The Sickly Master Is Reborn

How many days does it take to go from a god revered by all and worshipped at immortal temples to a disgraced immortal condemned by all three realms?

Shen Hengzhi needed only three.

"Shen Hengzhi, the thirteenth immortal leader of the Immortal Alliance, altered the edict of the Heaven-Connecting Terrace and betrayed all living beings in the three realms. He is a disgrace to humankind! Since he is already dead, we will spare him punishment, but strip him of his title as immortal leader and move his fate tablet to the Tower of Sins as a warning to all!"

At the Immortal Alliance's joint assembly, a single verdict from the Internal Review Court nailed him to the pillar of shame.

His soul merges with a night-blooming cereus, and he wakes again three hundred years later. Immortal Leader Shen is still the talk of the town.

This time, he plans to wash his hands of everything and live in seclusion until he dies. But just after he takes human form, he is kidnapped.

What?

He tries every trick to escape: from the ailing, frail body that can barely walk to luring the enemy away and switching places with a double. But in the end, he is still pinned down on red silk brocade and trapped in a five-foot-deep cold pool, with no freedom at all.

Years later, Shen Hengzhi gets his wish and lives in seclusion, but life is not as peaceful as he expected. Every day, complaint missives fly in like more birds than roost in the mountains.

By day, he's furious. After sundown, chaos reigns.

A bright-eyed, handsome young man suddenly appears, throws himself at Shen Hengzhi's knees, wraps his arms around his waist, and acts cute.

"Get up! You think this will make me go soft?"

Li Fuguang says nothing and snuggles into Shen Hengzhi's arms, secretly reaching for the Demon-Subduing Whip by his hand.

"You smashed your way through the immortal sect's cave dwelling without a second thought. You act so erratically. Is this how I raised you?"

Li Fuguang secretly slips the whip away and hides it behind his back, but gets caught.

Li Fuguang returns to his original eight-foot form, puts the Demon-Subduing Whip back into Shen Hengzhi's palm, and carries him back to the room. With the most fearsome air, he says the gentlest words: "Be careful not to hurt your hand. How about you save the beating for when we get home?"

Reader notes:

1. The shizun (immortal leader) is the shou, and the wayward disciple (Demon Venerable) is the gong. The romance has a groveling arc and an immortal-xianxia setting, with important original worldbuilding such as the Heaven-Connecting Tree and the edict, but nothing difficult to understand.

2. A lazy, carefree genius beauty shou (Shen Hengzhi) x a pragmatic, gloomy, irritable lone-wolf gong (Li Fuguang)

3. This is not a leveling-up story. The cultivation ranks are simplified to Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core (strong cultivators), Nascent Soul (few and far between), and Deity Transformation (extremely rare).

Theme: Blind faith is a bottomless abyss.