Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Reborn at the Wedding Banquet

The Heavenly Phoenix Continent—Ten Thousand Swords Sect, Mount Yun Ding.

Lanterns blazed like little suns beneath the eaves. Red ribbons streamed from every pillar, and the air tasted faintly of incense and wine. Inside the grand hall, the guests sat in orderly rows, smiles fixed in place, waiting for the bride and groom to step forward and bow.

Just as the music swelled—

A shriek tore through the celebration.

“Your Highness, the Holy Son!” A maid stumbled into the hall, face ashen, hair half-fallen from its pins. She dropped to her knees and slammed her forehead to the floor until it rang. “My miss suffered a cultivation backlash—she’s at death’s door! In her delirium she kept calling your name. Please—please save my miss!”

The groom’s shoulders snapped rigid.

Shen Yu Han’s expression shifted in an instant, all warmth vanishing like a candle snuffed by wind. “Where is she?”

“At Cloud Coming Grotto!” the maid cried, voice shaking. “Your Highness, please hurry!”

Shen Yu Han turned back to the woman beside him, the one draped in scarlet and crowned in gold. His tone softened, as if gentleness could patch a blade wound.

“Zhao Zhao. My junior sister’s life is on the line. I can’t ignore it.” He reached toward her, the gesture almost a comfort. “Wait for me here. I’ll go, and I’ll come right back.”

He pivoted to leave.

A gasp rose from the crowd.

Shen Yu Han froze and looked back.

The bride had lifted her veil.

Her face—too beautiful, too distant—was one few had ever truly seen. The eyes beneath were colder than winter water as they fixed on him, steady and sharp enough to cut.

No one knew Lin Zhao had already died once.

In her first life, she hadn’t even belonged to herself.

An inexplicable force had wrapped around her like invisible chains. The sect’s choices, her apprenticeship, her engagement, the way she spoke and yielded and swallowed her pride—it had all been pressed into her bones. The moment she so much as formed the thought of resisting, pain would erupt through her meridians and tear her apart until she tasted blood and darkness.

Only after death did she break free.

Only after death did she understand: she was nothing but a tragic supporting villainess in a torment-filled story.

While she lived, her childhood sweetheart and fiancé abandoned her on their wedding day for his junior sister. The entire continent laughed as she stood alone in red, humiliated beneath lantern light. The master she had worshiped with blind devotion tore out her spiritual bone to strengthen that junior sister’s body. The senior and junior brothers she had fed with resources and risked her life for stepped on her blood and bones to become geniuses—then mocked her for being mediocre.

After she died, they regretted it. Too late. They learned to love her and miss her and mourn her, then spent countless chapters drowning in a twisted romance with the junior sister “female lead,” until everyone got the ending she never received.

The memories slammed through her like a tide. Lin Zhao forced a breath into her lungs and steadied herself.

The hall was full of prominent guests. Today was meant to be a union between the Lin Family and Yao Chi Sacred Land, a marriage meant to keep her clan from slipping any further down the cliff’s edge. If Shen Yu Han walked out now—for another woman—she and the Lin Family would become the continent’s newest joke.

She lifted her chin and met his gaze.

“There are many things you and I never put into words,” she said, voice even, almost gentle. “Today, could we finish the ceremony first? We can talk about everything else after.”

For a heartbeat, Shen Yu Han’s eyes wavered. His hand rose, as if he would touch her sleeve, as if he would choose her—

A small body crashed to the floor again.

The maid crawled forward on her knees and began kowtowing directly to Lin Zhao this time, frantic and relentless. “Please have mercy, Immortal Maiden. My miss is also your junior sister! You can’t just watch her die!”

The cracking sound of skin striking stone echoed through the hall.

The maid’s forehead split, blood streaking down her face. She didn’t stop.

Shen Yu Han’s raised hand fell.

“A life is at stake,” he said, jaw clenched. “Zhao Zhao, wait here. Once my junior sister is stable, I’ll come back immediately.”

Lin Zhao stared at him for a long, disbelieving moment—then a laugh broke out of her, bitter enough to burn.

“If Chen Luo Luo is critically injured, she should find a healer,” she said. “Yet on our wedding day she sends her maid to disrupt our ceremony. What is she plotting?”

“My miss can’t speak right now!” the maid sobbed. “I was terrified—I had no choice but to come!”

The guests murmured, the sound swelling like rising wind. Eyes glittered with the kind of hunger that only a spectacle could satisfy.

And then the knives came out.

“This Immortal Maiden Wang Shu,” someone said with a sigh, loud enough to carry. “People claim she was born with Phoenix Fortune, but look at her now—just another woman fighting over a man.”

A vassal from Yao Chi Sacred Land sneered openly. “Phoenix Fortune? That’s the Lin Family inflating themselves. Lin Zhao has been in Ten Thousand Swords Sect for over ten years, and a disciple who joined later already reached late Foundation Establishment. Even Chen Luo Luo—an illegitimate daughter from the Ji Family who just entered—is about to reach Foundation Establishment perfection. But Lin Zhao is only mid Foundation Establishment. Don’t insult Phoenix Fortune. She’s just a pretty barnyard bird.”

“Tsk, tsk,” another voice chimed in. “A noble house’s legitimate daughter can’t even compare to some illegitimate girl.”

Lin Zhao’s fingers tightened beneath her sleeves. She drew a breath to speak—

A terrifying pressure crashed down.

Her vision blurred. Her knees trembled. A mouthful of blood spilled from between her teeth and splashed darkly onto the red silk at her feet.

She lifted her gaze.

Seated high above, black hair falling like ink, was Immortal Venerable Yun Ding.

Her master.

The man who had torn out her spiritual bone in her first life. The man who had watched her die.

His Spirit Transformation pressure bore down without restraint, pinning her like a nail to the floor as if she were nothing but an eyesore.

“So cold-blooded,” Yun Ding said, voice sharp with disgust. “All these years I told you to protect your junior sister, to cherish Luo Luo—and you still refuse to wake up.”

Lin Zhao’s back straightened, trembling under the weight. She forced herself upright through sheer will, blood filling her mouth again. But she didn’t look at Yun Ding.

She looked only at Shen Yu Han.

Her eyes were red, not from tears—never from tears—but from rage held back for too long.

“If you take one step out of here today,” she said, each word carved clean, “I will repay this humiliation a hundredfold.”

“How dare you!” Yun Ding’s voice snapped like a whip. “Even now you refuse to wake up. Do you want to drive your junior sister to death?”

A sigh cut through the chaos.

An old man rose, and with a lift of his hand, Yun Ding’s pressure was blocked.

Lin Zhao’s throat loosened enough for her to breathe.

The Lin Family’s Old Ancestor stepped forward, eyes like old steel. “Immortal Venerable may not care for Zhao Zhao,” he said, voice calm and cold, “but she is the Young Lord of my Lin Family. On her wedding day, not just any ‘junior sister’ gets to be compared with her.”

With the pressure eased, Lin Zhao drew a hard breath and steadied her stance.

In her first life, the invisible plot had dragged her again and again into betraying her own blood, trying to cut ties with the family that loved her. Even so, even after everything, the Old Ancestor had still stood up for her.

She turned to Yun Ding, voice steady despite the blood on her lips.

“Immortal Venerable Yun Ding,” she said, forcing herself to use the title properly. “Today is my wedding to Holy Son Shen. This is my lifelong affair. Master—if you act like this, do you truly have only your junior sister in your eyes, and not me, your disciple?”

Yun Ding’s pupils tightened. His obedient disciple had never spoken back like this.

Rage surged across his face. “How dare you compare yourself to Luo Luo? Just because the Lin Family backs you, you think you’re impressive!”

The maid’s eyes flicked up, reading Yun Ding’s expression, weighing it. Then she made her choice.

She sobbed harder, shoulders shaking, voice turning weak and pitiful with practiced ease. “Immortal Maiden… you’re the noble legitimate daughter of the Lin Family. Please pity this servant, pity my miss who has no one to rely on…”

Yun Ding said nothing. He never did, when Chen Luo Luo used this excuse. It had always worked.

And now—

Shen Yu Han’s gaze flickered. Something hardened in it.

Lin Zhao felt the corner of her sleeve tighten in his grasp. For a heartbeat, she thought—absurdly—that he was finally choosing her.

Then he tore himself free.

The red silk slipped from her fingers.

The next instant, Shen Yu Han vanished, his figure dissolving into a streak of light that shot out of the hall and across dozens of li in a blink.

Only his voice lingered behind, cold as a closing door.

“Zhao Zhao, you’ve disappointed me.”

Lin Zhao lunged forward.

She didn’t even make it two steps.

Yun Ding and the disciples of Mount Yun Ding shifted together, blocking her path as neatly as a wall.

“Senior Sister,” one of them pleaded, brows drawn as if he were the injured party. “Don’t be stubborn. How can you ignore Junior Sister Luo Luo’s safety?”

Lin Zhao stood among shattered lantern light and murmuring laughter, red silk clenched in her palm until it cut into her skin.

She stared at the faces in front of her—faces she had fed, protected, bled for. Faces that had always stood behind Chen Luo Luo, no matter what she did, no matter how much she took.

Hatred rose like bile. A metallic sweetness pooled in her throat.

For a long moment, she swallowed it down.

“Fine,” she said softly.

Then louder, sharper—each word like a blade unsheathed:

“Fine. Fine. Fine.”

She lifted her sword.

The blade’s point leveled at the people who had turned her wedding into a farce.

“I won’t even talk about how the day and night I spent working for Mount Yun Ding for over ten years can be erased so casually,” she said, voice ringing clean through the hall. “Let’s talk about today. The guests are all here. You twist right from wrong, let Chen Luo Luo’s maid barge in, and shield my husband as he abandons our wedding for Chen Luo Luo.”

Her gaze cut to Yun Ding, then back to the disciples.

“Where does that leave my Lin Family? Where does that leave the Old Ancestor?”

Silence tightened.

Lin Zhao’s sword didn’t tremble.

“Immortal Venerable Yun Ding,” she said, cold and clear. “Don’t talk to me about some master-disciple bond. All these years, you never guided me once. What bond? What ‘instructions’?”

Her eyes sharpened into something merciless.

“And what your precious junior sister did today turned me—and the Lin Family—into a joke.”

She took one step forward. The blade gleamed.

“If I endure it again, I would be unworthy of my parents.”

She raised her chin, blood still drying at the corner of her mouth.

“Today, between me and Chen Luo Luo, only one can remain in Mount Yun Ding’s line.”

Her voice cut like steel.

“Immortal Venerable Yun Ding—what do you choose?!”

The four disciples beside Yun Ding all changed expression.

They understood it instantly.

Yun Ding would never abandon Chen Luo Luo.

Lin Zhao wasn’t begging for fairness—she was forcing a way out.

Panic surged in them, sharp and ugly. For years, their cultivation had risen on the back of Lin Zhao’s blood and risk. She seized resources; Chen Luo Luo took most of the best; they took what was left. Lin Zhao kept scraps and still clawed her way to mid Foundation Establishment—proof of talent none of them wanted to admit.

If she left, what would they have?

One of them forced a strained smile and hurriedly stepped forward. “Master… Senior Sister is probably just acting out of anger. She doesn’t truly mean—”