Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Always Moving Forward
Should I go back to the beginning and change everything?
Autumn had already slipped into winter. The wind knifed through the broken City God Temple, slipping under Lu Shao Heng’s thin clothes and biting straight into her bones. She hunched her shoulders, drew the straw mat tighter, and tried to ignore the empty twist of hunger in her belly.
Then a voice spoke.
Not beside her ear—inside her chest, as if it had found a seam in her heartbeat and pressed through.
“What are you?”
Lu Shao Heng went rigid.
The voice was neither male nor female, neither pleased nor displeased. It carried no warmth, no anger—only the flat certainty of something that believed itself above everything.
“You don’t need to care,” it said, as if her shock meant nothing. “You only need to know one thing. Life is a play. You are destined to be Jiang Yun Jiang’s foil—the eternal clown.”
The words struck like a slap. Lu Shao Heng’s fingers curled hard enough to bite into her palms.
“But now,” the Divine Voice continued, “you can choose. You can return to the past and turn the tables. Go back to the start. Offer everything to Jiang Yun Jiang in exchange for a decent future.”
A beat of silence, sharp as a blade.
“Or you can start plotting again, and fight her once more.”
Lu Shao Heng’s jaw tightened. “What do you know?”
The voice didn’t even pause, speaking over her as though she hadn’t interrupted.
“You were born into the illustrious Marquis of Pacifying the South Manor of Great Yan. For 14 years, your parents doted on you. Your elder brother and younger brother treated you like a treasure.”
It sounded like praise, but the contempt underneath made it rot.
“But a clown is still a clown. Ever since your parents took in their late friend’s orphan—Jiang Yun Jiang—everything began to be stolen from you.”
Each item fell like a cold coin.
“Your closest friends. Your family’s affection. Your reputation across the capital.”
A faint edge—thin, vicious—slipped into the voice.
“And now you’ve been driven out of the manor and left to wander like this. How pitiful.”
Lu Shao Heng trembled. She couldn’t tell whether it was the cold or the sudden burn of rage that made her teeth want to chatter. She said nothing.
The Divine Voice pressed in, relentless.
“Since you can’t beat Jiang Yun Jiang, why not go back to the beginning and fight for a sliver of life? You’ve already lost everything, and you still don’t dare gamble even once. Are you really that cowardly?”
Lu Shao Heng drew in a slow breath. A laugh slid out, low and sharp.
“So you’re trying to provoke me.”
For the first time, the voice fell silent.
Lu Shao Heng didn’t fill the silence. She sat motionless, letting the cold gnaw at her and the hunger hollow her out, until the quiet itself began to feel like an answer.
Then, about 15 minutes later, a faint roar drifted in from the distance—shouts rising and falling like waves. Something was happening in Bian Capital.
Lu Shao Heng’s spine straightened a fraction. Her heartbeat steadied, the way it always did right before a decision.
“There are cultivators in this world,” she murmured into the wind. “Before them, Great Yan, Great Xia, and Great Liang—the three great dynasties—are nothing but mortal dust.”
She had heard the stories. She had read the scraps of books, the half-true legends whispered over wine.
“They say there are countless immortal sects, but only 49 stand at the peak: the Upper Qian Thirteen Sects and the Lower Kun Thirty-Six Schools.”
Her breath fogged. Her eyes sharpened.
“Each sect only sends disciples down to what cultivators call the Mortal Realm once every 20 years.”
Another distant shout, clearer now.
“Bian Capital is so lively because it’s that time again. The cultivation sects have come to recruit disciples.”
Lu Shao Heng rose, pushed open the temple door, and stepped into the cutting wind.
“I don’t need to go back to the past,” she said, voice steady. “This is our chance.”
The Divine Voice returned at once, smooth as oil.
“If you give up the chance to return, won’t you regret it?”
Its words slipped between her ribs like needles.
“Everything has been taken from you, yet now you have a chance to change everything. Start over, and you will have an absolute advantage.”
Lu Shao Heng didn’t even hesitate. “Ridiculous.”
She started walking, boots crunching over dried straw and splintered wood.
“Life isn’t going well, and people act like restarting once would make everything smooth.” Her mouth twisted. “But I would still be the same Lu Shao Heng.”
She didn’t look back.
“Go back and be Jiang Yun Jiang’s dog? Absolutely not.”
Her breath came out white and hard.
“Besides, I never regret what I’ve done. Why would I restart?”
At the temple threshold, she lifted her head.
Her eyesight had been sharper than most since birth. Now, looking toward the heart of Bian Capital, she saw the haze high in the clouds break apart as though sliced open.
And there they were.
Spirit ships. Long swords. Silk ribbons. Treasure gourds of every color—hovering in the air like a dream so bright it felt unreal. Men and women in immortal sect robes rode them, elegant and otherworldly, their sleeves fluttering like banners in the wind.
From above, they looked down at the crowd packed below.
A single flicker of expression—one lifted brow, one careless glance—was enough to make mortals tremble, heads bowed, minds racing with awe and fear.
But why?
One mouth, two eyes. Human faces, same as everyone else.
Lu Shao Heng broke into a run.
Her body was weak from hunger, but her steps landed steady, one after another, as if something in her refused to collapse. The cold air scraped her throat. The city’s noise grew louder with every stride.
“I don’t know what you are,” she said under her breath, speaking to the thing in her heart, “but you’re clearly not all-knowing.”
Her gaze locked on the figures in the clouds.
“You got one crucial thing wrong.” Her voice hardened. “I will never lose everything.”
She ran harder.
She watched the sect cultivators lounge in the sky as if the world belonged to them.
She watched them look down with bored arrogance.
She watched them use immortals to crush mortals—and call it natural.
Heat surged through her chest, hot enough to sting behind her eyes.
The Divine Voice spoke again, impatient now.
“You think cultivating can change everything? Useless.”
Its contempt sharpened.
“I’m telling you: Jiang Yun Jiang was born with an innate divine ability. Her aptitude is outstanding, and her fortune is blazing. She will gain chance after chance, encounter after encounter.”
A pause, like a smile made of sound.
“How will you compete with her?”
Lu Shao Heng’s breath hitched, but not from fear. From certainty.
“Honestly,” she said, voice rough with running, “I’ve seen more than enough of what’s strange about Jiang Yun Jiang.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“If that doesn’t disappear, going back wouldn’t help.”
She forced air into her lungs, then slowed just enough to speak clearly.
“And what’s strangest to me right now is you.”
She stopped for half a heartbeat, gulping air, and the world steadied.
“If someone truly returned to the past, even the smallest change—like a butterfly beating its wings—would stir up enormous waves. The ripples would spread wider and wider, snowballing until they were unstoppable.”
Her voice grew quieter, but more precise.
“Creating a new future is, in a way, creating a new world.”
She pressed a hand to her chest, where the voice lived.
“And you—with that kind of power—every word you say screams that you want me to go back. Yet you still ask for my consent.”
Lu Shao Heng’s smile was all edges. “So you must be under some kind of restriction.”
Silence.
She took that silence and tightened it into a noose.
“I can reasonably assume going back comes with a price,” she said. “And willingness is just another face of desire.”
Her eyes burned.
“I don’t doubt it. You want something from me.”
Her fingers clenched.
“So the cost of going back would be paid by me, and it would benefit you.”
She lifted her chin, ragged and starving and unbowed.
“Right?”
No one answered.
But the quiet was its own confession.
The mockery slid off Lu Shao Heng’s face. What remained was something harder—pride with teeth.
“And I’ll tell you this,” she said, each word clean as steel. “Even if I threw away every calculation, even if time really could run backward, I, Shao Heng, would never regret what I’ve done.”
Her voice rang in her own bones.
“I will always move forward.”
Something cracked.
It wasn’t in the sky. It wasn’t in the street. It sounded like it came from deep inside the place where the voice had been lodged—as if a lock had snapped.
When the Divine Voice came again, it carried two overlapping tones, woven together into something unfamiliar.
“May you always move forward.”
Lu Shao Heng’s brows lifted.
In the next instant, she felt it—something settling into her body, a new weight in her blood. The clearest proof was how the hunger eased, not vanished but dulled, as if a tight fist had loosened. Strength flowed back into her limbs, warmth spreading under her skin.
Lu Shao Heng swallowed, frowning. For the first time, uncertainty crept in.
At first it had tried to push her back. That last line had sounded like approval.
What are you?
But she didn’t have time to stand still and gnaw on questions. Not now.
Lu Shao Heng’s brows smoothed. She turned back toward the heart of the city and ran.
The once-every-20-years immortal sect recruitment was right in front of her.