Force-Bound to My Brooding Junior Brother - Chapter 1

For the longest time, I had assumed there was no one in this world who disliked me.

Then my youngest junior brother, Zhou Lingxue, joined the sect.

My spotless, snow-silk existence as everyone’s darling acquired its one and only ink stain.

Zhou Lingxue had the beauty of an immortal and the rare gift of an innate spirit constitution. By all rights, he should have been immensely popular. Unfortunately, he was gloomy, antisocial, and looked down on everyone with perfect impartiality. On the rare occasions he opened his mouth, every word seemed dipped in poison.

In a Sword Sect teeming with worshippers of its eldest senior sister, he alone had persisted in hating me for ten solid years.

If I told him to go east, he insisted on going west. Once, I tactfully encouraged him to mingle with the others. Zhou Lingxue answered with a sneer.

“Mingle with them? So I can turn into another idiot who spends all day circling Senior Sister like a lapdog?”

Whether or not that was what I meant could wait. Wasn’t that an unnecessarily nasty way to put it?

Such a lovely face. Why did it have to come with a mouth?

He was asking for discipline.

…

I had considered resorting to force.

The strong had always ruled the Sword Sect. Beat a disobedient disciple once and they generally learned to behave. But Zhou Lingxue was different from everyone else. He was the only spell cultivator in the entire sect.

A fight between us would end nine to one.

One punch from me, and he would be nine springs under.

Heaven only knew what had possessed a delicate spell cultivator like him to join the Sword Sect in the first place. Now I could neither scold nor touch him for fear of driving away our frail little god of wealth.

Yes, spell cultivators were delicate—but they were also filthy rich.

The Sword Sect had been poor for eight hundred years. Only after Zhou Lingxue joined did we finally begin living like human beings. We even had a dining hall now, one where meat occasionally appeared on the tables.

Do you know how hard-won that was?

If only so the Qi Refining disciples could continue eating braised chicken legs, I had to suppress my true nature and overlook His Highness’s foul temper.

If I couldn’t afford to offend him, surely I could avoid him.

…

I could not.

There was no avoiding him at all.

For reasons beyond me, the more I ignored Zhou Lingxue’s provocations, the more objectionable he found me. At first, he had merely traded a few barbs with me. When I stopped reacting, he escalated to seeking me out whenever I was injured just so he could taunt me.

“We haven’t met in days, yet Senior Sister is as hypocritical as ever. You’ll even throw your life away for a good reputation.”

“Do you really think a few compliments from outsiders make you invincible?”

More than once, I had my rope ready and my sword half an inch out of its sheath.

Then I would look at his gorgeous, sickly face, glance down at the purse at his waist…

And endure.

Zhou Lingxue, however, was incapable of reading the room.

When I closed my eyes to master myself, he did not take the opportunity to leave. Instead, he leaned right into my face and let his vicious little mouth run on and on.

“Say something. Where exactly are you hurt? Don’t tell me you’ve sprained your tongue.”

If anyone’s tongue deserved spraining, it was his.

I clenched my fists.

It was fine. Everything was fine.

My junior brother was still young.

Cultivators lived a very long time. Sooner or later, I would get my chance to discipline him.

The chance arrived without warning.

The immortal sects held their disciples’ tournament once every thirty years. As the Sword Sect’s chief disciple, I naturally led our delegation. With my abilities, taking first place should have been simple.

Then overconfidence made me capsize in a ditch.

As I mentioned, ever since I made a name for myself, I had occupied first place on the Joyous Union Sect’s list of people they most wanted to devour. Countless disciples there carried a torch for me, and none burned more fanatically than Junior Brother Bai Yang.

Back when he had been trying to win me, Bai Yang had discarded every last scrap of shame. Eventually, his pestering gave me such a headache that I had no choice but to hold one friendly spar with him. Only then was he forced to quiet down.

After the beating I gave him, I assumed that even if he did not hate me, any fondness he had once felt must have been thoroughly extinguished.

I was wrong.

On the night after the tournament’s opening round, Bai Yang slipped into the Sword Sect’s residence during the victory banquet. Once everyone had drunk themselves to sleep, he sneaked into my room.

I had no idea precisely what he did. By the time I used my spiritual power to purge the drug from my wine, a jade bangle—pink verging on purple—had appeared around my wrist.

A strange thread extended from it, slender in appearance but impossibly tough.

And at the other end of that thread…

Zhou Lingxue stood with a talisman pinched between his fingers, glaring in disgust at Bai Yang, who was bound hand and foot. An identical jade bangle sat snugly around Zhou Lingxue’s wrist.

I stared at them in confusion. “What is going on?”

The moment he saw that I was awake, the tips of my junior brother’s ears flared crimson. He rubbed his wrist uneasily, turned his face aside, and answered in an impatient voice.

“I don’t know. I happened to be passing by. Who could have guessed I’d get dragged into your filthy business?”

Bai Yang, still tied up, nearly exploded with rage.

“Are you insane? You just happened to be passing beside her bed in the middle of the night?”

“If you hadn’t interfered, I should be the one bound to Senior Sister Xie right now!”

That felt like a great deal of information to process.

I rubbed my still-spinning head and started with the most important question.

“What do you mean, bound? What is this thing?”

Bai Yang bitterly regretted that the Lovebinding Knot had attached itself to Zhou Lingxue instead of him, but he did not dare refuse me an answer.

“It’s a treasure invented by the founding ancestor of the Joyous Union Sect. Its proper name is the Lovebinding Knot. He forged it while courting the Sword Venerable.”

“The knot will only release the two people it binds once they have fallen wholeheartedly in love with each other. While they remain bound…”

While bound, the pair had to stay constantly at each other’s side.

To separate even temporarily, they needed intimate physical contact, allowing their auras to mingle and deceive the artifact for a time.

And, most importantly…

“Our founding ancestor was probably terrified after the Sword Venerable beat him, so he placed a restriction on the treasure.”

“If the bound pair go too long without dual cultivating, their spiritual power gradually congeals… until eventually, they’re no different from mortals.”

Bai Yang’s plan had been well calculated.

This was an unusually sensitive moment. Had he successfully bound himself to me, I might genuinely have agreed to dual cultivate with him to ensure I could win the tournament.

But his plan had failed.

The Lovebinding Knot had joined Zhou Lingxue and me instead.

So when the elders of the Joyous Union Sect arrived to drag him away, Bai Yang—his face black and blue from the beating I had given him—clung to the doorframe and wailed.

“Senior Sister Xie! I’ll find another way to undo it! Whatever you do, don’t touch that sickly weakling!”

I, who had not considered touching that sickly weakling until this exact moment, went, “Hmm?”

In that instant, image after image flashed through my mind.

Every one of them was Zhou Lingxue.

Zhou Lingxue talking back to me. Zhou Lingxue taunting me while I was injured. Zhou Lingxue refusing to submit to discipline…

The only rebellious junior brother in the entire sect now stood stiffly beside my bed, awkwardness radiating from every inch of him. He wanted to leave, but the fetter around his wrist held him fast, so all he could do was turn his back and play dead.

Hadn’t a perfectly legitimate opportunity to educate him just fallen into my lap?