After Becoming the Aloof Immortal Venerable's First Disciple

Main story complete.

Please check out my ongoing story next door, After Being Offered to a Mad Fiend. Its blurb is at the very bottom.

Blurb:

Lazy little salted fish x naturally airheaded little immortal

Lin Yan transmigrates into a cultivation world, becoming a peasant girl whose birth father drove her into the mountains in the depths of winter, hoping she would freeze to death.

She sets herself one ambitious goal: just stay alive.

When she first transmigrates, she meets a white-robed sword immortal in the mountains, cool and aloof, utterly removed from the world. He spends his days doing nothing but sleeping and cultivating. What's more, when they part, the man who had barely spoken to her finally asks why she doesn't cultivate.

Lin Yan: ? Is there some kind of KPI for getting people to cultivate?

A few days later, she still sets foot on the long steps leading to the immortal sect.

She hears they provide food and lodging, and in a world overrun by demons, an immortal sect is the best place to weather the storm.

Lin Yan figures she can join the sect and coast through life, but at the annual selection for new disciples, the revered Immortal Zhuangying, who has never taken a disciple, unexpectedly points at her.

She squints at the immortal on the high platform, as elegant as snow on green bamboo, and the longer she looks, the more familiar he seems.

Lin Yan: No, seriously, man, what exactly made you set your heart on me so completely?

Immortal Zhuangying, Jiang Chongxue, is famed as the untouchable flower of the immortal sects. People have even joked that his lover is his sword, Zhezhu.

Everyone is curious about what kind of peerless genius Lin Yan must be, for Immortal Zhuangying to favor her after turning away a genius sword cultivator.

But after several rounds of exams, Lin Yan is firmly at the bottom of the class.

What's more, even Immortal Zhuangying, who spends every day either vanquishing demons or cultivating, inexplicably turns up at a snack stall in the market below the mountain.

The cultivators: There must be some kind of demonic enchantment at this snack stall, right? There has to be!

Lin Yan: Exactly, exactly. These fruit slices with chili are amazing!

Lin Yan thinks her master may look cool and aloof, but he's actually dense and dull. He can make even a suggestive lesson on bedroom techniques so boring that his disciples nod off in class. Still, he is willing to ask questions whenever he doesn't know something, puts up with her nonsense, and is a decent person: protective of his own and kind-hearted. And since he's maxed out in combat, clinging to him and coasting through life in the cultivation world couldn't be more comfortable.

But later, the people who once praised, admired, and followed him all showed their true colors, calling him a demon by birth and clamoring to kill him.

In a single night, he fell from heaven's favored son to the dust. His frosty, snowlike figure became a reflection of moonlight shattered on the water.

The immortal sect lost a swordsmanship champion; the world gained two travelers wandering among its mountains and rivers.

She taught him joy, love, and hate, and how to leap from the summit of a thousand snowy peaks into the world of mortals.

Immortal Sect Express: Immortal Zhuangying has been shut in the pill-refining room for an entire month. A new immortal pill may soon appear in the cultivation world.

Jiang Chongxue gazes into the pill furnace, lost in thought.

There's too much salt, so it's a little salty. How can he make the clay-pot rice she glanced at in the restaurant the other day?

* A xianxia road story with a series of little arcs

* Cover character design: Fuze, by Shuimo Danqing

----------------After Being Offered to a Mad Fiend----------------

Wen Heng was used as a bargaining chip by her birth father and sent to the bed of the living devil who ruled Zhuxin Manor.

The devil was named Wen Du, a mad dog feared throughout the cultivation world. He had a face like the spring breeze melting snow, a carefree young man in his prime. But he was wicked by nature, his magic strange and his temperament erratic.

At their first meeting, he drew a dagger and pressed it against her arm. If killing her hadn't caused trouble afterward, she would have been dead already.

Through a twist of fate, Wen Du kept her.

Wen Du asks himself honestly and decides he's treated her pretty well. She is always grateful in front of him, looking pitiful as she says that without him, her father and brothers would drain her of every last bit of value and leave her dead without a whole corpse.

He keeps her by his side, feeds her, gives her clothes and shelter, teaches her to use spiritual artifacts, and tends to her wounds. He thinks she couldn't survive without him.

After her first few escape attempts, he is so furious he wants to kill her. But after thinking it over, he can't bring himself to do it. Instead, he keeps her locked up and watches her closely, crushing any thought of escape.

Unable to run, she grows more and more obedient. He thinks she has finally fallen for him, but it turns out she has murderous intentions.

The day Wen Heng grinds him to dust, she weeps like a pear blossom in the rain, looking just as pitiful as ever.

Wen Du keeps staring at her face until the moment he dies. As he breathes his last, he is still furious: furious that he didn't see through her sooner, furious that he couldn't bring himself to kill her.

For thousands of days and nights, he thinks of the face that cried as it sent him to the afterlife, grinding his teeth with rage.

He thinks, when I come back to the land of the living, I'll drag her back here.

And make her regret it every single day!

Wen Heng settles in a small town. Her days are as calm as water, and she gets engaged, with the wedding set for the season when the mountain flowers bloom.

Mountain flowers bloom in profusion, and moonlight spills across the ground.

Wen Heng is dressed in her wedding gown when someone grabs her by the shoulders from behind. A familiar voice sounds by her ear, laced with a sinister laugh:

"Wasn't I good enough to you back then? Why did you run?"

She turns stiffly and meets those same unruly, fervent eyes.

Wen Du looks her up and down, his tongue pressing against his cheek as he grins mischievously.

"Nice dress. Wonder how much trouble it'll be to take off."

#If they both want to send each other to the afterlife, doesn't that count as mutual devotion?#

[Reading Guide]

* One-on-one romance, happy ending, both leads have had no other partners

* Love and hate, and neither lead is a good person

* Romance and monster-slaying

* The male lead talks a lot

* I haven't decided whether there'll be a pregnancy plot. Maybe, maybe not, so consider this an advance warning.

* A low-magic setting, mostly about people fighting one another. The worldbuilding is all made up. If it holds together, I'm brilliant; if it doesn't, your eyes are brilliant.

Theme: Clouds are carefree, and water flows at ease