The Most Hated Person, Dead a Thousand Times

Xie Shu, a great demon lord without sect or master, was hated and reviled by the world. He was beautiful and refined, yet committed every kind of atrocity, with mountains of corpses and bloodshed on his hands. He had thrown the cultivation world into chaos, and everyone wanted to tear him limb from limb and grind his bones to dust. The sentence he heard most often in his life was probably, “Why don't you just die?” So he really did die. In the depths of winter, the youngest junior disciple Kunlun had ever had leapt into the icy River of Forgetfulness after drifting alone for three hundred years, and was buried at the most perilous edge of Kunlun Mountain. No one knew that the boy, clad in bloodstained red, had set out on a lonely, grueling cycle of reincarnation to save the world, dying a full thousand times. No one knew that it was his birthday that day. And no one knew that all he wanted was to be like he had been as a child. To wrap his arms around his beloved eldest senior brother's neck, let him carry him, and walk that long road home. - After the demon lord Xie Shu died, the whole country should have celebrated, with everyone cheering in triumph. Only when the boy's past slowly unfolded before their eyes did they learn that Xie Shu possessed the ability to return from death. In his memories, they saw him in bloodstained red, repeatedly setting out on that lonely, grueling cycle of reincarnation. He had once been a dashing young man, but now his face was worn with the exhaustion of someone about to die at any moment. The sinner they had all condemned... had in fact been the true hero. The junior disciple who had always been his foil realized that his former beloved, the one who had once been his moonlight, was Xie Shu, from whom he had taken everything. Broken and despairing, he leapt into the River of Forgetfulness to gather Xie Shu's remains. The close friend who had betrayed him and stabbed him dozens of times went mad, taking revenge on everyone who had ever hurt Xie Shu. His ungrateful younger brother was consumed by regret. He searched the medicinal archives day and night, sacrificed years of his life to make countless precious pills for Xie Shu, and wept until he lost his voice. The eldest senior brother who had personally cut out Xie Shu's golden core now had bloodshot eyes and was like a mad dog, venturing alone into the ghost realm and searching all night for his junior brother's fragmented soul. He searched for a full month and found nothing. Everyone went completely mad. - The ghost king of the Three Realms, beyond the distinction between good and evil, feared by humans and demons alike. Rumor had it that the most terrifying ghost king in the world had recently picked up a little red-clad dumpling. Everyone warned their lord that this was an evil spirit that would turn on its master. It couldn't be kept and had to be executed at once. But the ghost king only gave a soft laugh. In the darkness, the ominous mark of a heart demon slowly lit up on his forehead. He held the unconscious boy tightly in his arms, his gaze desperate and crazed. A sickly smile crossed his face as he gently pressed a precious kiss to the boy's forehead. “I've waited three hundred years for him...” “How could I possibly let go?” A refined gentleman on the surface, but actually a gloomy, obsessive man driven mad by cultivation deviation, top × a bratty, spoiled young master who is wicked in the early stages, then becomes a resilient, frail beauty, bottom. Older man/younger man. The top is the ghost king. [Content Warnings and Reading Guide] 1. Everyone gets their comeuppance, with a massive love-triangle showdown. Essentially an old-school melodrama. The top has never hurt the bottom. One-on-one, both are sexually inexperienced. 2. A coming-of-age protagonist. I've always wanted to write about a character's transformation and growth through cycles of death and reincarnation, as well as the supporting characters' guilt and breakdowns when they learn the truth. Later on, there will be plenty of villainous suitors turning on one another, clawing at each other and going mad. 3. This is not a scum top and masochistic bottom story. Readers with extreme preferences should proceed with caution. The balance between the bottom's suffering, the comeuppance, and the protagonist's growth is approximately 1:1:1. Later on, the top helps the bottom heal, and there are harem-like elements. 4. This story uses the tropes of watching memories, cycles of death and reincarnation, and comeuppance. If you feel uncomfortable while reading, please stop at once. Please don't derail discussions, attack the author, pirate the work, or accumulate bad karma. Please leave a little more merit behind. The author is striking a wooden fish here and wishes every reader a peaceful and happy life. Thank you. Theme: Love can help people move forward.