Ye Ling never imagined she would transmigrate into a book after casually opening a male-oriented fantasy novel. All she remembers is that the protagonist is named Su Zhen and has a golden finger called the Reincarnation Golden Register.
Everyone who has read the book says Su Zhen is a smiling monster. In one life, he grovels and treats everyone like a brother; in the next, he draws his sword and slaughters them all.
He's just as ruthless to beautiful women as he is to everyone else.
All he wants is to cultivate immortality and live forever.
Ye Ling and Su Zhen are both in the Qingxuan Sect, a notorious, heartless demonic sect, but they have nothing to do with each other. She's a nobody, like a stray dog by the roadside, and Su Zhen was just as insignificant when he first joined the sect.
They're both utterly miserable.
Ye Ling doesn't have the chance to cling to the protagonist, and she wouldn't dare anyway, so she racks her brains and latches onto the best backer she can find for now.
She wants to cultivate her way back home.
Gu Yuanyou, one of the Qingxuan Sect's prodigies, likes her.
She carefully maintains their relationship, getting as many resources out of him as she can.
He's also never had anyone else by his side.
Adrift and alone, Ye Ling can't help developing feelings for him. She truly once thought she would marry him.
Until Gu Yuanyou tells her she's nothing more than a resource for his cultivation, and that he was only kind to her so she'd be utterly devoted to him.
…
Ye Ling runs away, only to be imprisoned.
For some reason, Gu Yuanyou neither kills her nor refines her into a tool. He only visits her in silence, then leaves without a word.
Ten years of confinement. She hates him to the bone and curses him to die a horrible death.
At last, she dies.
By then, Su Zhen has also been slapped to death by his beloved senior brother.
Ye Ling comes to her senses as if waking from a dream, weeping with joy. So the protagonist's cycle of rebirth can encompass every timeline.
And she can retain her memories.
This time, Ye Ling kills Gu Yuanyou, then steps over his corpse and joins Blood Sea True Lord's sect. Su Zhen becomes her junior brother.
She meets Su Zhen for the first time.
The boy stands beneath a flowering tree in flowing white robes, smiling as he calls to her, “Senior Sister.”
Only then does Ye Ling remember that in the original novel, Su Zhen did seem to have a senior sister named Ye, gentle on the outside and ruthless within.
She gives a distracted reply and remains cold and distant toward him.
To cultivate more effectively,
Ye Ling diligently serves her master, never daring to slack off in the slightest.
Yet for some reason, her master develops feelings for her.
Ye Ling considers giving in.
But would a Nascent Soul True Lord ever lower himself? He says he can only offer her the position of a concubine.
Ye Ling would rather remain his disciple. Her master storms off in a fury.
In the third cycle,
Ye Ling escapes the demonic sect with an immortal from the righteous path.
She agrees to become his wife.
With resources, she can cultivate and return home, even if the odds of getting home remain slim.
But people's hearts change.
Ye Ling has struggled through this cruel world from birth to death without ever escaping it. She's truly tired.
She begins to contemplate death.
Su Zhen also reaches a life-or-death crisis, what people call a dead-end scenario.
Ye Ling knows the protagonist always manages to escape disaster, yet for some reason she wants to help him. Perhaps it's because she escaped the demonic sect, but Su Zhen still calls her Senior Sister.
He often sneaks over to see her.
One misty, rainy night, Su Zhen arrives in white robes, looking bedraggled and out of options. He stands at her window, gazing at her in silence, his expression serene.
She offers him a word of advice.
Su Zhen falls silent, then asks her, “Senior Sister, do you have any regrets?”
Ye Ling doesn't know what she mumbles in reply. All she knows is that Su Zhen personally shatters his own heart meridians in front of her.
The cycle starts over once again.
It is only much later that Ye Ling learns that she doesn't restart with every cycle. The cycle only resets when Su Zhen kills himself.
*
Su Zhen is used to scheming and betrayal.
Dying again and again, then being reborn again and again, is the gift bestowed on him by the Golden Register.
But how could something like that come without a price?
He hates useless people, useless things, and useless deaths.
Until he gets a so-called senior sister.
She is always keeping him at arm's length. She doesn't join the demonic sect in its depravity or engage in its filthy deeds, yet all she wants is to cultivate.
She's so strange, so strange that she doesn't seem to belong in this world.
It turns out Senior Sister discovered his secret of reincarnation. She always pretended not to know, but couldn't help warning him when disaster was about to strike.
She's such a good person,
Su Zhen thinks.
He should kill the person who knows his greatest secret. Yet he ends up killing himself for her, making the timeline return to the moment before she marries the immortal.
Senior Sister knows his secret now.
He'll never let her go again. She belongs with him forever, until the end of eternity.
Senior Sister wants to go home. He can go home with her.
P.S.:
The female lead is weak, just an ordinary person.
One-on-one, with different pairings at different stages. The female lead is not a virgin, the male lead is. Su Zhen is the final male lead.
Theme: A lotus can emerge from the mud unsullied