The Sect

That day, A Sheng carried her sister's corpse on her back and swung her blade at her own kin, the ones she'd once fought beside on bloody battlefields. Her eyes were injured, her legs broken, both arms barely moving, and her body drenched in blood... Still, she clenched her sister's hair between her teeth and vowed to crawl out of the prison that had confined her people for thousands of years.

The gods manifested and sent down heavenly punishment.

At the moment the thunderbolt plunged from the sky, the heavens blazed bright. A figure appeared in midair and blocked the way, catching a thousand-foot streak of lightning with one hand.

Through the haze, A Sheng heard a heavenly voice.

"Yuanzhi, you are the principal god in charge of thunder. By interfering with heavenly punishment like this, aren't you afraid of being stripped of your position and sent into the cycle of reincarnation?"

The withered hair slipped from between her teeth, and someone lifted her heavy body into their arms.

"Even when I was mortal, I never feared heaven or earth." A woman's voice sounded by her ear. "If becoming an immortal means losing my conscience, that's what would truly be frightening."

That was the last voice A Sheng heard before she entered the mortal world.

"I've already chosen your Dao name. Since you've joined my Tianyuan Sect, you'll take my surname, 'Yuan,' like the other disciples, and your given name will begin with 'Yao': Yuan Yao. Do you know how to write 'Yao'?"

She lifted A Sheng's hand and traced two pairs of intersecting, connected curves across her rough palm.

"All things between heaven and earth thrive without end. That is the meaning of your Dao name."

※The setting follows on from The Chronicle of Qiyuan, but you can read this without having read it. The heroine is the strongest character in the story. There is a male lead, but little romance; the focus is mainly on the bonds between master and disciple and among fellow disciples.

Theme: The sect reunites, bringing chaos and hilarity