[Xuanhuan] [Wild Imagination] [True and False Benefactors] [Framing] [Redemption]
Main character: Xuan Li, a nine-tailed black cat. True benefactor: Ji Yun. False benefactor: Pei Wulang.
Xuan Li is a nine-tailed black cat who has cultivated for a thousand years. During a mountain flood, a mortal boy saves her life.
To repay him, Xuan Li searches for the boy, guided by the pattern on the corner of his clothes. The good news: she has found her lifesaver. The bad news: she has mistaken someone else for him.
Taking advantage of his identity as her lifesaver, the false benefactor keeps demanding favors: his mother is gravely ill, his land has been seized, his hopes of attaining an official rank are dashed...
Xuan Li saves him again and again by sacrificing her tails, and her magical powers grow weaker by the day.
After the eighth tail is spent, Pei Wulang even demands that Xuan Li use magic to force a young woman to marry him.
As she begins the spell, the woman's older brother rushes forward to stop her. The pattern embroidered on the corner of his clothes is unmistakably the one worn by her lifesaver all those years ago.
Consumed by grief and rage, Xuan Li cuts off her last tail and reverses time, trading all her cultivation and her life to restore her benefactor and his family's chance to live.
