The biting wind was piercingly cold. In the small, secluded courtyard, countless strips of white funeral cloth fluttered wildly in the breeze. The rustling sound of spirit money being scattered filled half the pale night sky, striking a deep, desolate chill into anyone who heard it.
"Ah!"
A woman's miserable, piercing scream erupted from inside a small cottage. She wailed and shrieked in agony, while trampled yellow flowers lay scattered all over the ground, ignored by everyone. Before long, her voice faded into silence.
A massive nanmu coffin stood right in the center of the courtyard. Four or five old women were struggling to carry a corpse wrapped in white cloth out of the dilapidated cottage. Long, black hair slipped out from a gap in the shrouding cloth, trailing against the dusty ground without stirring up the tiniest speck of dust.
Blood from the corpse's chest had soaked through the white cloth, rapidly spreading until heavy drops of blood dripped onto the ground.
Grimacing and straining every muscle, they heaved the body and tossed it into the coffin with a loud *thud!*
Under the cover of night, the pale moonlight illuminated everyone's gloomy faces. Amid a rapid succession of *bang, bang, bang* sounds, the heavy lid was slammed onto the coffin, copper nails were hammered in, and it was sealed shut, ready for burial.
"Fourth Young Mistress, oh! Don't blame us for being cruel! You stood in the way of Miss Yanran and the Fourth Young Master. When you reach the Underworld, make sure you don't come looking for us—it was the Grand Madam who gave the order to cut out your heart!"
"It was Miss Yanran who wanted your heart, you see! It was the medicine primer she needed! The Fourth Young Master brought you here himself, so we couldn't disobey orders either."
"If you want to blame someone, blame your maiden family for not cherishing you, and blame the Fourth Young Master for not favoring you. Being human in this life is too bitter; may you be reborn into a blessed family in your next life..."
An old woman with white hair and a deeply wrinkled face kept up a ceaseless stream of mumbling. Several sturdy manservants hoisted the coffin onto their shoulders and headed toward the barren hills.
*Creak! Slam!*
The dilapidated wooden gate of the courtyard was forcefully blown shut by the wind. Its crooked plaque was scarred with the marks of swords, though the characters could still faintly be discerned: *Xiyan Courtyard*.
*Bang!*
A gavel slammed down fiercely. The disheveled woman snapped back to her senses in an instant. Lifting her head, she saw a towering figure sitting before the hall amid the swirling chaos—majestic, upright, with an angry scowl and fierce brows.
In a world of black and white, ghost guards lined both sides. Song Xiyan finally remembered: she had crossed the Ghost Gate, walked the Road to the Yellow Springs, and arrived in the Underworld!
"Song Xiyan! Do you confess your crimes?"
Song Xiyan lowered her head, only to see a massive, gaping wound on her chest. She stood in a daze for a moment, then burst into roaring laughter. The harder she laughed, the more uncontrollably her tears fell.
She cried out in a wretched voice as a fierce gust of wind whipped up her thick black hair, revealing her pale, emaciated face. "My Lord! This humble mortal has been wronged!"
The nether energy surged violently. A judge swept his gaze over the Book of Life and Death, then frowned deeply. "Song Xiyan, your allotted lifespan was seventy years, yet now..."
Song Xiyan gave a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. "This humble mortal is sixteen years old."
She thought back on how absurd her entire life had been. Her biological mother had been caught in a plot, leading to her being switched at birth with someone else. Kinship was never true kinship, and affection was never true affection. Her adoptive parents resented her, while her birth mother acknowledged her only so she could be married off in another's place to maintain a matrimonial alliance for the Duke's Estate.
Her mother had been trapped within the Duke's Estate all her life, harboring deep resentment toward an unfaithful and heartless birth father—a bitterness that spilled over onto her as well. Yet that swapped-in younger sister was deeply favored by her mother.
When a scandal broke out around her marriage, the sister stubbornly insisted on marrying the Marquis's Estate's heir, whom both parents despised. To shield her sister, Song Xiyan was framed for adultery, allowing the sister to get her wish and marry into the estate.
Right at that moment, a "true lover" appeared to rescue her: Zhang Yuan, her husband.
He saved her from the tragic fate of being casually married off to a fool. He was the most sought-after talent in the Capital, the top scorer of the imperial examinations, and the scion of a prestigious family—while she was a woman of ruined reputation.
Yet he cared nothing for the judgments of others, firmly insisting on marrying her.
How laughable that she had believed back then that she had encountered true love, that she had finally found someone who loved her.
Who could have known that this was the true abyss?
From the very beginning, she was nothing more than a medicine primer that Zhang Yuan had painstakingly hunted down for the woman he loved. First it was her flesh, her blood, and eventually, her heart.
Song Xiyan! No one loved you, and no one cared about you! Everyone you met in this life merely used you, treating you like a lifeless object rather than a human being!
A howling gale swept through the hall, and the dark miasma grew even thicker.
"My Lord! This humble mortal has been wronged!"
"A mother who was no mother, a father who was no father, kin who were no kin, and affection that was no affection! Throughout this life, this humble mortal never harmed a single soul. Whatever they wanted, I gave them; whatever they commanded me to do, I did!"
"Since childhood, they called me unruly and unyielding, so I forced myself to become all the more sensible. They called me vile and wicked, and whatever I did was deemed wrong."
Song Xiyan burst into wild laughter. "This humble mortal truly believed, back then, that it was all my fault..."
"How hateful that it was all a lie! Their true daughter and sister was someone else entirely. I was merely a swapped-out fake child, while the one who usurped my fate basked in boundless favor before my own birth mother, father, and brothers!"
"By the time I was abandoned, I no longer cared about any of that!"
"So why—why must my husband, my final shred of hope, be such an abyss?"
Song Xiyan suddenly stood up. Black blood continuously gushed from the wound on her chest. The judge's brush trembled slightly, his eyes wide with fury, yet he did not speak to interrupt her.
"He deceived me with love! He made me believe that there was still someone in this world who loved and protected me! Because of that, whatever he asked for, I gave him! His constitution was frail, and he lied to me that he had a terminal illness, using his own condition to beg for my flesh and blood! From my own body!"
She violently ripped open her blood-stained white robe. Up both her arms, right beneath the sleeves, were scars everywhere.
She raised her hands, tears of blood streaming from her eyes. "This flesh and blood! I gave it all to him!"
"Yet—yet from beginning to end, he was lying to me! He never had any terminal illness; it was the woman he loved who was sick!"
"And in the end, when my flesh and blood were no longer enough, my heart..."
She pointed fiercely at her own chest, screaming in a wretched voice filled with boundless resentment: "He cut that out too!"
"Hahahaha! I, Song Xiyan! My entire life has been a joke! I hate this world! I hate everyone who treated me like a pig or a dog!"
"I hate those who deceived me, lured me, and led me step by step into the abyss!"
"I hate them! I want to kill them! I want to kill him!"
Song Xiyan's hair grew wildly and billowed outward. Black miasma gathered rapidly, and her eyes turned pitch-black. In the blink of an eye, the entire ghost had become terrifyingly dangerous!
The ghost guards on either side hurried to look at the judge. "My Lord! This woman's resentment is too deep. If we don't act now, she will surely turn into a vengeful fierce ghost!"
Instead, the judge looked down at the Book of Life and Death before him, then suddenly grabbed the gavel at his side.
With a resounding *bang!* that echoed across the desk, the judge raised his head. "Song Xiyan! This was never supposed to be your destiny!"
Song Xiyan froze abruptly. Shrouded in black miasma, her entire body was bruised and dark, but at that moment, her consciousness gradually returned. Trembling all over, she heard the judge speak again.
"Your destiny was stolen! Furthermore, your true fate was tied to the destiny of a person of immense merit, and the mortal realm has been thrown into chaos by those demons!"
"I am no mere judge; I am Yama of the Underworld!"
Yama slashed down with his brush, completely writing off Song Xiyan's previous verdict. That original verdict had read: *Good health and longevity, boundless fortune, a house full of descendants, and peace in old age.*
"Now, I have seen through your grievances. Since the mortal realm has been thrown into chaos and your destiny erased by my hand, you may now rewrite your fate. I will give you two choices."
Song Xiyan dropped directly to her knees, the resentment around her almost entirely dissipating. With reddened eyes, she looked up at Yama as he continued: "First, I can grant you immense wealth and prosperity in your next life, free from the eight sufferings of the mortal world. Second..."
Yama tapped his brush against the desk, a flash of killing intent crossing his eyes: "I can grant you an undying body and supreme divine power, to walk the mortal realm as a being devoid of a heart, without desires or emotions, to slay demons and monsters, and to set right what has been thrown into chaos! Time limit: ten years!"