Arc 2

Lin Dan was awakened by a sharp, stabbing pain in her heart. The moment she opened her eyes, she found herself standing in a cramped and dark space. Just ten steps away were two iron doors, behind which a man and a woman were each locked up. The woman, dressed in red, was breathtakingly beautiful, her eyes glaring at Lin Dan with a mix of anger and wariness.

The man, even more striking than the woman, sat cross-legged behind the iron door, draped in a thin white robe that spread out like a flower in the darkness. His long black hair cascaded to the ground, and when the breeze swept by, a faint fragrance seemed to linger in the air. His face, as exquisite as a jade carving, glowed softly. He sat there silently with his phoenix eyes half-closed. His lips were pressed into a thin line and his expression revealed neither joy nor sorrow. Were it not for the subtle rise and fall of his chest, Lin Dan might have thought he was merely a lifelike statue, radiating a sacred aura.

However, Lin Dan had no time to concern herself with the man and woman. She glanced at them briefly, then surveyed her surroundings, and without saying a word, she left. It was clear that this was a dungeon, heavily guarded— a place unsuitable for organizing her thoughts.

After Lin Dan left, the woman in red finally relaxed and angrily exclaimed, “Master, she tried to kill me just now!”

The man didn’t even open his eyes as he calmly replied, “There’s no need to concern yourself with someone who is about to die.”

The woman quickly rushed to the cell door and asked in a low voice, “Master, how do you know she’s close to death?”

The man, now deep in meditation, was in a state of complete calm, his breath almost at a standstill. The woman knew that no matter what she said, her master would not hear her at this moment, so she had no choice but to remain quiet. Gazing at her master’s unparalleled face through the iron bars, a mix of admiration, struggle, and reverence flickered in her eyes……

———pr


Lin Dan had lost her memory again. Apart from knowing her own name, she couldn’t recall anything else. Why ‘again’? Because she seemed all too familiar with this situation and was highly adept at handling it. She quickly adjusted her emotions, ensuring no one could detect anything amiss, and then sought out a quiet place to sort through the memories in her mind.

The original owner of this body was also named Lin Dan and had been the left protector of the Eastern Sacred Sect. This was the sect’s headquarters, located in the depths of Longyin^[1]Hidden Dragon Mountain. The Eastern Sacred Sect was known for its unscrupulous methods and rapid expansion. In recent years, the righteous factions had branded it as a demonic cult, eager to eliminate it. As a protector of the sect, Lin Dan was naturally seen as a wicked woman.

In the other Lin Dan’s memory, she had indeed committed many misdeeds, but who could know that she had been forced into them? The other Lin Dan was an orphan, taken in and trained in martial arts by the old sect leader of the Eastern Sacred Sect. Out of gratitude, she swore to protect the young master, the old sect leader’s son, He Chongling. When she was twelve or thirteen, after making some progress in her martial arts, the old sect leader asked her if she wanted to go further. Without hesitation, she said yes. So, the old sect leader made her take a poison pill, entrusting her life to the young master, and then taught her a top-tier martial arts technique.

The other Lin Dan was utterly loyal to the old sect leader and, over time, fell deeply in love with He Chongling. Naturally, she was willing to risk her life for the two of them. A few years later, the old sect leader passed away and the young master took over. By then, Lin Dan had grown older and developed her own thoughts, only to discover that what she had swallowed back then wasn’t any ordinary poison but a parasitic Gu^[2]poison made with poisonous insect. It resided in her heart, impossible to remove. If she ever harbored any disloyalty towards He Chongling, she would suffer excruciating pain, and if she had the slightest intent to kill him, her heart would burst before she could act.

By the time Lin Dan arrived, the other Lin Dan had already died a painful death. Fortunately, Lin Dan managed to calm the violently writhing Gu just in time. Otherwise, there would have been no saving her. Even now, Lin Dan’s heart ached faintly, suggesting that her heart had been gnawed to the point of ruin by the Gu, leaving her with little time to live.

However, though Lin Dan had no other memories, she had a strong obsession with survival. She had finally obtained this body and was not about to die so easily. She desperately searched her mind for any useful information, her bitter smile deepening.

The other Lin Dan’s life could only be described in one word— tragic. Trained like a beast by the old sect leader since childhood, she had never had a good day. When she grew older, she fell in love with a heartless man. He Chongling, using both her affection and the Gu, had her completely under his control, yet he never regarded her as a human being. Countless times, she had been slashed and on the brink of death while protecting him, only for him to discard her like trash among the corpses without a second glance.

To him, she was nothing more than a blade. Once dulled, it could simply be thrown away, unworthy of any pity.

Fortunately, the other Lin Dan had a remarkable will to live. Even after near-death experiences, she would wake up, push the corpses off herself, wipe the blood from her face, and stagger back to the Eastern Sacred Sect. Again and again, she was discarded like an old shoe, yet again and again, she returned to He Chongling’s side, never knowing despair, never feeling exhaustion, only experiencing a dull pain in her heart when all was quiet.

One day, as she passed by the Qing River, she saw a man with an exquisite face and an ethereal demeanor drifting downstream on a bamboo raft. When his eyes accidentally met her lifeless ones, a faint smile slowly spread across his face. This tiny, seemingly ordinary expression planted a seed called happiness in the other Lin Dan’s heart, which then blossomed into a beautiful flower.

Unable to control the unspeakable feelings in her heart, she followed the man as he traveled south, silently protecting him along the way. She watched him play the qin, drink wine, and admire flowers. If he smiled, she smiled too. If he frowned, her heart ached. Only then did she realize that her feelings for He Chongling were not love, but mere obedience and fear. Had the man not appeared, she would have remained trapped in the mire of He Chongling’s world until she drowned.

The moment she figured it out, she did not hesitate to abduct the man and take him back to the Eastern Sacred Sect, where she ensured he would be well cared for by the sect members. She didn’t dare to profane him. Merely catching a glimpse of him from afar was enough to satisfy her. However, gradually, she noticed that the man was growing closer to one of her maidservants. The two often gathered to chat, both wearing contented smiles as if they had endless topics to discuss. This was bad enough, but what truly infuriated her was that He Chongling, who had always been indifferent and emotionless, started to treat the maidservant differently. He directly promoted her to the position of saintess, instantly elevating her status above the other Lin Dan.

She had been suppressing the jealousy and resentment in her heart all along, knowing that since He Chongling had set his sights on the maidservant, he would stop at nothing to possess her. At that point, there would be no need for the other Lin Dan to intervene as the maidservant and the man would inevitably be separated. And as she expected, He Chongling soon forced the maidservant to marry him and quickly began preparing for the wedding. The maidservant resisted fiercely, refusing food, and even attempted to crash herself into a pillar. As the saying goes, ‘one hesitates to kill a rat for fear of breaking the vessel^[3]hesitate to act for fear of unintended consequences’, and He Chongling, worried that the maidservant would harm herself, had no choice but to imprison her, threatening her with the man’s life. It turned out that he had also discovered their special relationship and used it to his advantage, forcing the maidservant to submit.

Having lost the two most important people in her life to the maidservant, the other Lin Dan finally couldn’t hold back any longer. She rushed to the dungeon, intending to kill the maidservant, but didn’t expect that the Gu inside her had been restrained by He Chongling. Harboring murderous intent towards the maidservant would also trigger the Gu’s violent reaction. He had long considered the maidservant as part of himself, protecting her so tightly that nothing could get through.

The other Lin Dan had risked her life for He Chongling, nearly bleeding herself dry, yet couldn’t earn even a glance from him. Meanwhile, the maidservant effortlessly obtained everything. Before dying, enduring the agony of having her heart hollowed out, the other Lin Dan was left with one final obsession— if possible, she wanted to escape it all, to live as a human, never to be trampled upon by anyone again.

To live well, without being trampled upon— these words were easy to say but incredibly difficult to achieve! Lin Dan shook her head with a bitter smile, thinking to herself, how could she live well when she couldn’t even guarantee her own life? However, in a flash of inspiration, she seized upon a piece of information that had long faded in the other Lin Dan’s memory and quickly retrieved the top-level martial arts manual passed down to the other Lin Dan by the old sect leader for careful review.

The manual was called 《The Asura^[4]a demigod or titan of the Kāmadhātu Blade》, and the very first line of the opening read, 「To be heartless and emotionless is to become the Asura; life and death, never to be destroyed.」 What followed were profound mantras and blade techniques. The other Lin Dan had practiced according to these mantras and techniques, but after reaching the level of a first-class master, she could make no further progress. Over the years, she had been searching for a breakthrough but had never found the right method and had to give up.

But in Lin Dan’s view, the most crucial mantra in this manual was precisely that opening line. What did it mean to be heartless and emotionless to become the Asura? What did it mean to live life and death, never to be destroyed? The other Lin Dan had fallen countless times into pools of blood, each time seemingly facing certain death, only to miraculously survive again and again. To Lin Dan, this tenacious vitality was truly monstrous.

No one was truly immortal, yet the other Lin Dan seemed to be one who couldn’t be killed. Was this related to her physique, or was it connected to the martial arts she practiced? Lin Dan quickly skimmed through the manual and then firmly told herself that by mastering the Asura Blade to its fullest extent, the answer would naturally become clear.

Life and death, never to be destroyed— this was clearly Lin Dan’s only hope of survival. And to become heartless and emotionless, though it might be as difficult as ascending to the heavens for others, was very simple for Lin Dan. It was as if she was born without the seven emotions and six desires, completely isolated from the other Lin Dan’s feelings. Her state of mind immediately began to improve, and at the same time, a sharp force suddenly emerged in her dantian^[5]refers to the region in the body where a person’s Qi is concentrated, traveling through her meridians to her limbs and bones, shattering her blood vessels, bones, and flesh piece by piece. A wave of overwhelming pain, like a tsunami, swept over her.

Lin Dan abruptly spat out a mouthful of blood, yet she maintained her meditation posture, not daring to move. The pain she was enduring at that moment was far more intense than the agony of having her heart hollowed out earlier. The sharp force seemed like countless steel knives, determined to turn her into a pool of blood, yet amidst all this, there was also a vigorous breath of life in her dantian, rapidly repairing her shattered body. Her bones grew increasingly solid, her flesh increasingly resilient, and her meridians increasingly wide……

It was as if she had died a thousand times, yet each time she was reborn, she becoming more indestructible. Even through the unimaginable torment, she never lost consciousness. She vaguely realized that only by discarding those unnecessary emotions could she attain true strength. And only those who were truly strong would not be trampled upon. But how much pain and how many choices would it take to reach such an understanding?