Reborn as My Nemesis's Junior Sister - Chapter 2

Another hundred years passed. After surviving my Nascent Soul tribulation, I emerged from seclusion to find countless envious, resentful eyes fixed upon me.

If looks could kill, I would have been riddled with holes. But beneath the bright and righteous heavens, all they could do was congratulate me.

The celebration for my advancement was a lively affair. Master drank himself senseless, leaving Shen Fuchen to arrange everything.

He was not one of those geniuses incapable of handling mundane matters. Every detail was impeccably managed.

Truly ideal husband material…

I toyed with my wine cup and watched him through half-lidded eyes, my gaze growing a little too brazen. He suddenly turned and looked straight at me.

I raised my cup. “Thank you, Senior Brother.”

The festivities carried on until late into the night. More than a few guests cornered Master in the meantime, trying to coax information from him.

“Brother Xu, two prodigies beneath one roof! Your luck with disciples is truly enviable.”

They circled around the question of my origins, but Master kept his mouth shut and revealed not a single word.

…Of course, he had not always been so discreet. I simply had plenty of ways to make him keep a secret.

“You have only just advanced, and your cultivation is still unstable. Why aren’t you meditating? How long do you intend to linger here?”

Shen Fuchen stood behind me with a frosty expression, nagging more than the parents I had never met.

I meekly begged forgiveness. “Thank you for the instruction, Senior Brother. I was wrong.”

It was not that a century had worn away my temper. It was simply that… Shen Fuchen took far too much care of me.

He handled my questions about the sword, but he also meddled in what I ate, wore, and did from morning to night.

Where I should go for experience, what type of sword I should choose, what sword-stone I should use—he laid out every detail with perfect clarity.

It wasn’t as if I had never resisted. I made plans of my own, went over them from every angle, and discovered that his solution was always the best.

He even took my disciple robes away to embroider subtle patterns into them. The twelve sword tassels in different colors that swayed from my blade had all been made by his own hands.

Once he learned I had no parents, he decided to become both father and mother to me.

Schemes might have filled my belly, but even I had to bow my head and accept defeat.

Of everyone on the righteous path, he alone… was exactly what he appeared to be.

Under his supervision, I returned to my cave dwelling. Just as I was about to enter seclusion, something occurred to me.

“Senior Brother, I’ve reached the Nascent Soul realm now. I can take care of myself. You can enter seclusion without worry and prepare for ascension.”

He looked at me quietly, a bitter trace of a smile lifting his lips. “I can no longer ascend.”

“I cannot overcome my heart demon. This is as far as I will ever go.”

A heart demon?!

He did not intend to explain. He simply turned and walked away, his broad back bleak as it slowly vanished into the night.

I tried to meditate but could not settle my mind. Since stillness refused to come, I rose and stormed into Master’s meditation chamber.

He was blind drunk. I poured three bowls of sobering soup down his throat and forced him awake.

“Master, did you know Senior Brother has a heart demon?”

He struggled, still trying to go back to sleep, so I seized his beard and hauled him upright.

“Fine, fine, you little ancestor! I’ll tell you, all right?”

“Have you heard of Mu Yuntang, the Demon Sovereign? The rumors about her were false. She did not deserve to die, but through a cruel twist of fate… ah…”

Regret for the dead filled his eyes. “I met that young woman. She had a wicked air about her, but everything she did had reason behind it. She never committed any truly heinous crime.”

“Your senior brother killed her by mistake. He has lived with the guilt ever since.”

I scratched my cheek. “She’s already dead. What’s the point of thinking about it so much?”

“You wretched child!”

I had no interest in listening to him ramble, so I flew away.

At Windwatch Cliff, the moon hung round as a silver plate, slanting pine branches etched across its face. My steps gradually slowed.

What had happened back then… was a trap of my own design.

The previous Demon Sovereign had neared the end of his lifespan. On the brink of death, his only remaining gamble was ascension.

But the lightning blasted his soul apart and reduced him to ash. That earthshaking heavenly tribulation, that defeat of an unrivaled powerhouse…

The stronger he was, the fiercer the lightning became, until ten thousand bolts wrapped around him and turned night into day.

Heaven’s will was clear: he had to die. Such was the intolerable nature of demonic cultivation.

Uneasy, I went to drink with the Buddhist Holy Son Ming’an.

He drank tea while I drank wine, cup after cup, until everything in my heart spilled out.

Had these hands truly never been stained with an innocent person’s blood?

Could this sword truly claim a clear conscience?

Too many dying eyes haunted me. I could not count them all… I could not be certain.

What demonic cultivator had not crawled to power across mountains of corpses and seas of blood, fighting for enough cultivation to turn around and prey upon the weak?

We killed our way forward until the road ended beneath an executioner’s blade.

Demonic cultivators could not ascend. To face a heavenly tribulation was to seek death.

I had already taken the wrong path. To turn back and begin anew? A delusion.

“Tell me. Is ascension truly beyond my reach?”

Amid the rising steam, Ming’an lowered his eyes and gently tapped his wooden fish. “Unless you live another life.”

A distant bell rang through heaven and earth. In a flash of revelation, I rose to my feet.

I would… live another life.

The world held no shortage of methods for seizing a body and stealing a life. But if I meant to ascend, I needed a rebirth untainted by any such crime.

Otherwise, all my painstaking work would be wasted.

I returned to the Demon Realm, crushed every challenger, and became the new Demon Sovereign. Then I used the Demon Sovereign’s power to gather what I needed.

The Sarira Lotus of Wanhua Temple could burn away karmic fire. The Yin Puppet Sect’s secret art, paired with the sacred medicine of Deathless Valley, could reshape a physical body.

I chose spiritual roots of perfect purity, meridians both resilient and strong, and a constitution born to gather qi. I gave my future self the very best of everything.

Finally, I needed to die in a glorious spectacle grand enough to deceive the eyes of Heaven.

I chose Shen Fuchen as the person who would kill me.

In the end, I admired him. A man utterly without selfish motives deserved a coronation, so I would let my death crown him.

After so many years of struggle, whenever something good came along, I still thought of him.

I played out our grand battle between righteousness and evil to my heart’s content.

At the very end, I dropped my defenses and let his sword pierce my heart. With the eyes of the world fixed upon us, I slowly slid down the blade.

Hahahahaha! I could still remember Shen Fuchen’s face—that shock, that total incomprehension.

It had been wonderfully entertaining.

From that day on, Mu Yuntang would cease to exist. There would only be Xie Fuyao, a peerless prodigy devoted to the Great Dao.

I had never imagined that my final whim would become his calamity.

Shen Fuchen had mourned me all these years—and from that grief, a heart demon had been born.