The Villainous Master Forcibly Redeemed His Corrupted Disciple - Chapter 1

Written by Zui Li Tan Yue

Wen Zhihan was back.

He had been possessed by an outsider, losing the physical body and cultivation he had spent years refining, and had nearly had his soul scattered to the winds.

Fortunately, the heavens did not wish his demise. His soul drifted away into another three thousand minor worlds, where, through a stroke of misfortune and endless trials and battles, he managed to preserve the completeness of his soul, enduring thus for eight years.

Now, he had finally returned!

Wen Zhihan’s divine soul surged, merging spirit and flesh as he ultimately drove that uninvited squatter out of his body.

Gathering his power, he prepared to crush that wandering soul entirely, only to hear a series of pleas for mercy echoing beside his ear.

“Do not kill me! I was forced to come here as well.”

Wen Zhihan’s thoughts paused slightly.

Forced? Could possession ever be described as something forced?

“Considering that I managed Shen Zong for you for a few years and looked forward to him achieving cultivation and enlightenment every single day, spare my life.”

“I came here purely to lend him a hand. If not for me, he could never have broken through to the Foundation Establishment stage so early.”

The possessing entity had actually mentioned his disciple, Shen Zong.

Distracted for a brief moment, Wen Zhihan intended to ask a few more questions when the interloper’s soul launched a sudden sneak attack, erupting with bizarre power that nearly inflicted severe injuries upon him.

Fortunately, having spent eight years fighting for survival in alien realms, he instinctively counterattacked.

Within a split second, the dying screams of the intruder rang in his ears before the aura completely dissipated, allowing him to finally draw a long breath.

He had no way of knowing how much truth lay in the usurper’s words, but there would be ample time in the future to investigate personally.

Eight years had passed. How was Shen Zong faring?

Shen Zong was the only personal disciple Wen Zhihan had taken under his wing before his soul was hijacked, styled Zi Zunyu, with the childhood nickname Ayuan. He was a good disciple whom Wen Zhihan had watched grow up from childhood. His background was somewhat pitiful, but his disposition was exceptional, being the epitome of kindness and sincerity.

Flashing through these thoughts, Wen Zhihan slowly opened his eyes, only to be caught off guard by the sight of a youth standing right before him.

The youth was clad in black robes, featuring a high-bridged nose and dark eyes resembling the moon resting in a night sky. That striking and intense countenance clearly belonged to his long-absent young disciple.

The very person he had been thinking about just moments ago was standing right in front of him!

When he had first picked up the child years ago, Ayuan was merely a six-or-seven-year-old orphan. Having spent many years nurtured within the sect, studying diligently with budding talent, he was a child Wen Zhihan watched mature.

By the time he was accidentally possessed by villains and his divine soul ripped away, Ayuan was barely in his teens and still growing.

After eight years apart, Ayuan looked noticeably more mature and steady than in his memory.

A wave of joy welled up in Wen Zhihan’s heart. “A—”

Before the name Ayuan could fully leave his lips.

A sudden, sharp pain interrupted his train of thought. Lowering his head, he discovered a patch of fresh blood spreading across his abdomen, revealing a deep and gaping wound.

The piercing pain made his legs turn weak. Wen Zhihan retreated half a step, clutching his injured side as he collapsed onto the edge of the couch.

Bending down before him, Shen Zong picked up a blood-stained blade from the floor, evidently the murder weapon that had inflicted the wound.

What?

How did he get injured?

Where did the blade come from?

Blankly lifting his head, he once again looked toward the youth standing before him.

Attempting to speak once more, a note of hesitation crept into his voice. “Ayuan? Hiss.” As he spoke, the movement of his breath pulled at his abdomen, sending a sudden tearing agony shooting through his wound.

Before Shen Zong could react, a flurry of chaotic footsteps suddenly sounded outside the door.

“Peak Master!”

“Senior Wen!”

“Immortal Venerable, what has happened!”

“Why is the door not open!”

Wen Zhihan instantly furrowed his brow.

Who were these people, junior disciples of the sect?

Since when had his Qionghu Peak become this noisy, and who were these people shouting at the top of their lungs?

How did they know something had happened to him?

“Peak Master!”

The door to his bedchamber was finally shoved open violently. The person in the lead stumbled in head over heels, closely followed by five or six others.

“Oh goodness, what is going on here!”

“This fellow really came here! I knew this brat was incorrigible and harbored wicked intentions!”

“Peak Master Wen! How did you sustain an injury!”

Taken aback, Wen Zhihan quickly spoke up, “I am uninjured in any grave way, merely flesh wounds, you—”

Before he could finish, the boy who led the charge pointed an unfounded accusation straight at the target, biting down firmly with a declaration.

“It must have been the handiwork of that scoundrel Shen Zong!”

“Indeed!”

“This is a grave crime against one’s master.”

“Someone come quickly, take Shen Zong down on the spot!”

With that, they closed in a step further, surrounding Shen Zong with a flurry of grabs and tugs, hauling and escorting him outward.

“Wait!”

Everything happened too fast. Hurrying to intervene, Wen Zhihan called out, “Where are you taking him?”

“Peak Master Wen need not worry! We will naturally escort this fellow safely to the Disciplinary Hall and make him reflect in confinement for a few days!”

“The Disciplinary Hall?”

Wen Zhihan’s expression chilled instantly. That was the place where sect disciples who committed major crimes were sent for judgment. Once taken inside, one could never expect a favorable outcome. “Who gave you permission to send him to the Disciplinary Hall!”

A momentary pause crossed the faces of those men. Pausing mid-rebuttal, they exchanged confused glances and muttered among themselves, “What has happened to Peak Master Wen?”

What had happened to Peak Master Wen?

Shen Zong tilted his head slightly, watching the farce before him with indifference. The depths of his eyes remained pitch black, his exquisite features resembling a doll carved from porcelain. He looked as though he were not the one about to be condemned, everything entirely unrelated to him, devoid of the youthful innocence and panic expected of a teenager.

He bore no resemblance to a murderer who had held a gleaming blade moments ago, nor did he look like a young man sheltered by his master.

While those lackeys continued their clamor, someone suddenly pointed directly at his nose, cursing him vehemently for being unfilial and insubordinate. He turned a deaf ear to it all, a sense of weary disinterest leaking from the depths of his eyes.

Yet the next second, he actually watched Wen Zhihan stand up abruptly, barking a sharp order for that noisy bunch to shut their mouths.

Lifting his gaze, he almost suspected he had misheard or experienced an illusion.

“With zero evidence, what nonsense are you babbling about here!”

Blazing with fury and forgetting his pain, Wen Zhihan stood straight up. “My disciple’s character, when has it ever been your place to criticize? Insubordinate? I, the superior in question, have said nothing yet, and you already know better?”

The youth’s dark eyes widened slightly, the shock on his face entirely devoid of pretense.

Everything was identical to before, yet everything had changed so drastically.

Compared to his past life.

In his previous life, ever since his youth, he had been subjected to all manner of cruel torment by such a vicious hypocrite as Wen Zhihan. It took countless grueling efforts before he finally managed to ascend to the status of a Mahayana-realm Demonic Lord.

Just as he was on the verge of successfully executing Wen Zhihan to exact his revenge, his vision had turned pitch black.

Opening his eyes once more, he found himself miraculously reborn back on the very day he was imprisoned under the fabricated capital crime of harming his master.

He remembered this day well. Wen Zhihan had deliberately set a trap for him, catching him red-handed and throwing him into prison under legitimate pretexts. Subjected to a battery of tortures that shattered his bone marrow and drove his inner demons berserk, he was subsequently expelled from the sect.

Realizing he had been reborn, his immediate instinct was to strike a supplementary blow and execute his mortal enemy right then and there.

It should have been exceedingly simple. Armed with the memories of his past life, he knew Wen Zhihan’s vulnerabilities and understood precisely how to catch him off guard and seize his vital core.

At this stage, Wen Zhihan was only at the early Nascent Soul stage of cultivation, allowing him to destroy the other’s physical form, capture the hypocrite’s divine soul, and spend endless amounts of time slowly torturing him through the lingering years, much like Wen Zhihan had done to him in the previous life.

Just as the intent to kill stirred, however, Wen Zhihan suddenly lifted his head and looked right at him.

Gone was the mockery and derision of his memories, absent was the gaze filled with disgust and disdain. Instead, he stared at him with a trace of bewilderment and uncertainty, before softly calling out his long-forgotten childhood nickname, Ayuan.

That was the affectionate address he used to hear when he was still cherished as a child, a name that had once sustained him through day-after-day of agonizing illusions.

He had thought he had forgotten it long ago.

Because of a single call like that, right at the momentary hesitation, he missed the optimal window to strike.

How laughable!

Wen Zhihan was still just as adept at toying with human hearts. He should have known! Were the memories of his past life not deeply carved into his bones?

Even now, he found himself still yearning for those things, things he had long since cast aside.

Those anchors that sustained him through his trials had twisted over daily tortures into mocking jeers, ridiculing his weakness and incompetence.

Clenching his knuckles until they cracked, a visceral self-loathing surged upward from the pit of his stomach.

Realizing how foolish he had been only fueled his urge to strike, nearly exposing his trump cards.

No matter. The days ahead were long. With the advantage of rebirth, he could repay all the torment he suffered in his previous life a hundredfold, meticulously returning it to his dear master and slowly dragging him down into eternal damnation.

In his past life, he had been far too hasty in rushing to kill for revenge, which was truly regrettable. This time, he possessed the utmost patience to weave the most meticulous trap, slowly savoring and appreciating Wen Zhihan’s despair and agony.

Though the train of thought took only a breath, Shen Zong re-evaluated the unfolding situation, detecting a strange anomaly.

So, what happened to the scheduled conviction, punishment, and expulsion from the sect?

Had this fellow gone mad?

Was this some new trick of Wen Zhihan’s, or could it be that this hypocrite had also?

Even more shocked and unsettled than Shen Zong were those individuals who had been acting arrogant and spouting grand claims just seconds before.

Three outer disciples, a guest itinerant cultivator, and a wayward disciple from a neighboring sect all stared at each other with wide eyes, practically wearing the words that is not what we agreed upon across their faces.

Indeed, all they knew was that they were supposed to charge in and catch Shen Zong red-handed in the act of insubordination, using some excuse as they always did to ruthlessly teach this brat a lesson about the vastness of the heavens.

“If you heard me, let go of him at once!”

With a stern roar from Wen Zhihan, the invisible pressure of his Nascent Soul stage cultivation spilled outward, startling those men into violent shudders. They dropped their grip in unison, their knees turning weak as they plopped down to the floor in a row of kneeling postures.

“Peak Master, spare us!”

“This, we were only worried for the Peak Master’s safety out of sudden panic, unaware that you wished to handle him personally.”

Seeing them trembling in such terrified misery, as though he were about to go on a killing spree at any moment, the anger Wen Zhihan had halfway built up choked in his throat. He shot them a bewildered, inexplicable glance.

He had merely lost his temper; he was not about to eat anyone. What on earth had that possessing impostor done with his identity to terrify these people into such states?

Frowning, he simply flicked his sleeve. “Get out of my sight!”

Like off-leash wild dogs, those men scrambled and scrambled over one another to tear through the door and flee, entirely stripped of their initial arrogance, terrified that lagging behind by even a step would trap them there.

Once the bedchamber doors were securely shut once more, Wen Zhihan finally relaxed his posture and allowed himself to ponder the strange turn of events.

Today’s affair was likely a trap specifically laid against his little disciple.

Tsk. He had only been gone for eight years, so how had Shen Zong been bullied to this extent?

Raising his head, his hand, still trembling slightly, concealed within his sleeve, he directed a now-calm gaze toward Shen Zong, falling into a brief trance.

With the restraints removed, Shen Zong still stood rigidly in place, though his expression remained hidden beneath the shadows of slightly messy locks, making it difficult to read clearly.

He had expected that after suffering grievances and seeing the outsiders leave, the child would immediately rush over in aggrieved grievance and beg his master to stand up for him.

Why now…

He parted his lips, seemingly intending to ask something, but seeing the tight tension gripping his young disciple’s entire frame, he swallowed the words back down.

Very well. No matter how curious he was about the truth, there was no need to rush at this exact moment.

Retrieving a handkerchief from his cosmos bag, Wen Zhihan raised a hand to beckon Shen Zong, calling out his childhood nickname. “Ayuan, come sit down and clean up your hands first.”

Emerging from his silence, Shen Zong lifted his head, walking slowly to the side of the bed to grasp both his master’s fingertips and the handkerchief together.

A colorless and odorless medicinal powder had already been discreetly smeared across his palm, transferring onto the other with the motion. As long as the powder made contact with a wound, it would imperceptibly affect the meridians.

Since Wen Zhihan wanted to play out the heartwarming master-and-disciple farce, he would gladly accompany him to the very end.

“Master’s injuries matter most; the wound is still oozing blood and must be treated promptly.”

With those words, he extended his other hand to gently pull back the blood-stained collar, exposing the wound to the air and releasing a faint reek of fresh blood.

Bowing slightly with disciplined reverence, he stared fixedly into Wen Zhihan’s eyes at close range, a well-behaved smile already plastered across his thin face, pure, flawless, and utterly unfathomable.

At such a distance, if he were to suddenly launch a surprise attack and bite through Wen Zhihan’s throat bones, it would be entirely impossible to guard against.

An opportunity like this, yet he felt no rush to clear the wound.

The youth’s voice had long since transformed into something deep, husky, yet bright like a cool breeze blowing through bamboo stalks, yet the words slipping past his lips felt wrapped in heavy fog, making one’s heart skip a beat.

“Master… do you have nothing to ask?”