The Demon Sect gave Lu Zhaozhao one final mission: infiltrate the Taixuan Sect and steal the Taiping Heart Seal from beneath the Hidden Sword Platform.
Before she left, the three elders repeatedly warned her: she had to enter the inner sect, but could not reveal her talent; she had to earn her fellow disciples' trust, but could not grow close to anyone.
Lu Zhaozhao thought it over carefully for three days and decided to place seventeenth.
But on the Heart-Testing Path, she found the exit first and came in first.
In the Trial Valley, she rescued the whole team on the way, just to keep the injured from blocking their escape route. First place again.
During the sword formation test, she was afraid the spirit-detecting swords would expose her demonic aura, so she dodged every single one. Still first.
On the day the overall rankings were announced, the bigwigs from all twelve peaks came flying on their swords, competing to take her as a disciple.
Standing among the crowd, Lu Zhaozhao felt the vein-sealing needle hidden in her sleeve and understood for the first time: the scariest part about coming in first wasn't that everyone knew who she was.
It was that every bigwig who could fly wanted to come down and see her in person.
She had only wanted to quietly steal the Heart Seal and take her younger brother away from the Demon Sect. But as she investigated further, she discovered that someone had begun preparing her false identity twelve years ago. The secret the Taixuan Sect was desperately protecting was connected to her brother's illness and the spirit vein that the righteous and demonic factions had fought over for five hundred years.
Worse, Wen Xingzhi, chief of the Discipline Hall, had already cornered her at the door.
He closed the flawless identity papers she had submitted and asked calmly:
"Junior Sister Lu, why is an ordinary wandering cultivator so good at making corpses disappear?"
