I Am the Mortal Wife of an Immortal Lord Who Died Young

Zhao Yunzhu transmigrates into a cultivation novel, where nearly everyone, from the protagonist and the villain to the cannon-fodder side characters, is a cultivator.

But she is just a mortal. In the book, she is never even given a name, only mentioned in passing: "Immortal Lord Shen Liang once had a mortal wife."

"She broke off their engagement when he fell on hard times, then insisted on marrying him after hearing he had entered the Dao. Fortunately, she died young and only held the Immortal Lord back for ten years."

She is a burden to this genius of an immortal sect, a shameless, clingy mortal woman who leeches off him and takes advantage of his soft heart to seek his protection.

So when Shen Liang's enemies come for him, Zhao Yunzhu even feels relieved. If she dies, she can go home, and Shen Liang will finally be free.

Yet not long afterward, she transmigrates back. By then, a hundred years have passed in the book, and most of the people and things she once knew are gone.

Zhao Yunzhu has the bad luck to end up in the Demon Realm, where she is abducted to a demon's estate and made a dancer.

She meets Shen Liang again at a banquet. Amid the clinking of wine cups, she cradles a pipa and timidly reveals half her face.

The instant their eyes meet, the wine cup in his hand crumbles to pieces.

*

At first, Shen Liang barely gives Zhao Yunzhu a second thought.

He neither dislikes nor likes her, and naturally doesn't care why she broke off their engagement or why she came back asking him to marry her.

Back then, he was young and arrogant, devoted to the Dao and with no interest in the tedious business of love.

On their wedding day, Shen Liang left to go on an adventure.

Six months into their marriage, he received a letter from home and only then remembered he had a wife.

By the ninth year of their marriage, he had grown used to returning home every so often.

He always thought there was plenty of time; that anything outside cultivation was a waste; that the things truly worth having were the ones snatched away only after countless hardships.

Only when the jade pearl sank, the morning mist dispersed, and everything fell silent did he finally understand, too late, as if waking from a dream.

*

Later, Shen Liang falls to the demonic path. A young man confronts him with a sword and demands to know what he really wants.

Shen Liang says nothing.

In the long years that followed, the only thing that made him look back again and again, dwell on it over and over, and pursue it with all his might, was those hurried ten years.

*2025.11.1

Theme: "The thing you spend your whole life pursuing was yours from the very beginning."