After Losing His Job, the Demon Venerable Switched to Raising Dragons and Fawning Over the Protagonist

When snow from the Ten Thousand Swords Sect fell on the demonic mark around Shen Chuyan's wrist, she was staring blankly at her own tombstone in the Sword Mound. Three days ago, the immortal sects had breached the Demon Palace. In its prison, they had found a sword prodigy who had been missing for a hundred years. But the girl who once dazzled the world with a single sword strike now bore a demonic mark on her wrist, had lost all her cultivation, and wandered in a daze as if she had lost her memory.

"Voluntarily becoming a slave..." The sect leader stared at the mark on her wrist. The teacup shattered to powder in his palm.

From that day on, Shen Chuyan became the disgrace of the Ten Thousand Swords Sect.

Rumors cut deeper than the icy wind on the mountaintop. Her fellow disciples, once eager to befriend her, now avoided her like the plague. Some said she had knelt and licked the Demon Venerable's boot when she fell to demonic cultivation. Others claimed they had seen her chained up and put on sale at a market in the Demon Realm.

Shen Chuyan thought this was simply how she would have to live from now on.

But her memories returned all too quickly. She dreamed of the night her spiritual energy turned against her, when she had grabbed a System that appeared out of nowhere while lying in a pool of blood. An image surfaced in the void: Gu Qing's soul lamp was about to go out. The mechanical voice was cold as iron: [Make a pact with me. Help one person become the leader of the immortal sects, and your senior brother will be reborn.]

Trembling, she bit her fingertip and pressed a bloody seal onto the contract formation. But the moment she saw Long Aotian, she felt as though she had fallen into an icy abyss. This hopeless fool couldn't even memorize the most basic flying sword technique.

How was she supposed to raise him into the leader of the immortal path???

"A sword cultivator must never let their mind grow restless." She snatched the storybook from Long Aotian's arms.

"Keep your stance steady. At the very least, don't trip over your own feet!" She grabbed Long Aotian by the collar just as he was about to fall.

After exhausting herself to no avail, with Long Aotian still showing no promise,

Shen Chuyan said, "Fine, fine, fine. If I can't raise a kid, then I can raise myself, right?"

Wasn't it just a matter of reforging her sword bones and restoring her spiritual roots? Wasn't it just a matter of sacrificing herself to seal the formation?

She would do it!

When Shen Chuyan opened her eyes in the Cold Pool, she saw that her sword bones had been restored. She also saw her senior brother, who had sacrificed himself to seal the formation, with blood from breaking it still on his palm. Warmly, he pressed it to her cold cheek. "Don't look."

On the day the Demon Realm's dark clouds gathered over the city, Shen Chuyan stood alone before the Ten Thousand Swords Sect, gripping her bloodstained life-bound sword. The Demon Generals' cheers abruptly fell silent. Millions of eyes fixed on the brilliant golden light glowing from the demonic mark on her wrist. It was unmistakably the Demon Venerable's life-bound seal!

"We welcome our lord back to the throne!"

The tip of Shen Chuyan's sword trembled. She suddenly remembered what Gu Qing had told her while teaching her swordplay. Back then, the young man had guided her hand on the sword, his voice tinged with teasing. "Naturally, if junior sister becomes an Immortal Venerable, I'll be your immortal attendant. If junior sister becomes the Demon Venerable, I'll be your protector."

Later, whenever Shen Chuyan took out the jade box holding the pearl, she remembered what Gu Qing had said when he gave it to her. Back then, the blushing young man had tucked a hairpin set with a pearl into her hair. "When junior sister comes of age, I'll make you an even prettier hairpin."

Bonus Scene:

During the seven days Shen Chuyan spent reforging her sword bones in the Cold Pool, Gu Qing kept watch outside the barrier for seven days and nights. Each time a blood-red ripple appeared on the water, another scar from a crescent blade appeared on his back.

That night, Shen Chuyan was pressed against a ginkgo tree. Gu Qing stroked the new demonic mark on her wrist, then suddenly bit the tip of her ear. "When you taught someone else to arrange the star paths, why didn't you tell them this was our love token formation?"

When the Demon Realm's army invaded, Shen Chuyan finally regained her memories. Watching the Demon Generals kneel, she turned and tossed her life-bound sword to Gu Qing. "We agreed back then that if I became the Demon Venerable, you'd be my protector."

Gu Qing caught the sword and casually pulled out her hairpin. Her three thousand strands of dark hair danced with the banners. "Being a protector is so dull. Why not become the Demon Venerable's..." The rest of his words were drowned out by a lingering kiss.

[Coming Soon: I Became the Number One in the Immortal Realm by Playing a Substitute. The promise: You never wanted a substitute romance. You wanted the medal of a godslayer. If you like it, adorable readers, please add it to your collection!]

Coming-soon blurb. Feel free to skip if it's not your thing!

Cold Pool:

Ji Mingheng dipped the hem of her gauze skirt into the icy spring. The Rebirth Mirror on her wrist glowed a ghostly blue. This was the third time that month she had impersonated the lingering soul of the immortal realm's beloved white moonlight to meet the young lord of the Medicine King Valley.

"Li'er, your soul is growing more substantial." The white-robed young man gazed dreamily at her reflection on the water. "I even brought a thousand-year-old brew made with profound ice..."

"From the quarter past three until six o'clock." Ji Mingheng conjured a water clock with a spell, then turned her pale hand to reveal a jade slip. "Three hundred spirit stones for studying dual cultivation techniques. Two wood spiritual roots extra for playing the zither to soothe your heartache. If you want to hold my hand, pay in advance..."

The young man's ears flushed red as he slapped down his storage bag. "I'll take it all!"

In the depths of the Sword Mound:

Iron chains clanked. The sword cultivator, drenched in blood, clutched her sleeve. "You said you'd come at midnight!"

Ji Mingheng nimbly took half a step back. The Rebirth Mirror reflected the bloody mark between her brows. "Fellow Daoist Pei, when you crushed your message jade at a quarter past seven, I was helping the Buddhist heir mend his kasaya. According to the rules, urgent last-minute requests cost triple in golden spiritual sword energy."

The young man bit his tongue and spat blood onto his sword. "Take it!"

In the Demon Realm's blood pool:

The black-robed man gripped her chin and sneered. "Song Qingli never dared bargain with me."

"If the Demon Venerable thinks I'm too expensive," Ji Mingheng said, a red lotus karmic flame unique to Song Qingli igniting at her fingertip, "the Demon King next door is still waiting for me to play his betrothed, who died young..."

A hand with sharply defined knuckles suddenly pressed against the back of her neck, pouring pure demonic energy into her spiritual platform. "Two hours. I'll buy you out."

At midnight, as the bell tolled, Ji Mingheng leaned against a dead tree and counted her gains. The Rebirth Mirror suddenly cracked. In it appeared a face identical to her own. "Dear disciple, the spiritual power you've stolen won't be enough to bring those corpses in the coffins back to life..."

Bonus Scene:

[Mirage Tower Illusion]

Ji Mingheng dipped her fingertips into the young lord of the Medicine King Valley's spiritual meridians. A crimson bead of blood fell into a crack in the Sin Mirror Altar. But the reflection showed not Song Qingli's cool, ethereal beauty, but the golden cores of her parents being shattered by icy blue sword light on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month.

"Song Qingli never told me it would hurt when she took the blood from my heart." She smiled as she crushed the scab in her palm, and her three thousand strands of dark hair turned white, one by one.

The young lord of the Medicine King Valley gazed infatuatedly at the jade pear hairpin taking shape in her hair, completely unaware that his life-bound Gu was passing into her body through their touching lips. The ninth primordial spirit was complete.

[Blood Tears in the Sword Mound]

Iron chains pierced Ji Mingheng's shoulder blade. She deliberately let icy sword energy tear her sleeve, revealing the red mark of a personal disciple that Song Qingli had carved there herself.

"When the Dao Lord gave you the Supreme Forgetting Passion Art here," she said, letting the Sword Venerable grip her throat and pin her against the ice coffin, "did she tell you that this Profound Yin body was originally meant for my master?"

The ice coffin exploded. A hundred-year-old corpse lay within, a crest from the Ji clan embedded in her chest.

[Execution of the Immortal]

When Song Qingli's immortal bones were nailed to the broken stele of the Ji residence, she finally saw the black mist curling around the Sin Mirror Altar. It was the vengeful souls of the entire Ji clan, whom she had personally exterminated.

"Dear disciple, you actually used the technique of swapping flowers for trees that I taught you..."

"On you." Ji Mingheng crushed the last fragment of her primordial spirit. Three hundred coffins burst open at once amid the ruins. "After all, on the night you slaughtered the city, you held my hand as I pierced my own dantian..."

Amid the blood rain, the newly fallen immortal stared at the godslaying curse flowing across her palm.

Next, it was time to settle the score with the System that had tricked her into signing a Mirage Spirit Pact.

Theme: Strive to live well.