After My Brother and I Got Cast as Archenemies

[Cool, aloof, blunt, and unhinged sister-obsessed heroine x gentle, scheming, intensely controlling brother-obsessed hero]

Zhu Xiangxie transmigrated with pretty good luck.

She got a stunningly beautiful body, a sister who would stick by her through life and death, a lunatic senior fellow disciple who checked in every day just to make his presence known, and a final boss waiting for her to kill him and prove her path to immortality.

Too bad the original owner was the incarnation of a lotus flower, exceptionally gifted, yet regarded as a monster and bullied mercilessly.

How could she possibly waste such a great setup?

Zhu Xiangxie rode hard day and night, taking her younger sister all the way to Penglai Immortal Mountain. She became a disciple, turned her life around, speedran her way through the plot, took down every petty enemy, settled every grudge one by one, and made a name for herself in a single battle.

Although she was determined to stand against the demonic overlord of the cultivation world, fortunately, he played fair. He gave her plenty of time to grow stronger, behaved himself in everyday life, was always eager to help, and held back whenever they fought. He was impossibly well-behaved.

Zhu Xiangxie: The prize pool is still building up. I can give you a quick death.

Boss: Fine.

But when Mei Yun Jing finally came for her and cut her master's head off right in front of her, the familiar face amidst the blood brought back her true memories. Reality and illusion turned upside down, and Zhu Xiangxie instinctively called out, "Brother?"

Mei Yun Jing's violet eyes were no longer gentle as they had once been. They were ice-cold.

No more harmonious brother and sister, only life and death. Zhu Xiangxie finally realized that this was the nemesis plot Mei Yun Jing had chosen for them himself. He took everyone around her from her one by one. She refused to be outdone and swore a deadly oath to heaven and earth: in this life, she would kill him and avenge herself.

Everyone in the cultivation world knew that Mei Yun Jing, the demonic overlord who recognized no family and killed without mercy, possessed a peerless puppet-crafting technique. Birds and beasts, peddlers and common folk, there was no puppet he could not make.

But only the overlord himself knew that he was actually hopelessly bad with his hands.

Zhu Xiangxie was his greatest failure of a creation: spoiled, then turned against him. But Mei Yun Jing never expected that her ferocious revenge would not stop even after his death. If anything, it only burned more fiercely.

Reduced overnight to a frail child, the boy did not know his own name. Pitifully, he sat with his eyes closed in the snow outside a Buddhist temple, waiting to die.

But what arrived before death was Zhu Xiangxie's face, looking down at him.

The boy lifted his head, revealing his blind left eye. "Are you an immortal? Could you give me something to eat?"

Zhu Xiangxie crouched down with a cold laugh. "Mei Yun Jing, do you think that if you make yourself look like this, I'll pity you, forgive you, and let you go?"

The boy did not understand. "But I'm really hungry."

"..."

Everyone thought Zhu Xiangxie would torment him in every way, or simply leave him to starve or freeze to death in the snow. But the young woman gently lifted his face, gazed into the murky purple in the boy's eyes, and in the end, right in front of the Buddha statue, took her brother's hand.

"Come home with me."

Content warnings:

1. Both leads are each other's first and only partners, with a secondary couple. Romance-focused, and the cultivation system is not rigorously developed.

2. The heroine is forceful and hot-tempered, and grows over the course of the story. She is truly heaven's favored child, rises to the top in the middle and later parts, and becomes the strongest character in the novel.

3. A raising-and-being-raised dynamic: first the older brother raises his younger sister, then the younger sister raises her older brother.

4. This has a strong pseudo-incest vibe. Both the brother-obsessed and sister-obsessed leads are extreme in their feelings, so it may not be very wholesome... Please take note before reading.

5. The ending will be happy.

Here's a preview of my other novel, Perfume Weirdo:

Five-year age gap, older man, pseudo-incest, reunited after a breakup, devoted to each other, one-on-one romance

"That fountain pen is in my trench coat pocket."

In the middle of a stormy night, Li Qiexin's skin was burning hot as she leaned against the cold glass of the cruise ship, panting. The man met her dark eyes, his voice laced with a tenderness he did not even realize he felt. "It was a coming-of-age gift from my father. I've always carried it with me. It was there when I signed many important decisions, including contracts worth hundreds of millions and your report card. Do you like it?"

He kissed Li Qiexin lightly on the cheek. The feelings he had thought lost and found again blazed wildly at the gesture. "You can take it out now..."

It sounded like surrender, seduction, and longing all at once.

"Anywhere on your brother that you like.

"Sign your name."

[Rebellious heiress x scheming, alluring, untouchable beauty]

[Obsessive sister-obsessed heroine x controlling brother-obsessed hero]

Everyone in the wealthy circles of Jingxi knew that Li Qiexin had impossibly high standards, yet had personally pursued and won her first love, the man who remained the one she could never forget.

The moonlight was pure and bright, and she kept him hidden away so carefully that no one knew who this secret lover really was. All anyone knew was that he had bewitched Li Qiexin, and that he was a weirdo with a distinctive scent.

Too bad her brother broke them up before they had even been together for a year. They parted on bad terms, and from then on, he became the name she refused to mention.

After a huge fight with her brother, Li Qiexin blocked Li Jiang and swore that they would be enemies, not siblings, for the rest of their lives. Then she packed her suitcase and fled abroad as if escaping a plague, without even leaving her brother a note.

At first, no one paid much attention. After all, Li Qiexin was a fiercely devoted sister, and Li Jiang had spoiled her since childhood. Even their worst fights never lasted more than three days. No matter how badly they argued, the siblings still had to go home and eat together.

It was only five years later, when Li Qiexin returned to attend their father's funeral and the siblings exchanged cold looks in public and vicious words in private, that people finally believed she truly no longer considered Li Jiang her brother.

...If only her phone's lock screen weren't a private photo of Li Jiang.

Back to the night before she left the country, and their final phone call:

"What should I call you from now on?" Li Qiexin gritted her teeth. "Brother, or ex-boyfriend?"

"I'm your brother."

They reunited at their father's funeral.

She wore a black dress, and his trench coat was black. The smell of smoke mingled with perfume in the air. They looked less like siblings than a couple who hated each other.

After a class reunion, Jiang Fan carried his drunk best friend back to the hotel. While Li Qiexin was asleep, he opened her phone, scrolled to the very bottom of her contacts, found the number saved as "Perfume Weirdo," and called. It was answered immediately.

After ten years of secretly loving her, out of affection and as a show of defiance, he deliberately kissed Li Qiexin on the lips.

The sound of the kiss came through the phone, especially clear in the silence.

"Who are you?"

"Her current boyfriend." As soon as he said it, Li Qiexin's eyes suddenly met his, clear and wide awake. The person on the other end of the phone was silent for a long time. "Where are you?"

She laughed without restraint and pressed the phone to Jiang Fan's ear. "Darling, tell my brother which hotel we're kissing in."

Theme: I am who I am. I ask neither gods nor Buddhas.