Cursed by the World After Love’s Demise - Chapter 1

I made my senior sister sad.

If possible, I would rather die than see my senior sister sad.

I was born into a prominent noble family in Lingnan. My father was a duke, my mother a princess. I vaguely remember having eight wet nurses in my childhood, golden and peacock-feather threads embroidering phoenixes on brocade quilts, and golden bells adorned with jade and agate hanging by the bed curtains.

As I grew older, the family gradually declined. Anything of value was secretly sold off by my mother, while my father spent his days sighing in despair.

Only I felt no distress, rejoicing in the lack of restraint and the freedom it brought.

Until one day, a friend of my father’s visited. He looked at me, then at my senior sister, and said we both possessed extraordinary talent perhaps in a hundred years, we could cultivate immortality and attain the Dao.

Seeing his fortunes wane and visitors grow scarce, my father thought that if our family produced a cultivator, he could hold his head high in his later years. So he sent both my senior sister and me to the Heart Inquiry Sect.

Thus, my senior sister became the sect master’s final disciple and, eighteen years later, took charge of the sect in his stead.

Thus, I became the final disciple of the eccentric old Hongxi and, eighteen years later, ended up guarding the Demon Suppression Tower only to let the Demon Clan’s Saintess escape.

My senior sister sat far, far away from me, yet I could clearly see her icy gaze, glinting coldly like dazzling gemstones.

Before the assembly of sect elders, my senior sister put me on trial.

She asked me why I had released the Demon Clan’s Saintess.

I dared not speak.

I dared not tell my senior sister that, day after day during my watch, the Saintess had torn open my chest and taken out my heart.

As a disciple of an orthodox sect, I had fallen in love with the Demon Clan’s Saintess.

4.

My senior sister was truly angry with me.

She dismissed the elders from the hall, then stepped closer to me, forming hand seals and casting a spell. Her cool fingertips touched my brow, and a moist, damp aura instantly enveloped me, like a breeze after rain carrying the faint scent of grass and trees. It seeped inch by inch into my flesh, into my organs.

This was the Heart Inquiry Sect’s forbidden technique, Seeking Past Lives.

It could reveal the most unforgettable memories of a person’s life.

“Senior sister, senior sister.”

The dampness seemed to condense into icy needles inside me, densely flowing through my veins. The pain was unbearable, I could no longer kneel before her, only lie sweating on the ground, clutching her ankle in a wretched, humble manner, pleading desperately: “Senior sister, senior sister.”

Though she stood right before me, her voice seemed to come from a distant place: “Still unwilling to speak?”

I dared not speak.

My senior sister held an irreconcilable hatred for the Demon Clan, yet I had fallen in love with their Saintess.

5.

That year, my senior sister’s entire family had been brutally slaughtered by the Demon Clan. Only she survived by chance, and a loyal servant traveled a great distance to bring her to my home.

By the time she arrived, though my family no longer enjoyed its former immense wealth, taking in an orphaned girl was not difficult. Since I was lively, gentle-tempered, and around the same age as her, my mother settled her in my courtyard. We ate, lived, and went everywhere together.

I was born with a wretched nature hints of it showed even in childhood.

The more aloof, silent, and indifferent my senior sister was, the more I delighted in wagging my tail and eagerly seeking her out.

Back at home, I used to call her “A-Tan.”

“A-Tan, A-Tan.”

I would always say: “Just smile, won’t you? If you smile, I’ll do anything for you.”

My senior sister rarely smiled, always looking at me with impatience. Yet when I stubbornly climbed into her bed at night, she never kicked me out.

“A-Tan, I can’t sleep. Tell me a story.”

“A-Tan, dear A-Tan, don’t ignore me. Then I’ll tell you one instead.”

“There was a lake near Little Rabbit’s home, but it contained nothing. Little Rabbit felt the lake was too lonely and shed sad tears. When the Moon saw Little Rabbit crying, it scattered star seeds into the lake. The seeds quickly grew into little fish. At daybreak, the Clouds saw Little Rabbit’s tears and tore off pieces of themselves to spread across the lake. The clouds became lotus leaves, and the leaves bloomed into lotus flowers. A-Tan, why aren’t you asleep yet? I’m running out of stories to make up.”

My senior sister told me to shut up.

6.

It felt like being scorched by raging flames, like having my flesh sliced and bones scraped. The pain was so unbearable I wished for death, yet I held no resentment toward my senior sister, only self-blame.

The reason Seeking Rebirth was designated a forbidden technique by the former sect leader was that from a certain moment onward, the caster would share senses with the target. If the target recklessly ended their own life, the caster would suffer backlash, likely resulting in mutual destruction.

In other words, every ounce of pain I felt was replicated exactly upon my senior sister.

“A-Tan, A-Tan!”

The snowy hem of my senior sister’s robe brushed past my ear. In my delirious, half-conscious state, I called her A-Tan again, only to meet a pair of cold, disgusted phoenix eyes.

I can’t recall when she stopped allowing me to call her A-Tan.

What’s certain is that it happened before we came to the Heart Inquiry Sect. I struggled with what to call her, stammering every time I tried to speak, which only deepened her annoyance with me.

By then, I had grown older and developed a cheap yet stubborn sense of pride. Whenever I felt slighted by her, I’d run off to wander for days, only to return with rare trinkets to win her favor. Then I’d feel slighted again, run away again, in an endless cycle.

My mother always said I remembered the treats but forgot the beatings, that I’d forget the pain once the wound healed.

But this was my senior sister, the one who secretly cried under the blankets when she missed home.

I once hugged her through the quilt and silently vowed to never let her suffer. If she lost her parents, I would become her parent. If she lost her siblings, I would become her sibling. If she lost her beloved dog, then I would become her dog.

All these years, I had obeyed her every word.

Though she found me irritating, having grown up together, she knew my nature well. That’s why she entrusted me with the crucial task of guarding the Demon Clan’s Saintess.

How could I have failed her so utterly?

If not for fearing the backlash of Seeking Rebirth upon her, I would have ended my life to atone.

7.

Since death wasn’t an option, I had to endure. Eventually, the pain overwhelmed me into unconsciousness.

I awoke still in the sect’s main hall.

Groping the cold blue stone beneath me, I struggled to rise, barely managing to kneel upright. Slowly lifting my head, my gaze met expressionless elders and my tight-lipped senior sister, who seemed to be suppressing fury.

My senior sister had always been reserved since childhood, and after joining the Heart Inquiry Sect, her words and actions became even more strictly restrained. It would be no exaggeration to say she remained unruffled even if Mount Tai collapsed before her. I hadn’t seen such an expression on her face in many years, and for a moment, I was taken aback, nearly forgetting my current predicament.

I had released the Demon Clan’s Saintess, Xuan Ying.

Xuan Ying was originally a spiritual child abducted by the Demon Clan to be sacrificed for a blood ritual. Due to her exceptional talent, she became a Demon Cultivator, and because of that same talent, she restored the Soul-Devouring Mirror, which had been damaged for millennia.

With the sudden emergence of the Soul-Devouring Mirror, Xuan Ying’s name spread across the Nine Provinces.

That year, she was only sixteen, yet she had already surpassed many immortal cultivators.

The major sects knew all too well that if they ignored Xuan Ying now, she would become a future calamity. Thus, they joined forces to besiege her.

But Xuan Ying, despite her youth and cultivation of demonic arts, had not committed the heinous acts typical of ordinary demons. The major sects, claiming to uphold righteousness, could not simply execute her without just cause. After careful consideration, they decided to imprison her in the Demon Suppression Tower, entrusting the Heart Inquiry Sect with her custody and reformation.

Last year, during the Battle of Xianglai, the sect master and several elders were severely injured. Before entering seclusion, the sect master specifically appointed my senior sister to act in his stead. Likely to keep me from pestering her all day, she assigned me to the Demon Suppression Tower like a chained guard dog.

The Demon Suppression Tower was an underground structure with twelve levels in total. The deeper one went, the heavier the oppressive aura, unsettling the mind and causing discomfort. Having been raised in relative comfort, I was naturally unwilling to endure such hardship. I left the routine inspections and reformation duties to my junior disciples, who carried them out perfunctorily, while I never ventured deep into the tower myself.

Until one day, a Nightmare Demon imprisoned on the third level vanished without a trace. My junior sister, assuming the demon had escaped, reported in a panic, urging me to investigate immediately. I had been napping at the time and bolted upright upon hearing the news, throwing on an outer robe before descending into the tower.

Though lax in my cultivation studies, my comprehension of techniques was among the finest in the world. I had mastered every obscure skill recorded in the ancient texts of the library pavilion, so I easily unraveled the Nightmare Demon’s invisibility spell.

The demon, intending to escape amid the chaos, was caught off guard by my quick discovery. In a fit of shame and rage, it destroyed its own soul.

I was stunned by the demon’s actions and took a moment to collect myself. Muttering, “This one has quite the temper,” I covered my nose and mouth as I made my way out.

But before I had taken more than a few steps, a woman emerged from the cell opposite the Nightmare Demon’s, none other than the Demon Cultivator Xuan Ying, sentenced to lifelong imprisonment.

Xuan Ying looked utterly pitiful then, clad in thin garments, her feet bare, and her cascading black hair flowing down to her ankles without even a hairpin to hold it in place.

“Sister,” she called out to me, her eyes brimming with tears, and my heart softened instantly.

It wasn’t attraction at first sight; rather, Xuan Ying in that moment reminded me of my senior sister from long ago. When A-Tan first arrived at my home, she too had no shoes, her feet marred by frostbite.

I couldn’t bear the thought of someone as young as Xuan Ying suffering such misery in the Demon Suppression Tower. From that day on, I often visited her under the guise of reformation, bringing her treats, clothes, and accessories that young girls would enjoy. These ordinary items were hardly excessive and couldn’t be considered favoritism.

But gradually, we grew closer, and the way she looked at me became increasingly dependent. I began to cross lines, to show her favoritism, until I could no longer bear the sight of her reluctant, longing gaze as I left.

I want to stay by her side. I want to take her out to bask in the sunlight.

As I lay drowsy on the green grass, I asked her, “You won’t run away while I’m asleep, will you?”

Xuan Ying said, “How could I? I can’t bear to leave you.”

So, I clung to a sliver of hope, sinking into conscious indulgence, and drifted peacefully to sleep.

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