Beneath the Altar - Chapter 1

I found Gu Changsheng at Fengyue Hall.

Dressed all in white, he sat on the platform, as remote and cool as the moon, utterly out of place amid the sultry extravagance around him.

An old guqin lay before him.

The moment he touched its strings, the noise around him fell away.

Gu Changsheng plucked softly. The music drifted through the room, distant and lingering, like a landscape painting come to life.

Even someone as artistically challenged as me could tell this was impressive, whatever it was.

When the piece ended, the spellbound guests showered him with money.

Silver clattered all over the floor. Gu Changsheng left it where it fell and stroked the zither instead, as though thanking a companion.

“How much?”

I walked up to him and discovered that Gu Changsheng was far more beautiful than I had imagined.

His unfocused eyes were dark, as if a veil of mist lay over them.

There was a cold, distant air about his face. “Miss, this zither isn’t for sale.”

“I meant you.”

His fine brows drew together. He seemed unable to make sense of that.

I had to try again.

“Gu Changsheng, I’m buying your freedom.”

Gu Changsheng had been a master of the Qingyun Sect on Liaowang Peak.

Reserved yet gentle, highly accomplished in cultivation, and devoted to the welfare of the world, he had been the member of his sect most likely to attain immortality.

What a wonderful character.

Unfortunately, this was a boys’ love novel about coercive love.

In that genre, a character like him might as well have been born with ABUSE ME stamped on his forehead.

Opposite him stood his deranged disciple, Lu Zefeng.

As in every melodramatic plot of its kind, an incompetent disciple met a master who recognized his worth. Once accepted as his pupil, he grew rapidly in power, until no one dared bully him again.

A childhood starved of love left him with a pathological need to possess his beautiful master.

So he went demonic, slaughtered the sect, and destroyed his master’s cultivation—the full package.

After repeated, fruitless attempts to resist, Gu Changsheng became Lu Zefeng’s captive plaything.

At the end, despite everything Gu Changsheng had lost, the author still made him forgive Lu Zefeng and fall in love with him.

What a fucking joke.

First the author created a Gu Changsheng who stood above the world, untouchable and inviolable. Then she smashed all of that and remade him into an empty shell, stripped of himself and willing to be a toy, all so love-starved Lu Zefeng could be redeemed.

But who would save the original Gu Changsheng? Where could the souls of Qingyun’s three hundred dead disciples find peace?

That was why I had come.

The story had now reached the aftermath of Qingyun’s destruction.

With his cultivation gone and his eyes blinded, Gu Changsheng had ended up in the mortal world, forced to earn a living playing the zither.

As for this female side character I had become?

She was just some nobody infatuated with Lu Zefeng’s mortal incarnation.

A mortal dismissed in a single sentence of the original novel.

Perhaps I had ached so badly for Gu Changsheng before my death that Heaven had sent me into his world.

Now he was no different from an ordinary mortal, except that he couldn’t see.

If he stayed in the brothel, he would probably never escape being found by Lu Zefeng, imprisoned, and subjected to his “love.”

I refused to watch a god be forced into the mire.

He should stand upon his altar and fulfill his duties, revered by all living beings.

He shouldn’t be on his knees beneath a madman, forced to give him pleasure.

“I’m buying your freedom,” I told him. “And the zither, too.”

Gu Changsheng froze, then lowered his eyes with a bitter smile. “I’m only a blind man with a little knowledge of music. If you enjoy listening, miss, you can come here every day. There’s really no need to spend so much on my account.”

“I know nothing about music, and I don’t understand your playing. But I do have a little money.”

When the pleasure house’s owner heard that I wanted to redeem Gu Changsheng, he named a price with a broad smile.

“Two hundred taels of gold?”

“Oh, don’t think it expensive. Master Gu is our star attraction. Who knows how many people in this room came just to hear him play?”

Now I understood Gu Changsheng’s bitter smile.

Two hundred taels of gold. He could play until his strings snapped and still never buy his own freedom.

In the original novel, Lu Zefeng had taken him away by force.

I, however, was a fine, law-abiding citizen. Naturally, I would get Gu Changsheng out through legitimate means.

What was two hundred taels of gold? A female side character who managed to get an actual name in her one-sentence appearance among all those nobodies had to have something special going for her.

And that something was the power of money!

“I’ll add another hundred. Once we’re gone, tell people Master Gu escaped on his own. No matter who asks, you mustn’t mention anyone buying his freedom.”

The owner hadn’t expected me to be so generous. Suspecting a catch, he ventured, “And by ‘who,’ you mean…?”

“Just a mad dog. Say a few words and send him away.”

A few words for a hundred taels of gold? He agreed delightedly.

I tore a strip of fabric from my sleeve and covered Gu Changsheng’s eyes.

“Miss, what is…?”

“My name is Su Xi. I’m covering your eyes so the sunlight won’t further irritate them. They’re fragile enough already.”

“Thank you, Miss Su. But may I ask what you need me to do in return for my freedom?” Gu Changsheng asked cautiously.

Someone who had once stood alone above the clouds, proud and beyond all profanation, was now this fearful before a mere mortal.

“You don’t need to do anything. Just come with me.”

I helped him down from the wooden platform and whispered in his ear.

“I’m going to bring you back to the cultivation world.”