Prologue

At 4:30 in the morning, the Century Garden apartment complex was still ablaze with light.

In front of a light brown leather long sofa, a tall, slender figure sat on the floor with one long leg slightly curled. Fingers with distinct knuckles, pale and white, tapped rapidly across a keyboard. Beside his hand sat a nearly empty cup of thick black coffee, with several empty instant coffee packets scattered around it.

The light from the computer screen fell across the young man's high, straight nose bridge. His face was strikingly beautiful, his skin so white it was almost bloodless.

Suddenly, a vibration came from a minimized chat window in the upper left corner of the screen, shattering the silence of the room. A new message had appeared in the company group chat.

[Team Leader: I want to see the planning proposal for the new project before work starts.]

It looked like it was going to be another sleepless night.

Chu Rong tiredly pinched the bridge of his nose, picked up his coffee cup, and stood up to go brew another cup — but his legs suddenly gave out beneath him. His body lurched forward uncontrollably.

His forehead struck the cold, hard corner of the tea table. Vivid red blood slowly trickled down Chu Rong's face.

Chu Rong's heavy eyelids trembled faintly, then closed shut, little by little.

"Chu Rong, do you have anything left to say for yourself?"

When Chu Rong regained consciousness, a cold, cutting interrogation exploded inside his foggy head, making it throb with pain.

Chu Rong furrowed his brows in agony, slowly shook his head, and after a long moment managed to gather just enough strength to gradually lift his face.

Through his somewhat blurred vision, he made out a floor of inlaid coiling-dragon-patterned green jade tiles, and a pair of finely crafted cloud-patterned white boots standing upon them. Following the line of those boots upward, he found a face more striking than any male celebrity he had ever seen on television.

The young man's features were elegant and peerless, his ink-black long hair bound high, his face nearly perfect in every way. He looked down at Chu Rong with undisguised contempt and hatred in his eyes, as though Chu Rong were some terrible, unforgivable criminal.

Chu Rong's unfocused eyes trembled slightly. Who was this person? Wasn't he supposed to be working overtime at home?

The man was half-kneeling on the ground, his body curled, his silk-smooth black hair sliding off his shoulders to reveal the mask on his face.

The mask was primarily blue-grey in color, covered across the brow with irregular raised textures. The eye openings were narrow and elongated, hollow in the middle, with red and gold used to mark the pupils. The mouth section was formed into a half-open hollow shape, with two long, thin fangs positioned on either side.

Eerie, grotesque, horrifying — like a devil from hell. For anyone faint of heart, a single glance might be enough to scare them out of their wits.

Cen Yan was a cultivator and feared neither ghosts nor gods. A single mask was not enough to intimidate him.

Seeing Chu Rong shaking his head back and forth, he assumed Chu Rong was still trying to argue his way out. A cold, forbidding aura radiated from his entire body. He raised his hand and flung dozens of written confessions toward Chu Rong: "Qing Yuan confessed in his own words that you forced him to hand over spirit stones. And yet you still dare to deny it! Look — is there a single charge on there that's been falsely laid against you?!"

Three years ago, it was only because Chu Rong had repeatedly used the debt of saving his life as leverage that Cen Yan had made an exception and brought Chu Rong back to the Qingyang Heavenly Sect. He had assumed that since Chu Rong was a mortal with no particular abilities, he wouldn't be capable of stirring up any trouble — but little did he know that, right under his nose, Chu Rong had been running rampant and swindling people all over the place under his name.

If he hadn't noticed certain signs recently and launched a covert investigation, who knew how much longer he would have been kept in the dark!

The confessions scattered and fluttered down around Chu Rong. Chu Rong instinctively glanced sideways at them, and saw written there in traditional characters: gouging out eyes, cutting out tongues, flogging and severing limbs, coercion and extortion, accumulating vast wealth by force... The victims, both direct and indirect, were spread throughout the Qingyang Heavenly Sect. Three people had lost their lives outright. There were even leads pointing to victims outside the sect as well.

What... what on earth was all this?

Chu Rong was startled and instinctively recoiled — but then felt a sharp pain at his neck.

Crimson blood welled up and trickled slowly down his pale throat. Chu Rong was momentarily stunned. On instinct he raised his hand to touch his neck, and his fingers came away drenched in blood. Only then did he belatedly realize there had been a sword pressed against his throat this entire time.

The sword was slender and narrow, engraved with intricate patterns, its cold light glinting — radiating spiritual energy from its entire body, clearly no ordinary object. Near the hilt, the character "Yan" was engraved in traditional script, in a deep crimson red.

Chu Rong's gaze was immediately drawn to it. Wasn't this the natal spirit sword belonging to the protagonist shou in "Tianxiao Records"?!

In his spare time, Chu Rong would occasionally read web novels. "Tianxiao Records" was a popular danmei cultivation novel he had read before. The protagonist shou, Cen Yan, was born into a merchant family in the mortal world. Gifted from a young age, he was noticed and recruited by the Qingyang Heavenly Sect when the immortal sects descended to the mortal world to take on disciples, and was carefully cultivated within the sect.

Cen Yan was intelligent and disciplined, with exceptional comprehension. In a mere thirty years his cultivation had reached the late Golden Core stage, and breaking through to Nascent Soul within a hundred years seemed all but certain. A talent like his was truly one of a kind in the entire cultivation world.

Cen Yan was also of an elegantly otherworldly appearance, and there was no counting the number of people among the hundred immortal sects who admired him. In the novel, there were several named men who were entangled with him, and there was not a single person in the Qingyang Heavenly Sect who didn't adore him. To call Cen Yan a universal heartthrob would be no exaggeration at all.

Wait!

Chu Rong suddenly recalled the question the man in front of him had just asked him, and his heart sank with a foreboding feeling.

He lowered his bloodstained hand and turned to look around. Ancient trees soared overhead, their canopies lush and green. Not far away, a magnificent hall stood in solemn grandeur, its beams made of cloud-top sandalwood.

In front of the hall stood a crowd of people, all dressed in similar robes, all looking down at him with expressions identical to Cen Yan's.

Wasn't this exactly the scene from the original novel, where Cen Yan discovers his fiancé's misdeeds and reports him to the sect?

In the original text, the one blemish on Cen Yan's otherwise smooth and glorious life was his fiancé, Chu Rong. Both came from the mortal world, but Chu Rong was ugly in appearance and had not the slightest talent for cultivation. Using the fact that he had once saved Cen Yan's life as leverage, he had not only forced Cen Yan into an engagement, but had also been running rampant everywhere using Cen Yan's name to line his pockets.

Countless people among the hundred immortal sects had suffered at his hands, yet Chu Rong remained unsatisfied, his ambitions growing ever more inflated, until at last he even set his sights on Cen Yan himself, with the intent to defile him.

Such conduct naturally incurred the wrath of the men in the cultivation world who admired Cen Yan. They used every means at their disposal to destroy him, discarding his body deep in the wilderness to be devoured by wild beasts until not even his bones remained.

So then — Chu Rong's breath grew suddenly heavy — had he transmigrated into a book? And into the mortal fiancé of the protagonist shou, who happened to share his exact name?

"A life for a life — that is the law of heaven." The thick killing intent within Cen Yan's heart expanded outward with every breath. He withdrew his spirit sword, raised his head, and looked toward the person standing at the very center in front of the hall, his every word ringing out clear and forceful: "I ask the Sect Master to carry out the sect rules and sentence Chu Rong to death!"

Death sentence?

Chu Rong sucked in a sharp breath, his face draining of color instantly. No — absolutely not!

Before Chu Rong could react, a vigorous and powerful voice rang out from the distance. An elder with a white-streaked beard came hurrying forward, his loose grey robes billowing as he moved, carrying with him a certain air of immortal grace.

"No!"

He Ming bowed respectfully toward the Sect Master, his kind and gentle features full of urgency: "We cannot execute Chu Rong, Sect Master — he and Yan'er are still bound by a marriage contract!"

Over the past centuries, spiritual energy in the cultivation world had been draining away at a rapid pace, becoming thinner and thinner, making cultivation increasingly difficult. Few people could open their spiritual senses, and even fewer could truly draw qi into their bodies to begin cultivating. The hundred immortal sects of the cultivation world were vast in number, and the Qingyang Heavenly Sect barely even ranked among them. The proportion of cultivating disciples within the sect had not even reached one in ten, and among that fraction, those who had reached Foundation Establishment could be counted on one hand.

Therefore, the sect was especially protective of its reputation. Anyone who harmed a disciple within the sect was to be executed without exception. Chu Rong had crippled three disciples, and putting him to death was entirely in accordance with sect rules.

However, the problem lay in the fact that three years ago, Chu Rong and Cen Yan had formed a Heavenly Dao marriage contract.

Cultivators were different from mortals. When forming a marriage contract, if heaven was informed and the oath was established, then should one party die, the other would be implicated as well.

In the lighter cases, one's cultivation realm would drop. In the more severe cases, one's foundation would be damaged, affecting one's cultivation for the rest of one's life.

Cen Yan was the most gifted disciple He Ming had seen in several hundred years, and was the heir that the entire sect placed the greatest importance upon. The glory and honor of the Heavenly Sect rested almost entirely on Cen Yan's shoulders — absolutely nothing could go wrong with him!

Sect Master Lian Ci had also thought of this point. He furrowed his brows and pondered gravely, his tone giving nothing away: "What do you propose?"

"We cannot kill him, so we must confine him. Lock Chu Rong up on Cloud Ridge Peak, and not allow him to take a single step outside. Once a method to dissolve the marriage contract is found, hand him over to the Discipline Hall to be dealt with according to sect rules." He Ming laid out his plan.

For a cultivator, cultivation was a path against the heavens, and no one would place their cultivation future in the hands of an outsider. In the cultivation world, even when taking a dao companion, no one would inform the heavens. Therefore, there were very few records concerning the dissolution of marriage contracts, and He Ming and the others had no idea where to begin — but no matter how difficult, he would find a way to dissolve it.

For a cultivator to kill a mortal was as effortless as breathing. Once stripped of the protection of the marriage contract, crushing Chu Rong would be as easy as pinching an ant to death for the Heavenly Sect.

This way, Cen Yan would not be affected, the disciples who had been harmed by Chu Rong could be avenged, and the sect would have an explanation to give. Even if those from outside sects who had been victimized came knocking in the future, this could be used to pacify their anger. It was the best of both worlds.

For the time being, this was truly the only option.

Lian Ci nodded, and was just about to make the final call, when a hoarse and muffled voice beat him to it: "I am not guilty."

The Qingyang disciples present instinctively looked toward the source of the sound.

The man propped himself up with one hand and slowly rose to his feet. His figure was tall and upright, his clothes in disarray, blood seeping from the sword wound on his neck — like a vivid red snake gliding down along his fine, smooth skin.

A subtle shift came over his entire bearing, devastatingly alluring in an instant, making one's soul stir and heart reel.

Even the terrifying mask on his face was instinctively overlooked, as everyone found themselves unable to resist the urge to draw closer to him.

The crowd's eyes went blank. Without thinking, they held their breath, unable to tear their gazes away for a long moment.

He could not be locked up.

Chu Rong had read the entire novel and knew what came next. In the original text, the original owner was locked up on Cloud Ridge Peak, and although he temporarily kept his life, the disciples assigned to guard him tormented him day after day.

They inflicted upon the original owner the same things he had done to those three disciples. By the later stages of the story, the original owner had been tortured until he was barely recognizable, kept alive by only a single breath.

Chu Rong pointed at the confessions scattered on the ground. The eyes behind the mask looked directly at Lian Ci, and he refuted every single one of the original owner's crimes, one word at a time: "I am not guilty. I did not kill any sect disciples. I did not use Cen Yan's name to extort wealth in the mortal world. I did not coerce or threaten anyone. These accusations have nothing to do with me. I do not accept them."

Everyone snapped back to their senses just in time to hear these words. They immediately burst into outraged laughter. The evidence was laid out right in front of Chu Rong, and yet he still had the audacity to claim innocence?

Even the usually even-tempered He Ming's face darkened: "The evidence is ironclad. There is no room for your nonsense. Qing Ming, drag him back to Cloud Ridge Peak!"

He Ming summoned the accompanying disciple, who accepted the order respectfully and stepped forward, grabbing Chu Rong by the shoulder and hauling him away.

The disciple used a great deal of force. Chu Rong's joint was dislocated, his shoulder nearly wrenched clean out of its socket. The pain drained the color from his face and left his lips bloodless. Beads of sweat broke out densely across his skin, and his body shook uncontrollably.

Was he truly unable to escape the original owner's fate?

Chu Rong's thoughts were thrown into chaos. His butterfly-wing-like lashes drooped low, casting a shadow over the mask.

Recalling the words he had just seen written on the confessions, his scalp prickled with dread, and his will to survive surged to its peak in an instant.

Chu Rong gritted his teeth against the pain in his shoulder, struggling with all his might, frantically searching through the entire text in his mind, looking for a way out.

Suddenly, a flash of inspiration struck him. Chu Rong shouted out loud: "The Truth Pearl! The Truth Pearl can distinguish truth from lies — if what I'm saying is true or not, wouldn't we know just by using the Truth Pearl?"