Cultivating the Way of Ruthlessness in a Dog-Blood Story

After failing to ascend, Wen He was struck by heavenly lightning and made the head of a declining sect. He was also bound to a spirit artifact that called itself the System of Love.

The System said the world was originally a melodramatic novel based on him, and the male leads were his junior disciples, his junior nephew, and two of his own disciples.

His eldest disciple was fair-faced and dark-hearted, with a confinement-room plotline, and wanted his master Wen He to be his dog every day.

His second disciple had a romance-novel plotline. He was a gender-ambiguous shuang'er, and would blush and burrow into Wen He's arms at the drop of a hat.

His junior disciple acted like a loyal dog, serving him dutifully on the surface, but secretly researched how to make Wen He bear his child.

His junior nephew was on the corruption route. Every day, he would corner his martial uncle against a wall with red-rimmed eyes and say, “If Master can do it, so can I!”

Wen He: They must all have something wrong with their heads.

The System told him to choose one of them as his cultivation partner. After completing the romance mission, it would help him ascend on the spot.

Wen He didn’t want to choose any of them. He just wanted to draw his sword and send the whole pack of lunatics in his sect soaring into the sky the hard way.

*

A hundred years later, the head of the Sword Sect, who cultivated the Path of Unfeeling, finally ascended and attained the Dao, with his cultivation partner at his side.

Over the past century, eight hundred versions of Head Wen’s scandalous love life had made the rounds.

Everyone stared curiously at his cultivation partner: red robes, white hair, a red mark between the brows, and otherwise a face exactly like Wen He’s.

It was said that this person was the worldly attachment Head Wen had severed when he entered the Path of Unfeeling.

*

Wen Chen spent his whole life trapped by invisible shackles. At crucial moments, he couldn’t control his own body. He could only watch helplessly as his cultivation was crippled and his meridians severed.

A pack of dogs in cahoots fastened chains around him, hoping to see him crawl and submit.

After Wen Chen perished alongside his sect, he thought his soul had been scattered for good. But when he opened his eyes again, he was back on the mountain behind the sect.

A black-haired young man with the same face stood among the pines and snow, sword on his back. He raised a hand to brush away the frost that had fallen between Wen Chen’s brows.

“My name is Wen He. Since you are the worldly attachment I severed from myself, you may choose your own name and surname, and stand in this world as your own person.”

“...Chen.”

Wen Chen smiled, the cinnabar mark between his brows bewitching and alluring. “Wen Chen.”

From this day forth, he would be nothing but Wen He’s worldly attachment.

– Self-pairing. If that’s not your thing, don’t come in.

– Cold, ruthless sword cultivator who says little x white-haired, obsessive beauty

– My take on cultivation, with tons of personal worldbuilding

Theme: Do not do unto others what you would not have done to yourself