No household intrigue. No business intrigue.

In this feudal workplace, she clung to three survival rules: join no faction, do no overtime, and clock out on time. Sleep early. Wake early. Live long.

Her goal was simple enough to taste: survive the eight-year term, reclaim her papers, leave the residence, buy two mu of thin farmland, and spend the rest of her days collecting rent and lying flat.

Now she only prayed Old Madam stayed healthy. If she could endure another year or two, then when she came of age, Old Madam might be pleased enough to return her deed.

Then she’d take the handful of coins she’d scraped together, find somewhere no one knew her face, and live quietly.

So why would she fear a spirit that appeared out of thin air?

Back in the modern world, she’d grown up on ghost stories and dramas. If transmigration could fall on her head, why not a monster? Her only regret was that she didn’t have a heroine’s fate—otherwise a system dropping into her life wouldn’t have been so bad.

But the treasure this thing dangled—gold, silver, status—didn’t even lift her eyelids.

She knew better than anyone: greed made the mouth too full to chew. Spirits and monsters were experts at sweet talk.

She reached out and tested the mist with her fingertips. Soft. Cool. Like breath trapped in cloth.

“Did you pick the wrong person?” she asked.

Her voice was light, steady.

“I don’t want to climb. In another year or two, I can leave the Heir Apparent’s Residence. I don’t want trouble.”

“Find someone else.”

The mist went rigid.

The tug at her hem tightened until the cloth creaked.

“A filthy person doesn’t deserve him,” the voice said, cold now, stripped of pleading.

“But you’re clean. You fit him. I chose you the moment I saw you.”

“Think again… just think again…”

The words looped through Xiao Man’s mind like a charm she couldn’t spit out.

She snapped awake.

Outside the window, the sky was still gray, holding its breath before dawn. The room was so quiet she could hear her own heart—hard, heavy, beating like a drum in a small space.

The dream clung to her ears. Xiao Man rolled over and buried her face in the buckwheat-husk pillow.

It was hard enough to hurt, but the pain was honest. It anchored her.

Once daylight came, she would throw the dream behind her like yesterday’s water.

Chose me at first sight. How generous. A spirit monster’s love at first sight?

No thanks.

Tempt the Buddhist Scion? She wouldn’t even know how she died.

If anyone found out, she’d be beaten senseless and carried out on a plank—or stuffed into a pig cage and dunked until the water stopped moving. Just imagining it made her spine go cold.

Not for me. Not for me.

She sat up and bowed toward the four corners of the room.

Heaven above, Guan Yin Bodhisattva, and God—bless me. I won’t go looking for trouble. Let trouble stay away from me.

She was only a third-rank maid. Her chores ran through the day like thread through a needle—too many to count, too many to dodge. There was no time for strange dreams and stranger bargains.

She washed, dressed in clean blue cloth, and spun into motion like a top.

She had just finished burning incense in Old Madam’s room when the first-rank maid Xiu He stepped out and flicked her eyes over.

“Eldest Young Master is here.”

Xiao Man lowered her head at once and retreated beneath the corridor, standing straight—eyes down, mind still.

The curtain was half-lifted. Inside, grandmother and grandson spoke softly.

Lin Qing Xuan’s voice was clear and cool, like mountain water—pure, with a bite of chill.

“Grandson thanks Grandmother. These sutras… Grandson likes them very much.”

“Good. Good,” Old Madam said, warmth thick in her tone. “But don’t hide in your courtyard all day. Buddhism cultivates the heart. It’s not meant to turn you into a stone lump.”

Xiao Man stood outside and listened, but her thoughts slid elsewhere.

This wasn’t the first time she’d dreamed that mist.

Ever since the day she delivered sutras to Lin Qing Xuan, she hadn’t slept soundly. The moment she closed her eyes, the fog returned. The voice returned. Over and over—like an opera repeating the same act until you couldn’t tell whether it was outside you or inside.

Even now, remembering that day made cold sweat creep up the back of her neck.

In Long Nan, the Heir Apparent’s Residence had a Buddhist Scion: Lin Qing Xuan, styled Yuan Jue. He was a legend—not only within the manor, but across all of Sheng Jing.

On the day he was born, strange omens fell from the sky. When he entered the world, golden light flared so bright it stung the eyes, and people swore they heard chanting woven through the air.

The Abbot of Fa Hua Temple came in person to the Heir Apparent’s Residence to pray blessings. He accepted Lin Qing Xuan as a personal disciple and gave him a Buddha-bone relic as a protective charm.

In all of Great Qian, there were only three such relics. One was enshrined in the Heaven-Reaching Tower. One was kept in the imperial palace’s observatory. The Si Li Tai Platform guarded the last, watching the heavens for signs.

Great Qian revered Buddhism. To be enlightened by an eminent monk was glory for an entire clan—enough to stir even the Emperor.

At three, Lin Qing Xuan could recite the Lotus Sutra. At five, he could sit on a dais and teach the Dharma. In the capital, no one failed to recognize the Buddhist Scion.

Rumors grew wilder with every retelling: Innate Buddha Child Lin Qing Xuan could heal the dead and regrow flesh from bone.

For a time, the Heir Apparent’s Residence stood so high even the royals treated it with extra courtesy.

Zhen Yuan General Lin De Shang—Lin Qing Xuan’s Second Uncle—once said, half bitter and half proud, “I’ve fought my whole life, and it still can’t compare to one Innate Buddha Child.”

Even Second Uncle’s three daughters were watched early by prominent families in the capital, all waiting for the right age to propose, hoping to borrow a little of the Buddhist Scion’s reflected glory.

Meanwhile, the Heir Apparent and First Madam worried until their hair turned white. Only after endless coaxing did Lin Qing Xuan agree: he would leave a bloodline for the Lin family, then shave his head and enter the order.

Matchmakers wore down the threshold. Portraits piled up like a small mountain. Lin Qing Xuan couldn’t even be bothered to lift an eyelid.

It was as if his heart held nothing but Buddha.

That day, Old Madam returned from Pu Tuo Mountain with prayers still clinging to her sleeves. She had specially requested several volumes of sutras said to be hand-copied by an eminent monk, and she named Xiao Man to deliver them to Lin Qing Xuan.

When Old Madam gave the order, Xiao Man’s heart sank.

Eldest Young Master’s courtyard was as quiet as a temple. The servants avoided it on instinct, afraid of disturbing the Buddhist Scion’s secluded practice.

But Old Madam’s words were law. As a maid, Xiao Man could only agree.

She planned to deliver the sutras early, come back early, and be done.

Yet when she reached the Auspicious Cloud Residence, something felt wrong.

It was too quiet.

There wasn’t even a servant sweeping the courtyard.

She stood at the gate, cleared her throat, and called out a few times.

No one answered.

With no choice, she steeled herself and went in alone.

The moment she stepped inside, a strange fragrance slipped into her nose.

It wasn’t the clean sandalwood Lin Qing Xuan used for worship. This scent was sweet and cloying—like spring pollen, like overripe fruit—luring the mind to wander deeper.

Uneasy, Xiao Man pushed open the study door and called for Eldest Young Master’s attendant.

“Stone? Stone?”

Still no sound.

She told herself: set the sutras on the desk and leave. That’s all.

She gathered her courage and walked in.

The room was dim, but she saw him at once—Lin Qing Xuan, seated behind the desk.

His eyes were shut. His brows were knotted tight. His handsome face had gone pale, and his lips were pressed into a hard line.

He didn’t look asleep.

He looked trapped.

Xiao Man’s heart lurched. She stopped short.

“Eldest Young Master?” she tried, softly. “Eldest Young Master?”

Lin Qing Xuan didn’t move, as if he hadn’t heard.

The sweet scent thickened, rolling off him like heat.

Xiao Man’s head began to swim. Her legs softened.

She wanted to set down the tray and run—but as if something had hooked her, she took one more step forward.

That single step was where everything broke.

A hand shot out from behind the desk like iron tongs and clamped down on her wrist.

Xiao Man’s scream jammed in her throat. The tray lurched.

Clang!

The sutras slid off in a mess, scattering across the floor.

She tried to wrench free. The grip was terrifyingly strong.

Then a voice exploded inside her head—sinister, smug, slick with malice.

“Why not borrow this maid’s body, lure this Innate Buddha Child, steal the Buddhist Scion’s yuan yang, and with a huge boost in power, finally take human form!”

“Otherwise I’ll stay neither human nor ghost nor demon, with nowhere to stand in the three realms!”

That voice wasn’t Eldest Young Master’s.

It was sharp and spiteful, filled with poison.

Xiao Man’s mind rang—buzz—and for a heartbeat she couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.

She thought she’d run into something unclean.

She used every ounce of strength, snapped her head hard, and—forgetting all rules—pried at that hand with her free fingers like her life depended on it.

Maybe fear lent her strength. Maybe the thing loosened. Either way, the pressure vanished all at once.

Xiao Man stumbled back on hands and knees. She didn’t even glance at the sutras strewn everywhere. She turned and bolted.

Like a startled rabbit, she sprinted out of the quiet courtyard and didn’t stop until she was far away. Only then did she dare lean against an old locust tree and gulp in air, one ragged breath after another.

Back in the study, Lin Qing Xuan slowly opened his eyes.

He looked down at his empty hand, then lifted his gaze just in time to see a thin blue figure vanish through the doorway.

On the desk, the yellow boxwood tray lay overturned. Sutras littered the floor.

From that day on, Yao Xiao Man began to dream.

In her dreams, it was always the mist.

But the voice in the dream didn’t match the one she’d heard in the study.

One sounded mournful, playing the victim.

The other sounded cold and sharp, hiding a knife.

Xiao Man understood with cruel clarity: they were the same thing.

It wanted to borrow her body to harm Eldest Young Master.

Who cared what it called him—Innate Buddha Child, pure yuan yang, sacred this, holy that?

Xiao Man only knew one truth: Eldest Young Master was a master. If she did as the thing said, she wouldn’t just lose her chance at freedom—she might never even learn how she died.

And besides… even a maid knew what should never be done.

Harming others was not in her hands. It went against every rule she lived by.

The corridor wind brushed past her, raising gooseflesh along her arms and sharpening her thoughts.

Inside, Old Madam spoke again.

“Qing Xuan, you’re not young anymore. About leaving an heir…”

“Grandmother,” Lin Qing Xuan cut in, calm as ever, “Grandson’s heart holds only Buddha. There’s no room for anyone else.”

“You child…” Old Madam sighed long and deep.

Standing outside, Xiao Man felt a thought rise, unbidden.

If Eldest Young Master truly held only Buddha, then the spirit monster’s plan—using her to tempt him—was foolish.

But she remembered the study. He had clearly been trapped by that thing.

She was only a maid with weak hands and no power to speak of. If the monster kept its claws in her, what could she do?

Yao Xiao Man’s heart sank.

She didn’t want trouble.

But trouble had already found her.