A Huge Bounty for the Senior Sister

. Gu Yuqing found a dying boy on the battlefield between immortals and demons.

Although the boy had a handsome face, this was not a storybook tale where a damsel saves a beauty and the handsome man repays her with his hand in marriage.

The boy was an ungrateful little brat who didn't appreciate her kindness. He also seemed like a gloomy little misanthrope.

The nth time he threw away the food Gu Yuqing had brought him, she punched him in his handsome face, grabbed him by the collar, hauled him up from the ground where he'd been sprawled, and gave him a thorough scolding.

As expected, after she hit and yelled at him, the boy's eyes reddened. Just as Gu Yuqing was beginning to reflect that she might have gone too far, the boy's thin lips trembled. On the verge of tears, with a hint of reserve, two parts delight, three parts pain, and four parts anticipation in his eyes, he asked, "Could you hit me one more time?"

Gu Yuqing: Wait, are you a masochist?

Fu Zhuo, young master of the demon clan, was famous throughout the four seas and eight wildernesses as a masochist. Specifically:

While living among humans, he became a disciple of an immortal sect. When his senior sister fled the sect, she shot an arrow through his heart, nearly pinning him beneath the Heaven-Suppressing Pillar.

When the demon clan took him back, he sheltered that same senior sister, who was on the run. But she stole the demon clan's sacred relic and grievously wounded him again.

To everyone else, Fu Zhuo, the masochistic young master of the demon clan, finally came to his senses and spent three hundred years hunting that woman.

That woman was a leading figure in the immortal sect and a genius at cultivating spiritual energy. Three hundred years ago, she abandoned the sect and joined the demon clan. Then, during the calamity that ravaged both immortals and demons, she stole the demon clan's sacred relic and was killed by Fu Zhuo. Her soul scattered across the world, and no one knew where it had gone. A practitioner of fate arts divined that she would gather her soul and be reborn three hundred years later. So Fu Zhuo personally put out a reward, refusing to let even the slightest scrap of news about her slip by.

But while seeking revenge, Fu Zhuo let his guard down for a moment and fell into a trap set by the immortal path. On the brink of death, he was found by a young female cultivator.

"...So do you really want to hunt down your senior sister?" the young cultivator asked, resting her chin in her hand.

"No. I just want to see a white pear blossom from three hundred years ago."

#The masochistic junior brother turns out to be a hopeless romantic#

#You really aren't going to fix that hopeless-romantic habit, are you?#

#Let's see who has more secret identities#

*An xianxia novel with a ton of original worldbuilding. It's not a level-up story, there are lots of arcs and characters, and I guess you could call it an xianxia road trip.

*No promise of a sweet ending, but the main couple gets a happy ending.

*One secondary couple has a girl-boy dynamic. They don't get much page time, but they're important. Please don't read if that bothers you.

Cover artist: Lao Pa

Theme: The strong can defeat others, but the one who conquers himself is truly powerful.