After I Took Up the Dao, the Heavenly Way Made Me Die in Different Ways

[No romance + ensemble cast + sect life + coming-of-age + starts with a flashback. If you’re confused, skip straight to Chapter Two.]

A lazy drunk transmigrates into a book. Ze Yan thinks that’s no big deal. She transmigrates as an undocumented nobody in the book, still no big deal. But then someone demands her life right from the start, and... well, that’s definitely a big deal. In ancient times, heroes rose amid chaos; now Ze Yan is here to turn Heaven upside down. Beneath the Abyss of Antiquity, the long-overdue master of Heaven’s authority tells her she is the chosen one of this world. Ze Yan doesn’t buy it. Who ever heard of a chosen one being hunted by Heaven itself? On the Hengzhou Continent, the strong rule. Get beaten, get stronger. A secret realm under one foot, a killing formation under the other. She hears that joining a sect means she can laze around and freeload, so gambler Ze Yan takes the bet. Instead, she becomes the busiest personal disciple in the sect. Above her, a deranged ghost of a senior brother wants her dead; below, demons and evil spirits cling to her. Ze Yan grins and tosses out a formation. Every last one of you can go to hell!

Fighting among sectmates becomes routine, and every mission turns into a group crime. The eldest senior brother, who follows the Way of the Gentleman, remains convinced that he can reform his junior siblings through virtue. After repeated failures, he decides to teach them with his fists. The truth is in the fist.

She works hard at cultivation, yet her level doesn’t budge an inch. Everyone else makes progress by fighting monsters and grinding for experience, while she gets nowhere. Ze Yan grows resentful and gives up, slacking off without a care. Then her cultivation starts shooting up. Watching his junior sister increasingly take the path of a demonic cultivator, the eldest senior brother holds back his fists again and again. But after the duo from Guining Peak invents stink bombs, he finally lets them fly. To hell with brotherly love! His junior sister is practically turning into a demonic cultivator!

[Content note: The pace is slow early on as the story lays the groundwork. The protagonist is feeling out and adapting to her new world; sect life begins in Chapter 14. For self-preservation, she reveals her true nature as little as possible at first. Initially, she tends to go with the flow, but later she schemes and takes control of the world.