After Bonding With the Ice-Cold Beauty

[The later chapters are being polished. I don't take responsibility for pirated copies after multiple revisions. Bonus chapters may drop from time to time.]

Rong Suyi, the First Sword Sect's senior disciple, was beautiful and talented in every way. Unfortunately, she had one fatal weakness: her spiritual power had been meager since childhood, and she was destined never to become an immortal.

The junior sister who had just arrived at Yanhua Sect only two years ago beat her in the immortal sect competition. Rong Suyi had trained hard and cared for her fellow disciples, yet her sect hated her.

She met Xie Xingjian in the mortal realm, and they shared the same misfortune. In the end, he killed her in a snowstorm.

To her dying day, she couldn't understand what she'd done wrong.

After being reborn, she decided to stay away from them and find her own path as a swordswoman.

*

After being reborn, she saved a young man.

She meant to leave, but unexpectedly discovered that her meager spiritual power began to grow whenever she was physically close to him.

Rong Suyi: !!?

So she used detoxification as an excuse to get close to him, confessed to him every day, and kept testing his boundaries.

Shi Weiming sneered. Once the poison was gone, he would kill her.

But she wasn't afraid of him, and her cultivation advanced at a dizzying pace.

*

Before long, she had cured Shi Weiming's poison.

He regained his lofty status and became the object of everyone's admiration.

She broke through to a new level and made a name for herself with a single sword strike.

He thought she couldn't live without him and would cling to him for the rest of her life.

He began preparing betrothal gifts. The next time they met, he could agree to become her cultivation partner.

But when they met again, all he heard was: "I'm leaving."

He stood stunned for a long moment. For the first time, he humbled himself and tried to win her over, offering countless rare treasures. "Stay. I won't kill you."

But she walked away without looking back.

"With a heart as gentle as silk, wield the sharpest of swords."

[Gentle and resilient heroine x aloof, high-and-mighty heartthrob]

Reader's guide:

1. The story focuses on romance. It isn't a cultivation-progression story or a power fantasy, and the heroine isn't strong. If you're a hardcore fan of those types, don't read.

2. The male lead is an aloof, high-and-mighty heartthrob who goes mad for love. The second male lead is gentle and forceful, and suffers a rebirth-and-regret arc. She has been physically intimate with the second male lead. The ending is 1v1.

3. Angsty melodrama. If it's not your thing, don't force yourself to read. No need to notify the author if you drop it.

See the author's note in Chapter 3 for more content warnings.

--Next xianxia story coming soon: My Ex-Husband Came Looking for Me After I Died--

Su Jingshui was an ordinary human woman with a short lifespan.

Her husband, Xie Changzhao, was Kunlun Sect's senior disciple, blessed with extraordinary talent and a beauty that could dazzle the world. He was purer than frost and snow, more flawless than jade.

She didn't fit in at the Kunlun Immortal Realm. Everyone said that marrying him was a blessing she'd earned over several lifetimes.

They had no connection before becoming cultivation partners due to a promise to a friend. There was no love between them.

Xie Changzhao loved someone else: the Immortal Maiden Lianmei. They shared the same origins and stood side by side. Their love should have blossomed naturally, but because of her, a mortal woman, they had to give it up.

He did everything a proper husband should. Though Xie Changzhao didn't love her, he treated her decently.

So before she died, she dissolved their cultivation pact. She didn't want to distract Xie Changzhao as he approached a breakthrough, and she wished him a smooth path to immortality and a future in which his dreams came true.

*

For some reason, a hundred years later, she returned.

She was still mortal. A disciple from a sect found and took her in. The sect was shabby, but everyone treated her wonderfully and trained alongside her. She thought she wouldn't mind spending the rest of her life like that.

One day, she went up the mountain to gather herbs in a light drizzle and met someone who shouldn't have been there.

The immortal lord held the wooden hairpin she'd dropped. His flowing hair obscured his expression. But she didn't need to see his face. After all their years together, she could guess how he behaved around strangers: gentle, polite, and distant.

After a long while, Xie Changzhao's gaze remained calm, and his voice rang like ice breaking. "Miss, you dropped your hairpin."

He didn't recognize her at all.

Su Jingshui breathed a sigh of relief.

She'd concealed her face with spiritual energy and looked even more unremarkable than before. How could he recognize her? Besides, a hundred years had passed. Even if she stood in front of him again, he might not remember her.

Xie Changzhao: "The mountain spirits can hurt people. It may be dangerous for you to come up here alone."

Su Jingshui: "Thanks for the warning, but I'm heading back down now." She thought that her former husband seemed much gentler than he had a hundred years ago.

Perhaps he'd changed so much because, just as he'd once hoped, he'd finally become cultivation partners with the person he truly loved.

But that had nothing to do with her anymore.

[The seemingly bright and noble, but secretly dark and obsessive senior disciple x the kind and beautiful mortal girl]

Theme: The road ahead is long and winding. I will seek my truth from top to bottom.