The great choosing hall fell into a hush so complete that even the mountain wind outside seemed to still. Candles flickered against jade pillars carved with scenes of ancient sect founders and the first immortal oaths sworn in blood.
At the front, the new initiates knelt in trembling rows, each one hoping that an elder’s finger would point at them — salvation in a single gesture. To be chosen meant shelter, cultivation, the path to power. To be overlooked meant nothing but a cold return to the streets.
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High on the dais, Yun Xueyan watched with flat, winter-clear eyes. Her ceremonial robes brushed against the marble as she sat in silence, the Frostroot crest pinned just below her throat — a piece of living ice in a hall full of flickering hopes.
Beside her, Elder Yue Lin presided over the ritual, her voice echoing as she announced each new match. Disciples and initiates bowed, vows were exchanged, jade slips pressed into palms.
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And behind Xueyan’s chair, a step to her right, stood Rong Yu — the youngest Elder in sect history, immortal beauty made flesh. His eyes stayed on her more than the children below, watching her every breath as if each one might slip away.
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Near the far end of the kneeling line, a small figure caught Zhao Fei’s silent attention. He stood in the shadows behind the Frostroot banner, head lowered — but his eyes stayed sharp. He alone saw the tension in the girl’s shoulders, the fierce clutch of her tiny fist around a cracked talisman hidden in her sleeve.
Lin Anxin. The girl abandoned in an alley, reborn with a soul from another world — just as the manuscript said.
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She looked up once, eyes darting toward the high dais. For a heartbeat, her gaze brushed Yun Xueyan’s cold face. Fear — then a flicker of something deeper. Recognition? Or simply desperation?
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When Rong Yu finally stepped forward to claim his next disciple, the hush broke into soft murmurs. Every child knelt lower — all except Lin Anxin, who stared unblinking, half-hoping the immortal Elder’s beautiful eyes might fall on her.
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But they didn’t.
Rong Yu’s fingers lifted, pointed past her, choosing instead a broad-shouldered boy already half on the path to Qi Refinement — a safe choice. Logical. Perfect for the sect’s ranks.
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Lin Anxin’s throat bobbed. For a moment, her head dipped, shadowing her face — rage and fear tangled where no one could see.
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High above, Yun Xueyan noted it all. In the original manuscript, this was where the tragedy began — the moment that Lin Anxin’s path shifted from pitiful stray to future Demon Lord. Her rebirth had made her clever, and the sect’s indifference made her hungry.
If Xueyan had been the original, she would have ignored her — a stray was beneath the Frostroot Heir’s interest. But she was not blind like her predecessor.
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She leaned a fraction toward Yue Lin. “Is that girl unsponsored?”
Yue Lin paused mid-scroll, glancing at the trembling figure at the end of the line. “Lin Anxin. Street-born. No bloodline trace. Weak root. Not worth the slot.”
Xueyan’s cold fingers tapped once on the jade armrest. “Assign her to the outer branch. She’ll serve in the frost gardens until the next test.”
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Yue Lin’s eyes narrowed, amused. “The Frostroot Heir soft-hearted?”
Xueyan did not smile. “I dislike waste.”
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Lin Anxin’s head snapped up when the decree was read aloud. Her stunned eyes found Xueyan’s pale gaze once more — and for a breath, the girl thought she glimpsed mercy there. But there was none. Only calculation.
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As the choosing concluded, the hall emptied in slow tides of silk and whispers. New disciples were led away by senior cultivators, each clutching jade slips that would bind their futures to Xuantian’s cold stones.
Lin Anxin lingered by the pillars, half-bowed, until a junior attendant tugged at her sleeve, leading her away to the servant’s quarters. She went without protest — but her spine was straight, her eyes burning with the quiet promise that she would claw her way back to this hall again.
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Zhao Fei, watching from behind the Frostroot banner, lowered his head to hide a faint smile. Another stray piece on the board — useful if guided well. And if not… easily discarded.
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When the hall finally emptied of outsiders, only the Frostroot’s small circle remained. Yue Lin dismissed the attendants with a flick of her sleeve. Rong Yu stepped closer to Xueyan’s chair — so close now that the warmth of him, that carefully leashed yearning, pressed at her cold calm like fire on snow.
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“You interfered,” he murmured, so low that only she heard. “Why that girl?”
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Xueyan’s eyes flicked to him, unreadable as glass. “A root grows stronger when buried deep.”
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Rong Yu’s fingers brushed the edge of her sleeve — a touch so fleeting that to anyone else it was nothing. But to him, it was enough to bind him tighter.
“You never change,” he whispered again — a prayer, a curse, a worship.
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Later, in her private quarters, Xueyan sat alone at a low writing desk. The oil lamp painted gold onto scrolls and knives alike. She flipped through the manuscript’s plot in her mind — the lines where Lin Anxin would awaken her bloodline, seduce the Male Lead’s despair, twist Rong Yu’s longing into a blade that would shatter the sect.
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Not yet. She had bent it once — a slight nudge here, a stolen pawn there. But the story resisted her. If the author’s curse was real, she would be shocked or burned if she strayed too far.
Her eyes lifted, cold and clear. The only path was to break it piece by piece — reshape every ruin into something that might hold.
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Behind her, Zhao Fei knelt on the woven mat by the door, half-dreaming, half-listening.
“Tomorrow,” she said without turning. “Watch that girl. Report every word.”
He dipped his head, voice soft. “Yes, Mistress.”
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In the far courtyard, the first snow of the deep winter began to fall. Lanterns flickered against the frost, shadows bending like branches under ice.
In the depths of the sect, Lin Anxin curled on a servant’s cot, her fists tight in her sleeves — dreaming not of mercy, but of revenge.
In the Elder’s quiet room, Rong Yu pressed his forehead to his palm, breath shallow, the memory of his Master’s sleeve ghosting across his lips — a hunger no cultivation could ever purge.
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In every corner of the Xuantian peaks, the board was set.
And at its frozen heart, Yun Xueyan waited — cold as steel, patient as death.
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