On the covenant platform, Shen Zhiyan drained her cultivation while lowering his head to straighten the sleeve ruffled by the wind.
"I took a liking to you when you had two marks," he said. "The clan's rule is to raise you until you have three before collecting. The fatter you grow, the more there is to take."
Three years of tenderness. So it had all been feeding her.
As Su Zhao fell, she heard him order his men, "Take that girl away. Don't hurt her. We still need her."
That girl was her younger sister.
When she opened her eyes again, it was seven days before the covenant ceremony.
This time, she didn't go tear up the marriage contract. She went to the covenant vault. Seven hundred and seventy-nine used covenants were locked inside, each one covering someone who had been drained dry.
The mark left on her wrist was growing backward.
Everything they had taken, she could draw back, bit by bit, from every person who had taken it.
On the third day, the senior disciple who had taken her sister's furnace share knelt on the floor of the medicine hall. Everyone watched as one mark vanished from his wrist and another appeared on hers.
In front of them all, she spoke the name of the person to whom that mark had originally belonged, then said, "If he comes for it himself someday, I'll return it."
Seven hundred and seventy-nine covenants. Seven hundred and seventy-nine steps.
She climbed them one by one.
