Guide to Ascension for a Scheming, Lazy Fish

New column story: Top-Tier Star Detective's Casebook

A top-tier Tang Dynasty detective x a transmigrated, laid-back female spy. The male lead is a little sharp-tongued, and the female lead is a goofy woman who transmigrated. The setup is also a married couple weathering every storm with their beloved pet.

[Completed: Marrying a Black Cat]: After marrying a cat, she goes from Crown Princess to Empress.

[Blurb]

[White Lotus of a Prestigious Orthodox Sect x A Hardworking-for-Nothing, Quarrelsome, Laid-Back Woman]

Legend has it that the Golden Cicada Sect has a cultivation technique that lets its practitioners ascend after shedding their shells 99 times.

Yan Sheng is the senior sister of the Golden Cicada Sect and was the first in the sect to establish her foundation.

Everyone thought she would be the first to ascend, but after a thousand years of hard work, all her effort came to nothing.

Everyone in the sect ascended except her, including the sect's mountains and rivers.

With no other choice, she went to the Crane Surge Sect to mooch off them, only to meet with an unexpected disaster. When she woke, they had mistaken her for the Crane Surge Sect leader's wife.

Sect Leader Lu Xi was handsome and refined, and devoted to his wife. The Crane Surge Sect was the foremost cultivation sect, while she was an obscure foundation-building cultivator who practiced an unorthodox path and had only three days left to live.

Everyone said she was lucky and ought to be content.

Yan Sheng spat in disdain. Only she knew the truth: this sect leader killed his wives to prove his Dao, having already killed eighty wives and turned them into little golden figurines.

She begged others for help, but no one believed her.

Instead, people slandered the entire Golden Cicada Sect, claiming they all practiced fake techniques and were all liars who never told the truth. They also said the Golden Cicada technique she practiced could never let her ascend.

Then, under everyone's watchful eyes,

she ascended in broad daylight.

[Scene]

A thousand years later, the Hundred-Day Investiture of the Gods ceremony was about to begin.

The High God Yan Sheng left the main hall of the gods. On her way home, she happened to overhear the immortals gossiping in secret. She cast an invisibility spell on herself, clutched a bag of melon seeds, and squeezed into the crowd.

"The next Heavenly Venerable will definitely be High God Yan Sheng."

"But she actually killed her husband to prove her Dao..."

Those words sent the immortals into an uproar, and spittle flew everywhere.

Yan Sheng sighed softly. They were talking about her.

Just as she was preparing to slip away, she accidentally became visible in the middle of the crowd, so she could only give everyone an awkward smile.

The immortals went deathly pale and scattered like birds and beasts.

Yan Sheng gazed at the empty space around her and rested her chin in her hand, pondering:

Could this reputation still be salvaged?

Maybe she should go down and see him?

Notes:

1. The female lead is very weak in the early chapters. The male lead never takes another wife and has no other women. It's all a misunderstanding. I don't know how to start the story in a way that makes this clear, QAQ.

2. In the middle, the female lead and the second male lead will get together, but the female and male leads have a one-on-one romance.

3. The extras will be updated later. I'm still working on them (the story won't be paywalled until the extras are complete).

4. The female lead is a person split into multiple versions, but this doesn't mean the male lead has a harem. That plot hole exists to explain how this works. I'll slowly revise it if I get the chance, or you can just ignore it. To put it simply, if something doesn't make sense, just assume the female lead is awesome and the greatest in the world (laughs).

Theme: Refuse to give up on life, and live well