Face-blind, easygoing master x scheming, unhinged villain
*Wen Tang had the misfortune of transmigrating into a book. Even worse, she became the evil master of the biggest villain in the story.
In the original novel, this master was utterly inhumanly cruel, beating and berating the future villain as a boy and inflicting severe psychological trauma on him.
On the day he came of age, he ran her through the heart with a single sword thrust.
Wen Tang wanted to run, but she was already seated on the high dais. Among the sea of disciples gathered in the hall to seek a master was the villain who would become her apprentice.
Wen Tang shakily scanned the list of names and didn’t see the villain’s name. She looked again, then remembered.
Before becoming an apprentice, the villain had been an orphan with no name. She had casually given him the name he used later.
Wen Tang smiled at the whole bunch of little potato-shaped children. “Which of you are orphans?”
The little potatoes answered, “All of us!”
Wen Tang: ?
*Wen Tang was severely face-blind. She thought all children looked alike.
She didn’t want to take any apprentices, but the senior sister beside her was sharpening her teeth menacingly while hefting a greatsword.
So Wen Tang kept all the little boys who claimed to be orphans, deciding to use love to reform every potential villain equally.
Ha! She had seventeen apprentices just like that.
None of the seventeen had names. To treat them all equally, Wen Tang gave them names similar to the male lead’s.
Yin Er, Yin San, Yin Si... all the way to Yin Shiba.
Who was Yin Yi? Yin Yi was the name of the villain in the original novel.
Wen Tang didn’t dare give anyone that name.
*Yin Yi was reborn, returning once again to the Linxiang Sect, where he had suffered endless bullying and grown to hate it with all his heart.
Once again, Wen Tang took him as her apprentice.
This time, his fellow disciples called him Yin Shiba.
Yin Yi sneered. In both this life and his previous one, Wen Tang had never once taken her apprentices seriously.
Every day after being reborn, the villain thought of nothing but killing Wen Tang.
With a belly full of schemes and a gloomy expression, he went to pay his respects to his master.
Instead, he found Wen Tang sitting at the lectern, munching on sunflower seeds as she gently read from the text, while... his sixteen senior brothers dozed off around her.
Yin Yi: ...This must be one of Wen Tang’s new ways of tormenting people.
*Wen Tang’s youngest apprentice, Yin Shiba, was a poor little thing with a weak spiritual root.
With his aptitude, he was destined to achieve nothing on the path of cultivation and seeking the Dao.
So although the child was gloomy and thought about running away all the time, Wen Tang always chose to forgive him with great patience.
There was just one thing: Wen Tang thought this child fit the original novel’s description of the villain a little too well.
Dark eyes, black hair, an indifferent temperament...
But then she thought: Aren’t all my apprentices black-haired and black-eyed?
Wen Tang never suspected Yin Shiba again, and happily settled into the daily routine of raising children.
Until the day Yin Shiba came of age, when she sent her most cherished little apprentice down the mountain. Rising on tiptoe, she patted his head and said cheerfully, “Shiba, our master-and-disciple bond has run its course. See you around!”
The little apprentice’s dark eyes fixed solemnly on her. “Master wants to abandon me again?”
Wen Tang corrected him. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m only abandoning you this time. Where did ‘again’ come from?”
The little apprentice smiled. “Master, have you ever considered that the ‘Yin Yi’ you called out during your nightmares was actually me?”
She burst out laughing. “Impossible!”
Only after Wen Tang was drugged and locked in a dark room, her white robe slashed to ribbons by sword energy, did she understand.
The villain rubbed her wrist and sneered. “Do you believe me now?”
Wen Tang clutched her ragged skirt, looked at the villain, then thought of the faces of her other sixteen apprentices. Tears streamed down her face. “I can’t tell you apart. I really can’t!”
Theme: Move forward with a kind and sincere heart.
