[Two male leads + transmigration + System + younger disciple and older master + angsty romance + mutual healing + happy ending]
Shen Zhiwei transmigrates into the role of Lingxiao Sect’s aloof master and gets bound to the [White Moonlight Cultivation System]. His task is to raise his sworn enemy and disciple, Xie Wujiao, into the perfect cultivation partner. If he acts out of character, he coughs up blood and hurts himself.
Forced to gaze at portraits of Xie Wujiao night after night, he has no idea that his disciple was born with a sword bone and can sense that blood-scented stare.
Xie Wujiao breaks into the secret chamber and sees the walls covered in portraits of himself, with bloodstains like plum blossoms at their corners.
“Master, does it hurt when you paint me...?”
Shen Zhiwei turns away coldly and spits blood onto the painting.
No one knows that this soul, abandoned time and again, has come to believe that “love must come at a price.” The System’s punishments bring him a twisted sense of comfort.
Even fewer know that as Xie Wujiao holds him, trembling, his sword bone quivering, he realizes that every time this man treats him well, he leaves himself covered in wounds.
Later, Xie Wujiao storms the System’s sea of consciousness, sacrificing half his cultivation. There he sees Shen Zhiwei as a child, earning a full meal by coming in first, and painting while coughing blood, murmuring, “I don’t want to love you.”
On the day the System disappears, Shen Zhiwei holds Xie Wujiao, whose cultivation has been completely destroyed, tears mingling with blood. “I can’t go back.”
“Then don’t.”
“...But I don’t think I want to go back that much anymore.”
