A Sudden Change on a Rainy Night
Shen Linyue awoke with a start to the sound of the torrential rain, the bitter taste of the sleeping pills she had swallowed before transmigrating into the book still lingering in her throat. A strange, stunningly beautiful face was reflected in the bronze mirror, a nine-tailed phoenix hairpin swaying gently in her hair—this was none other than the deceased matriarch of the He family from the original story.
"Madam, the Sect Master requests your immediate presence in the dungeon." The maid's voice trembled. "The Young Sect Master... he's gone mad again."
She clutched the blood-stained sheepskin scroll that had suddenly appeared in her sleeve; the writing was still bleeding: "Stop He Xiao from gouging out his heart before midnight, or the cycle of reincarnation will restart." In the original story, He Xiao went through this very rainy night to save his mother, but witnessing her corpse completely corrupted him.
The clanking of the dungeon chains was deafening. Seventeen-year-old He Xiao's collarbone was pierced by seven meteorite iron chains, his white robes soaked in blood. When he looked up, the corners of his eyes gleamed with an eerie red, yet a smile played on his lips: "Mother, have you come to deliver a dagger to your child?"
Shen Linyue looked at the thirty-seven cuts on the boy's wrist that had already scabbed over—evidence that the original owner had made her son bleed in order to prolong his life. She suddenly raised her hand and broke the chains, and warm blood splattered on He Xiao's pale face.
"From this day forward, anyone who dares to harm my son will have their golden core ripped out and fed to the dogs."
The candlelight flickered in the ancestral hall as Shen Linyue slammed the blood-stained family genealogy before everyone. On the yellowed pages, the name "He Xiao" was emanating black mist—a sign of the awakening of the Xuan Yin Body.
"Third Uncle, tell me, what kind of constitution does an ordinary cultivator have to survive being ripped out of their heart thirty-seven times?" She lightly tapped the blood jade on the table with her fingertip; it was a life-extending Gu nurtured with He Xiao's heart blood.
The elders' pupils constricted sharply. Suddenly, Shen Linyue crushed the blood jade, and hundreds of golden threads crawled out from the corpses of the Gu worms—the puppet threads unique to the third branch of the family.
"So what you all want isn't Xiao'er's blood." She smiled, wrapping the golden thread around her wrist. "You want to use the Xuan Yin Body to cultivate a Soul-Devouring Gu capable of controlling Nascent Soul cultivators?"
He Xiao stood in the shadows, watching his mother confront the entire clan for his sake. Suddenly, a warm, smooth object was placed in his palm—half a yin-yang jade pendant. Shen Linyue, her back to him, whispered, "Under the third floor tile in the east wing, lies the Shattered Star Sword Manual left by your father."
On the night the blood moon hung in the sky, twelve bolts of heavenly lightning cleaved open the forbidden grounds of the He family. He Xiao, clad in white and bathed in blood, stood at the entrance to the Mirror Abyss, with nine ancient bronze mirrors floating behind him. Each mirror reflected a different version of his death—the predetermined ending from the original story.
"Xiao'er!" As Shen Linyue lunged forward, the golden lines in the boy's eyes were consuming his pupils. He pointed his sword at his mother's heart: "Who exactly are you? The real Shen Linyue should have died twenty years ago."
Only then did she realize with a start that the Shattered Star Sword was pressed against her neck. In that life-or-death moment, the blood-stained letter in her sleeve suddenly transformed into a stream of light and disappeared between her brows, unleashing a torrent of memories from her past life—
The woman on the verge of death in the delivery room entrusted her infant to the time traveler: "Please let my Xiao'er...see spring..."
Shen Linyue suddenly gripped the sword blade, letting the blood stain her clothes: "That year you said you wanted to see apricot blossoms in spring, so Mother planted thirty-seven trees in the yard. This year... they've finally bloomed."
The sword in He Xiao's hand began to tremble, and the ancient mirrors shattered one after another. When the last bronze mirror broke, the golden lines in his eyes turned into tears and fell: "But apricot blossoms... have only ever bloomed in illusions..."
Fragments of the ancient bronze mirror floated in the torrential rain, each reflecting distorted moonlight. He Xiao staggered backward, the Ninefold Mirror Abyss collapsing into a vortex behind him, countless golden chains piercing out from the void, binding him and Shen Linyue into a cocoon.
"Xiao'er!" Shen Linyue grasped the chain piercing her shoulder blade, discovering it was a materialized causal thread. A sudden burning pain shot through her palm; the half of the yin-yang jade pendant transformed into a stream of light that seeped into the wound, and memories of her past life flooded back like a tide—
The delivery room twenty years ago reeked of blood. The real Madam He gripped the transmigrator's wrist tightly. Their faces overlapped in the candlelight, and a blood-red star map appeared on the infant's chest. "The Shattered Star Sword Technique isn't a cultivation method… it's a destiny chart…" The woman, vomiting blood, shoved a jade pendant into her hand, "Wait for the Blood Moon…"
Boom!
As the ninth bolt of lightning struck, Shen Linyue finally saw the inscription on the chains. It wasn't Sanskrit; it was modern simplified Chinese characters written upside down: "[Don't trust me in 2035]".
"Mother, be careful!"
He Xiao's exclamation and the sound of a sword rang out at the same time. Shen Linyue spun around and flicked her sleeve. The poisoned hidden weapon that was supposed to pierce her back was instead shredded into dust by the golden thread on her wrist—it was the puppet thread that she had taken from the Blood Jade Gu during the day.
Twelve assassins clad in black emerged from the rain, their vermilion birthmarks on their foreheads gleaming with a ghostly blue light. Shen Linyue's pupils constricted sharply; this was the mark of the "Cangming Pavilion" assassins in the original novel, an organization that was supposed to appear thirty years later!
"The young sect leader has fallen to demonic possession. He is to be executed on the spot by order of the patriarch!"
The lead assassin pointed his sword at He Xiao, and before he could finish speaking, golden threads were already wrapped around his throat. Shen Linyue lightly hooked her fingertip, and the man's entire jawbone was torn off, revealing a mechanical throat—it was an ancient mechanical art.
"I was unaware that the He clan's 'family rules' required the name of Cangming Pavilion." She wrapped the blood-stained gold thread around He Xiao's wrist, feeling the surging spiritual energy in the boy's meridians. "Xiao'er, do you still remember the third move of the Shattered Star Sword Technique?"
He Xiao stared blankly at the golden threads wrapped around his fingers. These puppet threads, which were supposed to control him, were now trembling gently with his mother's pulse, channeling warm true energy into his cold mind.
"Stars hang low over the plains..."
"Wrong." Shen Linyue suddenly grasped his hand holding the sword. "It's 'Moon Surges Across the Great River.'"
The moment the sword cleaved through the rain, He Xiao was startled to realize that the flow of spiritual energy within his body had reversed. The causal chains that bound him crumbled inch by inch, transforming into starlight that converged at the tip of the sword. When the last chain broke, he saw that his mother's black hair had turned to snow.
The severed limbs of the Cangming Pavilion assassin steamed in the rain, while the blood on the ground strangely coalesced into a hexagram. Shen Linyue wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and recognized it as a deadly trap from the *Lianshan Yi*: "The marsh is trapped, dragons fight in the wilderness."
This chapter is not finished yet. Please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
